The 1960s masterpiece Paul McCartney called “the classic of the century”
When Paul McCartney got behind the wheel of pop culture the cabin still had a new car smell. The Beatles then drove towards liberation at a breakneck, unprecedented pace—changing the world in a whirlwind whoosh. Elvis Presley’s hips might have thrust things into motion, but the Fab Four created the frenzy that we are still reeling from today.
They were a new hope at just the right time. As McCartney himself wrote in 1964: Eyes of the Storm: “President Kennedy had been murdered only a little over two months before our arrival in the United States, and his assassination had ricocheted throughout the world, so we figured the atmosphere might still be subdued.” If anything, they were the answer to America’s prayer for salvation.
“The minute we landed in New York,” he continues, “We knew instantly that we were not in store for any kind of funereal time. It was a Friday in early February when we touched down, and it felt like thousands – and later, through television and The Ed Sullivan Show – millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget.” But thus far, there has been no mention of music. Surely, if a band were a beacon rising from the rubble of a faltering society, then it was the music that made it so legendary?
Well, they would indeed revolutionise the sonic palette of culture, in turn, but they had a help in hand on that front.
There were many facets that made Macca and the rest of his Liverpudlian mates masters of their craft and everything that entailed in the new age of the 20th century, but one noteworthy point is that they were absolutely brilliant magpies. This is a feature well worth celebrating because it made music what it is today.
As Nick Cave once poignantly put it: “The great beauty of contemporary music, and what gives it its edge and vitality, is its devil-may-care attitude toward appropriation — everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time. It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music — the great artistic experiment of our era.”
McCartney was always eagerly learning lessons from others around him, but there was one sonic lecture that made the Scouse student weep. “I figure no one is educated musically until they’ve heard Pet Sounds,” he once said of The Beach Boys masterpiece.
His glowing appraisal continued, “I love the orchestra, the arrangements – it may be going overboard to say it’s the classic of the century – but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways. I’ve often played Pet Sounds and cried.” Likewise, he’s listened to Pet Sounds and made notes—that’s the majesty of it: it delivers on the most human level of emotional resonance, but it reaches that plashy mire through skyrocketing innovation.
And as Tom Petty and Jackson Browne later said respectively, “They say The Beach Boys were responsible for Sgt. Pepper,” “imagine a band influencing The Beatles?” With pioneering sonic sounds informing some of the most beautiful music ever written, they inspired just about everyone and changed the face of music with the alchemical mix of invention and artistry that is the humble majesty of Pet Sounds and its postmodernist bliss.
As the famed ‘Fifth Beatle’ producer George Martin, the man responsible for the wild cacophony of layered stereo sounds on the ‘Fab Four’s’ response, once said: “If there is one person that I have to select as a living genius of pop music, I would choose Brian Wilson. Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened. Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.” In truth, the score isn’t quite 1-1, but their both so timeless that the full-time whistle is yet to be blown.
The reason why Pet Sounds is so revered pertains to the scale of Wilson’s singular approach. The record was a pioneering leap forward in stereo sound, whereby music could be layered, overlapped and manipulated in making it three-dimensional and distinct as opposed to a recorded blend, taking a technological advancement and not only utilising it but incorporating it into the art to render pop baroque and provide the world with its first keyless masterpieces in ‘God Only Knows’.
Then there is the astounding poetry that sits atop these brand-new melodies, taking the deeply personal and profound impetus laid out by Bob Dylan and applying it as the cornerstone of their orchestration. Then there’s the faultless performances, the musical originality, the easy appeal, and the hits, the many, many hits.
Finally, there is the album’s justly deserved legacy. More so than any other record, with the exception of perhaps The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, you could argue that the classics of the century that came after it wouldn’t have been made – or at least wouldn’t have been the same – without it. Everything came before Pet Sounds, and everything came after it. Fittingly, it stands at the precipice of the ‘60s ideals, embodying everything that was best about the hope for a ‘technological fix’, the severance of stilted conservatism, the evisceration of cultural elitism, and meeting of rock ‘n’ roll and meaning.
However, Wilson was hoisted by his own petard in trying to equal his opus, too. “Our new album will be better than Pet Sounds,” he once ventured. Adding: “It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over Summer Days.” This proved an impossibility, and even though McCartney had McCartney himself munching vegetables for background noise on Smiley Smile, he ultimately canned the record and slunk into depression. McCartney continued to blaze a trail of innovation.
