The album that inspired Brian Wilson to write ‘Pet Sounds’: “It took me away”
It’s really a chicken-and-egg type of situation. What came first? In the world of rock and roll experimentation, who jumped first, The Beatles or The Beach Boys? Both acts pointed the finger at one another so perhaps it doesn’t have to be competitive at all.
Especially when it comes to Pet Sounds, it almost feels wrong to even consider inspirations. In the whole of music history, that 1966 record feels like the ultimate example of an artist having a spark and simply seeing it through. The album feels like a singular stroke of genius that hit Wilson and that he tirelessly followed to the end of the line. He wrote everything, he composed everything, he even produced it, all to make sure it was perfect.
But the perfection was something new and left-field. Looking back now, the band were always pioneering, as even in their most cookie-cutter vanilla pop songs, Wilson’s arrangements were technically fascinating. Pet Sounds, though, was something altogether different. It was the end of that old hyper-mainstream, all-American, surfer boy iteration of the band and the opening of a new phase where the group were suddenly on the cutting edge. They were not only joining the countercultural world, but they also instantly came in and ruled it.
It made people pay attention. Brian Wilson was heralded as a genius after that, rightfully given the praise and attention he deserved as the other titans of the musical world started giving him his flowers. “Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian,” Bob Dylan said of the musician. Paul Simon admitted his flaws for ignoring the band for so long beforehand, stating, “I began to realise he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation.” Neil Young laid on the praise too, claiming, “He’s like Mozart or Chopin or Beethoven or something. This music will live forever.”
It made the Beatles huge fans, too. Paul McCartney once said, “I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard Pet Sounds,” and as a group, they certainly got educated off that album, going on to make Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band after being inspired by it. McCartney admitted that, stating, “I played it to John so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence. If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed [Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band] and my influence was basically the Pet Sounds album.”
But really, The Beatles sort of inspired themselves there, as Wilson admitted that the Fab Four’s influence played a part in the album. Just as how Pet Sounds moved Beach Boys into counterculture, Wilson was inspired by the record that had done the same for The Beatles. “We were smoking this marijuana and we were stoned and Rubber Soul just took me away,” he said, recalling the first moment he heard the band’s 1965 album, “I went to the piano and I started writing Pet Sounds. It was a moment that lived forever in my heart.”
It makes perfect sense. On Rubber Soul, the band bravely shook off the shackles of pure, simple, radio-ready rock and roll. They included more folk sounds and the start of more psychedelic elements, being inspired by more modern figures rather than strictly looking back to the old legends. It’s clear that the record empowered Wilson to do the same.
But neither act would be happy with the idea of one ever truly coming before the other. “It’s a mutual admiration thing,” Mike Love said on The Dan Patrick Show in 2017, “We loved their music and they loved ours.”
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