Lindsey Buckingham initially didn’t like The Beach Boys album ‘Pet Sounds’
Any band trying to write a perfect pop song borrows from The Beach Boys, whether they know it or not. Being the American counterpart to The Beatles, Brian Wilson’s odes to cars, surfing and teenage fun brought music fans the greatest melodies of the 1960s, creating virtual symphonies on tracks like ‘California Girls’. When left to his own devices, Wilson would soon create the album that would shape rock and roll.
Looking to take The Beach Boys further after hearing The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, Wilson expanded his musical horizons on Pet Sounds, moving outside of the usual formula for pop songs. With the Wrecking Crew at his disposal in the studio, Wilson created one classic after another, from the jubilance of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ to the soaring sounds of ‘God Only Knows’.
Although the album is an acknowledged masterpiece today, one of The Beach Boys’ biggest fans was disappointed when he heard it for the first time. Working on his first songs, Lindsey Buckingham came from the surf-rock style of The Beach Boys, telling Rolling Stone, “It had the beat, the sense of joy, that explosion that rock and roll gave to a lot of us. But it also had this amazing chemical reaction that seemed to happen inside you when you heard it.”
Having been used to tracks like ‘In My Room’ and ‘Surfin Safari’, Buckingham was initially confused hearing the new tracks off Pet Sounds, recalling, “I have to admit that I did a little bit of knee-jerk in the same way probably the record company and some other people did because it wasn’t as accessible as Brian’s songwriting approach had been up to that time. I’m not sure I fully appreciated that until years later.”
Buckingham wasn’t the only one who thought Wilson was going too far away from the band’s roots. Mike Love famously hated the lyrics to the song ‘Hang on To Your Ego’, which he demanded be rewritten into ‘I Know There’s An Answer’ before it landed on the album.
Once Wilson had created his masterpiece, though, the record company still wasn’t sold on it, eventually releasing a greatest hits album a few months after to boost the group’s sales. However, looking back on it, Buckingham took a lot of lessons from listening to the album over again.
Bringing that perfectionism to Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham would try everything he could to create the sounds he heard in his head, crafting one sonic layer at a time before making songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’. Half of the album Tusk revolves around Buckingham’s habit of chasing the perfect sound, even recording the backing vocals to a few songs while doing pushups.
That often came at the expense of the rest of the group, with one tense session resulting in Buckingham almost strangling one of the engineers when one of his solos got wiped out of the final mix. Now with a fair share of classic tracks to his name, Buckingham has been able to finally understand what Pet Sounds was about, saying, “Pet Sounds is the acknowledged masterpiece, and it’s everything it’s said to be, with Brian taking some of the influences he got from Phil Spector and making something all his own.”
