The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
If you are reading this right now, I am guessing you are a member of one of two groups. There is the, “Really? The Beach Boys?” Their recollection is happy go lucky, 1960s teeny bopper music. Not something that ever grabbed them. Then you have the other group who are thinking, “Ahhh, please no more Pet Sounds mentions. We have been there, done that! Yes, we have heard over and over about this album”.
It is important for folks reading this to understand (or remember), before The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds in 1966, NOTHING CLOSE TO THIS CONTENT AND ARRANGEMENT HAD EVER BEEN WRITTEN, ARRANGED OR RECORDED IN THIS WAY BEFORE.
I grew up listening to such Beach Boys hits like, I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda and Surfin’ USA (Thank you Michael J. Fox and Teen Wolf!). These are fun, poppy songs that are catchy and easy for a 5 or a 10 -year-old to sing along to. When I heard Pet Sounds years later as an adult, I was mesmerized by the vocal harmonization. It is important to listen deeply to how the vocal harmonization and chord changes on this album blow the doors off all the rules involved in writing music.
Pet Sounds is a deviation from the band’s previous records. Instead of the standard surfing, beach, girls and California sun themes, this album is structured from an orchestral foundation. Writer and producer, Brian Wilson decided he was going to write material involving intimate subject matter, including from the perspective of being insecure, vulnerable and neurotic.
In 1966, Wilson was recovering from a nervous breakdown he suffered while on an airplane with his bandmates. The constant stress of touring resulted in Wilson staying off the road to focus solely on writing. While the rest of The Beach Boys toured the entire planet, Wilson spent months writing this masterpiece. From July through December 1965, Wilson worked tirelessly every day on the album only taking breaks to eat and sleep.
The album opens with Wouldn’t It Be Nice, which begins with a double tracking of guitars, one drum hit, followed by the verse kicking in. If you have been living on this planet, you will recognize this song. It is that popular. The song has been featured in likely over twenty motion pictures.
What changed my musical life was the album’s second track, You Still Believe in Me. Wilson recorded the intro to this song by plucking the strings inside the piano with a bobby pin. This is an incredibly unique sound not achieved prior to this album. The song then segues into a sweet-sounding vocal harmonization.
I lose control of the steering wheel when Wilson sings “I want to cry” and the song dives deep into a cauldron of vocal harmony. The harmony then halts in place, only to pick back up and continue riding the listener off into the sunset. An absolutely beautiful representation of art. You can feel Wilson’s pain as he sings about his displeasure of letting someone down who he knows is depending on him. I battle with this phobia quite often and immediately connected.
Brian admitted the use of LSD influenced his writing on Pet Sounds significantly. He stated in an interview years later, “LSD brought out some of the insecurities in me, which I think went into the music.” Songwriter Tony Asher also contributed to writing on this album. The two met months before recording in 1965 and collaborated. Asher stated he was drawn to Wilson’s desire to writing something, “completely different with someone he had never written with before”.
Wilson wished to make a “statement” when he wrote Pet Sounds. He went so far as pouring pounds of sand in his living room underneath his grand piano so he could mimic the feeling of being on a beach while he wrote. He wanted to make Pet Sounds into a concept album, meaning void of random arrangement of each track. Most albums up until 1965 were a collection of radio hits pieced together with little, if any thought on how or what order they were to be placed in. A concept album is pieced together deliberately. In many ways a concept album tells one story. Each song either covers a similar lyrical topic, and/or incorporates a similar musical note or chord into each song.
Pet Sounds was not created in the same concept as The Who’s Tommy or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, where significant repetition and revisiting of subjects are present, but instead it introduces chord changes and musical arrangements only previously performed by large symphony orchestras. Many music executives and artists named the content “art rock”, “progressive rock” and “psychedelic pop”. It was the first album that was really ABOUT THE ALBUM. It was not solely a carrier of a bunch of singles held together. Pet Sounds eventually changed the music industry to more of an album-oriented focus.
What gave me goosebumps was reading interviews with Wilson where he admits he wrote Pet Sounds after hearing The Beatles Rubber Soul album. The album blew Brian away and inspired him to be better. If you look further, you can find interviews with all four members of The Beatles admitting when each of them heard Pet Sounds, it inspired them to gang together and write their next masterpiece, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album many regard as the greatest ever recorded.
Pet Sounds integrates pieces of pop, classical, jazz, exotica and avant-garde music. While the other members, Mike Love, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston were touring Japan, Brian Wilson teamed up with a string of studio session musicians used frequently by Record Producer, Phil Spector nicknamed, The Wrecking Crew. These musicians were classically trained and hired by Wilson to play the increasingly complex nature of his arrangements.
