The song that predicted Brian Wilson taking over the studio: “I wanted to try something new”
There’s no arguing the influence of Pet Sounds in setting the standards for what a studio record could sound like. Layering complex harmonies and instrumental arrangements, it was a textural masterclass that shifted The Beach Boys from innocent doo-woppers to fearless innovators, ready to thrust popular music into the surreal.
Pet Sounds brought a more nuanced, borderline darkness to the breezy Californian harmonies to which people had become accustomed. Before its release, the band’s sonic composition was indeed accomplished but had an appropriately shinier disposition for songs that canonised California’s warm sun and sandy beaches.
Despite the commercial success of that sound, it was a period in the career of The Beach Boys and, in particular, Brian Wilson where they were grappling with their unknown potential. With the kernel of Pet Sounds’ idea beginning to present itself in the studio sessions of their 1963 album Surfin’ USA, Wilson stuck to the mission statement of the album, knowing the next project would be very different.
“‘Lonely Sea’ [from 1963’s Surfin’ USA] was on a different tack,” he told Uncut in 2006. It was a track that saw Wilson’s vocals softly gliding on top of a melancholic finger-picking track that cast a gloomier shadow over the deep blue sea on which the rest of the album existed.
He continued, “It was very mellow and soft. I felt like I needed to express myself more. I always wanted to produce records myself, even then. Up until 1966, we were just making car songs and surf songs. Then, I wanted to try something new. I needed to create a new kind of music.”
With an insight into how music could exist without sun, sea and surf, The Beach Boys’ follow-up Pet Sounds was an unbridled exploration of a more nuanced world. Explaining the following chapter to Uncut, Wilson said, “Pet Sounds happened immediately after I heard Rubber Soul by The Beatles. I went away and said I’d write an album that was just as good. I was a perfectionist; it had to be right.”
Adding, “I wanted pianos and organs and guitars to make one big new sound, like the Phil Spector sound. It wasn’t really like Phil’s stuff, but the style was similar. When I played it back for the first time, I couldn’t believe how much love we put into that album. There was a lot of love in our voices.”
It was a seminal album that, 60 years on, is still the blueprint for layered experimentation. But as Wilson alluded to, he was a perfectionist who, upon the release of Pet Sounds, was forever plagued by his own execution of what he deemed perfection. The strain and pressure to outdo his seminal record pushed his methods into the realm of the absurd, using up 90 hours of tape on another Beach Boys classic, ‘Good Vibrations’.
But a journey that started with ‘Lonely Sea’ and ended with ‘Caroline No’ has proved Wilson to be one of the industry’s all-time greats. And for a man whose efforts started with an attempt to outdo Rubber Soul, it’s certainly a consolation to know that McCartney himself said, “I figure no one is educated musically ‘til they’ve heard Pet Sounds.”
