“How a record should feel”: Brian Wilson once named his primary musical influence
Brian Wilson is one of those truly supreme talents. Across every corner of music, it’s not just that he has the skill to do it all—he has a genius streak that makes his work incredible, pioneering, and unlike anyone else’s. But that doesn’t mean he is without inspiration.
While it’s the most obvious option, Pet Sounds has to be the ultimate example of this. Before that 1966 album, The Beach Boys were popular, but after that, they were respected and revered, and that all came down to Wilson. With such a clear vision for what he wanted to make, Wilson wrote the songs and composed the music, arranged the orchestra, figured out weird little additions and adjustments like adding in field recordings, and then produced the album.
It’s the perfect example of ‘if you want something done, do it yourself’ as Wilson proved that no one in the world could understand or translate his ideas better than him. It’s the idea that sometimes, genius has to be self-contained in order to be protected and that maybe there has to be a point where the artist comes to rely on only themselves.
That’s not something you’d immediately think of when it comes to Chuck Berry. When thinking of that rock and roll legend, the world first thinks of the guitar, of his electric performances, of his thrilling melodies. They think of his immeasurable influence as an artist, inspiring the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and a generation-spanning cast of other artists. But for Wilson, Berry’s influence on him was as a producer.
“As a writer, I’ve had a few influences, and Chuck [Berry] is primary. As a producer, he also informed my sense of how a record should feel,” he told Billboard. It’s a two-pronged thing, as Berry’s impact is broad.
On the one hand, there is the writing – the thing that so many other artists have celebrated and revered. Berry always had a knack for writing great rock and roll. In fact, he was amongst the first to do it so successfully that the genre wave began crashing out of the UK and spreading around the world thanks to his music. For any artist hoping to be pioneering, as Wilson was, Berry’s career as a songwriter was always going to be influential.
However, Wilson’s comments about Berry’s production impact are interesting. Berry did, in fact, produce some of his own albums. In the late 1960s to the early 1970s, he produced several releases. Sporadically, throughout his career, he’d step behind the mixing desk as if certain records demanded more control from him. So clearly, Berry was another all-encompassing talent who had the skills to do it all.
That said, when Wilson talks about Berry influencing his sense of “how a record should feel”, it sounds like it mostly comes down to energy. Part of the reason why Berry’s emergence was so thrilling was because of how his music was recorded. On his first breakout albums, his guitar feels so present. The albums sound like a rock show with a band playing around you. They’re not overdone at all but are loud, exciting and immersive.
For Wilson, that’s how an album should sound. And when thinking about the ways an album like Pet Sounds picks you up and sweeps you along with it, he surely achieved it, too.
