The Beach Boys’ true “genius”, according to Brian Wilson
There were few challenges to Beatlemania and the ensuing British Invasion conquest of the US pop charts than The Beach Boys.
Alongside the Motown/Stax soul numbers and Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew hit factory, The Beach Boys offered the pop world a uniquely American slice of rock and roll that scored the Californian surf craze with a virtual Hot 100 monopoly, never mind that drummer Dennis Wilson was the member who actually enjoyed catching a wave.
And they were machines. While everybody from The Beatles to The Rolling Stones was dropping records and singles at a rapid-fire rate, an industry expectation carried over from the 1950s and was yet to be tempered by the album era, The Beach Boys were cutting LPs at a staggering pace, their first ten studio albums from Surfin’ Safari to Beach Boys’ Party! were already released little over three years.
While counting stone-cold classics like ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Surfin’ USA’ under their belt, it was The Beach Boys’ 11th record that began to flash principal songwriter and creative captain Brian Wilson’s emerging pop brilliance. Teases of Wilson’s expanding creative ambitions were evident on the previous year’s The Beach Boys Today!, but 1966’s Pet Sounds would sow the seeds of his maestro mythos.
Taking notes from the Spector school of popcraft, Wilson utilised the studio as an instrument in and of itself, embracing novel recording techniques and unorthodox arrangements to unleash a pop marvel that kicked The Beatles up the arse during the Revolver sessions. The primacy of the album had arrived, an artistic statement offering coherence and uniformity, with each album sharing importance and balance with the LP as a whole.
From day one, however, Wilson’s glittering gift for vocal harmonies shone all over The Beach Boys’ work. Reaching an immaculate peak on Pet Sounds and on ‘Good Vibrations’ sunny psych, Wilson would arrange and compose his band’s harmony interplay with an inventive creativity that hadn’t been seen in pop with such dazzling clarity.
An insight into his vocal approach was offered in a 2000 Salon interview, when responding to the “genius” tag often applied to his artistry and career: “I think I’m a vocal genius, not a musical genius. I like background vocals. I consider myself a voice, not a singer. A voice is a sound, and singing is what you do with that sound”.
It’s an interesting philosophy. Scrutinising the sound quality of his voice in its elemental make-up, Wilson was able to place his tones and his band members’ in a studied notation with meticulous precision. This plays out too in Wilson’s fastidious approach in the studio during the Pet Sounds sessions, spending time and money ensuring an electro-Theremin or particular bell sound is harnessed to its nth degree.
Contemporary critics sometimes felt such a practice was cold, but such precision with Wilson’s voice among the myriad of instruments that made up his classic output shines with a sonic character distinct from the pop trends around it. There are many things to take away from The Beach Boys for any budding artist, but Wilson’s pointer that voice is merely a sound is one that only a fool would disregard.
