By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.

Wilson’s family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren’t immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson’s longtime representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge.

The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock’s great Romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound.

The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. The 1966 album “Pet Sounds” was voted No. 2 in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson had done before, to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Smokey Robinson and Carole King. The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited “Pet Sounds” as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad “God Only Knows” as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears.

Wilson moved and fascinated fans and musicians long after he stopped having hits. In his later years, Wilson and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed “Pet Sounds” and his restored opus, “Smile,” before worshipful crowds in concert halls. Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monáe were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart.

An endless summer

The Beach Boys’ music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as host and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless a photographer was around. But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he conjured a golden soundscape — sweet melodies, shining harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls — that resonated across time and climates.

Decades after its first release, a Beach Boys song can still conjure instant summer — the wake-up guitar riff that opens “Surfin’ USA”; the melting vocals of “Don’t Worry Baby”; the chants of “fun, fun, fun” or “good, good, GOOD, good vibrations”; the behind-the-wheel chorus “’Round, ’round, get around, I get around.” Beach Boys songs have endured from turntables and transistor radios to boom boxes and iPhones, or any device that could lay on a beach towel or be placed upright in the sand.

The band’s innocent appeal survived the group’s increasingly troubled back story, whether Brian’s many personal trials, the feuds and lawsuits among band members or the alcoholism of Dennis Wilson, who drowned in 1983. Brian Wilson’s ambition raised the Beach Boys beyond the pleasures of their early hits and into a world transcendent, eccentric and destructive. They seemed to live out every fantasy, and many nightmares, of the California myth they helped create.

From the suburbs to the national stage

Brian Wilson was born June 20, 1942, two days after McCartney. His musical gifts were soon obvious, and as a boy he was playing piano and teaching his brothers to sing harmony. The Beach Boys started as a neighborhood act, rehearsing in Brian’s bedroom and in the garage of their house in suburban Hawthorne, California. Surf music, mostly instrumental in its early years, was catching on locally: Dennis Wilson, the group’s only real surfer, suggested they cash in. Brian and Love hastily wrote up their first single, “Surfin,’” a minor hit released in 1961.

They wanted to call themselves the Pendletones, in honor of a popular flannel shirt they wore in early publicity photos. But when they first saw the pressings for “Surfin,’” they discovered the record label had tagged them “The Beach Boys.” Other decisions were handled by their father, a musician of some frustration who hired himself as manager and holy terror. By mid-decade, Murry Wilson had been displaced and Brian, who had been running the band’s recording sessions almost from the start, was in charge, making the Beach Boys the rare group of the time to work without an outside producer.

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Their breakthrough came in early 1963 with “Surfin’ USA,” so closely modeled on Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” that Berry successfully sued to get a songwriting credit. It was their first Top 10 hit and a boast to the nation: “If everybody had an ocean / across the USA / then everybody’d be surfin,’ / like Cali-for-nye-ay.” From 1963-66, they were rarely off the charts, hitting No. 1 with “I Get Around” and “Help Me, Rhonda” and narrowly missing with “California Girls” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.” For television appearances, they wore candy-striped shirts and grinned as they mimed their latest hit, with a hot rod or surfboard nearby.

Their music echoed private differences. Wilson often contrasted his own bright falsetto with Love’s nasal, deadpan tenor. The extroverted Love was out front on the fast songs, but when it was time for a slow one, Brian took over. “The Warmth of the Sun” was a song of despair and consolation that Wilson alleged — to some skepticism — he wrote the morning after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “Don’t Worry Baby,” a ballad equally intoxicating and heartbreaking, was a leading man’s confession of doubt and dependence, an early sign of Brian’s crippling anxieties.

Stress and exhaustion led to a breakdown in 1964 and his retirement from touring, his place soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades. Wilson was an admirer of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” productions and emulated him on Beach Boys tracks, adding sleigh bells to “Dance, Dance, Dance” or arranging a mini-theme park of guitar, horns, percussion and organ as the overture to “California Girls.”

By the mid-1960s, the Beach Boys were being held up as the country’s answer to the Beatles, a friendly game embraced by each group, transporting pop music to the level of “art” and leaving Wilson a broken man.

The Beach Boys vs. The Beatles

The Beatles opened with “Rubber Soul,” released in late 1965 and their first studio album made without the distractions of movies or touring. It was immediately praised as a major advance, the lyrics far more personal and the music far more subtle and sophisticated than such earlier hits as “She Loves You” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” Wilson would recall getting high and listening to the record for the first time, promising himself he would not only keep up with the British band, but top them.

