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+ "page_name": "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds (TV Movie 2017) \u2b50 7.2 | ...",
+ "page_url": "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6683912/",
+ "page_snippet": "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds: Directed by Matthew Longfellow, Martin R. Smith. With Keith Altham, Tony Asher, Hal Blaine, Bruce Botnick. Five dudes from southern California surf the waves of 1960's radio, with hit after hit of original songs.\"The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds\" (2017 release; 59 min.) is a documentary about the making of the Beach Boys' ultimate album (released in May, 1966). As the documentary opens, we get a couple of quick quotes from current-day interviews with several of the main players (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, among others), before we go back in time for a thumb-nail review of the Beach Boys' early years of surf and hot rod music. Couple of comments: if you are somewhat familiar with the Beach Boys' history, none of what you will see in this documentary will come as a surprise or new revelation. Instead, we rehash the some ol' same ol', and that makes for pleasant viewing, nothing less but nothing more eitehr. (I had the good fortune of seeing the band on that tour here in Cincinnati--what a magical evening of music that was!) If you are a Beach Boys fan, \"Making Pet Sounds\" is pleasant if non-essential viewing. I caught it the other night while browsing my Spectrum On Demand library of documentaries but it is of course available on VOD, 59m | TV-14",
+ "page_result": "The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds (TV Movie 2017) - IMDb
Five dudes from southern California surf the waves of 1960's radio, with hit after hit of original songs.Five dudes from southern California surf the waves of 1960's radio, with hit after hit of original songs.Five dudes from southern California surf the waves of 1960's radio, with hit after hit of original songs.
During the interview, Hal Blaine, who was a session drummer for "Sloop John B", is wearing a shirt from "Zildjian, The only serious choice." Zikdjian had been making cymbals since 1623.
Because The Album Is Still A Sonic Wonder It Matters
Albums like Pet Sounds are serrendipitous like a random aligning of stars. Something that stuns for various reasons initially and evolving over time as to reveal it's wonders. This is Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys' masterpiece. Upon release it was a bit of an enigma as it wasn't "the formula" of previous Beach Boy albums. As Mike Love recounts: "it took 20-years to reach platinum status". Now, at over half-a-century it is without doubt the crown jewel in The Beach Boys catalog. This certainly adds to the mystical music itself and warrants this film.
1965 was a complex time for The Beach Boys. Brian, not unlike Lennon & McCartney, had tired of live performances and life on the road. Wisely he decided to make it his job to discontinue touring and work writing and arranging "new" songs with all the complexity only he could hear inside his head. Before drugs and mental illness would later hinder his unbridled creativity, Brian, along with new writing partner Tony Asher, crafted a quantum shift for the band. This doc uses stock film and footage along with later day interviews to topically reveal what was happening during this amazing time in the history of The Beach Boys.
If, like me, you've read countless articles and interviews regarding Pet Sounds you won't find any surprises here. It's not even really too in-depth. But, it gets the big picture across and does so with great interview snipets from the surviving band members and the occasional vintage clip such as the great comments by Dennis on his boat admitting how much Pet Sounds meant to him personally. If you're a big fan this film is a must. If you love the album itself it is certainly welcome. What I'd really like it to do is to inspire someone who hasn't really connected with The Beach Boys to get busy with discovering the greatness of this album. It this way it can push it forward once again for the next half-century dropping it's nuggets of sonic spledor on new generations.
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+ "page_name": "The Beach Boys | Members, Songs, Albums, & Facts | Britannica",
+ "page_url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Beach-Boys",
+ "page_snippet": "The Beach Boys, American rock group whose dulcet melodies and distinctive vocal mesh defined the 1960s youthful idyll of sun-drenched southern California. Their hit songs included \u2018Surfin\u2019 Safari,\u2019 \u2018Surfin\u2019 U.S.A.,\u2019 \u2018Fun, Fun, Fun,\u2019 and \u2018Good Vibrations.\u2019 Learn more about ...The Beach Boys, American rock group whose dulcet melodies and distinctive vocal mesh defined the 1960s youthful idyll of sun-drenched southern California. Their hit songs included \u2018Surfin\u2019 Safari,\u2019 \u2018Surfin\u2019 U.S.A.,\u2019 \u2018Fun, Fun, Fun,\u2019 and \u2018Good Vibrations.\u2019 Learn more about their lives, music, and career. Brian focused thereafter on the Beach Boys\u2019 studio output, surpassing all his role models with his band\u2019s masterwork, Pet Sounds (1966). A bittersweet pastiche of songs recalling the pangs of unrequited love and other coming-of-age trials, Pet Sounds was acknowledged by Paul McCartney as the catalyst for the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. A bittersweet pastiche of songs recalling the pangs of unrequited love and other coming-of-age trials, Pet Sounds was acknowledged by Paul McCartney as the catalyst for the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Brian soon eclipsed himself again with \u201cGood Vibrations,\u201d a startlingly prismatic \u201cpocket symphony\u201d that reached number one in the autumn of 1966. The landmark work of this period in Brian\u2019s career, however, was Smile (2004), finally offered to the world as a completed solo album after Brian had spent nearly four decades fine-tuning its sound; a boxed set of the original Smile recording sessions followed in 2011.",
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\n\t\t\tWhile every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.\n\t\t\tPlease refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.\n\t\t
the Beach Boys, American rock group whose dulcet melodies and distinctive vocal mesh defined the 1960s youthful idyll of sun-drenched southern California. The original members were Brian Wilson (b. June 20, 1942, Inglewood, California, U.S.), Dennis Wilson (b. December 4, 1944, Inglewood\u2014d. December 28, 1983, Marina del Rey, California), Carl Wilson (b. December 21, 1946, Los Angeles, California\u2014d. February 6, 1998, Los Angeles), Michael Love (b. March 15, 1941, Los Angeles), and Alan Jardine (b. September 3, 1942, Lima, Ohio). Significant later members included David Marks (b. August 22, 1948, Newcastle, Pennsylvania) and Bruce Johnston (original name Benjamin Baldwin; b. June 27, 1942, Peoria, Illinois). Initially perceived as a potent pop act\u2014celebrants of the surfing and hot rodculture of the Los Angeles Basin during the 1960s\u2014the Beach Boys and lead singer-bassist-producer Brian Wilson later gained greater respect as muses of post-World War II American suburban angst. Notwithstanding sales of 70 million albums, their greatest achievement was their ability to express the bittersweet middle-class aspirations of those who had participated in America\u2019s great internal westward movement in the 1920s. The Beach Boys extolled the promise of a fragile California dream that their parents had had to struggle to sustain.
Growing up in suburban Los Angeles (Hawthorne), the Wilson brothers were encouraged by their parents to explore music. Their father, Murry, who operated a small machinery shop, was also a songwriter. While still teenagers, Brian, drummer Dennis, and guitarist Carl joined with cousin Love and friends Jardine and Marks to write and perform pop music in the alloyed spirit of Chuck Berry and the harmonies-driven Four Freshmen and Four Preps.
The Beach Boys (from left): Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Mike Love, 1960s.
Dennis, a novicesurfer and adolescent habitu\u00e9 of the Manhattan Beach surfing scene, goaded Brian and the rest of the group (then called the Pendletons) into writing songs that glorified the emerging sport. The regional success in 1961 of the Beach Boys\u2019 first single, \u201cSurfin\u2019,\u201d led in 1962 to their signing as Capitol Records\u2019 first rock act. Brian\u2019s latent ambitions as a pop composer were unleashed; for years he would write almost all the group\u2019s songs, often with collaborators (most frequently Love). The Beach Boys soon appeared on Billboard\u2019s U.S. singles charts with such odes to cars and surfing as \u201c409\u201d and \u201cSurfin\u2019 Safari,\u201d while their debut album reached number 14. After the commercial triumph of the follow-up album and single, \u201cSurfin\u2019 U.S.A.,\u201d in 1963 (the year in which Jardine, back from school, replaced his replacement, Marks), Brian assumed complete artistic control. Their next album, Surfer Girl, was a landmark for the unheard-of studio autonomy he secured from Capitol as writer, arranger, and producer. Redolent of the Four Freshmen but actually inspired by \u201cWhen You Wish Upon a Star\u201d from Walt Disney\u2019s film Pinocchio (1940), the title track combined a childlike yearning with sophisticated pop poignance. Like his hero, pioneering producer Phil Spector, the eccentric Brian proved gifted at crafting eclectic arrangements with crisply evocative rock power (e.g., \u201cLittle Deuce Coupe,\u201d \u201cFun, Fun, Fun,\u201d \u201cI Get Around,\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Worry Baby\u201d).
After the first of a series of stress- and drug-related breakdowns in 1964, Brian withdrew from touring and was replaced first by singer-guitarist Glen Campbell, then by veteran surf singer-musician Johnston. Brian focused thereafter on the Beach Boys\u2019 studio output, surpassing all his role models with his band\u2019s masterwork, Pet Sounds (1966). A bittersweet pastiche of songs recalling the pangs of unrequited love and other coming-of-age trials, Pet Sounds was acknowledged by Paul McCartney as the catalyst for the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Brian soon eclipsed himself again with \u201cGood Vibrations,\u201d a startlingly prismatic \u201cpocket symphony\u201d that reached number one in the autumn of 1966. His self-confidence stalled, however, when an even more ambitious project called Dumb Angel, then Smile, failed to meet its appointed completion date in December 1966. Exhausted and depressed, Brian went into seclusion as the rest of the band cobbled remains of the abortive album into a tuneful but tentative release titled Smiley Smile (1967).
For the remainder of the decade, the Beach Boys issued records of increasing commercial and musical inconsistency. They departed Capitol amid a legal battle over back royalties and signed with Warner Brothers in 1970. When the splendid Sunflower sold poorly, Brian became a recluse, experimenting with hallucinogens and toiling fitfully while the rest of the group produced several strong but modest-selling albums in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, Endless Summer, a greatest hits compilation, reached number one in the charts in 1974. In 1976 an uneven but commercially successful album, 15 Big Ones, signaled the reemergence of the still drug-plagued Brian. In 1977 Dennis released a critically acclaimed solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue. Despite personal turmoil, the reunited Beach Boys seemed destined for a new artistic peak when Dennis drowned in 1983. The excellent The Beach Boys was released in 1985. In 1988 Brian released a critically acclaimed self-titled solo album, the other Beach Boys had a number one hit with \u201cKokomo,\u201d and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the 1990s the Beach Boys continued to tour and record, with Love continuing his longtime role as the band\u2019s business mind. Brian released another solo album (Imagination) and collaborated on albums with Van Dyke Parks (Orange Crate Art) and with his daughters Carnie and Wendy (The Wilsons), who were successful performers in their own right. Carl, who was considered the group\u2019s artistic anchor during the turbulent 1970s and \u201980s, died of cancer in 1998. Later that year the Beach Boys released Endless Harmony, a rarities collection culled from an acclaimed television documentary on the group.
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In 2004 Brian released Gettin\u2019 in over My Head, with contributions from McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Elton John. The landmark work of this period in Brian\u2019s career, however, was Smile (2004), finally offered to the world as a completed solo album after Brian had spent nearly four decades fine-tuning its sound; a boxed set of the original Smile recording sessions followed in 2011. After being presented with a Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, Brian released That Lucky Old Sun (2008), a nostalgic celebration of southern California made in collaboration with Scott Bennett and Parks. In 2012, a year after the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys\u2019 formation, the main surviving members reunited for a celebratory tour. The concerts coincided with the release of That\u2019s Why God Made the Radio, the group\u2019s first album in two decades to feature original material. In 2013 the two-disc concert album The Beach Boys Live: The 50th Anniversary Tour was released. Brian\u2019s solo album No Pier Pressure came out in 2015, and the concert recording Brian Wilson and Friends appeared the following year.
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+ "page_name": "Pet Sounds - Wikipedia",
+ "page_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sounds",
+ "page_snippet": "In the late 1990s, Carl Wilson vetoed an offer for the Beach Boys to perform Pet Sounds in full for ten shows, reasoning that the studio arrangements were too complex for the stage, and that Brian could not possibly sing his original parts. As a solo artist, Brian performed the entire album live in 2000 ...In the late 1990s, Carl Wilson vetoed an offer for the Beach Boys to perform Pet Sounds in full for ten shows, reasoning that the studio arrangements were too complex for the stage, and that Brian could not possibly sing his original parts. As a solo artist, Brian performed the entire album live in 2000 with a different orchestra in each venue, and on three occasions without orchestra on his 2002 tour. Wilson immediately showcased great advances in his musical development with the 1965 albums The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). Released in March, Today! signaled a departure from the Beach Boys' previous records with its orchestral approach, intimate subject matter, and abandonment of themes related to surfing, cars, or superficial expressions of love. Wilson also directed his new lyrical approach toward the autobiographical, with his songs written from the perspective of vulnerable, neurotic, and insecure narrators. On July 12, Wilson recorded a backing track for \"Sloop John B\", but after laying down a rough lead vocal, he set the song aside for some time, concentrating on the recording of what became their next LP, the informal studio jam Beach Boys' Party!, in response to their record company Capitol's request for a Beach Boys album for the Christmas 1965 market. In October, Wilson and his wife, 17-year-old singer Marilyn Rovell, moved from a rented apartment in West Hollywood to a home on Laurel Way in Beverly Hills, where he said he spent the subsequent months contemplating \"the new direction of the group\". Within two months, Capitol assembled the group's first greatest hits compilation, Best of the Beach Boys, which was quickly certified gold by the RIAA. Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann theorized that because the marketing department \"didn't believe that Pet Sounds was going to do that well, they were probably looking for some additional volume in that quarter.\" In the UK, the band had little commercial success until March 1966, when \"Barbara Ann\" and Beach Boys Party! rose to number 2 on the nation's respective Record Retailer charts. In April, two singles were released: \"Caroline, No\" (no chart showing) and \"Sloop John B\" (number 2). In response to the band's growing popularity among the British, two music videos were filmed set to \"Sloop John B\" and \"God Only Knows\" for the UK's Top of the Pops, both directed by Taylor.",
+ "page_result": "\n\n\n\nPet Sounds - Wikipedia\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJump to content\n
Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on May 16, 1966 by Capitol Records. It was initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the United States, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Top LPs chart. In the United Kingdom, the album was lauded by critics and reached number 2 on the Record Retailer chart, remaining in the top ten for six months. Promoted there as \"the most progressive pop album ever\", Pet Sounds was recognized for its ambitious production, sophisticated music, and emotional lyrics. It is now considered to be among the greatest and most influential albums in music history.[1]\n
The album was produced, arranged, and almost entirely composed by Brian Wilson with guest lyricist Tony Asher. It was recorded largely between January and April 1966, a year after Wilson had quit touring with his bandmates and debuted a more progressive sound with The Beach Boys Today! Wilson viewed Pet Sounds as effectively a solo album and credited part of its inspiration to marijuana and a newfound spiritual enlightenment. Galvanized by the work of his idol Phil Spector and rival group the Beatles, his goal was to create \"the greatest rock album ever made\", one without filler. An early concept album, it consists mainly of introspective and semi-autobiographical songs like \"You Still Believe in Me\", about a lover's unwavering loyalty; \"I Know There's an Answer\", a critique of LSD users; and \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\", about social alienation.\n
The July 1964 release of the Beach Boys' sixth albumAll Summer Long marked an end to the group's beach-themed period. From then, their recorded material took a significantly different stylistic and lyrical path.[2] In January 1965, to focus his efforts on writing and recording, 22-year-old Brian Wilson declared to his bandmates that he would not accompany them on concert tours.[3][4] The rest of the group \u2013 Brian's brothers Carl and Dennis, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine \u2013 continued to tour without Wilson, who was replaced on the road first by session player Glen Campbell and later by Bruce Johnston of Bruce & Terry and the Rip Chords.[5]\n
Wilson immediately showcased great advances in his musical development with the 1965 albums The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!).[6][7] Released in March, Today! signaled a departure from the Beach Boys' previous records with its orchestral approach, intimate subject matter, and abandonment of themes related to surfing, cars, or superficial expressions of love.[8] Wilson also directed his new lyrical approach toward the autobiographical, with his songs written from the perspective of vulnerable, neurotic, and insecure narrators.[9]Summer Days followed three months later and represented a bridge between Wilson's progressive musical conceptions and the group's traditional pre-1965 approach.[10]\n
On July 12, Wilson recorded a backing track for \"Sloop John B\", but after laying down a rough lead vocal, he set the song aside for some time, concentrating on the recording of what became their next LP, the informal studio jam Beach Boys' Party!, in response to their record company Capitol's request for a Beach Boys album for the Christmas 1965 market.[11] In October, Wilson and his wife, 17-year-old singer Marilyn Rovell, moved from a rented apartment in West Hollywood to a home on Laurel Way in Beverly Hills,[12] where he said he spent the subsequent months contemplating \"the new direction of the group\".[13]\n
Wilson devoted the last three months of 1965 to polishing the vocals of \"Sloop John B\" and recording six new original compositions.[14][nb 1] \"The Little Girl I Once Knew\", released as a standalone single in November, was the last original Beach Boys song issued before any Pet Sounds tracks.[15] In December, Capitol issued the Party! track \"Barbara Ann\" as a single without the group's knowledge or approval. Brian expressed to reporters that the song was not a \"produced\" record and should not be considered indicative of the group's upcoming music.[16] From January 7 to 29, the rest of the band went away on a concert tour of Japan and Hawaii.[17]\n
While at a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1965, Wilson met Tony Asher, a 26-year-old lyricist and copywriter working in jingles for an advertising agency.[18][nb 2] The two exchanged ideas for songs, and soon after, Wilson heard of Asher's writing abilities from mutual friend Loren Schwartz.[18] In December, Wilson contacted Asher about a possible lyric collaboration, wanting to do something \"completely different\" with someone he had never written with before.[20][nb 3] Asher accepted the offer, and within ten days, they were writing together, starting with \"You Still Believe in Me\".[18]\n
Wilson and Asher wrote together over a two-to-three week period at Wilson's home, likely between January and February 1966.[22][nb 4] A typical writing session started either with Wilson playing a melody or chord patterns that he was working on, by discussing a recent record that Wilson liked the feel of, or by discussing a subject that Wilson had always wanted to write a song about.[18] They referred to their rough musical sketches as \"feels\", per the vernacular of the time.[25] To inspire creativity, they sometimes smoked marijuana together.[26] The lyrics to their songs were finished before the recording of any backing tracks (except for \"You Still Believe in Me\") and recording started virtually as soon as the compositions were written.[22][nb 5]\n
