George Martin on The Beach Boys, falling in love and how the album ‘Pet Sounds’ blew his mind
The song ‘Good Vibrations’ by The Beach Boys is the by-product of obsession. When writing it, Brian Wilson completely threw himself into the track, letting it consume every waking hour of his life until he managed to perfect the structure, layering, and recording. The inspiration for the song came from his mother and the stories she would tell him about invisible forces and a dog’s instinct.
“My mother used to tell me about vibrations. I didn’t really understand too much of what she meant when I was a boy. It scared me, the word ‘vibrations’ – to think that invisible feelings existed,” said Brian Wilson when discussing the inspiration behind the track, “She also told me about dogs that would bark at some people, but wouldn’t bark at others, and so it came to pass that we talked about good vibrations.”
While the inspiration behind the track was relatively wholesome, Wilson’s stressful period trying to get it right was anything but. It took him and the band two months to record the song. The Beach Boys didn’t end up playing any instruments on it, but so many different sounds were looped that they ended up using 90 hours of studio time and 70 hours of tape.
At least 12 session musicians also played on the song, chipping in to help with the lead guitar, drums, piano, and organ. It was truly a gruelling process to finish the song, but the end result is something spectacular.
‘Good Vibrations’ is reminiscent of the entire album which came before it, Pet Sounds, both in terms of the obsession that went into making it and the spectacular end result. During a period when it felt as though all the new ideas coming into the music industry were the by-product of The Beatles, this album showed that other bands could have creative input without copying the Fab Four. It was a wholly unique and equal blend of happy and sad, truly a rollercoaster and an exercise in musical excellence.
One of the biggest names in the music industry at the time was George Martin, the producer behind all of the groundbreaking work that The Beatles were putting out. Even he was quick to agree that what the Beach Boys managed to achieve with Pet Sounds was something genuinely extraordinary. He still holds the album in high regard as one of the greatest records ever made and described listening to it as akin to “falling in love”.
“The first time I heard Pet Sounds, I got that kind of feeling that happens less and less as one gets older and more blasé […] that moment when something comes along and blows your mind,” he said, “Hearing Pet Sounds gave me the kind of feeling that raises the hairs on the back of your neck and you say ‘What is that? It’s fantastic.’ It gives you an elation that is beyond logic. It’s like falling in love; you’re swept away by it. That’s what Pet Sounds did to me.”
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