Wilson worked for months on what became “Pet Sounds,” and months on the single “Good Vibrations.” He hired an outside lyricist, Tony Asher, and used various studios, with dozens of musicians and instruments ranging from violins to bongos to the harpsichord. The air seemed to cool on some tracks and the mood turn reflective, autumnal. From “I Know There’s an Answer” to “You Still Believe in Me,” many of the songs were ballads, reveries, brushstrokes of melody, culminating in the sonic wonders of “Good Vibrations,” a psychedelic montage that at times sounded as if recorded in outer space.

The results were momentous, yet disappointing. “Good Vibrations” was the group’s first million-seller and “Pet Sounds,” which included the hits “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” awed McCartney, John Lennon and Eric Clapton among others. Widely regarded as a new kind of rock LP, it was more suited to headphones than to the radio, a “concept” album in which individual songs built to a unified experience, so elaborately crafted in the studio that “Pet Sounds” couldn’t be replicated live with the technology of the time. Wilson was likened not just to the Beatles, but to Mozart and George Gershwin, whose “Rhapsody in Blue” had inspired him since childhood.

But the album didn’t chart as highly as previous Beach Boys releases and was treated indifferently by the U.S. record label, Capitol. The Beatles, meanwhile, were absorbing lessons from the Beach Boys and teaching some in return. “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper,” the Beatles’ next two albums, drew upon the Beach Boys’ vocal tapestries and melodic bass lines and even upon the animal sounds from the title track of “Pet Sounds.” The Beatles’ epic “A Day in the Life” reconfirmed the British band as kings of the pop world and “Sgt. Pepper” as the album to beat.

All eyes turned to Wilson and his intended masterpiece — a “teenage symphony to God” he called “Smile.” It was a whimsical cycle of songs on nature and American folklore written with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. The production bordered on method acting; for a song about fire, Wilson wore a fire helmet in the studio. The other Beach Boys were confused, and strained to work with him. A shaken Wilson delayed “Smile,” then canceled it.

Remnants, including the songs “Heroes and Villains” and “Wind Chimes” were re-recorded and issued in September 1967 on “Smiley Smile,” dismissed by Carl Wilson as a “bunt instead of a grand slam.” The stripped down “Wild Honey,” released three months later, became a critical favorite but didn’t restore the band’s reputation. The Beach Boys soon descended into an oldies act, out of touch with the radical ’60s, and Wilson withdrew into seclusion.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to take a seat at Wednesday’s opening night of the award-winning musical “Les Misérables” at the Kennedy Center, where he replaced the previous leadership with loyalists, had himself installed as chairman and pledged to rid the performing arts venue of programming he has complained is “woke” and too focused on leftist ideology and political correctness.

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The Republican president’s attendance at the sold-out showing of the Tony Award-winning tale of redemption in 19th century France comes as he has focused more than any recent predecessor on the arts center along the Potomac River that is a memorial to a slain Democratic president.

Presidents’ involvement in the Kennedy Center’s affairs had been limited to naming members to the board of trustees and attending the taping of its annual honors program in the fall.

But after returning to office in January, Trump stunned the arts world by firing the Kennedy Center’s longtime director and board and replacing them with loyalists, who then named him as chairman, and promising to overhaul its programming, management and even appearance as part of an effort to put his stamp on the national arts scene.

Trump’s appearance in the Opera House on Wednesday, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, will also mark his first time at a Kennedy Center performance as president. He avoided the venue after entertainment industry pushback to his policies in his first term in office, breaking with presidential tradition by never attending the annual Kennedy Center Honors taping.

His moves have upset some of the center’s patrons and performers.

In March, the audience booed Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, after they slipped into upper-level seats in the Concert Hall to hear the National Symphony Orchestra. Trump appointed Usha Vance to the Kennedy Center board along with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Fox News Channel hosts Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham, among other supporters.

Sales of subscription packages are said to have declined since Trump’s takeover, and several touring productions, including “Hamilton,” have canceled planned runs at the center. Artists such as actor Issa Rae and musician Rhiannon Giddens scrapped scheduled appearances, and Kennedy Center consultants including musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming have resigned.

Understudies may perform Wednesday night due to boycotts by “Les Misérables” cast members.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has adopted a more aggressive posture toward the arts. The White House has taken steps to cancel millions of dollars in previously awarded federal humanities grants to arts and culture groups, and Trump’s budget blueprint proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Trump has also targeted Smithsonian museums by signing executive orders to restrict their funding and by attempting to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery.

Trump hosted the board at the White House for dinner in May and said congressional Republicans have pushed for more than $250 million for repairs and maintenance at the Kennedy Center. He claimed that “tremendous amounts of money” had been spent at the center but “they certainly didn’t spend it on wallpaper, carpet or painting.”