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It felt like we were writing an autobiography, but oddly enough, I wouldn't limit it to Brian's autobiography [...] We were working in a somewhat intimate relationship, and I didn't know him at all, so he was finding out who I was, and I was finding out who he was.\n
Asher maintained that he served mainly as a source of second opinion for Wilson as he worked out possible melodies and chord progressions, although the two did trade ideas as the songs evolved.[18] On his role as co-lyricist, he said, \"The general tenor of the lyrics was always his [...] and the actual choice of words was usually mine. I was really just his interpreter.\"[29] Asher later stated that he made some significant musical contributions to \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\", \"Caroline, No\", and \"That's Not Me\".[30][nb 6]\n
In Marilyn's recollection, Brian worked on Pet Sounds virtually nonstop, and that when he was home, \"he was either at the piano, arranging, or eating.\"[33] Asher differed, \"I wish I could say Brian was totally committed [to writing the songs]. Let's say he was ... um, very concerned.\"[34] After their songs were completed, Asher visited a few of the recording sessions, most of which were string overdub dates.[35]\n
Wilson wrote two more songs with other collaborators. \"I Know There's an Answer\", which predated the collaboration with Asher, was co-written by Wilson with the Beach Boys' road manager Terry Sachen.[36] In 1994, Mike Love was awarded co-writing credits on \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" and \"I Know There's an Answer\",[37] but with the exception of his co-credit on \"I'm Waiting for the Day\", his songwriting contributions are thought to have been minimal.[38]\n
Commentators and historians frequently cite Pet Sounds as a concept album.[39][nb 7] Academic Carys Wyn Jones attributes this to the album's \"uniform excellence\" rather than a lyrical theme or musical motif.[40] Wilson described Pet Sounds as an \"interpretation\" of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production technique.[41] He stated: \"If you take the Pet Sounds album as a collection of art pieces, each designed to stand alone, yet which belong together, you'll see what I was aiming at. [...] It wasn't really a song concept album, or lyrically a concept album; it was really a production concept album.\"[42]\n
With Pet Sounds, Wilson desired to make \"a complete statement\", similar to what he believed the Beatles had done with their newest album Rubber Soul, released in December 1965.[40] The version of the album that he heard was the alternate American edition, whose track listing had been configured by Capitol to have a cohesive folk rock sound.[43] Wilson was impressed that the album appeared to lack filler, a feature that was mostly unheard of at a time when more attention was afforded to 45 rpm singles than to full-length LPs.[44][45] Most albums up until the mid-1960s were largely used to sell singles at a higher price point.[44][nb 8] Wilson found that Rubber Soul subverted this by having a wholly consistent thread of music.[44][45][nb 9] Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, \"Marilyn, I'm gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!\"[48]\n
Comparing Pet Sounds to Rubber Soul, author Michael Zager wrote that Pet Sounds has more in common with Spector's productions, and that the album recycles many of Spector's Wall of Sound production watermarks.[49][nb 10] Wilson said that he was especially fascinated by the process of combining sounds \"to make another\", and for Pet Sounds, sought to emulate those aspects of Spector's productions.[52] In a 1988 interview, Wilson said that his goal for the album was to \"extend\" Spector's music, as he believed that, \"in one sense of the word\", the Beach Boys were Spector's \"messengers\".[51][nb 11]\n
On another occasion, Wilson credited Rubber Soul as his \"main motivator\" for Pet Sounds.[55][nb 12] He explained that he had wanted to create music \"on the same level\" as Rubber Soul, but was not interested in copying the Beatles' sound.[50] In a 1966 interview, he said that the scale of the arrangements was the \"main difference\" between their musical styles, noting that if he had arranged the Rubber Soul track \"Norwegian Wood\", he would have \"orchestrated it, put in background voices, [and] done a thousand things\".[43] In 2009, he said that although \"Rubber Soul didn't clarify my ideas for Pet Sounds\", the Beatles' use of sitar had inspired his choice of instrumentation for the album.[24]\n
Carl and I used to hold a series of prayer sessions for the world. I got into marijuana and it opened some doors for me and I got a little more committed to [...] the making of music for people on a spiritual level. [...] Carl said, \"What if we make an album after these prayer sessions, an album for people? A special album.\" I said, \"That's a good idea.\"\n
Spirituality was another core inspiration for the album.[60] Asked about Pet Sounds in various interviews, Wilson frequently emphasized the album's spiritual qualities, saying that he had held prayer sessions with his brother Carl and \"kind of made [the recording sessions into] a religious ceremony.\"[61] In a 1995 interview, he stated, \"We prayed for an album that would be a rival to Rubber Soul. It was like a prayer, but there was some ego there... and it worked.\"[62]\n
During his first LSD trip in April 1965, Wilson had what he considered to be \"a very religious experience\" and claimed to have seen God.[63] He soon began suffering from auditory hallucinations[64] and, for the remainder of the year, experienced considerable paranoia.[65] Wilson believed that LSD influenced the writing of Pet Sounds because it \"brought out some of the insecurities in me, which I think went into the music.\"[66] He also attributed his greater sense of creative freedom to his use of marijuana.[67]\n
Much of the album's pessimistic and dejected lyric content was inspired by Wilson's marital struggles,[68] which had been exacerbated by his drug habits in particular.[69] Marilyn felt that their relationship was a central reference within the album's lyrics, namely on \"You Still Believe in Me\" and \"Caroline, No\".[70] According to Asher, he and Wilson had many lengthy, intimate discussions centered around their \"experiences and feelings about women and the various stages of relationships and so forth\" in order to inspire subject matter for their songs.[18] This included Wilson's doubts about his marriage, \"[his] sexual fantasies\", and \"his apparent need to get with [his sister-in-law] Diane.\"[71][nb 13]\n
Asher disputed the notion that he and Wilson were following the models that had been set by Beatles or rock music in general. Asher remembered, \"Brian had defined it as wanting to write something closer to classical American love songs, like Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein.\"[73] During the writing sessions, Asher and Wilson regularly introduced different albums and types of music to each other. In particular, Asher said that Wilson \"was blown away\" after being played jazz records including Duke Ellington's \"Sophisticated Lady\" and Lionel Hampton's rendition of \"All the Things You Are\".[74] He remembered that Wilson had minimal awareness of Tin Pan Alley songs and \"hadn't given much thought to the structure or instrumentation of orchestral jazz compositions.\"[27] Having had experience with recording orchestras, Asher encouraged Wilson to employ instruments such as violins, cellos, and bass flutes.[27]\n
In a March 1966 article, Wilson acknowledged that the popular music trends of the era had also influenced his work and the group's evolution.[75] Conversely, Marilyn recalled that Brian was only consumed by thoughts of creating the greatest rock album ever and \"did not think about what music was there on the market, or what was happening in the industry.\"[76] In a 1996 interview, he said that he and Asher were \"kind of like on our own little wavelength\" and were not concerned with overtaking Phil Spector or Motown, \"It was more what I would call exclusive collaboration not to specifically try to kick somebody's butt, but just to do it the way you really want it to be. That's what I thought we did.\"[57]\n
According to biographer Jon Stebbins, \"Brian defies any notion of genre safety [...] There isn't much rocking here, and even less rolling. Pet Sounds is at times futuristic, progressive, and experimental. [...] there's no boogie, no woogie, and the only blues are in the themes and in Brian's voice.\"[77] Johnston identified \"a tremendous amount\" of noticeable doo-wop and R&B influences.[99] Journalist D. Strauss challenged the notion of whether Pet Sounds should be regarded as rock music. He argued that the album's quality and subversion of rock traditions is \"what created its special place in rock history; there was no category for its fans to place it in [...] But placed within the Easy Listening genre-i.e., elevator music-it becomes a historically grounded, if incredibly ambitious, release.\"[100]\n
Although it has been called \"baroque pop\", the often-specious term was not used in critical discussions about Pet Sounds until rock critics in the 1990s began adopting the phrase in reference to artists that the album had influenced.[101] No contemporary press material referred to Pet Sounds as \"baroque\", and instead, commentators used \"progressive\" as their descriptor of choice.[102] Writing in 2021, academic John Howland argued that the album's baroque-pop aesthetic was limited to \"God Only Knows\".[103]\n
Consequence's Zach Ruskin expressed: \"while Pet Sounds offers an intimacy unlike other psychedelic pop of the time, soundscapes of whispers and reverb and sudden departures in structure and form do lend the record a somewhat trippy effect.\"[104]
Pet Sounds is often considered to be psychedelic rock,[86] but many commentators hesitate to name the Beach Boys in discussions of psychedelic music.[82] For example, in his book The Acid Trip: A Complete Guide to Psychedelic Music, Vernon Joyson agreed that Pet Sounds contained psychedelic gestures, but chose not to devote significant coverage to the album because he felt that the Beach Boys had \"essentially predated the psychedelic era\".[105] Stebbins writes that the album is \"slightly psychedelic\u2014or at least impressionistic.\"[106] Wilson himself felt that while psychedelic features are present in a number of the songs, the overall tone was \"mostly not psychedelic\".[104]\n
According to academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Pet Sounds has a \"personal intimacy\" that sets it apart from the Beach Boys' contemporaries in psychedelic culture and the San Francisco Sound, but still retains a \"trippy feel\" that resulted from Wilson's LSD use.[107][nb 15] They attribute this to Wilson's \"eclectic mixture of instruments, echo, reverb, and innovative mixing techniques learnt from Phil Spector to create a complex soundscape in which voice and music interweave tightly\".[107] In the belief of cultural historian Dale Carter, the album's psychedelic qualities are proven through rich \"sonic textures\", \"greater fluidity, elaboration, and formal complexity\", \"the introduction of new (combinations of) instruments, multiple keys, and/or floating tonal centers\", and the occasional use of \"slower, more hypnotic tempos\".[109]\n
Among other reasons given for the album's perceived psychedelic quality, Jim DeRogatis, author of a book about psychedelic music, writes that the repeated listening value is similar to a heightened psychedelic awareness, elaborating that its melodies \"continue to reveal themselves after dozens of listens, just as previously unnoticed corners of the world reveal themselves during the psychedelic experience\".[110] Musician Sean Lennon opined that \"psychedelic music is a term that pretty much refers to these sort of epic, ambitious long-form records\", and that listening to Pet Sounds in its entirety can feel like \"entering another world\" temporarily, much like an LSD trip.[111]\n
\"Here Today\" has been described by AllMusic as one of Wilson's most ambitious arrangements, blending the \"complexity of an orchestral piece with the immediacy of a good pop tune\".[112]
Pet Sounds refined the themes and complex arranging style Wilson had introduced with The Beach Boys Today!.[113][114] Writing in The Journal on the Art of Record Production, Marshall Heiser observed that the album's music distinguished itself from previous Beach Boys releases in several ways:\n
\n
\"a greater sense of depth and 'warmth'\"
\n
\"more inventive use of harmony and chord voicings\"
\n
\"the prominent use of percussion [as] a key feature (as opposed to driving drum backbeats)\"
\n
\"the orchestrations, [which] at times, echo the quirkiness of 'exotica' bandleader Les Baxter, or the 'cool' of Burt Bacharach, more so than [Phil] Spector's teen fanfares.\"[115]
\n
By contrast, musicologist Daniel Harrison contends that Wilson's advancement as a composer and arranger was marginal in relation to his past work. He wrote that Pet Sounds shows \"comparatively little advance from what Brian had already accomplished or shown himself capable of accomplishing. Most of the songs use unusual harmonic progressions and unexpected disruptions of hypermeter, both features that were met in 'Warmth of the Sun' and 'Don't Back Down.'\"[116] Author Charles L. Granata referred to Pet Sounds as the culmination of Wilson's songwriting artistry, although his \"transition from writing car and surf songs to writing studious ones\" had already \"exploded in 1965\".[117]\n
Pet Sounds includes tempo changes, metrical ambiguity, and unusual tone colors that, in the opinion of author James Perone, remove the album from \"just about anything else that was going on in 1966 pop music\".[118] He cites the album's closer \"Caroline, No\" and its use of wide tessitura changes, wide melodic intervals, and instrumentation which contribute to this belief; also Wilson's compositions and orchestral arrangements which experiment with form and tone colors.[119] Wilson's arrangements combined traditional rock set-ups with unconventional selections of instruments and complex layers of vocal harmonies.[45] His orchestrations, in terms of the choices of instruments themselves and the stylistic appropriation of foreign cultures, were similar to those by exotica producers such as Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Esquivel.[120][nb 16] Many of the instruments were alien to rock music, including glockenspiel, ukulele, accordion, Electro-Theremin, bongos, harpsichord, violin, viola, cello, trombone, Coca-Cola bottles, and other odd sounds such as bicycle bells.[122]\n
The number of unique instruments for each track average to about a dozen.[123][nb 17] Electric and acoustic basses were frequently doubled, as was typical for the era's pop music, and played with a plectrum.[124] Drums were not arranged in a traditional manner of keeping time, but instead, to provide \"rhythmic texture and color\".[125] Two tracks are instrumentals: \"Let's Go Away for Awhile\" and \"Pet Sounds\". They were originally recorded as backing tracks for existing songs, but by the time the album neared completion, Wilson decided that the tracks worked better without vocals.[126] Arranger Paul Mertens, who collaborated with Wilson on live performances of the album, believed that although there are string sections on Pet Sounds, \"what's special about that is not that Brian was trying to introduce classical music into rock & roll. Rather, he was trying to get classical musicians to play like rock musicians. He's using these things to make music in the way that he understood, rather than trying to appropriate the orchestra.\"[127][nb 18]\n
\nThe songs on Pet Sounds are distinguished for their key ambiguity.[129] Pictured is a visual representation of the harmonic structures present in the verse and chorus of \"God Only Knows\".\n
Musicologist Philip Lambert estimates that the album's \"overall unity\" is strengthened by \"strong musical relationships among songs\", for example, the use of 4\u20133\u20132\u20131 stepwise descents and the reverse.[130] Perone concurred that the album contains musical continuity. On \"You Still Believe in Me\", he references a \"stepwise falloff of the interval of a third at the end of each verse\" as a typically \"Wilsonian\" feature that recurs throughout the album, along with a \"madrigal sigh motif\" that can be heard in \"That's Not Me\", where the motif concludes each line of the verses.[128][nb 19]\n
Wilson tended to write vertically, in block chords, rather than in the horizontal manner of classical composition.[131] An overwhelming majority of the chords are slashed, diminished, major seventh, sixths, ninths, augmented, or suspended.[132][nb 20] Simple (major or minor triad) chords are invoked minimally.[132][nb 21] The bass lines were written melodically and tend to play parts that avoid focusing on tonic notes.[135] According to Lambert, one of the album's few recurring compositional features that did not reflect a recent trend in Wilson's songwriting were bass lines that descend from 1 to 5.[136][nb 22]\n
Only four tracks feature a single strongly established key.[129][nb 23] The rest feature a primary and secondary key or a weak tonal center.[129]Tertian key modulations feature throughout the album and many of the choices of key signatures in themselves were unusual.[138][nb 24] For example, \"You Still Believe in Me\" is in B, which keyboardists avoid due to the number of sharps/flats, while \"That's Not Me\" is in F♯, the most distant key from C.[131]Submediants, major or minor, are invoked in a manner that Lambert calls \"an important source of overall unity\". With the exception of \"God Only Knows\", every composition on the album that shifts keys or has an ambiguous tonal center \"uses essentially the same tonic\u2013submediant relation.\"[140]Jim Fusilli, author of the 33\u2153 book on the album, offered that Wilson's tendency to \"wander far from the logic of his composition only to return triumphantly to confirm the emotional intent of his work\" is repeated numerous times in Pet Sounds, but never to \"evoke a sense of unbridled joy\" as Wilson recently had with \"The Little Girl I Once Knew\".[141]\n
\nBrian's voice is the most prominent one on Pet Sounds\n
Compared to previous Beach Boys albums, Pet Sounds contains fewer vocal harmonies, but the types of vocal harmonies themselves are more complex and varied.[142] Instead of simple \"oo\" harmonies, the band showed an increasing engagement in multiple vocal counterpoints.[143] There is also a greater occurrence of doo-wop style nonsense syllables, appearing more times here than on any of their previous albums.[144] Wilson invokes his signature falsetto seven times on the album. With the exception of Today!, this was the most he had on a Beach Boys album since 1963's Surfer Girl.[145] His voice is also the most prominent on the album. Of the 11 songs, he sang lead on five, shares lead on two, and appears on the choruses of two more. Of the album's 36-minute runtime, his voice is heard for 16 minutes, three more than the rest of the band members.[146]\n
People always thought Brian was a good-time guy until he started releasing those heavy, searching songs on Pet Sounds. But that stuff was closer to his personality and perceptions.\n
Asher stated that Wilson aspired to create a collection of songs that were relatable to adolescents. \"Even though he was dealing in the most advanced score-charts and arrangements, he was still incredibly conscious of this commercial thing. This absolute need to relate.\"[148] Carl Wilson offered: \"The disappointment and the loss of innocence that everyone had to go through when they grow up and find everything's not Hollywood are the recurrent themes on that album.\"[50]\n
According to AllMusic reviewer Jim Esch, the opening track \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" inaugurates the album's pervasive theme of \"fragile lovers\" who struggle with \"self-imposed romantic expectations and personal limitations, while simultaneously trying to maintain faith in one other.\"[149] Comparing the group's past celebrations of adolescence and teenage romance, journalist Seth Rogovoy felt that Pet Sounds \"upends and overturns every Beach Boys clich\u00e9, exposing the hollowness at their core.\"[150] Rogovoy points to \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", which \"starts right out with a 180-degree turn \u2013 'Wouldn't it be nice if we were older.'\"[150]\n
Critics Richard Goldstein and Nik Cohn found that the album's melancholic lyrics sometimes jarred with the overall tone of the music.[151] Cohn suggested that Pet Sounds comprised \"sad songs about loneliness and heartache; sad songs even about happiness.\"[151][152]Rolling Stone editor David Wild wrote that the lyrics were \"intelligent and moving, but [...] not pretentious\", much like the songs of Tin Pan Alley.[153]\n
It is sometimes suggested that Pet Sounds tells a story about the unraveling of a romantic relationship.[154] Author Scott Schinder argued that Wilson and Asher crafted a song cycle about \"the emotional challenges accompanying the transition from youth to adulthood\", supplemented with \"a series of intimate, hymn-like love songs\".[155] Even though Pet Sounds has a virtually unified theme in its emotional content, there was no intended narrative.[156] Asher said that there were no conversations between him and Wilson that pertained to any specific album \"concept\"; however, \"that's not to say that [Brian] didn't have the capacity to steer it in that direction, even unconsciously.\"[18] Lambert argued that Wilson must have intended the album to have a narrative framework due to the likelihood of his familiarity with similar \"theme albums\" by Frank Sinatra and the Four Freshmen.[157]\n
