Wilson remembers listening to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and the work of producer Phil Spector in the run-up to recording, as well as Bacharach. “ Paul McCartney said he thought it was the best song ever written,” he says, noticeably still delighted.
He wasn’t the only one who thought it was a cut above. He cites God Only Knows as the song where he knew Pet Sounds was going to be special. “Yeah, kind of,” he says, warming to the idea. Was he Wilson’s surrogate therapist?Īnd despite Asher’s involvement, and that of the rest of the Beach Boys and all the other musicians, given the fact that he wrote all the music and produced it, was Pet Sounds really the first Brian Wilson solo album? Many of the lyrics on Pet Sounds were written by a young advertising copywriter called Tony Asher, who managed to express succinctly Wilson’s feelings. It was actually released as a Brian Wilson solo single, but, as he recalls, it barely charted.
PET SOUNDS SESSIONS FULL
Finally, there was Caroline, No, a deeply autobiographical song – the only one on the album to have lyrics written by Brian – full of yearning for a girl, and a past, that could never be recovered. There were two instrumentals on Pet Sounds: Let’s Go Away For A While, which nodded to that other sublime 60s melodist Burt Bacharach, and the title track, briefly mooted as a James Bond theme (with the title Run James Run).
PET SOUNDS SESSIONS PLUS
The other Beach Boys – Brian’s brothers Carl (guitar) and Dennis (drums), plus Johnston, Love and Al Jardine (guitar) – may have barely contributed instrumentally to the album ( That’s Not Me was one of their few showcases as musicians), but their signature vocal harmonies throughout are stunning: on the hymnal You Still Believe In Me they sound like a choir the chord sequence for Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) was so affecting it reduced Brian’s then-wife Marilyn to tears I Know There’s An Answer was originally going to be called Hang On To Your Ego, but it was Love who apparently deemed it too weird and druggy and insisted on the change I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times was the perfect title for this staggeringly beautiful song about alienation. A cover of an old folk song, it was the anomaly on this song cycle about love and hope, regret and sorrow, and yet its lustrous orchestration was typical of the album. Wouldn’t It Be Nice might have been the opener on Pet Sounds, but side one closer Sloop John B was the first track to completed. At times he can seem like a fidgety, barely interested kid at school – Adult Child is the name of an unreleased album that Wilson worked on simultaneously to Smile (another unissued Wilson album, which came out in bootleg form in 1992, was titled Sweet Insanity) – but he focuses in fits and starts as he recalls the highlights of that momentous period.
Wilson talks in terse monosyllables, at this moment eager to be anywhere else but here being interviewed about his most famous and most lauded work. After that, the influence of LSD made him withdrawn, a recluse almost.” “He was totally in command up to Pet Sounds and Smile. “I used to refer to him as the Stalin of the studio,” laughs Mike Love, Wilson’s cousin and who sang on many of the Beach Boys hits.
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