Have you ever listened to pet sounds?
This will be an uncharacteristic post for this site. I remember The Beach Boys. They were still playing on the .45 record players when I went away to school in 1966, but the British Invasion was already taking over the music charts by then, and I never followed their music. Still, I feel an obligation to note the passing of Brian Wilson, because he was more important than I knew for a long time, and most of the news surrounding his later life has been about sadness, mental illness, and other flavors of woe.
His personal decline didn’t have the glamor or spectacle of the famous (and largely apocryphal) 27s, like Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, and Cobain. What he left behind for us, and you, was not trashed hotel rooms or legendary sexcapades. He left a body of music that played a part in the cultural turning point that was the Sixties, and his contribution was not about revolution but a layering of harmonies that still affect us in head and heart. But I can’t write about him without faking it at some level. What I can do is point you at him and give you the means to follow up on your own if you want to.
Whwt I have known by osmosis through the years is that “Pet Sounds” is considered the best album that never achieved its market potential. Reason? Stepped on by the tidal wave called the Beatles, who were also further inspired by him and this album in particular.
Here it is:
“What do Guns N’ Roses and The Beach Boys have in common? Besides for both being quintessentially California, ‘Appetite For Destruction’ and ‘Pet Sounds’ are the only two albums on the list that did not move. At the beginning of 1965, 22-year-old Brian Wilson, with already 7 albums under his belt, told his band members he’d be quitting touring to focus on his work in the studio. As I mentioned earlier, Brian Wilson heard The Beatles record, ‘Rubber Soul’ (#35) and became obsessed with it. It was like nothing else he’d heard before and he was inspired to make a record that was like it but better. He was impressed with the lack of filler tracks on the record and set out to make a cohesive work that had zero filler. He was also obsessed with Phil Spector and his Wall Of Sound production technique. These two obsessions coupled with a bad LSD trip that lasted 8 months culminated in ‘Pet Sounds.’ This record really, for all intents and purposes, was a Brian Wilson solo record. The Beach Boys weren’t even around when it was written, nor were they there for most of the recording. In fact, lead single, ‘Caroline, No’ was credited as a Brian Wilson song on release. Session players, known as The Wrecking Crew, were hired to play the music (they were often used by Spector on his recordings), which Dennis & Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston provided harmony vocals. Mike Love provided lead vocals on a handful of tracks, while Wilson saved arguably his greatest song of all time, for brother Carl to sing on; ‘God Only Knows.’”
And here’s another excerpt from his obituary at Rolling Stone, the only publication I would trust at the moment to present him in his proper context without impositions from our deeply biased present:
“Wilson grew up playing sports and obsessing over music, teaching his brothers to harmonize with him. Music was his sustenance and his solace, he said: “Early on, I learned that when I tuned the world out, I was able to tune in a mysterious, God-given music. It was my gift, and it allowed me to interpret and understand emotions I couldn’t articulate.”
In 1961, Brian, Dennis, and Carl formed a band with their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, managed by Murry Wilson; Brian played bass, took many of the lead vocals, and wrote the songs. Signed to Capitol Records and named the Beach Boys, they started to roll out hits like convertible Thunderbirds coming off an assembly line: “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (with music borrowed from Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”), “Surfer Girl,” “Be True to Your School,” “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Those Brian Wilson compositions all sounded like insanely catchy jingles for the California teenage lifestyle — surfboards, hamburger stands, pep rallies — but on the flip side of the good times was a real sense of melancholy. Sometimes that was apparent in the lyrics — the lonesome “In My Room,” for example — and sometimes it was expressed nonverbally, with the Beach Boys’ heartbreaking multipart harmonies.
Wilson got more ambitious in his songwriting and experimented with new sounds—like the chunky surf guitar and falsetto lead on “I Get Around.” But he buckled under the stress of touring, having a nervous breakdown on the road in Europe in 1964. He decided that while the other Beach Boys toured the world, he would stay home and work on perfecting new material in the studio: When the band came back to California, they would step in and lay down their tracks. The results included gorgeous singles such as “California Girls” and the immortal 1966 album Pet Sounds.
The album, which regularly ranks at or near the top of the best albums ever made (Rolling Stonenamed it Number Two in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), was inspired by the Beatles’ innovative work on Rubber Soul; in return, it inspired the Fab Four to new heights of experimentation on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney frequently cited Pet Sounds as a masterpiece, giving it particular credit for its innovative bass playing, and has called the aching “God Only Knows” his favorite song of all time; “God Only Knows” placed Number 11 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The album was orchestrated with instruments that included harpsichords, bicycle bells, and barking dogs. The culmination was “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” with its lyrics yearning for an adult life and love.
The other Beach Boys, particularly Mike Love, were not impressed by Pet Sounds, and Wilson considered releasing it as a solo record; as a Beach Boys album, it was only a middling success in the States, although its influence was huge and it was recognized as an instant classic in the U.K. Wilson followed up with the Beach Boys’ finest single, “Good Vibrations,” three-and-a-half thrilling minutes of electro-theremin and stacks of vocals, recorded over a period of six months in various studios at a cost that was reportedly, at that point, the most expensive single in history.
Wilson returned to the studio with plans to top himself: an album called Smile, which he told friends would be a “teenage symphony to God.” Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, he started to assemble an elaborate collection of musical suites, intended to change the face of popular music, but the sessions fell apart, weighed down by the indifference of the other Beach Boys, Wilson’s consumption of pot and LSD, and his growing mental instability. While recording “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” a piece of the “Elements” suite about fire, Wilson handed out plastic firemen’s helmets to the orchestra and actually lit a fire in the studio to inspire them. When he found out that a building near the studio had burned down, he thought he had caused the fire through his music, freaked out, and locked the tapes in a vault…”
I’m not going to inflict the downside of the deaths of old people on you. There’s a tendency to show how they looked most recently, which is usually remote from the arc of their lives. (I don’t like the pic Rolling Stone is featuring…) And I won’t repeat the stories and rumors of the sadder days. Find them if they will make the picture more complete for you.
Here’s what I’ll leave you with. A black & white photo of a very young but already important young American musician. How I’ll try to remember him…
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