Responding to the songwriters' denials of a conscious lyric theme, journalist Nick Kent observed that the album's lyrics show \"the male participant's attempts at coming to terms with himself and the world about him\" and that every song \"pinpoints a crisis of faith in love and life\" with the exception of \"Sloop John B\" and the two instrumental pieces.[158] Granata referenced \"Sloop John B\" and \"Pet Sounds\" as the tracks that undermine the album's \"thematic thread\" and supposed lyrical narrative, yet \"contribute to the marvelous pacing\".[159]\n
Pet Sounds is sometimes considered a Brian Wilson solo album,[160][161][162] including by Wilson himself, who later referred to it as his \"first solo album\" and \"a chance to step outside the group and shine\".[163] With the exception of Love, who had been previewed tracks over the phone by Wilson, the other members were not consulted on any aspect of the record.[164][nb 25] When they returned to the studio on February 9,[165] they were presented with a substantial portion of the album, with music that was in many ways a jarring departure from their earlier style.[166]\n
According to various reports, the group fought over the new direction.[167] However, Dennis denied that anyone in the group had disliked Pet Sounds, calling the rumors \"interesting\". He said that there was \"not one person in the group that could come close to Brian's talent\" and \"couldn't imagine who\" would have resisted Brian's leadership.[168][nb 26] Carl supported that such accusations were \"bullshit\" before adding, \"We loved that record. Everybody loved that record, it was a joy to make.\"[170][nb 27] Jardine differed in his recollection, \"I wasn't exactly thrilled with the change [in music style], but I grew to really appreciate it as soon as we started to work on it. It wasn't like anything we'd heard before.\"[172] He explained that \"it took us quite a while to adjust to [the new material] because it wasn't music you could necessarily dance to\u2014it was more like music you could make love to.\"[173]\n
\nMike Love (pictured 1966) is often accused of disliking the album, but he has rejected such claims.[174]\n
Whatever objections the band members may have had were mostly reserved for the lyrics, not the music itself.[175] Musically, they were concerned about how they would reproduce the songs in concert.[176] Love said that his only disagreement pertained to the original lyrics of \"I Know There's an Answer\",[177] although Jardine remembered that Love was generally \"very confused\" about the album: \"Mike's a formula hound \u2013 if it doesn't have a hook in it, if he can't hear a hook in it, he doesn't want to know about it.\"[172] In defense of Love, Asher said that \"[Mike] never was critical about what [the album] was, he was just saying it wasn't right for the Beach Boys.\"[178] Asher said that Jardine had shared this viewpoint.[179]\n
Brian recalled that the group \"liked [the new music] but they said it was too arty. I said, 'No, it is not!\"[36] Marilyn said that his bandmates struggled \"to understand what he was going through emotionally and what he wanted to create. [...] they didn't feel what he was going through and what direction he was trying to go in.\"[180] Asher remembered, \"All those guys in the band, certainly Al, Dennis, and Mike, were constantly saying, 'What the fuck do these words mean?' or 'This isn't our kind of shit!' Brian had comebacks, though. He'd say, 'Oh, you guys can't hack this.' [...] But I remember thinking that those were tense sessions.\"[181] Notwithstanding such remarks, Asher said that Brian's bandmates never \"really challenged Brian\" on his direction for the group because they had felt \"they weren't talented enough\" to make such judgments.[182]\n
Another concern among his bandmates, according to Brian, was whether he would leave the group and pursue a solo career. Brian said, \"it was generally considered that the Beach Boys were the main thing [...] with Pet Sounds, there was a resistance in that I was doing most of the artistic work on it vocally\".[183] Love wrote in his memoir that he \"would have liked to have had a greater hand in some of the songs and been able to incorporate more often my 'lead voice,' which we'd had so much success with.\"[184] Brian acknowledged that he had taken up most of the vocals \"because I thought, in a way, I wanted people to know it was more of a Brian Wilson album than a Beach Boys album.\"[185] He said the conflicts were resolved when his bandmates \"figured that it was a showcase for Brian Wilson, but it's still the Beach Boys. In other words, they gave in. They let me have my little stint.\"[183][186]\n
With the exception of three tracks, Pet Sounds was recorded from January 18 to April 13, 1966, and spanned 27 session dates.[187][nb 28] Instrumental sessions were conducted at Western Studio 3 of United Western Recorders, except for a few tracks that were recorded at Gold Star Studios and Sunset Sound Recorders.[189][nb 29] Wilson produced the sessions with his usual engineer, Western's Chuck Britz.[192] Although Phil Spector created all of his recordings at Gold Star, Wilson preferred working at Western for the studio's privacy and for the presence of Britz.[193]\n
For the backing tracks, Wilson used an ensemble that included the classically trained session musicians frequently employed on Spector's records, a group later nicknamed \"the Wrecking Crew\".[194][45][nb 30] Wilson had been employing the services of session musicians due to the increasingly complex nature of his arrangements and because his bandmates were often away playing concerts.[195] Carl, who had occasionally played guitar alongside these musicians at Brian's sessions, commented that his contributions were not as significant as before and that \"It really wasn't appropriate for us [the band] to play on those [Pet Sounds] dates\u2014the tracking just got beyond us.\"[196]\n
\nWilson conducting a Pet Sounds session behind the mixing desk at Western\n
Wilson said that he \"was sort of a square\" with his musicians, starting his creative process with how each instrument sounded one-by-one, moving from keyboards, drums, then violins if they were not overdubbed.[57] A backing track session would last for three hours at minimum. Britz remembered how most of the time was spent perfecting individual sounds: \"[Brian] knew basically every instrument he wanted to hear, and how he wanted to hear it. What he would do is call in all the musicians at one time (which was very costly), but still, that's the way he would do it.\"[197]\n
Although Wilson often had entire arrangements worked out in his head, they were usually written in a shorthand form for the other players by one of his session musicians.[57][nb 31] He also took advice and suggestions from his musicians and even incorporated apparent mistakes if they provided a useful or interesting alternative.[45] Session drummer Hal Blaine stated, \"Everyone helped arrange, as far as I'm concerned.\"[199] On notation and arranging, Wilson explained: \"Sometimes I'd just write out a chord sheet and that would be for piano, organ, or harpsichord or anything. [...] I wrote out all the horn charts separate from the keyboards. I wrote one basic keyboard chart, violins, horns, and basses, and percussion.\"[57]\n
\nA Scully four-track 280 tape deck, identical to the model used for Pet Sounds[188]\n
Discussing Spector's Wall of Sound technique, Wilson identified the tack piano and organ mix in \"I Know There's an Answer\" as one example of himself applying the method.[194] Compared to Spector, Brian produced tracks that were of greater technical complexity by using state-of-the-art four-track and eight-track recorders.[200][nb 32] Most backing tracks were recorded onto a Scully four-track 288 tape recorder[189] before being later dubbed down (in mono) onto one track of an eight-track machine.[202] Wilson typically divided instruments by three tracks: drums\u2013percussion\u2013keyboard, horns, and bass\u2013additional percussion\u2013guitar. The fourth track usually contained a rough reference mix used during playback at the session, later to be erased for overdubs such as a string section.[200] \"Once he had what he wanted,\" Britz said, \"I would give Brian a 7-1/2 IPS [tape] copy of the track, and he would take it home.\"[203]\n
\nThe Beach Boys recording vocals for Pet Sounds. From left: Carl and Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston (obscured)\n
Vocal overdubs were tracked at Western and CBS Columbia Square.[204] The Beach Boys rarely knew their parts before arriving in the studio. Britz: \"Most of the time, they were never ready to sing. They would rehearse in the studio. Actually, there was no such thing as rehearsal. They'd get on mike right off the bat, practically, and start singing.\"[203] According to Jardine, each member was taught their individual vocal lines by Brian at a piano. He explains, \"Every night we'd come in for a playback. We'd sit around and listen to what we did the night before. Someone might say, well, that's pretty good but we can do that better.\"[205]\n
This process proved to be the most exacting work the group had undertaken yet. During recording, Mike Love often called Brian \"dog ears\", a nickname referencing a canine's ability to detect sounds far beyond the limits of human hearing.[206] Love later summarized:\n
\n
We worked and worked on the harmonies and, if there was the slightest little hint of a sharp or a flat, it wouldn't go on. We would do it over again until it was right. [Brian] was going for every subtle nuance that you could conceivably think of. Every voice had to be right, every voice and its resonance and tonality had to be right. The timing had to be right. The timbre of the voices just had to be correct, according to how he felt. And then he might, the next day, completely throw that out and we might have to do it over again.[207]
\n
For microphones, they used two Neumann U-47s for Dennis, Carl and Jardine and a Shure 545 for Brian's leads.[203] Love sang most of the album's bass vocals, and necessitated an extra microphone due to his low volume range.[206] By the time of Pet Sounds, Wilson was using up to six of the eight tracks on the multitrack master so that he could record the voice of each member separately, allowing him greater control over the vocal balance in the final mix.[200] After mixing down the four-track to mono for overdubbing via an eight-track recorder, six of the remaining seven tracks were usually dedicated to each of the Beach Boys' vocals.[200] The last track was usually reserved for additional elements such as extra vocals or instrumentation.[38] The vocals for five of the album's songs were recorded at Columbia because it was the only facility in Los Angeles with an eight-track recorder.[208][nb 33]\n
Similar to subsequent experimental rock LPs by the Beatles, Frank Zappa, and the Who, Pet Sounds featured countertextural aspects that called attention to the very recordedness of the album.[209] Tape effects were limited to slapback echo and reverb. Archivist Mark Linett notes: \"to my ears, it sounds more like the plate [reverberators] rather than chambers. It should be mentioned that you get a significantly different sound from a chamber when you record it 'live' as opposed to doing it off tape, and one reason these records sound the way they do is that the reverb was being printed as part of the recording \u2013 unlike today where we'll record 'dry' and add the effects later.\"[189] One of Wilson's favorite techniques was to apply reverb exclusively to a timpani, as can be heard in \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", \"You Still Believe in Me\", and \"Don't Talk\".[210]\n
\n
\n
\n
It was full of noise. You could hear him talking in the background. It was real sloppy. He had spent all this time making the album, and zip\u2014dubbed it down in one day or something like that. [When we said something to him about it] he took it back and mixed it properly. I think a lot of times, beautiful orchestrated stuff or parts got lost in his mixes.\n
On April 13, 1966, the album's final vocal overdubbing session, for \"Here Today\", concluded a ten-month-long recording period that had begun with \"Sloop John B\" in July 1965.[212] The album was mixed three days later in a single nine-hour session.[162][nb 34] Most of the session was spent mixing down the vocals to fit with the instrumentals, which had already been locked into one mono track.[214] The album's original mono master ultimately featured many technical flaws that contrast the refined arrangements and performances.[214] One of the most prominent examples occurs in \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", where an audible tape splice is heard between the chorus and Mike Love's vocal entrance in the bridge. A similar anomaly is heard in the instrumental break of \"Here Today\", where a distant conversation was accidentally captured during a vocal overdub.[215] In David Leaf's view, \"It's not sloppy recording, it's part of the music.\"[216]\n
A true stereophonic mix of Pet Sounds was not considered in 1966 largely because of mixing logistics.[200] In spite of whether a true stereo mix was possible, Wilson intentionally mixed the final version of his recordings in mono (as did Spector). He did this because he felt that mono mastering provided more sonic control over the final result, irrespective of the vagaries of speaker placement and sound system quality.[200][nb 35] Another and more personal reason for Brian's preference for mono was his almost total deafness in his right ear.[217] At the end, the total cost of production amounted to a then-unheard of $70,000 (equivalent to $630,000 in 2022).[151]\n
\"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" introduces the album with a sound described by journalist Nick Kent as \"limpid harps imitating a teenage heartstrings in a tug of love\".[148]
\"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" describes a young couple fantasizing about the romantic freedom they would earn as adults.[153] Asher said that it was the only song on the album in which he wrote words to a melody that Brian had already finalized.[218] The group's vocal performance took longer to record than any other track on the album, as Wilson's bandmates struggled to sing the multiple vocal parts to his satisfaction.[219]\n
\"You Still Believe in Me\" contains the first expression of introspective themes that pervade the rest of the album.[128] The lyric discusses a narrator who, while acknowledging their irresponsible behavior and unfaithfulness, is impressed by the unwavering loyalty of their lover.[220] In Wilson's words, the song was about a man who feels free to express his love for people from the perspective of a girl.[221] Wilson and Asher created the song's ethereal intro by plucking a piano's strings with a bobby pin.[222]\n
\"That's Not Me\" contains multiple key modulations and mood shifts[223] and is the track that most closely resembles a conventional rock song.[224] The lyric illustrates a young man in his path toward self-discovery, with the realization that he is better living with a lover than pursuing a life of solitude in service to his dream.[225] It is the only track on the album where most of the instrumentation was played by the band members themselves.[123]\n
\n
\"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)\"[edit]
\n
\"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)\" is among the most harmonically complex songs that Wilson ever wrote.[226] The subject matter involves non-verbal communication between lovers. According to Asher, \"It's strange to sit down and write a song about not talking [...] but we managed to do it\".[227]\n
\"I'm Waiting for the Day\" features jazz chords, a doo-wop progression, timpani blasts, English horn, flutes, and a string section interlude.[228] Carl Wilson praised the arrangement, saying, \"The intro is very big, then it gets quite small with the vocal in the verse with a little instrumentation and then, in the chorus, it gets very big again, with the background harmonies against the lead. It is perhaps one of the most dynamic moments in the album.\"[229]\n
Lyrically, it is about a boy who falls in love with a broken-hearted girl who is reluctant to commit herself to another relationship.[227] The song was copyrighted by Brian as a solo composition in February 1964, indicating that it predated the album's sessions by some years. It was co-credited to Love, who made a minor adjustment to Wilson's lyrics.[228]\n
\"Let's Go Away for Awhile\" is an instrumental that features 12 violins, piano, four saxophones, oboe, vibraphones, and a Coca-Cola bottle used as a guitar slide.[231] In 1966, Wilson considered the track to be \"the finest piece of art\" he had made up to that point, and said that every component of its production \"worked perfectly\".[126]\n
\n\"Sloop John B\" is a traditional folk song about a boat from Nassau (pictured circa 1900)\n
At the suggestion of Al Jardine, Wilson arranged a version of \"Sloop John B\", a traditional Caribbean folk song that Jardine had learned from listening to the Kingston Trio.[232] His arrangement blended rock and marching band instrumentation with the use of flutes, glockenspiel, baritone saxophone, bass, guitar, and drums.[233] Jardine likened the result to John Philip Sousa.[234] Wilson elected to change the original lyrics from \"this is the worst trip since I've been born\" to \"this is the worst trip I've ever been on\". This may have been done as a deliberate reference to acid trips.[235][236]\n
Brian included \"Sloop John B\" on Pet Sounds to appease Capitol Records, who had expected \"Sloop John B\" to be a hit single and wanted to capitalize on its success by including the track on Pet Sounds.[234] The song is often said to disrupt the album's lyrical flow, as Fusilli explains: \"It's anything but a reflective love song, a stark confession or a tentative statement of independence like the other songs on the album. And it's the only song on Pet Sounds Brian didn't write.\"[237]\n
Fusilli posits that the track fits musically with the album, citing the track's chiming guitars, doubletracked basses, and staccato rhythms.[237] Noting that a sense of self-doubt, concern for the future of a relationship, and melancholy pervades Pet Sounds, Perone says the song successfully portrays a sailor who feels \"completely out of place in his situation\", a quality that is \"fully in keeping with the general feeling of disorientation that runs through so many of the songs.\"[118] DeRogatis agreed, citing the key lyric \"I want to go home\", which reflects other songs themed around an escape to somewhere peaceful \u2014 namely, \"Let's Go Away for Awhile\" and \"Caroline, No\".[236]\n
\"God Only Knows\" is often praised as one of the greatest songs ever written.[240] Wilson reflected: \"I think Tony [Asher] had a musical influence on me somehow. After about ten years, I started thinking about it deeper [...] because I had never written that kind of song. And I remember him talking about 'Stella by Starlight' and he had a certain love for classic songs.\"[57] The musical structure contains an ambiguous tonal center and non-diatonic chords.[116] According to musicologist Stephen Downes, this quality made the song innovative not just in pop music, but also for the Baroque style it is emulating.[240]\n
\"I Know There's an Answer\", originally titled \"Hang On to Your Ego\", portrays someone who hesitates to tell people the way that they live could be better.[241] The lyrics created a stir within the group due to its references to drug culture.[242] Schwartz, who introduced Wilson to LSD, recounted that Wilson had \"had the full-on ego death. It was a beautiful thing.\"[243] In 1999, Wilson explained that the original chorus line had \"an inappropriate lyric. [...] I just thought that to say 'Hang on to your ego' was an ego statement in and of itself, which I wasn't going for, so I changed it. I gave it a lot of thought.\"[244] The song features a bass harmonica solo played by session musician Tommy Morgan.[222]\n
\"Here Today\" is told from the perspective of an ex-boyfriend narrator[213] who warns the listener of the inevitable heartbreak that will result from a newfound love.[245] The track was an experiment in basslines, as Brian recalled, \"I wanted to conceive the idea of a bass guitar playing an octave higher than regular, and showcase it as the principal instrument on the track.\"[246] Asher said, \"'Here Today' contains a little more of me both lyrically and melodically than Brian.\"[29] Perone noted that the high-pitched electric bass guitar bring to mind similar parts in \"God Only Knows\", culminating in what sounds like the vocal protagonist of \"Here Today\" warning the protagonist of \"God Only Knows\" that what he sings stands no chance at longevity.[247]\n
\"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\" features lyrics about feeling alienated by society.[248] Brian said: \"It's about a guy who was crying because he thought he was too advanced, and that he'd eventually have to leave people behind. All my friends thought I was crazy to do Pet Sounds.\"[249] For the track, he employed harpsichord, tack piano, flutes, temple blocks, timpani, banjo, harmonica, Fender bass, and most unusually, an Electro-Theremin performed by the instrument's inventor Paul Tanner.[250] According to Lambert, the strongest musical indication of Wilson's progressive vision for the album is heard in the cumulative vocal layering in the chorus, with each line sung by Wilson via overdubs.[251]\n
\"Run, James, Run\" was the working title for the instrumental \"Pet Sounds\", the suggestion being that it would be offered for use in a James Bond movie.[57] According to Perone, the track represents the Beach Boys' surf heritage more than any other track on the album with its emphasis on lead guitar, however, it is not truly a surf composition due to the elaborate arrangement involving countless auxiliary percussion parts, abruptly changing textures, and de-emphasis of a traditional rock band drum set.[247] Lambert describes the track as a \"musical synopsis\" of the album's \"primary musical themes\" that functions as a respite for the narrator following the realizations of \"Here Today\".[253]\n
