Brian Wilson

(US Sun image)

I didn't have an appreciation for the Beach Boys until I went to college in 1970, and my roommates played their albums continuously. The sound was unique, the tunes were catchy, and the Beach Boys' standing was such that they were lauded by their fellow artists, e.g., McCartney, Dylan, Springsteen, Elton John.

And the genius behind the Beach Boys was Brian Wilson, who died Tuesday.

Though his most creative period lasted roughly six years in the 1960s, Brian Wilson, whose death at age 82 was announced today, left a profound impact on pop music, record production and American culture. In an ascent that ran from 1962 to 1967, the songwriter, bassist, arranger, falsetto singer and original Beach Boys leader pioneered vocal harmony, studio experimentation and songs that fed teens’ dreams of an endless summer.

From the start, Mr. Wilson and the Beach Boys combined the tight phrasing of the Four Freshmen, a jazzy pop vocal group, with the driving sound of surf-rock bands like the Ventures and the guitar of Chuck Berry. The result linked the twang and beat of mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll with puppy-love pop songs of the Kennedy era.

Over the course of Mr. Wilson’s seven-decade career, he won two Grammys (in 2005 and 2013) and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 as a member of the Beach Boys. The band’s first Top 10 Billboard pop hit, “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” reached No. 3 in 1963. In all, they had four No. 1 Hot 100 entries, 15 in the Top 10 and over 50 that charted.

I am as susceptible to nostalgia as other Boomers and remember the good vibrations of my youth, forgetting much of the bad. R.I.P.