FEATURE:
You Still Believe in Me
The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds at Fifty-Five
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ON 16th May…
one of the greatest albums of all-time turns fifty-five: the sublime Pet Sounds. The eleventh studio album from The Beach Boys, it is amazing to think that it was initially met with a slightly tepid raft of reviews and commercial performance! It peaking at number-ten on the U.S. Billboard Top LPs chart – this was lower than the band's preceding albums. It is strange how some albums fare better in different counties. Maybe it was the fact that The Beatles and other bands were experimenting and producing these similar albums that Pet Sound was taken to heart in the United Kingdom. The reviews were more favourable. Pet Sounds reached number-two on the album chart. One of the most progressive and astonishing Pop albums ever, the reception and reaction to the album has drastically shifted since 1966. Pet Sounds is now seen as one of the most important albums in music history. There are some parallels between The Beach Boys and The Beatles. As The Beatles quit touring largely by 1966/1967, they immersed themselves in the studio and challenged themselves. Produced, arranged, and almost entirely composed by Brian Wilson (with guest lyricist Tony Asher), he wanted to release the greatest album ever - one you could listen to and not encounter any weak tracks. I have written about Pet Sounds a lot through the years. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews and articles that helps give a sense of how important and groundbreaking the album is.
Just look at the tracklisting and it is wall-to-wall gold! God Only Knows ranks alongside the greatest songs ever. Wouldn’t It Be Nice (which Mike Love co-wrote with Wilson and Asher) is a perfect opener that still sounds so magnificent and spellbinding after all of this time! There is this wonderful balance between the more experimental and sunny songs and those that are more emotional and tender. Opening with the bright Wouldn’t It Be Nice and ending that first side with the effusive Sloop John B, there is this perfect start and end. Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder) appears in the middle of the first half and is one of the most moving songs in The Beach Boys’ catalogue. After the spirited close of the first half, God Only Knows opens the second half. I think there is this brilliant sequencing so that you get these emotional hits and joyous rushes in equal measures. A great balance and blend, everything is in its right place! The vocal harmonies from Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnstone, Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Dennis Love are rich, dreamy and reliably heavenly. Brian Wilson Wall of Sound orchestrations and layered vocals had never been heard in mainstream Rock/Pop prior to 1966. Mixing together so many interesting sounds and textures – including a bicycle bells and flutes -, one has to listen to Pet Sounds over and over to fully grasp and absorb it!
Before getting to the reviews, I would advise people to look at the Wikipedia page for Pet Sounds to get a sense of its background, recording and legacy. There are a couple of interesting articles that I feel are worth bringing in at this point. Last year, udiscovermusic. argued why Pet Sounds remains a work of art.
“When Pet Sounds was released in the UK, Capitol Records ran adverts in the music press calling it “The most progressive pop album ever! It’s fantastic!” Then, like now, it sometimes seems that British Beach Boys fans “got” the band – and, in particular, where Brian Wilson was trying to take his music – maybe more so than fans at home in America. It has so often been the case that no man is a prophet in his own land, and that old adage certainly applies to musicians and their music.
In the summer of 1966 there were some fans who were confused by The Beach Boys’ 11th studio album – where were the striped shirts and the surfboards? In the intervening five decades, however, Pet Sounds has been acknowledged as a masterpiece, a record that has topped countless polls of the greatest albums ever made, and is revered by musicians and fans alike as the pinnacle of Brian Wilson’s songwriting, production and all-round creative genius.
Brian began seriously working on his masterpiece on Tuesday, 18 January 1966, at Western Recorders, and continued for 27 sessions spread over three months at four separate Los Angeles studios. This was an unprecedented amount of studio hours to be devoted to one album, but Brian was in pursuit of perfection. Just take a listen to any of the tracking sessions released on the various reissues of Pet Sounds: Brian was totally focused and demanded nothing less from everyone who worked on the project.
