The one song Pete Townshend knew he could never beat: “A masterpiece”
There are entire genres of rock and roll that wouldn’t have existed if not for what Pete Townshend did with The Who.
Although he was never trying to change the world by any stretch, hearing him push the envelope every single time he went into the studio helped inspire virtually every kid who was born thinking that they could make something of themselves with a couple of power chords. Everything from psychedelic rock to punk starts with listening to the first few Who albums, but Townshend said that there were always those few albums that were forever out of his reach.
That said, it’s not like anyone could have come up with the concepts that he could for records like Tommy or Quadrophenia. He was a musical genius when it came to arranging things, and with the thunder of Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey by his side, half of the band’s discography packed as much punch as any hard rock band could. But the sheer volume didn’t always mean that much to Townshend.
It did give people a physical reaction when they heard it, but he wanted to show people that life didn’t have to be only about the three-minute single. On tunes like ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’, Townshend wasn’t playing that game anymore. Music could mean more if you believed in it, but it’s not like he was the only one pushing the envelope for what could happen if you threw caution to the wind.
The Beatles had already opened up people’s hearts more than anyone, and The Rolling Stones weren’t too far behind them when making their hard-rocking tunes, but Bob Dylan helped open people’s minds as well. He shook people up on records like Blonde on Blonde, but after poring over those lyrics for ages, Townshend felt that nothing could compare to what he heard on songs like ‘God Only Knows’. Brian Wilson had created a benchmark for rock and roll, and it was up to everyone else to make sense of what the hell he had come up with on that psychedelic headtrip.
So when Townshend started making those longer pieces, it was simply an extension on what Wilson was talking about. A song like ‘I Can See For Miles’ has those same layers of voices and guitars across the tune, but it’s not like Townshend was ever trying to outdo what Wilson did. He could try all he wanted to, but in his eyes, he could have spent a lifetime trying to match Wilson and still never manage to come close.
For Townshend, ‘God Only Knows’ was more of a proof of concept than anything else, saying, “Brian Wilson had a harmonic sensibility that was sort of off the map. ‘God Only Knows’ is a masterpiece. And I suppose to some extent with ‘I Can See for Miles,’ the challenge was not to try to equal Brian Wilson’s harmonic sensibility but certainly to say, ‘Well, that’s a new standard. Instead of just doing three-part harmony, let’s do five-part harmony and see what happens.’”
Because listening to how Wilson arranged everything, it was practically a classical symphony that used rock instruments instead of strings and woodwinds. The Wrecking Crew was his makeshift orchestra, and over the course of making Pet Sounds, he created the ultimate love song that even managed to leave The Beatles dumbfounded as to how the hell such a song could be done by one person.
‘God Only Knows’ might be insurpassable in many people’s eyes, but it’s not a song that’s meant to intimidate people, either. Wilson never wanted people to feel inferior when listening to his masterpieces, so the best thing he could have asked for was for people to take the example that he set and bring their own sonic flavour to it.
