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06/11/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/11/2025 16:32

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and UCLA

UCLA Newsroom
June 11, 2025
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Brian Wilson, the co-founder of the Beach Boys and the group's driving creative force, died today at the age of 82. Read below about how Wilson's path - and those of his bandmates and friends - intersected with UCLA over the years.

Where the boys were

Earl Leaf / Capitol Records
The Beach Boys on campus in 1964.

Who knew the cover of the Beach Boys' first No. 1 hit was photographed right here on campus?

Wouldn't it be nice, thought top photographer Earl Leaf in the fall of 1963, if we relocated the band away from their familiar habitat of surfboards and hot rods, and shot them somewhere that was also equally iconically Californian, but without the waves and bikinis?

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UCLA introduces scholarship named for Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson

UCLA
UCLA student David Ghesser and David Leaf speak with legendary songwriter Brian Wilson.

In 2019, UCLA established a new student scholarship named for Brian Wilson, one of America's most celebrated modern songwriters, funded by a gift of $100,000 from David Leaf, a writer, filmmaker and then-UCLA adjunct professor of musicology.

Leaf was inspired to create the scholarship by his long friendship with Wilson, which began in the 1970s.

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David Leaf Talks Beach Boys, Brian Wilson

David Leaf, an adjunct associate professor of music industry and musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, recently spoke at UCLA about his latest book, released in April 2025, "SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson."

Told with the insight of a journalist and the intimacy of a friend, Leaf's account is a powerful story of a musical genius. But he is not only documenting Wilson's story - he lived parts of it alongside him.

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Tags: music | arts | culture | campus history
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