The 1966 song Brian Wilson never wanted to give up: “I sacrificed that one”
Brian Wilson always tended to look at every one of his songs like one of his musical children.
He didn’t like the idea of making the same kind of ho-hum songs every single time The Beach Boys made a new record, and even if Mike Love preferred to follow the formula every time they made something new, Wilson wasn’t going to be satisfied unless he was pushing the band into new territory. He had much bigger dreams than a bunch of songs about surfing and driving, and it hurt to have to leave some of his masterpieces to the rest of his band to sing whenever he made a new record.
But it’s not like Wilson could have made Pet Sounds work all by himself. He had all of the music already in his head when he first got the idea for the album, and even if Love was pushing back on some of the experimental tunes, Wilson wasn’t about to roll over and cower to what he wanted. The Wrecking Crew were making the music that he was hearing in his mind, and getting someone like Hal Blaine or Carol Kaye to help fill out the soundstage on every one of those songs was all that he ever wanted out of his records.
In fact, some of the tunes on the record are so personal that it’s hard to think of anyone else but Wilson singing them. There are certainly moments where the rest of the band do a respectable job singing around him, but ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times’ was practically his life story whenever he sang it. He always felt out of place, and the only way he could feel comfortable in his own skin was when he sang about it.
A lot of that came down to Tony Asher getting the right lyrics for every one of those songs, but ‘God Only Knows’ was definitely a step up from everything else they were doing. The whole song has some of the strangest chords that you would ever hear in a pop song, and yet when Wilson put his melody over top of everything, he created one of the most earnest love songs that would have made The Beatles jealous.
When it came down to who was going to sing the thing, though, Wilson knew that he wasn’t the right person for the job. Even though he loved the idea of singing what was in his heart, his brother Carl was always the one singing a lot of the softer tunes. It made sense to give the song away to Carl to sing, but Brian did mention feeling a little bit of regret knowing that he wasn’t going to be singing one of his masterpieces.
It was a hard pill to swallow, but Brian remembered that it was all about getting the right instrument and voice for every song, saying, “I thought I was gonna do it. As the song progressed, I said, ‘Hey, I feel kind of natural doing this.’ But when we completed creating the song, I said my brother Carl will probably be able to impart the message better than I could, so I sacrificed that one. But he had a good time singing it.”
Granted, it’s not like Brian didn’t still have a lot more classics to choose from for him to sing. ‘Caroline No’ and ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)’ are some of the greatest pop tunes ever created, and even though Smile never saw the light of day like it should, his piano-led version of ‘Surf’s Up’ is still one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful tunes that he had ever made.
He had to fight tooth and nail to have his way on this record, but even if it didn’t sell well right out of the gate, Wilson knew that he had reached a turning point in his career. His work was finally reaching a higher plane than anything else he had made, and he was going to do everything in his power to keep pushing himself, no matter how many people wanted him to make the “safe” choice on his records.
