Tom Petty on why Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys is a “genius”
Florida-born singer-songwriter Tom Petty was brought up in the 1950s on a healthy diet of classic rock music. Aged ten, he realised his dream of becoming a musician after having a rare chance to meet with Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, Petty’s uncle was working on the set of Presley’s film, Follow That Dream, in nearby Ocala, and invited Petty to watch the shoot. After this brush with stardom, Petty set his sights on following in the icon’s footsteps and traded his Wham-O slingshot for a collection of Elvis 45s.
In the 1960s, a teenaged Petty was introduced to The Beatles during their 1964 premiere in the US live on The Ed Sullivan Show. “The minute I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show – and it’s true of thousands of guys – there was the way out. There was the way to do it,” Petty once said of his early heroes. “You get your friends, and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.”
If Petty’s attention towards the Beatles were to be divided by any other contemporary rock band, it would have been The Beach Boys. Durnig a 1982 interview with Playboy, Petty was asked to choose between The Beatles’ 1967 psychedelic touchstone, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds.
“Interesting question,” Petty replied, mulling it over. “Well, I like both. But these days, I’d probably play Pet Sounds. I can hear Sgt. Pepper without playing it. But frankly, I don’t think it wears that well into the eighties.”
“Pet Sounds still sounds great to me,” he added. “Hell, I once heard a radio interview with Paul McCartney in which he said that after hearing Pet Sounds, he had to do something like Sgt. Pepper. He was right. Brian Wilson is the greatest. The root of his personal problem was that he did genius work and never got recognition for it from the man in the street. So he took a real artistic risk. It’s a brilliant album.”
After commending Wilson’s genius work on Pet Sounds in ’82, Petty appeared to backpedal the use of “genius” ever so slightly in a quote that appears on Wilson’s website. “I think I would put him up there with any composer, especially Pet Sounds,” Petty said. “I don’t think there’s anything better than that, necessarily. I don’t think you’d be out of line comparing him to Beethoven, to any composer. The word genius is used a lot with Brian. I don’t know if he’s a genius or not. But I know his music is probably as good as any music you can make.”
As it turns out, the respect is mutual. When Petty died in 2017, aged 66, Wilson was among the many musicians to pay tribute. “I’m heartbroken to hear about Tom Petty,” Wilson wrote in a tweet. “Tom was a hell of a songwriter and record-maker. He will be missed by everyone who loves music.”
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