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,

Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with a run of hit songs with the Beach Boys, has died. He was 82.