The musical world lost a giant with news Wednesday that Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader, had died. He was 82.Attempting to distill Wilson's talent and influence in a few short songs is an impossibility;

The Beach Boys leader, whose death was announced on Wednesday, was a brilliant writer, arranger and producer whose ambitions propelled his band — and contemporaries like the Beatles — into the future.

Brian Wilson’s death on Wednesday at the age of 82 heralds an end to one idea of Southern California — as the temperate paradise of ascendant Americana. Exuberance and dreaminess, writer