\nThe Owl, otherwise known as the train heard after \"Caroline, No\"\n
\"Caroline, No\" is about the loss of innocence.[254] Asher conceived the title as \"Carol, I Know\". When spoken, however, Brian heard this as \"Caroline, No\", which Asher thought was \"a much stronger and more interesting line than the one I had in mind.\"[255] Brian considered the song \"probably the best I've ever written\", summarizing, \"It's a pretty love song about how this guy and this girl lost it and there's no way to get it back. I just felt sad, so I wrote a sad song.\"[256] The track is introduced by the sound of a plastic Sparkletts water cooler jug being hit with a hard percussion mallet.[233] As the song fades, it segues into a recorded excerpt of Brian's dogs barking accompanied by a sample of passing trains taken from the 1963 sound effects LP Mister D's Machine.[257]\n
\"The Little Girl I Once Knew\", which may be considered part of the Pet Sounds sessions, was not included on the album. Writer Neal Umphred speculated that the song might have been considered for the LP and would have probably been included had the single been more commercially successful.[258]\n
On October 15, 1965, Wilson went to the studio with a 43-piece orchestra to record an instrumental piece entitled \"Three Blind Mice\", which bore no musical connection to the nursery rhymeof the same name.[257][nb 36] On the same day, he recorded instrumental versions of the standards \"How Deep Is the Ocean\" and \"Stella by Starlight\".[59] According to Leaf, it was a coincidence that the latter turned out to be a favorite of Asher's.[46] Biographer Mark Dillon surmised that these recordings were never meant for release, and that they were merely experimental exercises in recording orchestras, possibly in anticipation for the string ensemble required for \"Don't Talk\".[259]\n
Another instrumental, \"Trombone Dixie\", was recorded on November 1.[260] According to Wilson, \"I was just foolin' around one day, fuckin' around with the musicians, and I took that arrangement out of my briefcase and we did it in 20 minutes. It was nothing, there was really nothing in it.\"[261] It was released as a bonus track on the album's 1990 CD reissue.[260]\n
In February and March 1966, Wilson began recording an unfinished song he wrote with Asher, \"Good Vibrations\", between sessions for \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\" and \"God Only Knows\".[262] Asher recalled that the song was conceived in response to Capitol's demand for a new single.[256] Brian ultimately delivered \"Sloop John B\" to the label instead, and to the band's disappointment, chose not to include \"Good Vibrations\" on the album.[263] The track was replaced by \"Pet Sounds\" as indicated by a Capitol Records memo dated March 3.[264] Johnston and Jardine later expressed regrets with Wilson's decision, as they felt that including \"Good Vibrations\" would have bolstered the sales of Pet Sounds.[265] However, the song was not released until October, albeit in a drastically different form.[266] Wilson's bandmates prevailed against him to include \"Good Vibrations\" on their next album, Smiley Smile, (1967),[267] after it had been previously slated for their unfinished album, Smile.\n
In late 1965, Wilson devoted some Pet Sounds sessions to experimental indulgences such as an extended a cappella run-through of the children's song \"Row, Row, Row Your Boat\" that exploited the song's use of rounds.[257] Granata called the piece \"very low-key and relatively simple\", but an \"effectively lavish layer of recorded vocal harmonies\".[268] Humorous skits and sound effects were also recorded in an attempt to create a psychedelic comedy album.[257] At least two sketches survive, \"Dick\" and \"Fuzz\", which feature Brian, a woman named Carol, and the Honeys, a girl group that included Marilyn. These recordings remain unreleased.[59]\n
\"Dick\" involves an exchange between Brian and Carol: \"What's long and thin and full of skin and heaven knows how many holes it's been in?\" \"Dick?\" \"No, a worm.\"[59] The participants then burst into forced laughter. According to documentarian Keith Badman, \"Just as with his music, Brian insists on perfection for 'Dick' and [six] further takes are made by Carol to tell the joke.\"[59] \"Fuzz\" involves a similar joke: \"What's black and white and has fuzz inside?\" \"A lorry?\" \"A police car.\"[59] Carol then asks Wilson if he has hemorrhoids: \"No.\" \"Well let me shake your hand.\" \"Why?\" \"It's really great knowing a perfect asshole.\"[59]\n
The front sleeve depicts a snapshot of the band \u2013 from left, they are Carl, Brian, and Dennis Wilson; Mike Love; and Al Jardine \u2013 feeding pieces of apples to seven goats at the San Diego Zoo while dressed in coats and sweaters.[269] A green band header announces the titles of the artist, album, and each track on the LP,[269] partly written in the Cooper Black typeface.[270][271] Bruce Johnston, who joined the band as an unofficial member one year earlier, does not appear on the front cover due to contractual restraints from Columbia Records.[272] On the reverse side, the sleeve contained a montage of monochrome photos depicting the touring band on-stage and posing in samurai outfits during their tour of Japan, as well as two photos of Brian.[269]\n
Jardine expressed disappointment with the zoo photo and said he had \"wanted a more sensitive and enlightening cover.\"[273] Johnston referred to it as the \"worst cover in the history of the record business\",[274] while author and biographer Peter Ames Carlin opined that the backside of the LP was \"perhaps an even worse design idea than the goat shot\".[269] Author Peter Doggett writes that the design was at odds with the increasingly sophisticated cover portraits used on releases by artists such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones over 1965\u201367.[275] He highlights it as \"a warning of what could happen when music and image parted company: songs of high romanticism, an album cover of stark banality.\"[275]\n
Writing in his memoir, Love said that Capitol planned the cover shoot after the company had conceived the would-be album title Our Freaky Friends, with the animals representing the group's \"freaky friends\".[276][nb 37] When questioned about the cover in 2016, Wilson could not recall who thought of going to the zoo.[277] Jardine remembered that the Pet Sounds title had already been decided, and that until arriving to the photo shoot, he thought that \"pet\" referred to slang for making out (\"petting\"). He credited Capitol's art department with the idea.[273] Some sources claim that Remember the Zoo was another working title,[278] but the name was actually part of a hoax that had originated from a Beach Boys fanzine in the 1990s.[279]\n
The cover photo was taken on February 10, 1966, by photographer George Jerman.[280] Local reporters from KFMB-TV filmed the shoot.[281][nb 38] According to a contemporary report by the San Diego Union, the group \"came down from Hollywood to take a cover picture for their forthcoming album Our Freaky Friends. [...] Zoo officials were not keen about having their beloved beasts connected with the title of the album, but gave in when the Beach Boys explained that animals are an 'in' thing with teenagers. And that the Beach Boys were rushing to beat the rock and roll group called The Animals.\"[282][nb 39] The group was subsequently banned from the zoo, as the staff had accused them of mishandling the animals.[67] Johnston said, \"The goats were horrible! [...] The zoo said we were torturing the animals but they should have seen what we had to go through. We were doing all the suffering.\"[282]\n
A taped conversation from the March 1966 dog barking session for \"Caroline, No\" reveals that Brian considered photographing a horse belonging to Carl in Western Studio 3 for the album cover.[284][nb 40] Wilson told biographer Byron Preiss that the album was named \"after the dogs [...] That was the whole idea\".[286] Love credited himself with titling the album Pet Sounds,[276] a claim supported by Wilson and Jardine in a 2016 interview.[277] In 1996, Love recalled that he came up with the name while he and his bandmates were standing in the hallway of Western or Columbia studio. He said, \"we didn't have a title. [...] We had taken pictures at the zoo and [...] there were animal sounds on the record, and we were thinking, well, it's our favorite music of that time, so I said, 'Why don't we call it Pet Sounds?'\"[206] Wilson subsequently consulted Asher, who did not have a favorable reaction to the album's title, thinking that the name had \"trivialized what we had accomplished\".[287]\n
In the 1990s, Brian credited Carl with the title.[288][207] Carl said with uncertainty that the name might have come from Brian: \"The idea he [Brian] had was that everybody has these sounds that they love, and this was a collection of his 'pet sounds.' It was hard to think of a name for the album, because you sure couldn't call it Shut Down Vol. 3.\"[171] Brian commented that the title was a \"tribute\" to Spector by matching his initials (PS).[152] Wilson's 1991 memoir, Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story, writes that the title was inspired by Love asking \"Who's gonna hear this shit? The ears of a dog?\"[289] Asked about this quote in a 2016 interview, Love denied having said it.[290]\n
Personally, I think the group has evolved another 800 per cent in the last year. We have a more conscious, arty production now that's more polished. It's all been like an explosion for us. [...] it's like I'm in the golden age of what it's all about.\n
In March 1966, the Beach Boys hired Nick Grillo as their personal manager following a move from Cummins & Currant to Julius Lefkowitz & Company.[291] The band also recruited Derek Taylor, former press officer for the Beatles, as their publicist.[292] According to Carl Wilson, although the band were aware that trends and the music industry were shifting, \"Capitol had a very set picture\" of the group that remained incongruous with how they wished to present themselves.[171]\n
For updating the band's image with firsthand accounts of their latest activities, Taylor's prestige was crucial in offering a credible perspective to those outside Wilson's inner circle.[293] Taylor said he was hired to take the band to \"a new plateau\", and to that end, he invented the tagline \"Brian Wilson is a genius\".[294]\n
This section is missing information about audits revealing that Capitol had significantly under-reported the sales of Beach Boys albums, including Pet Sounds, which prevented it from being certified gold until decades after the fact.. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(May 2022)
\n
On March 7, the single \"Caroline No\" (B-side \"Summer Means New Love\"), was released as Wilson's solo debut,[295] leading to speculation that he was considering leaving the band.[296] The single peaked at number 32 during a seven-week stay.[295] On March 21, \"Sloop John B\" (B-side \"You're So Good to Me\") was released as a single, credited to the Beach Boys, and reached number 3. [191] After Pet Sounds was assembled, Brian brought a complete acetate to Marilyn, who remembered, \"It was so beautiful, one of the most spiritual times of my whole life. We both cried. Right after we listened to it, he said he was scared that nobody was going to like it. That it was too intricate.\"[180] Capitol executives were less impressed and discussed plans to scrap the album when they heard it. Following several meetings \u2013 the last of which had Brian appearing with a tape recorder and responding to their questions with eight pre-recorded responses \u2013 Capitol accepted the album as the Beach Boys' next LP.[297]\n
Pet Sounds was released on May 16 and debuted on the Billboard charts at 106.[298] It sold 200,000 copies shortly thereafter.[299] Compared to their previous albums in the US, Pet Sounds achieved somewhat less commercial success, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard LP chart, on July 2, during a ten-month stay.[300] Although total sales were estimated at around 500,000 units,[269]Pet Sounds was not initially awarded gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) \u2013 a first for the group since 1963.[299]\n
For the album's promotion in the US, Capitol ran full-page advertisements in Billboard that did not distinguish the record from earlier Beach Boys offerings and relied on the group's familiar public image instead of rebranding.[292] This was also true for the promotional spots that were recorded by the Beach Boys themselves and disseminated to radio stations. Like they had done for previous spots, the members performed a comedy skit without any indication of what the record they were promoting sounded like. Instead, they relied on their name recognition.[301] Johnston blamed Capitol for the album's underwhelming sales and alleged that the label did not promote the album as heavily as previous releases.[302] Carl shared this view and said that Capitol did not feel a need to promote the band since they were getting so much airplay.[171] Others assumed that the label considered the album a risk, appealing more to an older demographic than the younger, female audience the Beach Boys built their commercial standing on.[303]\n
Within two months, Capitol assembled the group's first greatest hits compilation, Best of the Beach Boys, which was quickly certified gold by the RIAA.[304] Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann theorized that because the marketing department \"didn't believe that Pet Sounds was going to do that well, they were probably looking for some additional volume in that quarter.\"[305] There were reports that when record shops ordered copies of Pet Sounds, they instead received Best Of.[306] On July 18, \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" (B-side \"God Only Knows\") was released as a single, peaking at number 8 on September 2.[307]Billboard ultimately ranked the album at number 43 on its \"Top Pop Albums of 1966\" list.[308]\n
\nText from a UK advertisement of the album. Public demand had led to Pet Sounds being issued several months earlier than scheduled.[309]\n
In the UK, the band had little commercial success until March 1966, when \"Barbara Ann\" and Beach Boys Party! rose to number 2 on the nation's respective Record Retailer charts.[191] In April, two singles were released: \"Caroline, No\" (no chart showing) and \"Sloop John B\" (number 2).[310] In response to the band's growing popularity among the British, two music videos were filmed set to \"Sloop John B\" and \"God Only Knows\" for the UK's Top of the Pops, both directed by Taylor.[311][nb 41] The \"Sloop John B\" video premiered on April 28.[311]\n
EMI planned to release the record in November to coincide with the band's tour of Britain.[309][nb 42] From May 16 to 21, Johnston and Taylor holidayed at central London's Waldorf Hotel with the intention of promoting the album around local music scenes.[299] Thanks to the connections of London-based producer Kim Fowley, a number of musicians, journalists, and other guests (including John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Keith Moon) gathered in their hotel suite to listen to repeated playbacks of the album.[313] Fowley said that they had arranged \"a horde of press, so it looked like the Beatles had just arrived at La Guardia airport in 1964. Bruce Johnston was like Jesus Christ in tennis shoes, and Pet Sounds represented the Ten Commandments.\"[314] Moon himself involved Johnston by helping him gain coverage in British television circuits, and connecting him with Lennon and McCartney.[302]\n
Due to popular demand, EMI rush-released Pet Sounds on June 27.[309] It peaked at number 2, and remained in the top-ten positions for six months.[315] Taylor is widely recognized as having been instrumental in this success, due to his longstanding connections with the Beatles and other industry figures in the UK.[316] The music press there carried advertisements saying that Pet Sounds was \"The Most Progressive Pop Album Ever!\"[317][318] According to Carlin, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who was also the Beach Boys' publisher in England,[319] took out a full-page advertisement in Melody Maker in which he lauded Pet Sounds as \"the greatest album ever made\".[320] On July 22, \"God Only Knows\" (B-side \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\") was released as the third UK single, peaking at number 2.[307]\n
Pet Sounds was one of the five bestselling UK albums of 1966.[309] In response to the success of the Beach Boys' singles \"Barbara Ann\", \"Sloop John B.\" and \"God Only Knows\", EMI flooded the market with other albums by the band, including Party!, Today! and Summer Days.[321] In addition, Best of the Beach Boys was number 2 there for five weeks through to the end of the year.[322] The Beach Boys became the strongest selling album act in the UK for the final quarter of 1966, dethroning the three-year reign of native bands such as the Beatles.[323]\n
Early reviews for the album in the U.S. ranged from negative to tentatively positive.[269]Billboard's terse review, published uncharacteristically late,[299] called it an \"exciting, well-produced LP\" with \"two superb instrumental cuts\" and highlighted the \"strong single potential\" of \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\".[298] Biographer David Leaf wrote in 1978 that the album received \"scattered\" instances of praise from American reviewers; the group's fans initially considered Pet Sounds too challenging and \"quickly passed the word to 'stay away from the new Beach Boys album, it's weird.'\"[324]\n
By contrast, the reception from music journalists in the UK was highly favorable[325][326] due in part to the promotional efforts of Taylor, Johnston, and Fowley.[325]Rolling Stone founding editor Jann Wenner later recalled that fans in the UK identified the Beach Boys as being \"years ahead\" of the Beatles and declared Wilson a \"genius\"[327]Penny Valentine of Disc and Music Echo admired Pet Sounds as \"Thirteen tracks of Brian Wilson genius ... The whole LP is far more romantic than the usual Beach Boys jollity: sad little wistful songs about lost love and found love and all-around love.\"[328] Writing in Record Mirror, Norman Jopling reported that the LP had been \"widely praised\" and subjected to \"no criticism\". He prefaced his review as \"unbiased\" and wrote that his only \"real complaint\" with the album was the \"terribly complicated and cluttered\" arrangements.[329] Jopling predicted: \"It will probably make their present fans like them even more, but it's doubtful whether it will make them any new ones.\"[330] A reviewer in Disc and Music Echo disagreed: \"this should gain them thousands of new fans. Instrumentally ambitious, if vocally over-pretty, Pet Sounds has brilliantly tapped the pulse of the musical times. ... A superb, important and really exciting collection from the group whose recording career so far has been a bit of a hotchpotch.\"[309]\n
Melody Maker ran a feature in which many pop musicians were asked whether they believed that the album was truly revolutionary and progressive or \"as sickly as peanut butter\".[309] The author concluded that \"the record's impact on artists and the men behind the artists has been considerable.\"[309] Among the musicians contributing to the 1966 Melody Maker survey: Spencer Davis of the Spencer Davis Group said: \"Brian Wilson is a great record producer. I haven't spent much time listening to the Beach Boys before, but I'm a fan now and I just want to listen to this LP again and again.\"[309] Then a member of Cream, Eric Clapton reported that everyone in his band loved the album, adding that Wilson was \"without doubt a pop genius\".[309] Andrew Loog Oldham told the magazine: \"I think that Pet Sounds is the most progressive album of the year in as much as Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade was. It's the pop equivalent of that, a complete exercise in pop music.\"[309]\n
Three of the nine people who are quoted in the Melody Maker survey (Keith Moon, Manfred Mann's Mike d'Abo, and the Walker Brothers' Scott Walker) did not agree that the album was revolutionary. D'Abo and Walker favored the Beach Boys' earlier work, as did journalist and television presenter Barry Fantoni, who expressed a preference for Beach Boys' Today! and stated that Pet Sounds was \"probably revolutionary, but I'm not sure that everything that's revolutionary is necessarily good\".[331]Pete Townshend of the Who opined that \"the Beach Boys new material is too remote and way out. It's written for a feminine audience.\"[309][nb 43]\n
In other issues of Melody Maker, Rolling Stones member Mick Jagger stated that he disliked the songs but enjoyed the record and its harmonies, while John Lennon said that Wilson was \"doing some very great things\".[333] At the end of 1966, the magazine crowned Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Revolver as the joint \"Pop Album of the Year\". The paper's spokesman wrote, \"We argued, argued and argued and still the MM pop panel couldn't agree which was the Pop Album of the Year. The voting was evenly divided [...] Cups of coffee were drunk and sheets of paper were torn up before we finally agreed to compromise and vote for both The Beatles and Beach Boys on top.\"[334]\n
\nWilson (pictured in late 1966) was devastated by the album's commercial failure and aspired to top himself with Smile.\n
Wilson later said that despite the positive reception afforded to the album in Britain, he felt deeply hurt when Pet Sounds did not sell as highly as he expected and interpreted the poor sales as the public's rejection of his artistry.[57] Marilyn supported that the lackluster response \"really destroyed Brian\" before adding: \"He just lost a lot of faith in people and music. [...] then when people would talk about it later, tell him how great it was, even if it was just a year later, he didn't want to hear about it. It reminded him of failing. And then he was more tortured.\"[180] Carl remembered Brian's disappointment and said that the album was \"so much more than a record [...] it was like going to church and a labor of love.\"[171][nb 44]\n
