The song Brian Wilson called “a musical orgasm”
Whenever you listen to any Beach Boys record, the first thing that jumps out is the harmonies that Brian Wilson created.
The biggest calling card of their music was having all of them sing together, and when they locked in on the right groove, there were moments where their voices managed to outshine even what John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing half the time. But even if Wilson was born to give the world his voice, he still wanted to show everyone the kind of musician that he always was.
Granted, he knew better than to make records that were nothing but noodling around in the studio, or at least he did when he started taking himself seriously. The strange sketches that they did on their old surf albums were far from the greatest feats that they’ve ever made, but even when they were walking about nothing but fun days at the beach and cars, there was still room for the band to stretch things out a little bit more.
You have to remember that they were pumping out music like clockwork when they began making albums, and having to fill out the track listing was no easy feat at the time. They needed to have everything sounding perfect, but there were a few rougher parts of their catalogue that could squeak by every now and again, whether that was Wilson and Mike Love pretending that they’re boxers or giving Dennis Wilson a drum solo at the end of the record.
But by the time of Summer Days and Summer Nights, they had started to take themselves a little more seriously. All of the joke songs went out the window, and by the time that Wilson started working with The Wrecking Crew, he didn’t have time to screw around anymore. He wanted to make the best music that he could, and the backing band was so good that he oftentimes didn’t need lyrics for everything to sound great.
The members of the session band were perfect for Pet Sounds, and when looking through the band’s masterpiece, Wilson felt that ‘Let’s Go Away For Awhile’ was the best instrumental work they did, saying, “[It’s] probably one of my favourite instrumentals that we ever did that didn’t have any voices on it. It was just an experience in instrumental music. The bassline was really uplifting. It was an attempt to make a more pleasant, easygoing, [like a] musical orgasm. A little bit influenced by Burt Bacharach, actually.”
And despite having none of the Beach Boys singing on it, the song fits on Pet Sounds just as much as some of their pop hits. Some of the best moments on the record were about Wilson trying to work through his emotions every time he sang, but a lot of the musicians are providing the heartache for him every single time they linger on those chords, to the point where it can make someone’s heart ache in the middle sections.
The Bacharach influence is definitely felt on the record, but the counterpoint going on throughout the song is something that only Wilson could have done. He was always looking to have different musical voices cascading over each other, and hearing every instrument complimenting each other perfectly was the reason why he should be considered the Mozart of rock and roll.
If anything, the fact that he could make something sound so beautiful without voices just makes his decision to not release ‘Surf’s Up’ for years even more of a tragedy. He had all of those ideas in his head, and even if he thought that the song was too long to be a single, it would have been a crime against the musical gods if he had kept a song like that in his pocket for years at a time.
