Brian Wilson occupies a special place in the pop pantheon, the golden youth who blew his mind making mind-blowing music. His 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds remains a benchmark in pop culture, blending classical harmonic theory with melodious songcraft, baroque orchestrations and an audacious sound palette, all conjured in Wilson’s sandbox studio.

The Beach Boys’ genius leader is gone now, dead at 82, but the good vibrations he created will take a very long time to fade away, if they ever do. They reverberated throughout his long life, even as their damaged creator struggled with debilitating mental health problems, cutting an increasingly strange and isolated figure.

The pop culture myth of Wilson swirled around this wild disparity between the beauty, emotion and dazzling resonance of his songcraft and the withdrawn, uncommunicative, damaged man who created it. But ultimately it is the music that defines him, an expression of an incredibly rich inner world that gave us all a window to the depths and artistry of his soul. Wilson was responsible for some of the very greatest music of his and our times, and all time. And all we need to do to tap into it is listen.

When they broke out in 1962, the Beach Boys’ blend of rock’n’roll and classical harmonies offered America a pure expression of youthful, heady........

© The Age