Asher had a different recollection, saying that neither he nor Brian had valued Pet Sounds as a \"masterpiece\" at the time. He explained, \"I was more impressed by the production really. To me it was just a great album, and [...] a chance to show some people like my parents, and the guys at the advertising company, that rock music could be [...] a mature medium.\"[335] Taylor recalled in 1975 that Wilson was unperturbed by the album's poor sales and had been more preoccupied with besting his rivals \u2013 namely, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones \u2013 on an artistic front.[336]\n
\nThe Beach Boys accepting a gold record sales certification for \"Good Vibrations\" at the Capitol Tower, late 1966.\n
In mid-1966, Brian began writing songs with lyricist Van Dyke Parks for a new album, Smile, that was never finished but would have included \"Good Vibrations\".[337] Wilson touted the album as a \"teenage symphony to God\" that would have surpassed Pet Sounds.[338] During the project's sessions, Wilson revisited the idea of a psychedelic comedy album, previously explored with the \"Dick\" and \"Fuzz\" outtakes from Pet Sounds.[257] In October, \"Good Vibrations\" was issued as a single and became an immediate worldwide hit.[339][nb 45]\n
As Wilson's mental health deteriorated, his involvement with the Beach Boys reduced, and the group instead released follow-up records that were less ambitious and largely ignored by critics.[341] Wilson referred to the band's 1968 release Friends as his second \"solo album\", following Pet Sounds.[342] It was a commercial failure and, in the words of a Mojo writer, caused the band's fanbase to lose \"any hope that Brian Wilson would deliver a true successor to [Pet Sounds]\".[343]\n
The 1977 album The Beach Boys Love You saw Wilson's brief reemergence as the group's principal songwriter and singer.[344] Wilson regarded Love You as a spiritual successor to Pet Sounds, namely because of the autobiographical lyrics.[345][nb 46] In 1988, Wilson released his first solo album, Brian Wilson, which was an attempt to recapture the sensibilities of Pet Sounds, such that co-producer Russ Titelman touted the album as Pet Sounds '88.[347] It included \"Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long\", a sequel to \"Caroline, No\".[348]\n
The Beach Boys, accompanied by Timothy B. Schmit, re-recorded \"Caroline, No\" with a new multi-part vocal arrangement for the 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1.[349] Shortly after that album, there were tentative plans for what biographer Mark Dillon nicknamed \"Pet Sounds, Vol. 2\", an album that would have involved the band teaming with Sean O'Hagan, leader of the avant-pop band the High Llamas.[350] Although many record companies expressed interest in the project, it never progressed past the planning stages.[351] In the late 1990s, Wilson and Asher rekindled their writing partnership and wrote at least four songs together. Only two were released: \"This Isn't Love\" and \"Everything I Need\".[352]\n
[Brian Wilson] was a genius who never received his just acclaim, and it's possible that he never will. The main reason for this is absurdly simple: ... Just as it was settling nicely into its position as the world's number one popular music record, the far more fashionable Beatles released Sgt Pepper, and Pet Sounds was forgotten, just like that.\n
Pet Sounds was not nominated for the 1967 Grammy Awards.[300][nb 47] In his 1969 Pop Chronicles series, John Gilliland stated that the album was almost overshadowed by Revolver, released August 1966, and that \"a lot people failed to realize that Brian Wilson's production was as unique in its own way as the Beatles'\".[327] In his 1971 reappraisal of the Beach Boys for Melody Maker, Richard Williams wrote that although Pet Sounds had \"defied criticism\" and \"dwarfed all the rest of pop music put together\", whatever continued recognition Wilson would have received was immediately diverted to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released 12 months after Pet Sounds.[353]\n
Geoffrey Cannon wrote in his late 1967 column for Listener that the group were \"lesser than the Beatles\" chiefly due to a lack of \"emotional range; all their ballads, in evidence especially on Pet Sounds, are juvenile or specious. And none of their albums makes a collective statement.\"[354][nb 48] Writing in Jazz & Pop magazine in 1968, Gene Sculatti recognized the album's debt to Rubber Soul, saying that Pet Sounds was \"revolutionary only within the confines of the Beach Boys' music\", although later in the piece he commented: \"Pet Sounds was a final statement of an era and a prophecy that sweeping changes lay ahead.\"[355]\n
According to author Johnny Morgan, a \"process of reevaluation\" of Pet Sounds was underway from the late 1960s onward, with a 1976 NME feature proving especially influential.[330] Ben Edmonds of Circus wrote in 1971 that the \"beauty\" of Pet Sounds had aged well against \"the turbulence of the past few years\", adding that \"many consider it not only the Beach Boys' finest achievement, but a milestone in the progression of contemporary rock as well.\"[356] In a 1972 review for Rolling Stone, Stephen Davis called Pet Sounds \"by far\" Brian Wilson's best album and said that its \"trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel\".[357] He argued that the album had changed \"the course of popular music\" and \"a few lives in the bargain ... nobody was prepared for anything so soulful, so lovely, something one had to think about so much.\"[357]Melody Maker's Josh Ingham said in 1973 that the album was \"ignored by the public\" but inspired many critics to label Wilson a genius, \"not least for being a year ahead of Sgt Pepper in thinking.\" Ingham concluded that, \"With hindsight, of course, Pet Sounds has become the classic album.\"[358]\n
After 1974, Pet Sounds went out-of-print. In Granata's description, the album subsequently \"fell into obscurity\" and was \"relegated to the cutout bins\" for decades.[359] Sociomusicologist Simon Frith wrote in 1981 that Pet Sounds continued to be largely regarded by \"the music world\" as a \"'weird' record\".[360] Writing in the first edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979), Dave Marsh gave the album four stars (out of a possible five) and described it as a \"powerful, but spotty\" collection on which the least experimental songs proved to be the best.[361] In 1985, he wrote that the album was now considered a \"classic\", elaborating: \"Pet Sounds wasn't a commercial flop, but it did signal that the group was losing contact with its listeners (a charge that could not be leveled against the Beatles during the same period)\".[362] Granata offered that, by the time the album reappeared on compact disc in 1990, it was \"embraced by hard-core fanatics\" yet \"still considered an insider's record\u2014a quasi-cult classic\".[363]\n
Pet Sounds has since appeared in many \"greatest records of all time\" lists and has provoked extensive discourse regarding its musicianship and production.[374] By the 1990s, three British critics' polls had featured the LP at or near the top of their lists.[375] Those who deemed it \"the greatest album of all time\" included the writing staffs of NME,[376]The Times,[377] and Uncut.[378] In 1994, Pet Sounds was voted number 3 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums, a book which surveyed the general public alongside hundreds of critics, musicians, record producers, songwriters, radio broadcasters, and music enthusiasts.[379][nb 49]\n
In 2004, Pet Sounds was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.\"[385] By 2006, more than 100 domestic and international publications and journalists had lauded Pet Sounds as one of the greatest albums ever recorded.[386] In Chris Smith's 2009 book 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, Pet Sounds is evaluated as \"one of the most innovative recordings in rock\" and as the work that \"elevated Brian Wilson from talented bandleader to studio genius\".[122]\n
Music historian Luis Sanchez viewed the album as \"the score to a film about what rock music doesn't have to be. For all of its inward-looking sentimentalism, it lays out in a masterful way the kind of glow and sui generis vision that Brian aimed to expand in a radical way with Smile.\"[285] Music critic Tim Sommer, referencing other albums that are often labeled \"masterpieces\", such as Thick as a Brick (1972), The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and OK Computer (1997), commented that \"only Pet Sounds is written from the teen or adolescent point of view.\"[387] It has been viewed by some writers as the best pop rock album of all time,[388] including Sommer, who deemed it \"the greatest album of all time, probably by about 20 or 30 lengths\".[387]\n
In 2000, Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber gave Pet Sounds' then-latest reissue a 7.5 (out of 10) and decreed that while Pet Sounds had been \"groundbreaking enough to permanantly [sic] alter the course of music\", its \"straight-forward pop music\" had become \"passe and cliched\", especially when compared to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and Radiohead's OK Computer.[389] For the album's 40th Anniversary edition, Pitchfork ran another review, this time written by Dominique Leone, who awarded the album a 9.4 score. Leone opined that the work had aged well and deserved its continued praise, although he preferred the band's post-Pet Sounds recordings. He wrote:\n
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[T]wo or three generations of music fans will secretly believe you have no soul if you don't announce your allegiance to it [...] \"Influence\" is a loaded concept here [...] Certainly, regardless of what I write here, the impact and \"influence\" of the record will have been in turn hardly influenced at all. I can't even get my dad to talk about Pet Sounds anymore. [...] Very famous people waste no time in offering testimonials to Pet Sounds' greatness [...] The hymnal aspect of many of these songs seems no less pronounced, and the general air of deeply heartfelt love, graciousness and the uncertainty that any of it will be returned are still affecting to the point of distraction.[120]
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Music journalist Robert Christgau, writing in 2004, felt that Pet Sounds was a good record, but believed it had become looked upon as a totem.[390] In the 2004 book Kill Your Idols, which reevaluates so-called \"classic\" rock albums, Jeff Nordstedt writes that the commentary surrounding Pet Sounds had \"rarely\" discussed specifics about the album, only its impact and influence. He wrote \"The fact is, even the hits are disjointed, and the rest of the songs are downright insane.\"[391] Nordstedt lamented the negative aspects of its influence \u2013 namely, the \"overproduction\" exemplified in the music of the 1980s \u2013 as well as the record's inoffensive aesthetics, the lack of \"visceral charge\", and the fact that it had been co-written by a jingle writer (\"it offends every notion of truth that I hold dear about rock 'n' roll\").[392]\n
Musician Atticus Ross, who composed the soundtrack to the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic, referred to \"an element of clich\u00e9 that's grown around\" the album, exemplified in a comedy sketch from the television show Portlandia in which \"your classic hipster musicians [...] are building a studio and everything is like 'this is the mike they used in Pet Sounds.' This is exactly the same as Pet Sounds.'\"[393]\n
Wilson himself was bemused by the album's continued acclaim. In a 2002 documentary about the album, he commented, \"It keeps going back to Pet Sounds here in my life, and I'm going, 'What about this Pet Sounds? Is it really that good an album?' It's stood the test of time, of course, but is it really that great an album to listen to? I don't know.\"[394]\n
Pet Sounds is recognized as an ambitious and sophisticated work that advanced the field of music production in addition to setting a higher standard in music composition and numerous precedents in its recording.[194][395] Lambert, who was a professor of music at the CUNYGraduate Center in New York, wrote that the album was \"an extraordinary achievement \u2013 for any musician, but especially for the 23-year-old Wilson\".[396] Singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb described it as \"a musician's album\", \"an engineer's album\", and \"a songwriter's album\".[397] Paul McCartney declared that \"no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album.\"[398][399] To explain why the album \"was one of the defining moments of its time\", composer Philip Glass referred to \"its willingness to abandon formula in favor of structural innovation, the introduction of classical elements in the arrangements, [and] production concepts in terms of overall sound which were novel at the time\".[400] Edmonds believed that the album's \"most impressive\" feature was \"the fully integrated use of orchestration, an area glossed over all too lightly in those days.\"[356]\n
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It's been said that, although hardly anyone bought the Velvet Underground's records, those who did ended up being inspired to start their own bands. In the case of the Beach Boys' 1966 opus Pet Sounds, it's likely that each of its 13 songs inspired its own subset of pop offspring [...]\n
Although not originally a big seller, Pet Sounds was \"enormously\" influential from the moment of its release.[122] No other artist of Wilson's stature had written, arranged, and produced an album on the scale of Pet Sounds, and Granata writes that Wilson's \"authoritative approach affected his contemporaries\" and thus \"redefined\" the role of the producer.[402] Producer Lenny Waronker, who later became president of Warner Bros. Records, supported that Pet Sounds likely contributed to a higher emphasis on studio artistry among West Coast artists. \"Creative record-making took a giant step and it affected everybody who was caught up in it. It was a landmark record\".[403] Similarly in Britain, many groups responded to the album by increasing the studio experimentation on their records.[315] In 1971, publication Beat Instrumental & International Recording wrote: \"Pet Sounds took everyone by surprise. In terms of musical conception, lyric content, production and performance, it stood as a landmark in a music genre whose development was about to begin snowballing.\"[404]\n
In rock music, Pet Sounds marked the first occasion in which doubling was used for virtually every instrument, a technique previously limited to classical composers and orchestrators.[405] It was also the first time that a group departed from the usual small-ensemble electric rock band format for an entire album.[387] \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\" was the first piece in popular music to incorporate the Electro-Theremin as well as the first in rock music to feature a theremin-like instrument.[406] According to D. Strauss, the Beach Boys were also the first major rock group to openly challenge contemporary music trends \"and declare that rock really didn't matter.\"[100]Cue magazine reflected in 1971 that Pet Sounds made \"the Beach Boys among the vanguard\" and anticipated trends that were not widespread in rock music \"until 1969\u20131970\".[407] The album is also frequently credited for being \"partially responsible for the invention of synthesizers\", according to Norstedt, who explains that the doubled and tripled instrumental parts \"fueled the drive toward the synthesizer\u2014a single electronic instrument which fuses the tones of multiple organic instruments to create an entirely new sound. Wilson maniacally synthesized sounds on Pet Sounds before such a device was available.\"[408]\n
Cultural historian John Robert Greene stated that \"God Only Knows\" remade the ideal of the popular love song, while \"Sloop John B\" and \"Pet Sounds\" broke new ground and took rock music away from its casual lyrics and melodic structures into what was then uncharted territory.[409] He also credited Pet Sounds (as well as Rubber Soul, Revolver, and the 1960s folk movement) with spawning the majority of trends in post-1965 rock music.[409] Many Los Angeles record producers imitated the album's orchestral style, which became a component to the sunshine pop acts that followed.[410] Discussing the smooth soul genre, Chicago Reader's Noah Berlatsky argued that the Beach Boys helped bridge a gap between the polished pop harmonizing of the Drifters and the experimentation of the Chi-Lites, particularly with \"Sloop John B\", whose \"fussy\" arrangements, \"pure\" harmonies, and \"childish vulnerability\" he says \"come out of a tradition of pop R&B\".[411] \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" was similarly influential to power pop with respect to its \"happy\"-sounding music underpinned by a sense of yearning and longing.[412]\n
Pet Sounds is often cited as one of the earliest entries in the canon of psychedelic rock.[86] Scholar Philip Auslander writes that even though psychedelic music is not normally associated with the Beach Boys, the \"odd directions\" and experiments in Pet Sounds \"put it all on the map. [...] basically that sort of opened the door\u2014not for groups to be formed or to start to make music, but certainly to become as visible as say Jefferson Airplane or somebody like that.\"[413] DeRogatis said that it was one of the first psychedelic rock masterpieces, along with The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966) and Revolver.[88]\n
While many may struggle to see the direct link between the bright, bouncy tones of Pet Sounds and bands like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and countless prog-rock bands, there was simply no precedent for the way that notes moved and vibrated across the record.\n
Pet Sounds marked the origins of progressive pop, a genre that gave way to progressive rock. Tidal contributor Ryan Breed cited the album's \"non-rock instrumentation (strings, brass, Theremin, harpsichord, tack piano), dizzying key changes and complex vocal harmonies\" as features that informed progressive pop.[78] Journalist Troy Smith similarly cited \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" as \"the first taste of progressive pop\" subsequently elaborated upon by bands such as the Beatles, Queen, and Supertramp.[415]\n
The album also furthered the \"rock as art\" concept heralded by Rubber Soul.[355] In the belief of music journalist Barney Hoskyns, \"If the Beatles' Rubber Soul was the first album to make a case for pop music as a maturing art form, 1966's Pet Sounds was a quantum leap into the unknown\".[416] According to Gary Graff, Pet Sounds \"can be seen as a launch pad for the album era\", alongside Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966).[417]\n
Composer and journalist Frank Oteri recognized Pet Sounds as a \"clear precedent\" to the birth of album-oriented rock and progressive rock.[418]Bill Martin, an author of books about prog-rock, felt that the album represented a turning point for prog as the Beach Boys and the Beatles transformed rock music from dance music into music that was made for listening to, bringing \"expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology\".[419] Asked in a 1968 interview about the Beatles' role in rock's \"progress toward an art form\", Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page responded, \"I think the Beach Boys tried to do it first. I think there were lots of Beach Boy things on the Revolver album. Especially, the vocal harmony. Wilson really said a lot in his Pet Sounds album.\"[420]Gang of Four'sAndy Gill argued that \"so many rock bands took [Pet Sounds] as a green light to get clever\u2014to start playing with the time signatures, to go prog. You know, 'Let's put a french horn in there!' Before you know it, you've got Queen.\"[421]\n
In the wake of Pet Sounds, Wilson was heralded as the leading figure of the \"art-rock\" movement.[422]Pet Sounds is viewed as the first work of art rock by Leaf,[84] Jones,[83] and Frith.[360]Rolling Stone writers described the album as heralding the art rock of the 1970s.[423] Sommer writes that \"Pet Sounds proved that a pop group could make an album-length piece comparable with the greatest long-form works of Bernstein, Copland, Ives, and Rodgers and Hammerstein.\"[97] Bill Holdship said that it was \"perhaps rock's first example of self-conscious art\".[424] According to Fusilli, it raised itself to \"the level of art through its musical sophistication and the precision of its statement\",[425] while academic Michael Johnson said that the album was one of the first documented moments of ascension in rock music.[426] In 2010, Pet Sounds was listed in Classic Rock's \"50 Albums That Built Prog Rock\".[427][428]\n
Discussions of the greatest albums of all time frequently mention Pet Sounds with Revolver and Blonde on Blonde, which were all released within four months of each other.[430] Journalist Liel Leibovitz called Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde \"two strands in the same conversation, the one that turned American popular music, for one fleeting moment of one year in the middle 1960s, into a religious movement\".[431] Author Geoffrey Himes said that \"Brian's introduction of non-standard harmonies and timbres proved as revolutionary\" as Dylan's introduction of \"irony into rock'n'roll lyrics\".[50]\n
Rock historians also frequently link Pet Sounds to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band;[432] McCartney later credited Pet Sounds as an influence on his increasingly melodic bass-playing style and cited \"God Only Knows\" as \"the greatest song ever written\".[433] He said that the album was the primary impetus for Sgt. Pepper[432] and influenced his Revolver composition \"Here, There and Everywhere\".[434] Dennis Wilson said, \"Pet Sounds had a lot to do with Sgt. Pepper. I remember talking to Paul McCartney and a couple guys and they were saying, 'Sorry we ripped you off.'\"[435]\n