He characterized previous programming as “out of control with rampant political propaganda” and said it featured “some very inappropriate shows,” including a “Marxist anti-police performance” and “Lesbian-only Shakespeare.”

Trump cited some drag show performances as a reason to take control of the center, though next season’s theater lineup includes ”Mrs. Doubtfire,” which tells the story of a divorced man who disguises himself as a female nanny so he can spend time with his children.

Trump also visited the Kennedy Center in March to preside over a board meeting and take a tour.

The Kennedy Center, which is supported by government money and private donations, opened in 1971 and for decades has been seen as an apolitical celebration of the arts.

It was first conceived in the late 1950s, during the administration of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who backed a bill from the Democratic-led Congress calling for a National Culture Center. In the early 1960s, Democratic President John F. Kennedy launched a fundraising initiative, and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law a 1964 bill renaming the project the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Kennedy had been assassinated the year before.

By ISABELLA O’MALLEY

Human-caused climate change boosted Iceland and Greenland ’s temperatures by several degrees during a record-setting May heat wave, raising concerns about the far-reaching implications melting Arctic ice has for weather around the world, scientists said in an analysis released Wednesday.

The Greenland ice sheet melted many times faster than normal during the heat wave, according to the analysis by World Weather Attribution, with at least two communities seeing record temperatures for May. Parts of Iceland saw temperatures more than 18 °F above average, and the country set a record for its warmest temperature in May when Egilsstadir Airport hit 79.9 F on May 15.

The findings come as global leaders put more focus on Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that he would like to annex the mineral-rich island.

Burning fossil fuels for electricity and transportation releases pollutants such as carbon dioxide that cause the planet to warm unnaturally fast. The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth.

Even in today’s climate, the occurrence of such a strong heat wave in the region is relatively rare, with a 1% chance of occurring in a year, the analysis said. But without human-caused climate change, such an event would be “basically impossible,” said Friederike Otto, associate professor of climate science at Imperial College London, one of the report’s authors.

The extreme heat was 40 times more likely compared to the pre-industrial climate.

Global impacts from a melting Arctic

Otto said this extreme weather event affects the world.

As the Greenland ice sheet melts, it releases massive amounts of fresh water into the salty oceans. Scientists say this could slow down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean current that circulates water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe and then the Arctic.

Such a slowdown could disturb global climate and weather patterns.

“The nature of weather in the Northern Hemisphere is directly tied to what’s happening in the Arctic, because that ice floor basically at the bottom of the atmosphere helps determine the weather patterns that we get,” said Waleed Abdalati, who heads an environmental sciences institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was not involved in the WWA analysis.

The Greenland ice sheet and other ice covering the Arctic can influence where and when wind blows, how much water content the wind has and whether precipitation falls as rain or snow.

Most of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet happens in June, July and August. The May heat wave means there will be a longer melting season this year.

Melting ice sheets and glaciers also contribute to sea level rise that is threatening to flood coastlines globally and inundate low-lying island nations in the Pacific Ocean.

Indigenous communities in Greenland are increasingly encountering dangerous travel conditions as sea ice that was once constantly frozen begins to thaw. Access to traditional hunting locations are lost, and sled dogs can no longer travel the same routes. Thawing permafrost can destabilize buildings and increases the risk of landslides and tsunamis caused by landslides.

Greenland dismisses interest from U.S.

Greenland was recently thrust onto the global stage with Trump’s interest in annexing it. The Arctic island is rich with oil, gas and rare earth minerals, and its proximity to the U.S., Russia and Europe has geopolitical appeal.

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Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said Greenland “will never, ever be a piece of property that can be bought by just anyone.”

Twila Moon, deputy lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, said it is essential that Greenlanders lead decisions about their territory. “Certainly an important part of this conversation is about climate change and climate impacts,” she said. She was not involved in the WWA analysis.

Moon said the climate impacts Greenland is experiencing, particularly the warming global temperatures, stem from well-identified sources such as highly polluting nations and industries. She said actions such as converting to solar or wind energy and switching to transportation that emits less pollution create positive climate impacts for people far away.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By BEN FINLEY

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — James McDonough served in the U.S. Army for 27 years, fighting in Vietnam and delivering humanitarian aid to Rwanda. For him, Saturday’s military parade in Washington for the Army’s 250th anniversary — coinciding with President Donald Trump’s birthday — is about the resilience of a vital institution and the nation it serves.

“The soldiers marching that day represent all of that history,” said McDonough, 78, of Crofton, Maryland. “They don’t represent a single day. They don’t represent a single person. It’s the American Army still standing straight, walking tall, ready to defend our country.”

