The 1966 song Pete Townshend called “a new standard” for rock
Rock and roll is a constantly evolving beast, but it was during the 1960s that the most drastic of its transformations occurred. Pete Townshend and The Who, for instance, injected copious amounts of youthful, amphetamine-fuelled anarchy into proceedings, but even they couldn’t compete with the more revolutionary of rock reinventors.
One of the prevailing reasons why The Who were able to remain on the upper echelon of cutting-edge rock and roll for so long was Pete Townshend’s dedication to reinvention. A group of lesser ambition might have found that early success with tracks like ‘My Generation’ and spent the following few decades vainly trying to recapture that magic. Instead, Townshend’s songwriting was constantly on the move, like a shark with a drug habit.
While you could certainly pin that penchant for evolution on Townshend’s art-school leanings, particularly so far as rock operas like Tommy were concerned, a lot of The Who’s innovations were inspired by the work of their fellow artists. After all, the 1960s were a period awash with musical revolutionaries, reinventing the wheels of pop, rock, and music itself, spurred on by the emergence of LSD and the counterculture years.
One of the era’s most prominent groups was The Beach Boys, who epitomised this newfound era of innovation. Having spent the early part of the decade ripping off Chuck Berry for a litany of pop hits, Brian Wilson’s decision to shut himself away in a recording studio soon produced a masterpiece in Pet Sounds – an album that changed the musical landscape forevermore, inspiring the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and, of course, The Who in the process.
“Brian Wilson had a harmonic sensibility that was sort of off the map,” Townshend once told Guitar Player. “‘God Only Knows’ is a masterpiece,” he added, citing arguably the most iconic track from Pet Sounds.
Unsurprisingly, then, that legendary song had a colossal impact on The Who, not least because Keith Moon was an ardent devotee of The Beach Boys going back to their earliest days.
There is no doubt that 1967’s The Who Sell Out owed itself, in some form, to Pet Sounds. With its ambitious, postmodern structure, evoking a radio broadcast complete with parody advertisements and expansive, occasionally orchestral arrangements. Particularly, as it turns out, the album’s only single, ‘I Can See for Miles’, was heavily influenced by that Beach Boys masterpiece.
“I suppose to some extent with ‘I Can See for Miles,’” Townshend shared, “The challenge was not to try to equal Brian Wilson’s harmonic sensibility but certainly to say, ‘Well, that’s a new standard. Instead of just doing three-part harmony, let’s do five-part harmony and see what happens.’”
The Who weren’t the only group to take that “new standard” and run with it, splintering off into countless different sonic directions and experiments. While The Who’s output never attempted to be an identikit version of The Beach Boys, the influence Brian Wilson provided to them and hundreds of other bands across the musical spectrum was utterly undeniable.