Among the distinguishing musical features of Pet Sounds that the Beatles adopted throughout Sgt. Pepper were the upper-register bass lines, a larger emphasis on floor toms, and more eclectic and unorthodox combinations of instruments (including bass harmonica).[436][nb 50] Lambert writes that \"the overall key relations\" on Pet Sounds resemble the patterns found on Sgt. Pepper, particularly with the invocation of B♭ as a tonic.[140]\n
The album's influence on emo music, according to writer Sean Cureton, is evident on Weezer's Pinkerton (1996) and Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism (2003).[442]Treblezine's Ernest Simpson and Wild Nothing's Jack Tatum additionally characterize Pet Sounds as the first emo album.[443][444] According to music writer Luke Britton, such assertions are perhaps stated \"wryly\", and wrote that \"it\u2019s generally accepted that the genre's pioneers\" came later in the 1980s.[445]\n
In the decades since its release, Pet Sounds has influenced artists from a wide span of genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, jazz, electronic, experimental, and punk.[443] Wilson also originated the trope of the \"reclusive genius\" among studio-oriented musical artists.[47] Jason Guriel of The Atlantic, writing about the record in 2016, drew comparisons with the albums of Michael Jackson, Prince, and Radiohead, and said that Wilson \"certainly anticipated the modern pop-centric era, which privileges producer over artist and blurs the line between entertainment and art\".[47] In 1995, a panel of musicians, songwriters and producers, surveyed by Mojo, ranked Pet Sounds as the \"greatest record\" of all time.[446] Referencing the album's newfound popularity in 1998, journalist Paul Lester reported that \"today's most interesting acts \u2013 The High Llamas, Air, Kid Loco, Saint Etienne, Stereolab, Lewis Taylor \u2013 are using the Brian Wilson songbook as a resource for their forays into the realms of electronic pop.\"[447]Cornelius' 1997 release Fantasma was created as an explicit homage to Pet Sounds and contains numerous references to the album.[448]\n
In 1990, the political cartoon strip Doonesbury ran a controversial story arc involving the character Andy Lippincott and his terminal battle with AIDS. It concludes with Lippincott expressing his admiration for Pet Sounds, and in the last panels, depicts the character's death while listening to \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", as well as his last written words, the line \"Brian Wilson is God\" scrawled on a notebook (a wry reference to the line \"Clapton is God\"). According to cultural theorist Kirk Curnett in 2012, the panel \"remains one of the most iconic in Doonesbury's forty-three year history, often credit[ed] with helping humanize AIDS victims when both gay and straight sufferers were severely stigmatized.\"[452]\n
\nNovelist Haruki Murakami translated a Japanese edition for one of the book analyses of Pet Sounds.[453]\n
In 2000, the album was presented with gold and platinum awards based on sales that could be documented, although Capitol estimated it may have sold over two million copies.[454] By 2007, there had been at least three books dedicated to Pet Sounds.[455][456] In Japan, Fusilli's book was translated to Japanese by the novelist Haruki Murakami.[453] Writing in his 2012 book Music Producer: for Producers, Composers, Arrangers, and Students, Michael Zager stated that the album's production techniques remained in use forty-six years later.[457] The album motivated film producer Bill Pohlad to direct the 2014 biopic on Brian Wilson, Love & Mercy, a film which includes a substantial depiction of the album's making, with actor Paul Dano portraying Wilson.[458]\n
In 2016, to honor the album's 50th anniversary, 26 artists contributed to a Pitchfork retrospective on its influence, which included comments from members of Talking Heads, Yo La Tengo, Chairlift, and Deftones. The editor noted that the \"wide swath of artists assembled for this feature represent but a modicum of the album's vast measure of influence. Its scope transcends just about all lines of age, race, and gender. Its impact continues to broaden with each passing generation.\"[443]\n
\nWilson performing Pet Sounds as a solo artist at Byron Bay Bluesfest, 2016\n
After its release, several selections from Pet Sounds became staples for the group's live performances, including \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", \"Sloop John B\" and \"God Only Knows\". Other songs were performed, albeit sporadically and infrequently through the years, and the album was never performed in its entirety with every original group member.[citation needed] In the late 1990s, Carl Wilson vetoed an offer for the Beach Boys to perform Pet Sounds in full for ten shows, reasoning that the studio arrangements were too complex for the stage, and that Brian could not possibly sing his original parts.[459]\n
As a solo artist, Brian performed the entire album live in 2000 with a different orchestra in each venue, and on three occasions without orchestra on his 2002 tour.[460] The concerts received favorable reviews, however, critics focused on Wilson's \"trancelike\" demeanor and odd interview responses.[461] Recordings from Wilson's 2002 concert tour were released as Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds Live.[462]Rolling Stone's Dorian Lynskey says that the shows helped establish the now-ubiquitous practice of artists playing \"classic albums\" in their entirety.[463]\n
In 2013, Wilson performed the album at two shows, unannounced, also with Jardine as well as original Beach Boys guitarist David Marks.[464] In 2016, Wilson performed the album at several events in Australia, Japan, Europe, Canada and the United States. The tour was planned as his final performances of the album,[465] but occasional shows were performed through 2020.[citation needed] A concert reviewer noted that Wilson received a standing ovation every time he performed a track from the album.[466]\n
In 1974, Reprise issued Pet Sounds as a single disc, which became the album's last reissue until 1990.[363]
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In 1990, Pet Sounds debuted on CD with the addition of three previously unreleased bonus tracks: \"Unreleased Backgrounds\" (an a cappella demo section of \"Don't Talk\" sung by Wilson), \"Hang On to Your Ego\", and \"Trombone Dixie\".[467] The edition was prepared from the original 1966 mono master, by Mark Linett, who used Sonic Solutions' No Noise processing to mitigate damage that the physical master had accrued.[468] It became one of the first CDs to sell more than a million copies.[469]
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In 1995, DCC issued a 20-bit audiophile version that was mastered by engineer Steve Hoffman. It was created from a safety copy of the original master.[470] According to Granata, this version \"garnered numerous accolades, and some feel it comes closest to capturing the spirit and punch of Brian's original 1966 mix.\"[471]
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In 1997, The Pet Sounds Sessions was released as a four-disc box set. It included the original mono release of Pet Sounds, the album's first stereo mix (created by Linett and Wilson), backing tracks, isolated vocals, and session highlights. It was received with controversy among audiophiles who felt that a stereo mix of Pet Sounds was sacrilege against the original mono recording.[472]
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In 2001, Pet Sounds was issued with mono and \"improved\" stereo versions, plus \"Hang On to Your Ego\" as a bonus track, all on one disc.[473]
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On August 29, 2006, Capitol released a 40th Anniversary edition, containing a new 2006 remaster of the original mono mix, DVD mixes (stereo and Surround Sound), and a \"making of\" documentary.[386] The discs were released in a regular jewel box and a deluxe edition was released in a green fuzzy box. A two-disc colored gatefold vinyl set was released with green (stereo) and yellow (mono) discs.[386]
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In 2016, a 50th anniversary edition box set presented the remastered album in both stereo and mono forms alongside studio sessions outtakes, alternate mixes, and live recordings. Of the 104 tracks, only 14 were previously unreleased.[474]
Mike Love was not originally credited for \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" and \"I Know There's an Answer\". His credits were awarded after a 1994 court case.[37]
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Al Jardine's contribution to the arrangement of \"Sloop John B\" remains uncredited.[476]
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Vocal credits sourced from Alan Boyd and Craig Slowinski.[123]
Brian Wilson \u2013 vocals; plucked piano strings on \"You Still Believe in Me\"; bass guitar, Danelectro bass, and organ on \"That's Not Me\"; piano on \"Pet Sounds\"; overdubbed organ or harmonium on \"I Know There's an Answer\"
^1965 is the date given by most sources. Others state that Wilson had met Asher during a social gathering at Schwartz's house. Carlin dates the initial meeting between Asher and Wilson to early 1963.[19]\n
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^December 1965 is the date given by Carlin.[20] Asher recalled that Wilson called him when the rest of the band were out of the country.[21]\n
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^This is Charles Granata's rough estimation. As of 2003, most of the documentation that could have provided a more definitive chronology of the album's writing had been lost.[22] Carlin dates the start of the writing sessions to December 1965.[23] In 2009, Wilson himself recalled that he may have been writing with Asher as early as November 1965.[24]\n
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^Asher recalled that Wilson \"never planned ahead\" his studio booking times.[27] At another time, he said that they wrote melodies and lyrics for multiple songs that Wilson had already recorded instrumental tracks for.[28]\n
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^Also, Asher said that he conceived the title and subject matter of three of their eight songs.[31] On the publishing royalties, Asher agreed to a 25% cut, an arrangement that he felt was not necessarily commensurate with his contributions.[32]\n
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^Even further, it is sometimes advanced as the first concept album in the history of rock music.[39]\n
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^The lack of a hit single on the North American version of Rubber Soul added to the album's identity there as a self-contained artistic statement.[46]\n
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^Wilson's previous habits, evident in Today! and Summer Days, were to sacrifice portions of an album with lesser, superficial material.[44]Today! also contained five songs with a unified theme located on the album's second side, similar to Wilson's endeavor for the whole of Pet Sounds.[47]\n
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^Carl supported that Brian had been a greater fan of Spector than the Beatles.[50] Brian frequently discussed Spector's influence on his work, having learned how to produce records through attending his sessions.[51]\n
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^According to Wilson, Nelson Riddle taught him \"a lot about arranging\",[53] and Stebbins felt that the album's Riddle influence was more apparent than its Spector influence.[54]\n
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^In a 2002 foreword for Mojo, Wilson wrote that although he had already begun working on some of the songs, the urge to express his feelings after hearing Rubber Soul led to his decision to seek out a new lyricist.[56] Conversely, he told David Leaf in 1996 that he believed he was introduced to the LP by Asher.[57] In 2009, he said he wrote \"God Only Knows\" with Asher the morning after listening to the album for the first time.[24] Asher recalled that Wilson played him Rubber Soul and said that he wanted \"to do something that is better than this album.\"[15] Bruce Johnston remembered listening to the album at around Christmastime 1965 with Wilson and other friends. \"Brian said he thought that Rubber Soul was a great thematic pop album.\"[58]\n
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^Asher stated that during the writing sessions, Wilson did not explicitly state that the songs were based on his own personal experiences. Asher explained that while he was aware that certain songs were certainly written from Wilson's perspective, their conversations were limited \"to the theoretical\", for example, \"What if we write a song about a kid somewhere who doesn't fit in?\"[72]\n
^DeRogatis wrote that the introspective bent of the album contrasted the Beatles, who after taking LSD began addressing problems in the world around them.[108]\n
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^Pet Sounds percussionist Julius Wechter was a former member of Martin Denny's band.[121]\n
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^The most minimal track on the album, \"That's Not Me\", employs 6-string guitar, 12-string guitar, electric bass, organ, a drum kit, and additional percussion. The most expansive track on the album, \"God Only Knows\", employs string bass, electric bass, guitar, tack piano, harpsichord, accordion, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, violin, viola, cello, a drum kit, sleigh bells, tambourine and additional percussion.[123]\n
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^Referring to \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", Perone opined that the track sounded \"significantly less like a rock band supplemented with auxiliary instrumentation [...] than a rock band integrated into an eclectic mix of studio instrumentation.\"[128]\n
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^This sighing motif reappears in \"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)\" and \"Caroline, No\".[128]\n
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^Augmented and ninth chords appear less than the others listed.[133]\n
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^All of the Beach Boys' prior records were mostly reliant on major or minor triads.[134]\n
^\"You Still Believe in Me\" (B), \"I'm Waiting for the Day\" (E), \"Sloop John B\" (A♭), and \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\" (B♭).[129]\n
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^Two examples of its tertian shifts: \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" shifts from A to F to D, while \"That's Not Me\" shifts from F♯ to A and back to F♯.[139]\n
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^Brian had also played Dennis and Carl excerpts of the new music over the phone while they were in Japan.[165]\n
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^In his 2016 memoir, Brian wrote that Carl was enthused with the album, but Love and Dennis were not.[169]\n
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^Carl said in 1996, \"We knew this was good music. [...] I loved every minute of it. He [Brian] could do no wrong. He could play me anything, and I would love it.\"[171]\n
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^Work was already started on \"Sloop John B\" (in July and December 1965), \"You Still Believe in Me\", and \"Pet Sounds\" (both in November 1965).[188]\n
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^At Gold Star, Wilson tracked \"Good Vibrations\" and the instrumentals of \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\" and \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\";[190] at Sunset Sound, he tracked the instrumental of \"Here Today\".[191]\n
^For his session of \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\", Paul Tanner remembered: \"Brian came over to me and sang such and such a thing, and I said 'Well, write it down and I'll play it,' and he said 'Write it down? We don't write anything down\u2014if you want it written down you have to write it down yourself.\"[198]\n
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^Although Spector's trademark sound was aurally complex, many of the best-known Wall of Sound recordings were recorded on Ampex three-track recorders. Spector's backing tracks were recorded live, and usually in a single take. These backing tracks were mixed live, in mono, and taped directly onto one track of the three-track recorder. The lead vocal was then taped, usually (though not always) as an uninterrupted live performance, recorded direct to the second track of the recorder. The master was completed with the addition of backing vocals on the third track before the three tracks were mixed down to create the mono master tape.[201]\n
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^\"God Only Knows\", \"Here Today\", \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", \"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times\", and \"I'm Waiting for the Day\".[208]\n
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^In 1995, it emerged that this session was originally intended to add vocals to \"Let's Go Away for Awhile\", but Capitol insisted that the session date be used for the album's mixing.[213]\n
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^In that era, radio and TV were broadcast in mono and most domestic and automotive radios and record players were monophonic.[200]\n
^According to historian Brad Elliot, Pet Sounds was chosen as the album's title before its cover photo was taken.[207]\n
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^The crew's footage was lost, but later rediscovered in 2021.[281]\n
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^During the previous September, the Animals had released an album called Animal Tracks.[283]\n
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^Brian asked Britz: \"Hey, Chuck, is it possible we can bring a horse in here without [...] if we don't screw everything up?\", to which a clearly startled Britz responds, \"I beg your pardon?\", with Brian then pleading, \"Honest to God, now, the horse is tame and everything!\"[285]\n
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^The first was filmed at Brian's Laurel Way home with Dennis acting as cameraman, the second near Lake Arrowhead. While the second film, containing footage of the group minus Bruce flailing around in grotesque horror masks and playing Old Maid, was intended to be accompanied by excerpts from \"Wouldn't It Be Nice\", \"Here Today\" and \"God Only Knows\", slight edits were made by the BBC to reduce the film's length.[311]\n
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^According to a late May 1966 report, there were initially no plans for the company to issue Pet Sounds in the UK.[312]\n
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^Townshend later stated: \"'God Only Knows' is simple and elegant and was stunning when it first appeared; it still sounds perfect\".[332]\n
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^He lamented that Brian did not join the group on their November 1966 tour of Britain \"to experience how much excitement the records were causing, because all his hard work was being rewarded in full measure and he didn't get to enjoy the full impact of the success first hand.\"[171]\n
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^Noel Murray of The A.V. Club theorized that the success of \"Good Vibrations\" helped convert detractors of Pet Sounds who were confused by the album's \"un-hip orchestrations and pervasive sadness [and] didn't immediately get what Wilson was trying to do.\"[340]\n
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^Upon release, Wilson stated that Love You was \"the first time since Pet Sounds that I've felt this thoroughly satisfied with an album.\"[346]\n
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^At the same ceremony, the Anita Kerr Singers won Best Performance by a Vocal Group for an album that included a rendition of \"Good Vibrations\".[300]\n
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^Cannon's negative remarks about the Beach Boys were withheld from publication by the magazine's editor.[354] Williams similarly cited Wilson's narrow range of influences as a reason the album was not as celebrated as the Beatles' work.[353]\n
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^The third edition of Larkin's book, published in 2000, ranked the album at number 18.[380]\n
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^According to musician Lenie Colacino, McCartney \"didn't start using the upper register on his Rickenbacker bass until after he heard Pet Sounds. The bass parts for 'Here Today' directly influenced the way Paul played on 'With a Little Help' and 'Getting Better'.\"[437] Granata writes that, by the time the Beatles recorded Magical Mystery Tour (November 1967), \"it was clear they'd fully assimilated the essence of Brian's eclectic arranging style.\"[438]\n
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^The 1995 reissue of Pet Sounds charted in the UK in 2016.\n
^ abcElliott, Brad (August 31, 1999). \"Pet Sounds Track Notes\". beachboysfanclub.com. Archived from the original on January 24, 2009. Retrieved March 3, 2009.\n
^ abcdeSlowinski, Craig. \"Pet Sounds LP\". beachboysarchives.com. Endless Summer Quarterly. Archived from the original on September 24, 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2018.\n
^Andrews, Grame (March 4, 1967). \"Americans Regain Rule in England\". Billboard Magazine. Vol. 79, no. 9. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. pp. 1, 10. Retrieved April 27, 2013.\n
Brend, Mark (2005). Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop (1st ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Backbeat. ISBN978-0-87930-855-1.
