‘A Christmas Gift for You’: Brian Wilson’s favourite Phil Spector album
In the mid-1960s, an astonishing and unprecedented number of groundbreaking albums were being released at an unrelenting pace by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of great artists and musical geniuses.
Whether it was in the soul styles of Aretha Franklin or Marvin Gaye, the bluesy rock of The Animals or the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the phantasmagorical combination of poetry and rock from Dylan or on a gospel album like Elvis’ How Great Thou Art, whether it was in the rootsy sound of The Band’s debut outing or on Johnny Cash’s raucous Folsom Prison live album, or something from any of the British invasion bands like The Beatles, The Stones and The Kinks, you couldn’t escape the great new releases that were coming out seemingly by the hour during this heady decade.
All of these great artists (and all the rest not mentioned above) were pushing each other to even greater heights. Dylan inspired The Beatles, who wanted to outdo The Stones, who were better than The Who, who admired The Kinks and so on and on and on.
Among all these great artists were the great producers Berry Gordy at Motown and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic. Bob Johnston and Tom Wilson at Columbia. Rick Hall at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, and George Martin at Abbey Road. And then, of course, there was Phil Spector.
Among all that was a family band of singing surfers who had a knack for vocal harmonies and great melodies. The Beach Boys followed up their first hit, 1962’s Surfin’, with Surfin’ Safari, Surfin’ Girl and Surfin’ USA, before expanding their repertoire to include a broader array of topics once they had ridden their first wave of popularity. Brain Wilson once hilariously revealed, “I wasn’t into surfing at all. My brother Dennis gave me all the jargon I needed to write the songs. He was the surfer, and I was the songwriter. Started to take more control of the songwriting duties.”
He wasn’t into surfing, but he was into both The Beatles and Phil Spector. Starting with All Summer Long in 1964, Wilson was trying to move the band into a new, more mature, experimental and ambitious direction. Inspired by Spector’s legendary ‘Wall of Sound’ production technique – where the mantra that “more is more” severely undersells the levels of noise he could achieve – and by the creative leaps that were being taken on each album by The Beatles, Wilson wanted to push his own band on to new territory, culminating in the legendary Pet Sounds.
With the clear influence from Spector and The Beatles on the album, as well as Wilson’s own musical genius, it is no wonder that when he was asked to list his ten favourite albums, he opted to include works from both of these musical luminaries that have inspired him so.
That he picked The Beatles’ Revolver and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band comes as no surprise, but his favourite Phil Spector release, and the album which he has referred to elsewhere as his favourite record ever, was a slightly more left-field pick.
It wasn’t any of the albums that he produced for George Harrison or John Lenon, All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band or Imagine respectively, or any of the albums he worked on with Ike and Tina Turner, The Ronnettes, the Ramones or even Leonard Cohen, but the 1963 holiday album, A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records.
Made up of recordings by various session musicians from the legendary Wrecking Crew in the trademark Spector style and alternately fronted by The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bob B Soxx & the Blue Jeans and Darlene Love, the album is a collection of secular Christmas songs like ‘White Christmas’, ‘Frosty the Snowman’, ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’.
Brian Wilson had even hoped to feature on the album. Having attended some of the sessions, he was invited to play piano on the song ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’, but was dismissed by his hero Phil Spector, who was unimpressed with his playing and called Wilson’s performance “substandard”.
Undeterred, Wilson returned to The Beach Boys, who cut their own Christmas album with their own Wall of Sound and, something that Spector couldn’t ever do, with their own songs, which came out a year later. Side One featured new compositions, including ‘Little Saint Nick’ and ‘The Man with All the Toys’, whilst Side Two was made up of traditional festive material, including a Beach Boys rendition of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’. Conspicuously, there is no piano playing to be heard on the recording.
