Beach Boys pioneered the soaring "surf sound"

Wilson, who had lung and brain cancer, died on Friday evening in Los Angeles with his family at his side.

"Even though he was diagnosed with cancer last year and going through treatment for a year, he was a real fighter," said his publicist, Alyson Dutch. "He participated in the entire summer tour."

Surfing craze

Wilson was born in Hawthorne, a Los Angeles suburb about five miles from the Pacific Ocean. He learned to play guitar as a teenager and - with brothers Brian and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Alan Jardine - founded the Beach Boys in 1961.

Pet Sounds was voted 26th best album in Channel 4's Music of the Millennium poll

Dennis Wilson, who died in a swimming accident in 1983, came up with the idea of a surfing theme. Brian Wilson and Love started writing lyrics that capitalised on the craze that began in the mid-1950s.

Despite an initial repertoire of just three songs, the audience embraced the band on its first appearance in Long Beach. Throughout the 1960s and later, the Beach Boys defined the "surfing beat" with hit songs like I Get Around, Good Vibrations, Help Me Rhonda and Surfin' USA.

Critics often cite the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds as one of the all-time greatest rock albums, and former Beatle Paul McCartney has acknowledged it as an inspiration for the Fab Four's 1967 masterpiece, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"Tired of nostalgia"

Differences in creative goals between the quintet and its producers led to a slowdown after 1966. The group refused to release new songs they prepared in their studio, and they refused to work in Capitol Records' facility.

A comeback in the 1970s was stalled by drug problems involving Brian Wilson, the band's creative force. In the mid-1970s, he told Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a useless little vegetable."

In the early 1980s, Carl Wilson said he had tired of the Beach Boys' nostalgia and lack of musical growth. He left the group in 1981 and released an album that year.

He later rejoined the band, performing with them when the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Wilson is survived by his wife, Gina, and two sons. No details of funeral arrangements have yet been released.