Brian Wilson was a troubled genius who made so many people happy but had far too much sadness in his life already.

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.

The Beach Boys mastermind has been the subject of pop scholarship and major boxed sets, but some corners of his oeuvre remain unreleased.