Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Brian Wilson, Songwriter and Leader of the Beach Boys, Dies at 82

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      Brian Wilson, who as the leader and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys became rock’s poet laureate of surf-and-sun innocence, but also an embodiment of damaged genius through his struggles with mental illness and drugs, has died. He was 82. His family announced the death on Instagram but did not say where or when he died, or state a cause. In early 2024, after the death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, business representatives for Mr. Wilson were granted a conservatorship by a California state judge, after they asserted that he had “a major neurocognitive disorder” and had been diagnosed with dementia.On mid-1960s hits like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” the Beach Boys created a musical counterpart to the myth of Southern California as paradise — a soundtrack of cheerful harmonies and a boogie beat to accompany a lifestyle of youthful leisure. Cars, sex and rolling waves were the only cares.That vision, manifested in Mr. Wilson’s crystalline vocal arrangements, helped make the Beach Boys the defining American band of the era. During its clean-cut heyday of 1962 to 1966, the group landed 13 singles in the Billboard Top 10. Three of them went to No. 1: “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.”At the same time, the round-faced, soft-spoken Mr. Wilson — who didn’t surf — became one of pop’s most gifted and idiosyncratic studio auteurs, crafting complex and innovative productions that awed his peers.“That ear,” Bob Dylan once remarked. “I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.”Mr. Wilson’s masterpiece was the 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” a wistful song cycle that he directed in elaborate recording sessions, blending the sound of a rock band with classical instrumentation and oddities like the Electro-Theremin, whose otherworldly whistle Mr. Wilson would use again on “Good Vibrations.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Frederick Forsyth, Master of the Geopolitical Thriller, Dies at 86

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      He wrote best-sellers like “The Day of the Jackal” and “The Dogs of War,” often using material from his earlier life as a reporter and spy.Frederick Forsyth, who used his early experience as a British foreign correspondent and occasional intelligence operative as fodder for a series of swashbuckling, best-selling thrillers in the 1970s and ’80s, including “The Day of the Jackal,” “The Odessa File” and “The Dogs of War,” died on Monday at his home in Jordans, a village north of London. He was 86.His literary representative, Jonathan Lloyd, who confirmed the death, did not specify a cause, saying only that Mr. Forsyth’s had died after a short illness.Mr. Forsyth was a master of the geopolitical nail-biter, writing novels embedded in an international demimonde populated by spies, mercenaries and political extremists. He wrote 24 books, including 14 novels, and sold more than 75 million copies.His stories often juxtapose a single individual against sprawling networks of power and money — an unnamed assassin against the French government in “The Day of the Jackal” (1971), a lone German reporter against a shadowy conspiracy to protect ex-Nazi officers in “The Odessa File” (1972).A film version of “The Day of the Jackal,” starring Edward Fox, right, and Cyril Cusack was released in 1973, just two years after the novel’s publication.George Higgins/Universal Pictures“It’s one man against a huge machine,” he told The Times of London in 2024, explaining why so many readers of “The Day of the Jackal” sided with a hit man intent on killing French President Charles de Gaulle, instead of with the authorities. “We don’t like machines, so one guy even trying to kill a human being, taking on this vast machine of government, secret intelligence service, police and so on, has appeal.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sly Stone, Maestro of a Multifaceted, Hitmaking Band, Dies at 82

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      Sly Stone, the influential, eccentric and preternaturally rhythmic singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose run of hits in the late 1960s and early ’70s with his band the Family Stone could be dance anthems, political documents or both, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 82. The cause was “a prolonged battle with C.O.P.D.,” or lung disease, “and other underlying health issues,” according to a statement from his representatives.“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the statement said.As the colorful maestro and mastermind of a multiracial, mixed-gender band, Mr. Stone experimented with the R&B, soul and gospel music he was raised on in the San Francisco area, mixing classic ingredients of Black music with progressive funk and the burgeoning freedoms of psychedelic rock ’n’ roll.The band’s most recognizable songs, many of which would be sampled by hip-hop artists, include “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “Family Affair,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”Mr. Stone, second from left, with the other members of Sly and the Family Stone in 1970.GAB Archive/RedfernsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roger Nichols, Songwriter Behind Carpenters Hits, Dies at 84