‘Let’s Go Away For Awhile’ was recorded that first day, with Take 18 of what was then called ‘Untitled Ballad’ the master. Among those in the studio were guitarists Al Casey and Barney Kessel; saxophonists Jim Horn and Plas Johnson; Carol Kaye on bass; and the ever-present Hal Blaine on drums. The rest of The Beach Boys were over 5,000 miles away, in Sendai, Japan, on tour with new man Bruce Johnston, who had replaced Brian in The Beach Boys’ road band, but was also becoming an integral part of the studio group.
By 9 February, eight sessions had taken place, and on this day the remainder of The Beach Boys joined Brian in the studio for what proved to be a difficult day for all concerned. Brian was frustrated that they could not seem to handle some of the complexities of the vocals he was demanding from them, and some of the band thought this new music was too radical a departure from their “sound” – a hit-making concoction no better illustrated than on ‘Barbara Ann’, which had been released as a UK single that same week, having already been a No.2 hit to The Beatles’ chart-topping ‘We Can Work It Out’ on the Billboard Hot 100.
By the end of the month they were over halfway through the Pet Sounds sessions, including working on a song that a Capitol Records memo refers to as “‘Good, Good, Good Vibrations’, the preliminary track from the album”, though, in the end, the song was not included on Pet Sounds. The final session for the album was held on 11 April, when the vocals for ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ and ‘God Only Knows’ were finally completed to Brian’s exacting standards.
Brian mastered the album five days later, and it was released in the US exactly a month after that. The album’s title was chosen by Mike Love, in reflection of the fact that the music on the record was very much made up of Brian’s “pet” sounds. Despite all the effort, the beauty of the record, its innovative nature and the brilliance of Brian’s creative genius, it stalled at No.10 on the Billboard album chart. Brian was mortified.
On Monday, 16 May 1966, the day of Pet Sounds’ US release, Bruce Johnston arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport carrying a copy of the album. The following day, in his suite at the Waldorf Hotel, Bruce played the album in its entirety for John Lennon and Paul McCartney – not once, but twice. After the two Beatles left the Waldorf they went straight back to Paul’s house and there, inspired by Brian’s incredible music, they worked on the introduction to their song ‘Here, There And Everywhere’, which later appeared on Revolver.
“Pet Sounds blew me out of the water,” Paul recalled in 2003. “First of all, it was Brian’s writing. I love the album so much. I’ve just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life – I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard this album.”
Just what is it that makes Pet Sounds so amazing? The vocals include Brian’s most poignant ever performance, on the sublime ‘Caroline No’; Mike Love shines on ‘Here Today’; and Carl Wilson turns in a heart-stopping tour de force, ‘God Only Knows’. If you get a chance, listen to the a cappella mixes of the songs included on the most recent box set reissue of the album. The complexity of the arrangements are staggering, and yet the band were all so young. Brian himself was still only 23; Mike, the oldest member of the group, had turned 25 during its recording; Carl Wilson was still only 19, Dennis Wilson was 21 years old; and Bruce Johnston and Al Jardine were also both 23”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Brian Wilson in an outtake from the Pet Sounds cover shoot at the San Diego Zoo
I want to highlight an article from Vox that was published in 2016. There are various sections that interested me greatly. The fact there was this production race between The Beach Boys and The Beatles is fascinating! After Pet Sounds, The Beatles tried to up the ante with 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Depending on what side you on, you could say that The Beach Boys bested The Beatles and produced the best album with Pet Sounds – though Revolver must come pretty close in terms of the best albums of that time. The incredible songwriting and blend of sounds/emotions on Pet Sounds is still influencing artists today:
“Wilson also used better-known instruments in weird ways. For the intro to "You Still Believe in Me," Tony Asher, Pet Sounds' primary lyricist, helped Wilson get the sound he wanted by plucking the strings inside Wilson's piano as Wilson held down the notes on the keyboard. "I Know There’s an Answer" uses a harmonica as a bass instrument and for a solo — unheard of at the time.