Kent, David (2005). Australian Chart Book (1940-1969). Australian Chart Book. ISBN9780646444390.
\n
Kent, Nick (2009). \"The Last Beach Movie Revisited: The Life of Brian Wilson\". The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music. Da Capo Press. ISBN9780786730742.
Schinder, Scott (2007). \"The Beach Boys\". In Schinder, Scott; Schwartz, Andy (eds.). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN978-0-313-33845-8.
Toop, David (1999). Exotica: Fabricated Soundscapes in a Real World: Fabricated Soundscapes in the Real World (1st ed.). London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN978-1852425951.
Wilson, Brian (2002). \"Foreword\". 1000 Days That Shook the World (The Psychedelic Beatles \u2013 April 1, 1965 to December 26, 1967). London: Mojo Special Limited Edition. OCLC155990822.
\n\n\n\n",
+ "page_last_modified": " Sun, 17 Mar 2024 06:16:57 GMT"
+ },
+ {
+ "page_name": "The Beach Boys - Wikipedia",
+ "page_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys",
+ "page_snippet": "The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies, adolescent-oriented lyrics, and musical ...United by a shared love of the group's music, they named Pet Sounds Studio in honor of the band. Rolling Stone writer Barry Walters wrote in 2000 that albums such as Surf's Up and Love You \"are becoming sonic blueprints, akin to what early Velvet Underground LPs meant to the previous indie peer group.\" Distinguished by their vocal harmonies, adolescent-oriented lyrics, and musical ingenuity, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. They drew on the music of older pop vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound. Under Brian's direction, they often incorporated classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. It was during the sessions for this single that Brian made the production decision from that point on to use double tracking on the group's vocals, resulting in a deeper and more resonant sound. The album of the same name followed in March and reached number 2 on the Billboard charts. Its success propelled the group into a nationwide spotlight, and was vital to launching surf music as a national craze, albeit the Beach Boys' vocal approach to the genre, not the original instrumental style pioneered by Dick Dale. Biographer Luis Sanchez highlights the \"Surfin' U.S.A.\" single as a turning point for the band, \"creat[ing] a direct passage to California life for a wide teenage audience ... Carl took over as the band's musical director onstage. Now a full-time studio artist, Brian wanted to move the Beach Boys beyond their surf aesthetic, believing that their image was antiquated and distracting the public from his talents as a producer and songwriter. Musically, he said he began to \"take the things I learned from Phil Spector and use more instruments whenever I could. I doubled up on basses and tripled up on keyboards, which made everything sound bigger and deeper.\" Many of the album's advocates believe that had it been released, it would have altered the group's direction and cemented them at the vanguard of rock innovators. In 2011, Uncut magazine staff voted Smile the \"greatest bootleg recording of all time\". From 1965 to 1967, the Beach Boys had developed a musical and lyrical sophistication that contrasted their work from before and after. This divide was further solidified by the difference in sound between their albums and their stage performances.",
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The Beach Boys formed as a garage band centered on Brian's songwriting and managed by the Wilsons' father, Murry. In 1963, the band enjoyed their first national hit with \"Surfin' U.S.A.\", beginning a string of top-ten singles that reflected a southern Californiayouth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, dubbed the \"California sound\". They were one of the few American rock bands to sustain their commercial standing during the British Invasion. Starting with 1965's The Beach Boys Today!, they abandoned beachgoing themes for more personal lyrics and ambitious orchestrations. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and \"Good Vibrations\" single raised the group's prestige as rock innovators; both are now widely considered to be among the greatest and most influential works in popular music history. After scrapping the Smile album in 1967, Brian gradually ceded control of the group to his bandmates.\n
In the late 1960s, the group's commercial momentum faltered in the U.S., and they were widely dismissed by the early rock music press before rebranding themselves in the early 1970s. Carl took over as de facto leader until the mid-1970s, when the band responded to the growing success of their live shows and greatest hits compilations by transitioning into an oldies act. Dennis drowned in 1983 and Brian soon became estranged from the group. Following Carl's death from lung cancer in 1998, the band granted Love legal rights to tour under the group's name. In the early 2010s, the original members briefly reunited for the band's 50th anniversary tour. As of 2024[update], Brian and Jardine do not perform with Love's edition of the Beach Boys, but remain official members of the band.\n
At the time of his 16th birthday on June 20, 1958, Brian Wilson shared a bedroom with his brothers, Dennis and Carl\u2014aged 13 and 11, respectively\u2014in their family home in Hawthorne. He had watched his father Murry Wilson play piano, and had listened intently to the harmonies of vocal groups such as the Four Freshmen.[1] After dissecting songs such as \"Ivory Tower\" and \"Good News\", Brian would teach family members how to sing the background harmonies.[2] For his birthday that year, Brian received a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He learned how to overdub, using his vocals and those of Carl and their mother.[1] Brian played piano with Carl and David Marks, an eleven-year-old longtime neighbor, playing guitars they had each received as Christmas presents.[3]\n
Soon Brian and Carl were avidly listening to Johnny Otis' KFOX radio show.[1] Inspired by the simple structure and vocals of the rhythm and blues songs he heard, Brian changed his piano-playing style and started writing songs.[citation needed] Family gatherings brought the Wilsons in contact with cousin Mike Love. Brian taught Love's sister Maureen and a friend harmonies.[1] Later, Brian, Love and two friends performed at Hawthorne High School.[4] Brian also knew Al Jardine, a high school classmate.[5] Brian suggested to Jardine that they team up with his cousin and brother Carl. Love gave the fledgling band its name: \"The Pendletones\", a pun on \"Pendleton\", a style of woolen shirt popular at the time.[6] Dennis was the only avid surfer in the group, and he suggested that the group write songs that celebrated the sport and the lifestyle that it had inspired in Southern California.[7][8][nb 1] Brian finished the song, titled \"Surfin'\", and with Mike Love, wrote \"Surfin' Safari\".[8]\n
Murry Wilson, who was a sometime songwriter, arranged for the Pendletones to meet his publisher Hite Morgan.[10] He said: \"Finally, [Hite] agreed to hear it, and Mrs. Morgan said 'Drop everything, we're going to record your song. I think it's good.' And she's the one responsible.\"[11] On September 15, 1961, the band recorded a demo of \"Surfin'\" with the Morgans. A more professional recording was made on October 3, at World Pacific Studio in Hollywood.[7] David Marks was not present at the session as he was in school that day.[12][nb 2] Murry brought the demos to Herb Newman, owner of Candix Records and Era Records, and he signed the group on December 8.[8] When the single was released a few weeks later, the band found that they had been renamed \"the Beach Boys\".[7] Candix wanted to name the group the Surfers until Russ Regan, a young promoter with Era Records, noted that there already existed a group by that name. He suggested calling them the Beach Boys.[14] \"Surfin'\" was a regional success for the West Coast, and reached number 75 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart.\n
Surfin' Safari, Surfin' U.S.A., Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe[edit]
\nThe Beach Boys, in Pendleton outfits, performing at a local high school, late 1962\n
By this time the de facto manager of the Beach Boys, Murry landed the group's first paying gig (for which they earned $300) on New Year's Eve, 1961, at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance in Long Beach.[8] In their early public appearances, the band wore heavy wool jacket-like shirts that local surfers favored[15] before switching to their trademark striped shirts and white pants (a look that was taken directly from the Kingston Trio).[16][17] All five members sang, with Brian playing bass, Dennis playing drums, Carl playing lead guitar and Al Jardine playing rhythm guitar, while Mike Love was the main singer and occasionally played saxophone. In early 1962, Morgan requested that some of the members add vocals to a couple of instrumental tracks that he had recorded with other musicians. This led to the creation of the short-lived group Kenny & the Cadets, which Brian led under the pseudonym \"Kenny\". The other members were Carl, Jardine, and the Wilsons' mother Audree.[18][nb 3] In February, Jardine left the Beach Boys and was replaced by David Marks on rhythm guitar.[19] A common misconception is that Jardine left to focus on dental school. In reality, Jardine did not even apply to dental school until 1964, and the reason he left in February 1962 was due to creative differences and his belief that the newly-formed group would not be a commercial success.[20] \n
After being turned down by Dot and Liberty, the Beach Boys signed a seven-year contract with Capitol Records.[21] This was at the urging of Capitol executive and staff producer Nick Venet who signed the group, seeing them as the \"teenage gold\" he had been scouting for.[22] On June 4, 1962, the Beach Boys debuted on Capitol with their second single, \"Surfin' Safari\" backed with \"409\". The release prompted national coverage in the June 9 issue of Billboard, which praised Love's lead vocal and said the song had potential.[23] \"Surfin' Safari\" rose to number 14 and found airplay in New York and Phoenix, a surprise for the label.[19]\n
The Beach Boys' first album, Surfin' Safari, was released in October 1962. It was different from other rock albums of the time in that it consisted almost entirely of original songs, primarily written by Brian with Mike Love and friend Gary Usher.[19] Another unusual feature of the Beach Boys was that, although they were marketed as \"surf music\", their repertoire bore little resemblance to the music of other surf bands, which was mainly instrumental and incorporated heavy use of spring reverb. For this reason, some of the Beach Boys' early local performances had young audience members throwing vegetables at the band, believing that the group were poseurs.[24]\n
In January 1963, the Beach Boys recorded their first top-ten single, \"Surfin' U.S.A.\", which began their long run of highly successful recording efforts. It was during the sessions for this single that Brian made the production decision from that point on to use double tracking on the group's vocals, resulting in a deeper and more resonant sound.[26] The album of the same name followed in March and reached number 2 on the Billboard charts.[27] Its success propelled the group into a nationwide spotlight, and was vital to launching surf music as a national craze,[28] albeit the Beach Boys' vocal approach to the genre, not the original instrumental style pioneered by Dick Dale.[24] Biographer Luis Sanchez highlights the \"Surfin' U.S.A.\" single as a turning point for the band, \"creat[ing] a direct passage to California life for a wide teenage audience ... [and] a distinct Southern California sensibility that exceeded its conception as such to advance right to the front of American consciousness.\"[29]\n
Throughout 1963, and for the next few years, Brian produced a variety of singles for outside artists. Among these were the Honeys, a surfer trio that comprised sisters Diane and Marilyn Rovell with cousin Ginger Blake. Brian was convinced that they could be a successful female counterpart to the Beach Boys, and he produced a number of singles for them, although they could not replicate the Beach Boys' popularity.[30] He also attended some of Phil Spector's sessions at Gold Star Studios.[31] His creative and songwriting interests were revamped upon hearing the Ronettes' 1963 song \"Be My Baby\", which was produced by Spector. The first time he heard the song was while driving, and was so overwhelmed that he had to pull over to the side of the road and analyze the chorus.[32] Later, he reflected: \"I was unable to really think as a producer up until the time where I really got familiar with Phil Spector's work. That was when I started to design the experience to be a record rather than just a song.\"[33]\n
Surfer Girl marked the first time the group used outside musicians on a substantial portion of an LP.[34] Many of them were the musicians Spector used for his Wall of Sound productions.[35] Only a month after Surfer Girl's release the group's fourth album Little Deuce Coupe was issued. To close 1963, the band released a standalone Christmas-themed single, \"Little Saint Nick\", backed with an a cappella rendition of the scriptural song \"The Lord's Prayer\". The A-side peaked at number 3 on the US Billboard Christmas chart.[36] By the end of the year David Marks had left the group and Al Jardine had returned.\n
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British Invasion, Shut Down Volume 2, All Summer Long, and Christmas Album[edit]
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The surf music craze, along with the careers of nearly all surf acts, was slowly replaced by the British Invasion.[37] Following a successful Australasian tour in January and February 1964, the Beach Boys returned home to face their new competition, the Beatles. Both groups shared the same record label in the US, and Capitol's support for the Beach Boys immediately began waning. Although it generated a top-five single in \"Fun Fun Fun\", the group's fifth album, Shut Down Volume 2, became their first since Surfin' Safari not to reach the US top-ten. This caused Murry to fight for the band at the label more than before, often visiting their offices without warning to \"twist executive arms\".[38] Carl said that Phil Spector \"was Brian's favorite kind of rock; he liked [him] better than the early Beatles stuff. He loved the Beatles' later music when they evolved and started making intelligent, masterful music, but before that Phil was it.\"[39] According to Mike Love, Carl followed the Beatles closer than anyone else in the band, while Brian was the most \"rattled\" by the Beatles and felt tremendous pressure to \"keep pace\" with them.[40] For Brian, the Beatles ultimately \"eclipsed a lot [of what] we'd worked for ... [they] eclipsed the whole music world.\"[41][42][nb 4]\n
Brian wrote his last surf song, \"Don't Back Down\", in April 1964.[45] That month, during recording of the single \"I Get Around\", Murry was relieved of his duties as manager. He remained in close contact with the group and attempted to continue advising on their career decisions.[46] When \"I Get Around\" was released in May, it would climb to number 1 in the US and Canada, their first single to do so (also reaching the top-ten in Sweden and the UK), proving that the Beach Boys could compete with contemporary British pop groups.[47] \"I Get Around\" and \"Don't Back Down\" both appeared on the band's sixth album All Summer Long, released in July 1964 and reaching number 4 in the US. All Summer Long introduced exotic textures to the Beach Boys' sound exemplified by the piccolos and xylophones of its title track.[48] The album was a swan-song to the surf and car music the Beach Boys built their commercial standing upon. Later albums took a different stylistic and lyrical path.[49] Before this, a live album, Beach Boys Concert, was released in October to a four-week chart stay at number 1, containing a set list of previously recorded songs and covers that they had not yet recorded.[50]\n
\nThe Beach Boys in 1964; clockwise from top left: Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine.\n
In June 1964, Brian recorded the bulk of The Beach Boys' Christmas Album with a forty-one-piece studio orchestra in collaboration with Four Freshmen arranger Dick Reynolds. The album was a response to Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You (1963). Released in December, the Beach Boys' album was divided between five new, original Christmas-themed songs, and seven reinterpretations of traditional Christmas songs.[51] It would be regarded as one of the finest holiday albums of the rock era.[47] One single from the album, \"The Man with All the Toys\", was released, peaking at number 6 on the US Billboard Christmas chart.[52] On October 29, the Beach Boys performed for The T.A.M.I. Show, a concert film intended to bring together a wide range of musicians for a one-off performance. The result was released to movie theaters one month later.[53]\n
\nThe band with caricatures in Paris, November 1964\n
By the end of 1964, the stress of road travel, writing, and producing became too much for Brian. On December 23, while on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, he suffered a panic attack.[54] In January 1965, he announced his withdrawal from touring to concentrate entirely on songwriting and record production. For the last few days of 1964 and into early 1965, session musician and up-and-coming solo artist Glen Campbell agreed to temporarily serve as Brian's replacement in concert.[55] Carl took over as the band's musical director onstage.[56][nb 5] Now a full-time studio artist,[35] Brian wanted to move the Beach Boys beyond their surf aesthetic, believing that their image was antiquated and distracting the public from his talents as a producer and songwriter.[58] Musically, he said he began to \"take the things I learned from Phil Spector and use more instruments whenever I could. I doubled up on basses and tripled up on keyboards, which made everything sound bigger and deeper.\"[59]\n
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We needed to grow. Up to this point we had milked every idea dry [and did] every possible angle about surfing and [cars]. But we needed to grow\nartistically.\n
