Elton John shared an Instagram tribute to Brian Wilson after The Beach Boys co-founder's death was announced by his family earlier in the day.

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.

Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with a run of hit songs with the Beach Boys before being pulled down a rabbit hole of despair and depression when his highly anticipated masterwork was shelved unfinished,