Jeffrey Foskett, a musician familiar to The Beach Boys fans for more than four decades as a presence in the touring bands led by both Brian Wilson and Mike Love, died Monday at age 67. He had been diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer.
Foskett, who was deemed the “vice principal of The Beach Boys” by its core members, was the rare musician who found favor in all of that group’s sometimes competing camps over the decades. He was in Wilson’s solo band from 1998 through 2014, and was in Love’s Beach Boys for long periods before and after that, from 1981 through 1998, and again from 2015 until he was sidelined by stage 4 cancer in 2019.
Brian Wilson mourned his former band member’s death in a social media post, writing, “I’m so heartbroken that my dear friend Jeff Foskett has passed. 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.”
Carnie Wilson affirmed in a reply how much Foskett meant to her father, writing, “I know it hurts Daddy. We will miss him. I love you.”
In a 2012 interview with the Los Angeles Times, conducted when he was taking part in a Beach Boys 50th anniversary tour that temporarily reunited Wilson with Mike Love, Foskett compared his tenure with the Beach Boys and/or Wilson as being akin to a Little League baseball player who gets invited to join the Dodgers. “How many amateur athletes turn pro?” he said. “And how many of the thousands of musicians — tens of thousands of musicians — in Los Angeles are going to get into the band that they really loved, and tour with them?”
Foskett, who said “I don’t often post on…
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