JEFFREY FOSKETT,
1956-2023   

Jeffrey Foskett, longtime musical director and guitarist for The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson’s band, died Monday after battling anaplastic thyroid cancer for more than four years. He was 67.

“I’m so heartbroken that my dear friend Jeff Foskett has passed,” Brian Wilson wrote on Facebook. “Jeff was always there for me when we toured and we couldn’t have done it without him. Jeff was one of the most talented guys I ever knew. He was a great musical leader and guitarist and he could sing like an angel. I first met Jeff in 1976 when he knocked on my door in Bel Air and I invited him in, and we were friends ever since. I don’t know what else to say. Love and Mercy to Jeff’s family and friends, we will remember him forever.”

Foskett joined The Beach Boys in 1980 as musical director, guitarist and singer, a role he held until 1991 when he left to focus on a solo career.

In the late 1990s, he helped Wilson form a backing band that would famously go on tours centered on Pet Sounds and Smile. He was in the band that recorded Wilson’s version of Smile in 2004 as well Wilson’s solo albums That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin and In the Key of Disney.

He recorded That’s Why God Made the Radio with the reunited Beach Boys in 2012 and spent most of that year on the group’s 50th anniversary world tour. He toured in 2013 with Wilson and, beginning in 2014, rejoined The Beach Boys for four years.

Foskett released nine solo albums between 1996 and 2019 and recorded with Mickey Dolenz, America, Mike Love, Rita Wilson and others.