And remember that eerie sound of the electric theremin in science fiction movies of the '50s and '60s? Its haunting wails turn up near the end of "I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times."
It’s impossible to say for sure where Wilson got his ideas for instrumentation, but what motivated his endless experimentation is unmistakable: his desire to beat the Beatles.
So when the Beatles began work on 1967's Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pet Sounds was at the forefront of their minds. "Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper never would have happened. ... Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds," Sgt. Pepper producer Martin wrote in the liner notes for the Beach Boys' outtakes collection The Pet Sounds Sessions, released in 1997, a year after Pet Sounds’ 30th anniversary.
Paul McCartney himself has echoed that sentiment. "If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper," McCartney said in an interview he did in 1990. "And my influence was basically the Pet Sounds album." Sgt. Pepper marked a huge production leap over Revolver, and went on to win the Beatles a Grammy for Best Album.
That's essentially where the production race ended. While the Beatles were busy with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, the Beach Boys' Wilson had been trying to up the ante even more with SMiLE, his intended follow-up to Pet Sounds.
SMiLE was an ambitious, high-concept undertaking; Wilson was recording everything in pieces, effectively experimenting with a physical version of digital editing about 20 years before the technology arrived. But due to the huge amount of effort involved and a breakdown in Wilson's mental health, SMiLE was not to be. The project famously collapsed and wasn't released — until decades later, when it was released officially in two different versions.
What’s remarkable, though, and what has seemingly been forgotten in the decades since, is the strong possibility that by the end of 1966, Wilson had finally managed to fight the Beatles to a near draw in terms of popularity — at least when considering the two groups' chart performance in the US and the UK.
Of the many themes and subjects Pet Sounds touches upon and tackles, the album is united by a sadness it never shies away from; at its core, Pet Sounds is about young, failed love.
"God Only Knows," like most of the songs on the album, functions differently as a standalone work than within the context of the album. By itself, the song explores a person longing for her romantic partner who has died. But in the context of the album as a whole, it feels like a pivot, signifying that point in a relationship when you suspect you’re falling out of love or can begin to imagine life without the person you’re involved with.
"Caroline, No" is Pet Sounds’ piercingly vulnerable finale. Far in the future, and thus much older, our teenage ex-partners meet once again. Expanding upon the premise of how people change as they get older, the song wonders if the love these teenagers once felt for each other could ever be reignited or felt again. But its tone implies it cannot, and mourns the loss of that first love.
The conclusion of "Caroline, No" can seem bewildering, especially to first-time listeners. The sound of an oncoming train accompanied by barking dogs might be confusing in the moment, but as the train approaches and accelerates, the barking dogs chasing after it, the metaphor becomes clear: It represents the loss of innocence after your first heartbreak.
What’s heartening to see, however, is that even though the production race between the Beach Boys and the Beatles ended nearly 50 years ago, in some ways it’s still going on. Both groups have charted among the top 10 on the Billboard 200 within the past four years — pretty good for 50-year-old bands. And it's common, on lists of the best albums of all time, to see Pet Sounds jockey with a Beatles album (like Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road) for the top spot.
But to my mind, the Beatles never topped Pet Sounds. For all the Fab Foursome's admirable achievements, they never managed to wield an album so deftly united in subject matter, theme, production, and song-to-song quality”.
