“My favourite riff ever written”: The best riff Brian Wilson ever heard
If there was one thing that Brian Wilson was put on this Earth to do, it was to perfect harmonies.
He had grown up idolising some of the greatest vocal bands of his time, but when listening to the greatest bands of his youth, like the Four Freshmen, it’s hard to picture any of them coming up with the basis of a tune like ‘Good Vibrations’ if they tried. Wilson was truly gifted with one of the best ears in the business, but he could also realise when some songs had a better construction than he could have ever thought of.
Because, really, what is rock and roll if not for the band behind every singer? No one was watching Little Richard just to see him destroy a piano, and even if Chuck Berry could do the duckwalk up and down the stage, it was all about the feeling that everyone got when they heard the rest of the band pounding away behind him. But whereas every other band brought their own spark to the table, it was much easier to let Wilson do his thing whenever he entered the studio.
He clearly had the sixth sense for what every song he needed, and while his brothers Dennis and Carl wrote some brilliant tunes for them as well, no one was really competing with the kind of music that Brian came up with on Pet Sounds. This was pop brilliance on parade, and Wilson hit on the kind of raw nerve that every musician is chasing after but never quite manages to catch whenever they’re writing their own tunes.
But in The Beach Boys’ catalogue, not all of their songs are necessarily based around riffs. The guitar riff might be the basis of all great songs, but Wilson didn’t see it that way all the time. One instrument could take centre stage a lot better than others, like Carol Kaye’s bass playing on ‘Good Vibrations’, but it was more about how each instrument contributed to the overall sound of the record once it was finished.
That’s not to say that he couldn’t pick out a great riff when he heard one, though. All of his favourite artists had licks at the top of songs like ‘Johnny B Goode’ or even the drum groove of ‘Keep A-Knockin’, but the songs that always won Wilson’s heart were the girl groups. Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound was what he always chased after, and ‘Then He Kissed Me’ by The Crystals was the perfect example of what a riff should be doing in his mind.
The song lives and dies on the momentum of that riff, and Wilson felt that still nothing hadn’t been topped even when Wilson did his own arrangement of the tune with Al Jardine singing lead, saying, “The opening riff is my favorite riff ever written. And on the record I wanted to feature Al and give him a chance to stand up and sing. It’s hard to describe Al’s vocals, but he can go up there and get pretty high.”
In all fairness, Jardine does an admirable job of making the song his own, but it doesn’t really have the same kind of passion as the original. You can say a lot about how Spector was one of the worst scoundrels in music history, but the man did know his way around the studio, and when listening back to the song, there isn’t a single note that’s out of place when The Crystals come soaring in on the chorus.
‘Then He Kissed Me’ was the sound of pure teenage romanticism on record, and Wilson knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to make something on that level. Whether he actually matched it is up to the rest of us to decide, but it’s safe to say that Wilson’s music will be enough to last just as long as Spector’s records will.
