“The very best sounds”: Brian Wilson on the guitarist no one could compare to
Every musician has a bit of a balancing act when performing on a pop song. It’s one thing to be asked to perform on a classic, but it’s up to the performers not to fumble everything by using the tune as a chance to flex their muscles instead of actually playing what the artist wants. While Brian Wilson usually heard the parts that he wanted for The Beach Boys in his head long before he entered the studio, he knew that this guitarist never really put his hands in the wrong place whenever he got behind the fretboard.
Then again, The Beach Boys were never exactly known for their phenomenal guitar hero moments. The lion’s share of their songs were based around those voices bouncing off each other, and even if the lyrics could be a little goofy at times, it didn’t matter as long as they sounded sincere while singing them.
But Wilson didn’t see his songs as a simple melody being recorded off the floor. No, his music needed to be sculpted for him to be completely satisfied, and when he used the Wrecking Crew on albums like Pet Sounds, he no longer wanted to make the kind of disposable music for the charts to eat up. He wanted to make the music speak to someone on a deep level, and that meant giving each instrument its own place in the arrangement.
While Carol Kaye was normally a safe bet for delivering the perfect bass line, it was anyone’s guess whether a tune would be driven by a guitar on the final recording. Throughout their glory years, no instrument was off the table, with Wilson trying to use everything from a cello to a guitar to a piano to a theremin. When it came time to track guitars, though, it was all an extension of what Les Paul had done in the 1950s.
Whereas Chuck Berry could make the guitar talk in a certain way, the ingenuity that Paul brought to the instrument transcended standard lead playing. He could have easily been a one-man band when putting together arrangements for his songs, and even if one of his musical pieces only lasted for ten seconds, it would always be exactly what the tune needed when layering up different parts.
Although Wilson did get some decent guitar moments under his belt with The Beach Boys, he felt that all of the bases were already covered when he heard Paul play, telling Rolling Stone, “He made the very best guitar sounds of the 1950s. There’s nobody that came close [to him]”.
And listening to how Wilson treated guitars in the mix, it wasn’t all that different from how Paul approached everything. After all, the six-string was meant to be another piece of the rock and roll symphony, so why try to grandstand when playing one tasty lick would suffice for an entire song?
Beyond being a genius in the field, Paul is the reason why millions of guitarists sound like they do today. Besides the fact that he built an empire of his Gibson guitars, anyone who has ever tried to play something tasty rather than solo their way through a track has taken notes from what Paul was doing naturally.