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beach Boys in a further outtake from the Pet Sounds cover shoot
I am going to round this off with a couple of reviews. It seems almost surplus to requirement, as I have not seen anyone give anything less than a glowing five-star review! That said, each critics has a different interpretation and angle. This is what AllMusic said in their review:
“The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound. Conventional keyboards and guitars were combined with exotic touches of orchestrated strings, bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Theremin, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans, barking dogs, and more. It wouldn't have been a classic without great songs, and this has some of the group's most stunning melodies, as well as lyrical themes which evoke both the intensity of newly born love affairs and the disappointment of failed romance (add in some general statements about loss of innocence and modern-day confusion as well). The spiritual quality of the material is enhanced by some of the most gorgeous upper-register male vocals (especially by Brian and Carl Wilson) ever heard on a rock record. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows," "Caroline No," and "Sloop John B" (the last of which wasn't originally intended to go on the album) are the well-known hits, but equally worthy are such cuts as "You Still Believe in Me," "Don't Talk," "I Know There's an Answer," and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times." It's often said that this is more of a Brian Wilson album than a Beach Boys recording (session musicians played most of the parts), but it should be noted that the harmonies are pure Beach Boys (and some of their best). Massively influential upon its release (although it was a relatively low seller compared to their previous LPs), it immediately vaulted the band into the top level of rock innovators among the intelligentsia, especially in Britain, where it was a much bigger hit”.
I am ending with a review from SLANT. They note that, whilst critics usually have something bad to say about an album or do not understand it, it was the rest of The Beach Boys who were not buying the buzz for Brian Wilson’s masterpiece:
“Whenever pundits, critics, and intelligentsia decide that some work of art or other is worthy of being designated “the absolute greatest painting/recording/novel/lint collection of all time,” there’s always someone with claws out, waiting to pounce on the pronouncement and rip the accolades to so many adjective-laden shreds. Oddly enough, in the case of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s compositional masterwork Pet Sounds, it was the rest of his band who couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. Sure, the other Boys (Mike Love, Brian’s brothers Carl and Dennis, and Al Jardine) sang their parts (as written by Brian) beautifully, even if they were singing gobbledegook about “hanging onto your ego.” But these lush, symphonic, and baroque pieces were as far removed from the good-time surf ditties the band was known for as they could possibly be. For all the band knew, these tunes could’ve been beamed into Brian’s brain from another planet. And for all we know, they probably were.
Still, even with stiff resistance from his bandmates, his record label, and potentially even his fans, Brian soldiered on, pulling these pet sounds from his head and painstakingly putting them to tape. And we’re a much better world for it. Imagine a world without Carl Wilson’s sublime, gentle reading of “God Only Knows” (the first song to include the word “God” in the title, according to folklore). A world without the impossibly gorgeous vocal harmonies stacked sky-high in the closing of “You Still Believe in Me.” A world without the giddy, heart-bursting optimism of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” or the silly musical mischief of “Sloop John B.” I can’t imagine living in such a world, and thank God (and Brian Wilson) we don’t have to.
So while his band thought he was bonkers, and the American public didn’t quite get it right away, Pet Sounds did find an eager audience in the U.K., and in particular with those shaggy mustachioed mop-tops the Beatles, who proceeded to nick various aspects of the album for their own orch-pop opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Wilson would hear that album and be tempted to recoil in defeat, and the Beach Boys’s days as summertime chart-toppers grew limited. But as time has crept on, the hosannas for Pet Sounds are still fervently sounded (hell, even Mike Love likes it now), you can buy several versions of the collection (including a lavish box set containing alternate versions, a cappella takes, and other goodies), and it’s widely regarded as perhaps the greatest pop album ever made. And still, somewhere on planet Earth, someone is experiencing the euphoria of these songs for the first time. To that person, I say welcome to a new and lovelier world”.
Ahead of its fifty-fifth anniversary on 16th May, I was keen to reinvestigate Pet Sounds and state why it remains this hugely important and peerless work. Go and buy the album on vinyl if you can, as this is an album that will be talked about for decades and decades to come! Whilst it has inspired so many artists – from Prog Rock acts in the 1970s to Indie bands of the 1990s and beyond -, I do not think anyone has managed to match the genius and gravity of Pet Sounds. I am not sure that anyone ever will! When it comes to albums, you can’t get higher praise than that. It is s staggering achievement and work of brilliance…
THAT moves all the senses.