When the band returned from Japan, several of the members were less thrilled by Wilson’s departure from the formula that brought them intense global fame. However, they were aware of Brian’s talent. They realized in order to stay relevant, they needed him to continue writing for them. Capitol Records, the band’s label, were also unhappy by the new content. Capitol reluctantly released the album in May 1966, but immediately scrambled to release a Greatest Hits album soon after to keep the money coming in, without the band’s consent.
I think the lack of support Capitol had for Wilson fueled his anxiety and, in many ways, fueled his desire to make better records. Brian Wilson to me seems like a sweet, caring dreamer who just wanted to make music. He never intended to hurt people or “win” in business. He is a true soul-searcher, filled with love and a need to share it with the world.
A track that brings the energy level to an eleven is Sloop John B. This is certainly a song you have heard before. You do not even need to be a fan of The Beach Boys to know this one. It is just a staple. Originally published under the title, “The John B. Sails”, in 1916, the song was recorded again in 1927 by Carl Sandburg, as a revision of the famous early 1900s Nassau, Bahamas folk song. The song was recorded again several times, most memorable by The Kingston Trio in 1958. Band member, Al Jardine brought the song to Brian Wilson’s attention, encouraging him to write a cover version. Wilson, at first declined, but later peeled the song apart, created his own beat, coupled with The Beach Boys’ vocal harmonizing and gave it a new feel. Their version of Sloop John B. ended up charting at #3 in the United States on the Billboard Top 100 in 1966. It’s difficult not to belt out the song’s popular chorus, “I want to go home. I feel so broke up; I want to go home”.
God Only Knows begins side two of the record. Once again, another staple. This is a tune I am willing to bet everyone has also heard. If you are not sure, play it on your phone really quick. You will instantly remember hearing this somewhere. Also famous for being at the end of the film, Boogie Nights, the song takes you on a sweet, soft journey back in time.
I am reminded of my mother playing this song in our living room. A true Beach Boys fan, she would play this over and over. I can remember my jaw dropping as I heard the chord progressions here. A true love song, the band uses two bass guitars to record this track along with several accordions, a French horn, a harpsichord, a cello and sleigh bells. The song is about loss. Wilson and Asher wanted to write about the fact that in loss, many times there is gain. Gain of perception as to what really matters in life. Another way to put it is even though blind people cannot see, in many cases, they see much more than all of us.
Side two rounds out with, I Know There’s An Answer, Here Today, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, Pet Sounds, and ends with Caroline, No. These songs do have a taste of Doo Wop to them. As a listener, I recommend you pay attention to Wilson’s lyrical and instrument placement.
As previously mentioned, he places a lot of orchestral changes on here. Try listening to older, traditional Doo Wop from the 1950s. It is more simplistic. It hits you right between the eyes with its point. The songs get right to the catchy chorus and serve their purpose, much like early 60s Beach Boys music does. But this album…. it’s different. It has the Doo Wop mixed in with some early psychedelic overtones. I am not referring to Pink Floyd psychedelic, where the songs just take you to “never-never” land. These songs will lure in the basic music fan of any age group who likes to hum a catchy tune. However, all of a sudden, if you listen closely, you can hear what is going on in the background from an arrangement standpoint which is truly remarkable. To this extent, it is NOT traditional Doo Wop. This is groundbreaking. Perhaps this might be the reason Rolling Stone rated Pet Sounds #2 on the list of 500 greatest albums of all time.
Before you go getting opinionated, I think it is important to understand Rolling Stone magazine’s reasons. They are not listing this record so high because some writer connected more with this than the other 499 albums he listened to.
Stephen Davis of Rolling Stone Magazine:
“Pet Sounds was the first rock record that can be considered a “concept album”; from first cut to last we were treated to an intense, linear personal vision of the vagaries of a love affair and the painful, introverted anxieties that are the wrenching precipitates of the unstable chemistry of any love relationship. This trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel, and by God if this little record didn’t change only the course of popular music, but the course of a few lives in the bargain”.
I agree that Pet Sounds is the first concept album and it changed the way artists wrote and recorded albums moving forward, forever (see my mention to The Beatles reaction to Pet Sounds earlier in this review). In a way, The Beach Boys almost worked themselves out of a job, because after numerous bands began to embrace the concept album approach, the non-concept albums began to take a back seat. Recording companies such as Capitol started to gravitate towards The Beatles types of albums, where every song has a reason for being in the place that it is in. This is the reason Rolling Stone put it at #2.
I encourage you to open your mind, open your ears and prepare for something different. Pick up a copy of Pet Sounds and own a piece of history. For me, it is a trip down memory lane, thanks to my Mom playing their records. For you, perhaps it is an opportunity to be turned on to something new.
If you like what you hear, check out some of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys deeper tracks on Smiley Smile.
Or pick up some sweet merchandise and send yourself back in time!