Brian Wilson’s favourite Beach Boys songs of all time
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The fabulously innovative song John Lennon called “the greatest”
When the iconoclastic Lou Reed was breaking down the songs of John Lennon, he controversially opined: “I don’t think Lennon did anything until he went solo. But then too he was like trying to play catch up. He was getting involved in choruses and everything.”
Before kindly clarifying, “I don’t want to come off as being snide, because I’m not being snide, what I’m doing is giving you a really frank answer, I have no respect for those people at all, I don’t listen to it at all, it’s absolute shit,” he added, just in case you had any worries that he was being nasty.
While Reed no doubt had his own reasons for touting such radical opinions, and no matter how wayward they might be on the whole, there is a slight grain of truth that he was influenced by innovative trailblazers during his time with The Beatles and later honed his technical leaps to be more chorus orientated in solo ventures. One artist who inspired him in both pursuits was the legendary Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.
Beyond Wilson’s ear for melody and chorus – which Bob Dylan once said should be “donated to the Smithsonian” – he was almost a masterful innovator of layering tracks too. As Tom Petty once declared, “The Beach Boys are said to be responsible for Sgt. Peppers.” And Lennon clearly had his eye on the band for a long time and the way Wilson was building his songs using four-tracks and the sort of choruses that clear the sky of clouds.
There was one particularly innovative song that stirred Lennon. Speaking about The Beach Boys’ standalone 1965 single ‘The Little Girl I Once Knew’, he eulogised: “This is the greatest!” Excitedly adding, “Turn it up, turn it right up. It’s got to be a hit. It’s the greatest record I’ve heard for weeks. It’s fantastic. I hope it will be a hit. It’s all Brian Wilson. He just uses the voices as instruments.”
This vocal harping approach tessellated six vocal topline melodies with only a bass played by Carol Kaye, organ by Don Randi, and percussion by Frank Capp, alongside the later additions of a twelve-string guitar, and a trumpet and saxophone segment. Yet the whole thing sounds positively orchestral it’s that filigreed.
As Lennon continued: “You keep waiting for the fabulous breaks. Great arrangement.” The arrangement is not only “great” but it also was one of the very first pop hits to utilise stop-start melody sections to create a flowing sound that allowed the track to sway from its central chorus continually. As Wilson said himself: “That is my very favourite introduction in a song in my whole life. It kills me every time. It might have been the first time the music stopped and started again on a record.”
That wasn’t the only way that the song and its production influenced Lennon either. He notably remarked in 1965: “He never tours or anything. He just sits at home thinking up fantastic arrangements out of his head.” A year later, The Beatles would quit the hectic ways of the road and take a similar scientific studio approach. However, Reed might be pushing it somewhat if he’s calling that “catch up”.
