The album Cameron Crowe called the best he ever heard: “The high watermark”
Cameron Crowe never saw his career beginning and ending as a humble writer for Rolling Stone. The entire story of Almost Famous was about him paying homage to his old life hanging out with the titans of rock and roll, but his vision behind the camera was where he found his true passion. But, really, both music and film are all about taking the audience on a journey, and Crowe always knew that his favourite work came from someone who opened their heart to the crowd and made them make heads or tails of it.
But throughout every Crowe movie, there have always been subtle pieces of music history sprinkled throughout everything. Opening up Vanilla Sky with Radiohead’s ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ perfectly sets the tone for what you’re going to be watching, and while he could not have known the kind of enormity that grunge would have over culture at the time, Singles reads as one of the greatest time capsules of what life was like in Seattle circa 1990.
That music may have resonated more with him at the time, but the greatest legends that he interviewed were already royalty by that time. He had already known firsthand what Led Zeppelin were like to talk to, and had even come to see Glenn Frey as an older brother figure who happened to be a rock star, but in terms of the true legends, people like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were bound to be a little more out of reach.
For someone growing up in California, though, none of the British invasion bands could compare to what Brian Wilson created with The Beach Boys. They gave the entire country a glimpse of what life was like cruising through Los Angeles without a care in the world, but as the music world was evolving, Crowe always kept Pet Sounds close to the chest as much as he did with the Sgt Peppers of the world.
As far as Crowe was concerned, nothing could beat what Wilson had made across those 13 tracks, saying, “Pet Sounds is the high-water mark of songwriting and production so meticulously rendered that you ache hearing these songs; they’re filled with secret cries for help disguised in baroque and candy-coated harmonies, the sound of Brian Wilson’s universe coming together and falling apart. For me, [it] is a souvenir, a masterwork, an underdog story and a record that takes you gently by the lapels and says, ‘Here’s what it feels like to be alive.’”
But what separates Pet Sounds from everything else at the time was how emotionally honest it was. Bob Dylan was making more universal material on Blonde on Blonde and The Beatles took everyone down a rabbit hole that would kickstart the Summer of Love, but you can hear Wilson’s love and heartache throughout every line, whether that’s him singing ‘Caroline No’ or imagining a world where he had his other half by his side on ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’.
It’s a masterpiece in many ways, but the only reason it works is because of the struggles that Wilson took to make it in the first place. The album flopped when it came out since everyone wanted to hear the same old surf rock songs, but when looking at its legacy, Wilson was making the kind of music that needed to be driven out of him rather than something that he felt would sell.
Even if the rest of the world didn’t do it the same way he did at the time, Crowe is right on the money when pointing out Wilson’s cries to be thought of as a serious artist. It’s not always the cheeriest album in the world, but rarely has someone been able to lay their heart out so bare and managed to get millions of people to smile along with him.
