Melinda Wilson, the wife of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and the force behind his return to the spotlight, has passed away at the age of 77.
“My heart is broken,” Brian Wilson wrote yesterday on X. “My beloved wife of 28 years left us this morning. Our five children and I are in tears. We feel lost. Melinda was more than a wife. She was the person who saved me. She gave me the security I needed. She encouraged me to make the music that meant the most to me. She was my anchor. She meant everything to us. Please, say a prayer for her.”
Melinda and Brian Wilson met in 1986 when she worked at a Cadillac dealership in Los Angeles during the time when psychologist Eugene Landy controlled almost every aspect of the Beach Boys’ musician’s life. “I think she helped him at first,” Melinda told Larry King twenty years ago. Over time, however, the musician “became a prisoner of it.”
Brian Wilson managed to sever all ties with Landy, thanks in part to Melinda, whom he married in 1995. The couple adopted five children.
Born Melinda Kae Ledbetter, she grew up in Whittier, California. She worked as a model before starting her job at Cadillac. “I knew the Beach Boys,” she told Larry King, “but I didn’t know that the genius behind their music was Brian.”
In 2014, Elizabeth Banks portrayed Melinda in the film “Love & Mercy,” where the role of Wilson is played by Paul Dano (the younger years) and John Cusack (the mature years).