All About Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson’s Complicated Relationship With Daughters Carnie And Wendy Wilson

Brian Wilson may be best known for writing Beach Boys classics like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” but he was also a dad to seven children, including daughters Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson of the pop band Wilson Phillips.

The legendary musician, whose death at age 82 was announced June 11, famously battled addiction and mental health issues in his private life, which strained his relationship with his two older daughters.

Although estranged off and on for years when she and her sister were younger, Carnie Wilson said she and her late father later grew close.

“No one’s perfect,” Carnie Wilson told People in April 2024. “We’ve had a lot of healing as father, daughter and apologies. We do the best we can. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.”

Read on to learn more about Brian Wilson’s relationship with daughters Carnie and Wendy Wilson.

Brian Wilson was a dad of seven

The Beach Boys songwriter welcomed Carnie Wilson, in 1968, and Wendy Wilson, in 1969, with his first wife, Marilyn Wilson.

He went on to adopt five younger children — three daughters, Daria, Delanie and Dakota, and two sons, Dylan and Dash — with his second wife Melinda Ledbetter, who he married in 1995.

He struggled with drug and alcohol addiction when Carnie and Wendy Wilson were young

Brian Wilson famously struggled with drug and alcohol addiction when Carnie and Wendy Wilson were children, which led to two decades of off-and-on estrangement.

The sisters wrote a song about their estranged dad called ‘Flesh and Blood’

The sisters shot to fame when they were in their early 20s in 1990 when they scored a No. 1 hit with Wilson Phillips’ feel-good single “Hold On.”

The sister were not close with their father at the time. They later dedicated a song, “Flesh and Blood,” on their 1992 sophomore album, to him.

“We can’t call him up and we can’t see him,” Carnie Wilson told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “I guess we could, but we’re so afraid of each other. I don’t know what I would say to him.”

Carnie Wilson noted that she and her dad had not spoken for two years at the time of the interview. She said she and her sister wrote “Flesh and Blood” in hopes of a reunion with him.

“He’s either going to cry real hard, or else just stare at something and get (mad),” she said.

Brian Wilson recorded a song with Carnie Wilson in 1994

Brian and Carnie Wilson reconciled in 1994 and joined forces to record a song co-written by the Beach Boys legend called “Fantasy Is Reality /Bells of Madness.”

“It was the first time I was in the studio with him as an adult and he cried the whole time. He walked back and forth and cried the whole time,” Carnie Wilson later recalled during a May 2025 interview with People.

“I remember singing and he loved it and it was great. That was the beginning of the healing of our relationship and it was through music … this doesn’t surprise me,” she added.

Brian Wilson later appeared as a guest on several songs on the sisters’ 1997 album “The Wilsons.”

Brian Wilson performed onstage with his daughters in 2001

Brian Wilson joined his older daughters onstage when they reunited with their Wilson Phillips bandmate Chynna Phillips in 2001 to perform at a tribute show to their dad at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Brian Wilson called his kids ‘the light of my life’

In 2006, Brian Wilson spoke to Ability Magazine about the happiness his seven children brought him.

“Yes, they’re the light of my life. Nothing brings joy into my life like my children. I have two girls by a previous marriage who are in their 30s, and now I have 9 and 8-year-old girls and a little 2-and-a-half year-old boy. And they are all beautiful kids. My children and my music are my two greatest loves,” he said.

Carnie Wilson said in 2025 that her father ‘has a problem’ expressing love

Just last month, Carnie Wilson told People that she sees her dad, who was placed in a conservatorship shortly after his second wife, Marilyn Ledbetter, died in January at age 77, around “three times a month.”

“The good news is I can say that today, it doesn’t matter what has happened in the past,” she said, adding that her father, on the other hand, is “haunted by his past.”

“I’ve never known anybody that can live in the past and be in the present like my dad,” she said. “I know he loves his children and his grandchildren, but he has a problem expressing love. It’s hard for him. It scares him.”

“I have been able to connect and tap into love with him over these years and it’s been the most healing, best thing ever,” she added. “But the amount of acceptance that I’ve had to have around what I’m going to be able to receive from him is my biggest life’s lesson.”