I'll never forget the first time Brian Wilson made me see God. It was 1973, and I was sitting in the mostly empty balcony of a second-run movie theater finally watching “American Graffiti,” the movie everyone in my high school was talking about.

Tributes have been pouring in this past week for Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys co-founder and pop music maestro, following his death aged 82. But there have been possibly none so personal as the memories of writer David Leaf,

A musical genius is the only way to describe Brian Wilson after his passing recently at age 82. Brian created a sound and a soundscape from 1961 to 1966 that resonated all over the entire world. All of a sudden everyone was singing Surfing USA among other songs to put California and The Beach Boys in everyone’s consciousness forever then.