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      With Paul Williams, he wrote enduring 1970s soft-rock classics like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”Roger Nichols, a California songwriter and musician who, with his pop-alchemist partner Paul Williams, wrote an advertising jingle for a bank that turned into “We’ve Only Just Begun,” a milestone hit for the Carpenters and a timeless wedding weeper, died on May 17 at his home in Bend, Ore. He was 84.His death, from pneumonia, was confirmed by his daughter Caroline Nichols.Mr. Nichols was best known for his collaborations with Paul Williams, the songwriter, lyricist and all-around celebrity known for songs like “Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog’s forlorn anthem from “The Muppet Movie” (1979).With Mr. Nichols focusing on the music and Mr. Williams conjuring up the words, the duo churned out silky pop nuggets like Three Dog Night’s “Out in the Country” (1970), which rose to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100; “Traveling Boy,” which Art Garfunkel released in 1973; and “I Never Had It So Good,” recorded by Barbra Streisand in 1975.But it was with their work for the Carpenters, the hit-machine sibling duo Karen and Richard Carpenter, that Mr. Nichols and Mr. Williams scaled the heights of pop success.“We’ve Only Just Begun” peaked at No. 2 in 1970, sold more than a million copies of sheet music and served as a timeless showcase for Ms. Carpenter’s spellbinding contralto vocal stylings.The single “We’ve Only Just Begun,” by Mr. Nichols and Paul Williams, rose to No. 2 on he music charts and became a staple of weddings. A&M RecordsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Sunny Jacobs, a Celebrity After Freed From Death Row, Dies at 77

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      Her story, fashioned into an Off Broadway play and television movies, was later questioned by an investigator in a 2021 book.Sunny Jacobs, a former death row inmate who was convicted of a 1970s double murder in Florida and later freed, becoming a news media celebrity and a leading subject in an acclaimed Off Broadway play and two television movies, died on Tuesday in rural County Galway, Ireland. She was 77.Her death was announced by the Sunny Center, an anti-death penalty nonprofit organization founded by Ms. Jacobs, with locations in Galway and Tampa, Fla. It said she had “passed away after a fire at the Sunny Healing Center.” The circumstances of the fire were not immediately clear.Ms. Jacobs spent nearly 17 years in prison in Florida, five of them on death row, for the murders of two law enforcement officers in February 1976 at a rest stop near Fort Lauderdale.Her boyfriend at the time, Jesse Tafero, a petty criminal who had been convicted of attempted rape, was also convicted of murder. He was executed by electric chair in Florida in a notoriously botched procedure in May 1990. It took seven minutes and three jolts, and his head caught on fire.Ms. Jacobs, whose death sentence was overturned in 1982, was ultimately freed a decade later, when a federal appeals court found that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence from the defense. She took a plea deal rather than face retrial and was never legally exonerated.It was this story that formed the basis of Ms. Jacobs’s subsequent, celebrated tale — that she had been an innocent, a “28-year-old vegetarian hippie,” as she told The New York Times in a 2011 Vows article about her marriage to a fellow former inmate, the Irishman Peter Pringle, who died in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Philippe Labro Dies at 88; Restless Chronicler of the French Condition

