This is John Bachelor, Jeff Bliss, paying tribute to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

The word is that his health is failing and that he needs care, lots of care, but the tribute to him is more than that what he represented

to Jeff as a young person to all of us young people in the 20th century.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, here's Jeff Bliss to explain more of this later

Brian Wilson is dealing with dementia right now and he recently lost his wife

who really was his caregiver in so many ways.

I happen to see him in concert a couple years ago in June and I thought he looked pretty bad,

pretty rough right then.

He was still sitting behind a piano, but he had to be brought out

on a wheelchair and essentially guided to everywhere he went on stage. And you know, you

really had the feeling he was kind of sitting there not doing a whole lot it was hard to see

his hands on the piano but he didn't seem very energetic so this is not a

surprise to anybody that has seen him either on TV or at a concert venue or in public and the story is with the

passing of his wife it's really hit him very hard as these things typically do

for people who are deeply in love with their caregivers, their spouses, you name it.

And, you know, so now that he's being in, he's been put in conservatorship,

people are just kind of thinking they're probably not going to see

Brian Wilson out in public a lot but he was the creative genius behind that band and

so many other artists from the Beatles to you can just run a list of mile long

We'll say that his music the things that he wrote wrote and composed were were actually genius level in a lot of ways people think of him as kind of a modern day

Mozart. He was so gifted.