Christopher Purdy, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, called the parade a facade that paints over some of the Republican president’s policies that have targeted military veterans and current service members, including cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs and a ban on transgender troops.

Purdy said the parade, long sought by Trump, will needlessly display U.S. military might on the president’s 79th birthday.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Purdy, 40, of Atlanta. “It’s expensive. And whatever his reasons are for doing it, I think it’s entirely unnecessary.”

Until recently, the Army’s long-planned birthday celebration did not include a big parade. Added under the Trump administration, the event, featuring hundreds of military vehicles and aircraft and thousands of soldiers, has divided veterans.

Some liken it to the military chest-pounding commonly seen in North Korea, a step toward authoritarianism or a perverse birthday party for Trump.

Others see it as a once-in-a-lifetime accounting of the Army’s achievements and the military service of millions of soldiers over centuries. The parade is not about Trump, they say, but the public seeing the faces of soldiers when so few Americans serve.

The Army expects up to 200,000 people could attend and says the parade will cost an estimated $25 million to $45 million.

Trump, speaking at Fort Bragg this week, said Saturday would be “a big day” and noted “we want to show off a little bit.”

“We’re going to celebrate our greatness and our achievements,” he said. “This week, we honor 250 years of valor and glory and triumph by the greatest fighting force ever to walk the face of the Earth: the United States Army.”

‘Divisive politics have ruined it’

For Edmundo Eugenio Martinez Jr., an Army veteran who fought in Iraq, the parade is a missed opportunity to honor generations of veterans, many of whom paid a steep price and came home to little fanfare.

“Sadly, the timing and the optics and divisive politics have ruined it,” said Martinez, 48, of Katy, Texas. “And I’m not picking one side or the other. Both sides are guilty.”

‘It’s just suspicious’

Joe Plenzler, a retired Marine who fought in Iraq, said Trump wants to see troops saluting him on his birthday as tanks roll past.

“It’s just suspicious,” the 53-year-old from Middletown, Virginia, said of the timing.

“I absolutely love the Army from the bottom of my cold black Marine heart,” he said. “But if the Army’s birthday was a day later, we probably wouldn’t be doing it. I’d rather see that $50 million take care of the men and women who went off to war and came back with missing arms, legs and eyeballs, and with damaged brains.”

‘Part of American culture’

Joe Kmiech, who served in the Army and Minnesota National Guard from 1989 to 1998, supports the parade because the Army is “part of American culture and our fabric.”

He notes the Army’s pioneering contributions to engineering and medicine, from dams to new surgical techniques. Like many veterans, he has a strong familial connection: His father served in the Army, and so did his maternal grandfather, who fought in World War II.

“I didn’t vote for President Trump, but the commander in chief is going to be part of that celebration,” said Kmiech, 54, of Roberts, Wisconsin. “The distinction needs to be made that the parade is a celebration of our Army, not of a person.”

‘Stroking Trump’s ego’

For Gulf War Army veteran Paul Sullivan, Trump and the parade are inextricably linked.

“This Trump tank travesty is all about stroking Trump’s ego,” said Sullivan, 62, who lives outside Charlottesville, Virginia. “If Trump truly cared about our service members, he would sit down with them quietly and say, ‘What can we do with $50 million or $100 million to make your lives better?’ He’s not.”

‘We are a great nation’

McDonough, the veteran from Crofton, Maryland, disagrees that the parade is about Trump or too costly. He said the U.S. held a grand celebration in New York after World War II when the nation was deeply in debt.

“We certainly need to bring our debt down, and we certainly need to take care of our veterans,” he said. “But it’s a false dichotomy. It’s like saying if we bought two less aircraft carriers, we could do so much better to take care of our poor.”

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And McDonough said soldiers’ oath is to the Constitution, not to Trump.

The president “understands the importance of doing this, not only for the Army, but for the nation,” McDonough said.

‘A real dark turn’

Purdy, the veteran from Atlanta, said the parade’s brazen flex of military strength is not an American tradition, particularly absent a recent victory.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate the country,” he said. “But for us to be projecting this type of hard power, in such a real in-your-face way, that’s just not who we are.”

Trump is brushing aside old alliances and foreign aid that have helped maintain peace for decades, Purdy asserted.

“It signals a real dark turn if we’re just going to roll out the tanks,” Purdy said.

‘People are the Army’

Michael Nardotti, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said military hardware has long been in American parades, which can help recruitment.

More important, he said, is the tremendous value in the public seeing soldiers’ faces in a parade when active-duty troops make up less than 1% of the population.

“’People are the Army,’” said Nardotti, 78, of Aldie, Virginia, quoting a former Army chief of staff.

Nardotti said he’ll listen carefully to Trump’s speech.

“I hope it sends the right message,” he said.