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      As an author (often blurring the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction), a film director, a lyricist and a host of TV and radio shows, he sought to capture his epoch.Philippe Labro, a prolific journalist, author, movie director and songwriter whose lyrical prose, boundless curiosity and oft-repeated determination to “forage in deep waters” offered France a sweeping image of itself over several decades, died on Monday in Paris. He was 88.His death, in the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, was caused by lymphoma of the brain, which was diagnosed in April, said Anne Boy, his longtime assistant. Mr. Labro lived in Paris.A restless spirit, notebook always at his side, convinced that journalism was an exercise in unrelenting observation, Mr. Labro pursued a lifelong quest to capture his epoch by any means. “He wrote our popular, French, and universal history,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a tribute on X, “from Algeria to America” and from Herman Melville to Johnny Hallyday, the French rock ’n’ roll superstar.In 24 books, including novels and essays; seven movies; lyrics to popular songs; and several television and radio shows, Mr. Labro probed the enigma of existence. No one medium sufficed. Truth, he believed, lurked between fact and fiction, and so he refused to be confined by one or the other. Quoting Einstein, he called life a “dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” That piper was his muse.Mr. Labro arrived as a guest for an official state dinner with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Jill Biden, at the Élysée Palace in Paris in June 2024.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Labro also liked Victor Hugo’s observation that “nothing is more imminent than the impossible.” He had good reason. It was in the United States, on Nov. 22, 1963, that Mr. Labro, then 27, achieved fame as the first French newspaper correspondent on the scene in the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mara Corday Dead: Actress and Pinup Model Was 95

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      She appeared in magazines like Playboy and sci-fi films in the 1950s. Later, in Clint Eastwood’s “Sudden Impact,” she was a hostage until he uttered five famous words.In the 1950s, Mara Corday — a nightclub showgirl and popular pinup model — was a star of three science-fiction thrillers, including “Tarantula” (1955), in which she fled from a 100-foot-tall spider that had escaped from a laboratory.“The whole world is after him,” Ms. Corday told the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper that year about the terrifying arachnid. “He’s a pretty unhappy spider, I can tell you. I’m a lady scientist, and Leo Carroll and John Agar are playing two top roles.”At a time when sci-fi cinema was focused on subjects like alien invasions, space exploration and nuclear paranoia, Ms. Corday was cast in B-movie tales about nasty, gigantic creatures.In 1957, Ms. Corday played a mathematician in “The Giant Claw,” in which a gigantic bird tears down buildings and foments panic.Columbia Pictures, via LMPC/Getty ImagesIn 1957, she played a mathematician in “The Giant Claw,” in which a gigantic bird (first thought to be a U.F.O.) tears down buildings and foments panic. She returned that year to outsize insects, as a rancher in “The Black Scorpion,” about giant scorpions threatening the countryside after rising out of a volcanic eruption in Mexico.Ms. Corday was a rancher in “The Black Scorpion” (1957) about giant scorpions that threaten the countryside in Mexico.Warner Bros, via LMPC/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Sacha Jenkins, Filmmaker Who Mined the Black Experience, Dies at 53

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      Shaped by early hip-hop culture, his documentaries put race in the foreground, whether the topic was hip-hop fashion, the Capitol riots or Louis Armstrong.Sacha Jenkins, a fiery journalist and documentary filmmaker who strove to tell the story of Black American culture from within, whether in incisive prose explorations of rap and graffiti art or in screen meditations on Louis Armstrong, the Wu-Tang Clan or Rick James, died on May 23 at his home in the Inwood section of Manhattan. He was 53.The death was confirmed by his wife, the journalist and filmmaker Raquel Cepeda-Jenkins, who said the cause was complications of multiple system atrophy, a neurodegenerative disorder.Whatever the medium — zines, documentaries, satirical television shows — Mr. Jenkins was unflinching on the topic of race as he sought to reflect the depths and nuances of the Black experience as only Black Americans understood it.He was “an embodiment of ‘for us, by us,’” the journalist Stereo Williams wrote in a recent appreciation on Okayplayer, a music and culture site. “He was one of hip-hop’s greatest journalistic voices because he didn’t just write about the art: He lived it.”And he lived it from early on. Mr. Jenkins, raised primarily in the Astoria section of Queens, was a graffiti artist as a youth, and sought to bring an insider’s perspective to the culture surrounding it with his zine Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language, which he started at 16. He later co-founded Beat-Down newspaper, which covered hip-hop; and the feisty and irreverent magazine Ego Trip, which billed itself as “the arrogant voice of musical truth.”Nas on the cover of the first issue of Ego Trip magazine, which billed itself as “the arrogant voice of musical truth.”Ego TripWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More