‘Pet Sounds’: the making and breaking of the 1960s
It’s difficult to dispute that the 1960s were the most influential era of music. The decade gave us the biggest band of all time in The Beatles, enduring guitar bands like The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, folk legends like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, and so many more. It spawned subcultures and countercultures, from mods to rockers to hippies. It also gave us some truly iconic releases that captured the time period, such as the Fab Four’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. But before there was Sgt. Peppers, there was The Beach Boys‘ Pet Sounds.
“Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened,” George Martin, the producer sometimes referred to as the fifth Beatle, once stated, “Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.” Interestingly, the inspiration for Pet Sounds first came from The Beatles. Brian Wilson had listened to the Fab Four’s 1965 record, Rubber Soul, and was stunned, so he set out to create something just as artistically complete.
The Beach Boys had spent the earlier part of the decade penning pop tunes about surfing waves, chasing girls, and relishing every element of life under the Californian sun. But, much to their label’s disappointment, the band would attempt to shrug off this clean-cut commercial image with their eleventh record. Instead, they sought to follow The Beatles in their pursuit of something more artistic, something more experimental.
The result of this was the gruelling writing and recording process of Pet Sounds. Rather than writing songs about surface-level topics, Wilson and Tony Asher prioritised introspection, forging an intimate partnership that would bleed into the songs. This level of intensity characterised the entire production process as the Beach Boys hit the studio tirelessly, desperate to create something new.
Days in the studio were abandoned if they weren’t up to Wilson’s standards, and the label spent the equivalent of $500,000 on the record. The band and those around them put everything they could into Pet Sounds, emotionally, physically, and financially. And while this would lead to one of the greatest albums of all time, it would also break them.
Pet Sounds marked a drop-off in commercial sales for the band, but it also won them the most critical acclaim of their career so far. Wilson’s experimentations with strange instrumentation and orchestral creations stunned critics and audiences, changing pop composition forever. It even inspired the Beatles to respond from the other side of the Atlantic with Sgt. Pepper’s, another record that encapsulated the counterculture of the era.
But it would also mark the height of the Beach Boys’ critical success. The strain and pressure to outdo the Beatles, to create something experimental and whole, was not sustainable. Wilson continued to push into new directions following the release of Pet Sounds, using up 90 hours of tape on another Beach Boys classic in ‘Good Vibrations’, but his new direction lost the band Capitol’s support.
The Beach Boys gradually fell out of favour with audiences, while Wilson began to struggle more and more with his mental health. The Beach Boy promised that their follow-up, 1967’s Smiley Smile, would be even better than Pet Sounds, a declaration that they did not deliver on. Their intense highs and lows surrounding Pet Sounds almost seemed to mirror the decade, encapsulating its sound, subcultures, and feeling into one release.
Despite the aftermath of Pet Sounds, and the fact that the Beach Boys would never quite reach the same level of artistic fulfilment again, the record remains one of the most important influential releases of all time. Shrugging off the light-hearted, sunlit tunes of their early career, they created a collection of songs that would change music forever.
“I figure no one is educated musically ‘til they’ve heard Pet Sounds,” Paul McCartney once declared, via the Brian Wilson website.
