The song Keith Richards and Brian Wilson called “the greatest”
In the grand story of rock and roll, Keith Richards and Brian Wilson seem to be on two opposite ends of the spectrum.
Both of them were world-class songwriters who could make perfect melodies for whatever the occasion was, but there was a certain innocence that came with Wilson’s work that no one could really say about anything having to do with The Rolling Stones. But even with all the mutual respect The Stones and The Beach Boys had for each other, both of them had a keen ear for what a pop song should sound like.
Then again, the Stones would have probably been laughed out of the room if they ever tried to deliberately write a pop song. As much as Mick Jagger tried to make them versatile, there’s no doubting that they rock and roll to their core, and the minute that they hit on something like ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, they were clearly in their element writing the best riffs ever created.
Whereas Wilson was the kind of guy who could have written the handbook on what pop melodies could sound like. Although The Beatles had their fair share of great tunes in their arsenal, Wilson was like a modern-day Mozart for the singles charts. Every single one of his songs may not have been the deepest set of lyrics in the world, but the way that the harmonies layered on top of each other was nothing short of heavenly.
If you were to look at Wilson’s upbringing, though, a lot of that came from studying everything that he could on the charts. There were obviously the early rock and rollers like Chuck Berry and the harmonic genius of The Four Freshmen, but there was something about listening to the way that Ronnie Spector sounded with the Ronnettes that set his world on fire from the first time he heard them.
Spector’s voice was absolutely electrifying, but what Phil Spector did behind the scenes was what turned it into a classic for Wilson, saying, “This is the song that inspired me to produce records. When I first heard it, it blew my mind. The drum sound that Phil Spector got, the harmonies, the piano and guitar sounds — I thought it was the greatest record I ever heard.” The whole track was practically a symphony put together within a few minutes, but it’s not like that magic was lost on Richards when he first heard it, either.
Even though this kind of doo-wop seemed like the furthest thing from The Stones, they were never averse to pop music on principle. It took them a while to have the confidence to record a song like ‘As Tears Go By’ for themselves, but when they finally had a few sensitive tunes under their belt, Richards had no problem admitting when a song spoke to him.
What The Stones were doing was never far away from the pop charts, and when he heard Ronnie sing, he was convinced that he had listened to one of the best voices that the pop world had to offer, saying, “The Ronettes were the hottest girl group in the world, and early in 1963 they’d just released one of the greatest songs ever recorded, ‘Be My Baby,’ produced by Phil Spector. We toured with the Ronettes on our second UK tour, and I fell in love with Ronnie Bennett, who was the lead singer.”
And while the song itself is an absolute masterpiece of pop production, it’s the human elements that really add to everything. This is before Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ became too overbearing, so hearing all of those voices working in perfect sync with each other was the gold standard for what pop music was going to sound like and a go-to for what John Lennon and George Harrison were looking for after The Beatles broke up.
It wasn’t exactly rock and roll, and you’d have to go through a lot of reinventions to make it sound nasty, but it’s not like rockstars couldn’t appreciate the craft, either. Richards and Wilson both looked at music through different lenses, but when someone hits on something this perfect, it’s almost impossible to ignore.
