The genius of Brian Wilson

The Beach Boys were America ’s biggest-selling and perhaps most acclaimed rock’n’roll group of the early-to-mid-1960s.

Their chamber-pop masterpiece Pet Sounds still lurks near the top of countless “greatest albums of all time” lists.

But by the early 1970s , they were largely dismissed as burn-outs, eclipsed by more overtly introspective singer-songwriters and harder-edged bands such as The Doors.

Wilson has long been spoken of by many as a sort of victim of his own wild imagination, talent and mind a savant, rather than a true master.

He shaped our worldviews, crafting a vision of a more playful, gentler America that should and could still exist.

In these pretty dark times, surely there's not much cooler than that?.