Released in March 1965, The Beach Boys Today! marked the first time the group experimented with the \"album-as-art\" form. The tracks on side one feature an uptempo sound that contrasts side two, which consists mostly of emotional ballads.[61] Music writer Scott Schinder referenced its \"suite-like structure\" as an early example of the rock album format being used to make a cohesive artistic statement.[35] Brian also established his new lyrical approach toward the autobiographical; journalist Nick Kent wrote that the subjects of Brian's songs \"were suddenly no longer simple happy souls harmonizing their sun-kissed innocence and dying devotion to each other over a honey-coated backdrop of surf and sand. Instead, they'd become highly vulnerable, slightly neurotic and riddled with telling insecurities.\"[62] In the book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop, Bob Stanley remarked that \"Brian was aiming for Johnny Mercer but coming up proto-indie.\"[63] In 2012, the album was voted 271 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[64]\n
In April 1965, Campbell's own career success pulled him from touring with the group.[65]Columbia Records staff producer Bruce Johnston was asked to locate a replacement for Campbell; having failed to find one, Johnston himself became a full-time member of the band on May 19, 1965. With Johnston's arrival, Brian now had a sixth voice he could work with in the band's vocal arrangements, with the June 4 vocal sessions for \"California Girls\" being Johnston's first recording session with the Beach Boys. \"California Girls\" was included on the band's next album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and eventually charted at number 3 in the US as the second single from the album, while the album itself went to number 2. The first single from Summer Days had been a reworked arrangement of \"Help Me, Rhonda\", which became the band's second number 1 US single in the spring of 1965.[66] For contractual reasons, owing to his previous deal with Columbia Records, Johnston was not able to be credited or pictured on Beach Boys records until 1967.[67]\n
To appease Capitol's demands for a Beach Boys LP for the 1965 Christmas season, Brian conceived Beach Boys' Party!, a live-in-the-studio album consisting mostly of acoustic covers of 1950s rock and R&B songs, in addition to covers of three Beatles songs, Bob Dylan's \"The Times They Are a-Changin'\", and idiosyncratic rerecordings of the group's earlier songs.[28] The album was an early precursor of the \"unplugged\" trend. It also included a cover of the Regents' song \"Barbara Ann\", which unexpectedly reached number 2 when released as a single several weeks later.[68] In November, the group released another top-twenty single, \"The Little Girl I Once Knew\". It was considered the band's most experimental statement thus far.[50] The single continued Brian's ambitions for daring arrangements, featuring unexpected tempo changes and numerous false endings.[69] With the exception of their 1963 and 1964 Christmas singles (\"Little Saint Nick\" and \"The Man with All the Toys\") it was the group's lowest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 since \"Ten Little Indians\" in 1962, peaking at number 20.[70] According to Luis Sanchez, in 1965, Bob Dylan was \"rewriting the rules for pop success\" with his music and image, and it was at this juncture that Wilson \"led The Beach Boys into a transitional phase in an effort to win the pop terrain that had been thrown up for grabs.\"[71]\n
Wilson collaborated with jingle writer Tony Asher for several of the songs on the album Pet Sounds, a refinement of the themes and ideas that were introduced in Today!.[61] In some ways, the music was a jarring departure from their earlier style.[72][73] Jardine explained that \"it took us quite a while to adjust to [the new material] because it wasn't music you could necessarily dance to\u2014it was more like music you could make love to.\"[74] In The Journal on the Art of Record Production, Marshall Heiser writes that Pet Sounds \"diverges from previous Beach Boys' efforts in several ways: its sound field has a greater sense of depth and 'warmth;' the songs employ even more inventive use of harmony and chord voicings; the prominent use of percussion is a key feature (as opposed to driving drum backbeats); whilst the orchestrations, at times, echo the quirkiness of 'exotica' bandleader Les Baxter, or the 'cool' of Burt Bacharach, more so than Spector's teen fanfares.\"[75]\n
For Pet Sounds, Brian desired to make \"a complete statement\", similar to what he believed the Beatles had done with their newest album Rubber Soul, released in December 1965.[76] Brian was immediately enamored with the album, given the impression that it had no filler tracks, a feature that was mostly unheard of at a time when 45 rpm singles were considered more noteworthy than full-length LPs.[77][78] He later said: \"It didn't make me want to copy them but to be as good as them. I didn't want to do the same kind of music, but on the same level.\"[39] Thanks to mutual connections, Brian was introduced to the Beatles' former press officer Derek Taylor, who was subsequently employed as the Beach Boys' publicist. Responding to Brian's request to reinvent the band's image, Taylor devised a promotion campaign with the tagline \"Brian Wilson is a genius\", a belief Taylor sincerely held.[79] Taylor's prestige was crucial in offering a credible perspective to those on the outside, and his efforts are widely recognized as instrumental in the album's success in Britain.[80]\n
\"God Only Knows\" conditions its tonality between the keys of E and A major, which according to musicologist Stephen Downes, was innovative even in the context of the song's Baroque antecedents. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs ever written.[81]
Released on May 16, 1966, Pet Sounds was widely influential and raised the band's prestige as an innovative rock group.[50] Early reviews for the album in the US ranged from negative to tentatively positive, and its sales numbered approximately 500,000 units, a drop-off from the run of albums that immediately preceded it.[82] It was assumed that Capitol considered Pet Sounds a risk, appealing more to an older demographic than the younger, female audience upon which the Beach Boys had built their commercial standing.[83] Within two months, the label capitulated by releasing the group's first greatest hits compilation album, Best of the Beach Boys, which was quickly certified gold by the RIAA.[84] By contrast, Pet Sounds met a highly favorable critical response in Britain, where it reached number 2 and remained among the top-ten positions for six months.[85] Responding to the hype, Melody Maker ran a feature in which many pop musicians were asked whether they believed that the album was truly revolutionary and progressive, or \"as sickly as peanut butter\". The author concluded that \"the record's impact on artists and the men behind the artists has been considerable.\"[86]\n
\nThe Beach Boys accepting a gold record sales certification for \"Good Vibrations\" at the Capitol Tower, late 1966.\n
Throughout the summer of 1966, Brian concentrated on finishing the group's next single, \"Good Vibrations\".[87] Instead of working on whole songs with clear large-scale syntactical structures, he limited himself to recording short interchangeable fragments (or \"modules\"). Through the method of tape splicing, each fragment could then be assembled into a linear sequence, allowing any number of larger structures and divergent moods to be produced at a later time.[75] Coming at a time when pop singles were usually recorded in under two hours, it was one of the most complex pop productions ever undertaken, with sessions for the song stretching over several months in four major Hollywood studios. It was also the most expensive single ever recorded to that point, with production costs estimated to be in the tens of thousands.[88]\n
\nVan Dyke Parks, Brian's lyricist and collaborator for the unfinished album Smile\n
In the midst of \"Good Vibrations\" sessions, Wilson invited session musician and songwriter Van Dyke Parks to collaborate as lyricist for the Beach Boys' next album project, soon titled Smile. Parks agreed.[89][90] Wilson and Parks intended Smile to be a continuous suite of songs linked both thematically and musically, with the main songs linked together by small vocal pieces and instrumental segments that elaborated on the major songs' musical themes.[91] It was explicitly American in style and subject, a conscious reaction to the overwhelming British dominance of popular music at the time.[92][93] Some of the music incorporated chanting, cowboy songs, explorations in Indian and Hawaiian music, jazz, classical tone poems, cartoon sound effects, musique concr\u00e8te, and yodeling.[94]Saturday Evening Post writer Jules Siegel recalled that, on one October evening, Brian announced to his wife and friends that he was \"writing a teenage symphony to God\".[95]\n
Recording for Smile lasted about a year, from mid-1966 to mid-1967, and followed the same modular production approach as \"Good Vibrations\".[96] Concurrently, Wilson planned many different multimedia side projects, such as a sound effects collage, a comedy album, and a \"health food\" album.[97] Capitol did not support all these ideas, which led to the Beach Boys' desire to form their own label, Brother Records. According to biographer Steven Gaines, Wilson employed his newfound \"best friend\" David Anderle as head of the label.[98]\n
Throughout 1966, EMI flooded the UK market with Beach Boys albums not yet released there, including Beach Boys' Party!, The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!),[99] while Best of the Beach Boys was number 2 there for several weeks at the end of the year.[100] Over the final quarter of 1966, the Beach Boys were the highest-selling album act in the UK, where for the first time in three years American artists broke the chart dominance of British acts.[101] In 1971, Cue magazine wrote that, from mid-1966 to late-1967, the Beach Boys \"were among the vanguard in practically every aspect of the counter culture\".[102]\n
\"Good Vibrations\" was the Beach Boys' third single to top the Billboard Hot 100. It proliferated a wave of pop experimentation with its rush of riff changes, echo-chamber effects, and intricate harmonies.[103]
Released on October 10, 1966, \"Good Vibrations\" was the Beach Boys' third US number 1 single, reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in December, and became their first number 1 in Britain.[104] That month, the record was their first single certified gold by the RIAA.[105] It came to be widely acclaimed as one of the greatest masterpieces of rock music.[106] In December 1966, the Beach Boys were voted the top band in the world in the NME's annual readers' poll, ahead of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers, the Rolling Stones, and the Four Tops.[107]\n
Throughout the first half of 1967, the album's release date was repeatedly postponed as Brian tinkered with the recordings, experimenting with different takes and mixes, unable or unwilling to supply a final version. Meanwhile, he suffered from delusions and paranoia, believing on one occasion that the would-be album track \"Fire\" caused a building to burn down.[108] On January 3, 1967, Carl Wilson refused to be drafted for military service, leading to indictment and criminal prosecution, which he challenged as a conscientious objector.[109] The FBI arrested him in April,[110] and it took several years for courts to resolve the matter.[111]\n
After months of recording and media hype, Smile was shelved for personal, technical, and legal reasons.[112] A February 1967 lawsuit seeking $255,000 (equivalent to $2.24 million in 2022) was launched against Capitol Records over neglected royalty payments. Within the lawsuit was an attempt to terminate the band's contract with Capitol before its November 1969 expiry.[113] Many of Wilson's associates, including Parks and Anderle, disassociated themselves from the group by April 1967.[114] Brian later said: \"Time can be spent in the studio to the point where you get so next to it, you don't know where you are with it\u2014you decide to just chuck it for a while.\"[115]\n
In the decades following Smile's non-release, it became the subject of intense speculation and mystique[108][116] and the most legendary unreleased album in pop music history.[50][117] Many of the album's advocates believe that had it been released, it would have altered the group's direction and cemented them at the vanguard of rock innovators.[118] In 2011, Uncut magazine staff voted Smile the \"greatest bootleg recording of all time\".[119]\n
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1967\u20131969: Faltered popularity and Brian's reduced involvement[edit]
From 1965 to 1967, the Beach Boys had developed a musical and lyrical sophistication that contrasted their work from before and after. This divide was further solidified by the difference in sound between their albums and their stage performances.[120] This resulted in a split fanbase corresponding to two distinct musical markets. One group enjoys the band's early work as a wholesome representation of American popular culture from before the political and social movements brought on in the mid-1960s. The other group also appreciates the early songs for their energy and complexity, but not as much as the band's ambitious work that was created during the formative psychedelic era.[120] At the time, rock music journalists typically valued the Beach Boys' early records over their experimental work.[121][nb 6]\n
In May 1967, the Beach Boys attempted to tour Europe with four extra musicians brought from the US, but were stopped by the British musicians' union. The tour went on without the extra support, and critics described their performances as \"amateurish\" and \"floundering\".[122] At the last minute, the Beach Boys declined to headline the Monterey Pop Festival, an event held in June. According to David Leaf, \"Monterey was a gathering place for the 'far out' sounds of the 'new' rock ... and it is thought that [their] non-appearance was what really turned the 'underground' tide against them.\"[123] Fan magazines speculated that the group was on the verge of breaking up.[124] Detractors called the band the \"Bleach Boys\" and \"the California Hypes\" as media focus shifted from Los Angeles to the happenings in San Francisco.[125] As authenticity became a higher concern among critics, the group's legitimacy in rock music became an oft-repeated criticism, especially since their early songs appeared to celebrate a politically unconscious youth culture.[126][nb 7]\n
Although Smile had been cancelled, the Beach Boys were still under pressure and a contractual obligation to record and present an album to Capitol.[128] Carl remembered: \"Brian just said, 'I can't do this. We're going to make a homespun version of [Smile] instead. We're just going to take it easy. I'll get in the pool and sing. Or let's go in the gym and do our parts.' That was Smiley Smile.\"[129] Sessions for the new album lasted from June to July 1967 at Brian's new makeshift home studio. Most of the album featured the Beach Boys playing their own instruments, rather than the session musicians employed in much of their previous work.[130] It was the first album for which production was credited to the entire group instead of Brian alone.[118]\n
In July 1967, lead single \"Heroes and Villains\" was issued, arriving after months of public anticipation, and reached number 12 in US. It was met with general confusion and underwhelming reviews, and in the NME, Jimi Hendrix famously dismissed it as a \"psychedelic barbershop quartet\". By then, the group's lawsuit with Capitol was resolved, and it was agreed that Smile would not be the band's next album.[131] In August, the group embarked on a two-date tour of Hawaii.[132] The shows saw Brian make a brief return to live performance, as Bruce Johnston chose to take a temporary break from the band during the summer of 1967, feeling that the atmosphere within the band \"had all got too weird\".[133][134] The performances were filmed and recorded with the intention of releasing a live album, Lei'd in Hawaii, which was also left unfinished and unreleased.[135] The general record-buying public came to view the music made after this time as the point marking the band's artistic decline.[120]\n
Smiley Smile was released on September 18, 1967,[136] and peaked at number 41 in the US,[118] making it their worst-selling album to that date.[137] Critics and fans were generally underwhelmed by the album.[138] According to Scott Schinder, the album was released to \"general incomprehension. While Smile may have divided the Beach Boys' fans had it been released, Smiley Smile merely baffled them.\"[118] The group was virtually blacklisted by the music press, to the extent that reviews of the group's records were either withheld from publication or published long after the release dates.[136] When released in the UK in November, it performed better, reaching number 9.[139] Over the years, the album gathered a reputation as one of the best \"chill-out\" albums to listen to during an LSD comedown.[140] In 1974, NME voted it the 64th-greatest album of all time.[141]\n
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When we did Wild Honey, Brian asked me to get more involved in the recording end. He wanted a break [because he] had been doing it all too long.\n
The Beach Boys immediately recorded a new album, Wild Honey, an excursion into soul music, and a self-conscious attempt to \"regroup\" themselves as a rock band in opposition to their more orchestral affairs of the past.[142] Its music differs in many ways from previous Beach Boys records: it contains very little group singing compared to previous albums, and mainly features Brian singing at his piano. Again, the Beach Boys recorded mostly at his home studio.[123] Love reflected that Wild Honey was \"completely out of the mainstream for what was going on at that time ... and that was the idea.\"[143]\n
Wild Honey was released on December 18, 1967, in competition with the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request.[144] It had a higher chart placing than Smiley Smile, but still failed to make the top-twenty and remained on the charts for only 15 weeks.[123] As with Smiley Smile, contemporary critics viewed it as inconsequential,[145] and it alienated fans whose expectations had been raised by Smile.[123] That month, Mike Love told a British journalist: \"Brian has been rethinking our recording program and in any case we all have a much greater say nowadays in what we turn out in the studio.\"[146]\n
The Beach Boys were at their lowest popularity in the late 1960s, and their cultural standing was especially worsened by their public image, which remained incongruous with their peers' \"heavier\" music.[147] At the end of 1967, Rolling Stone co-founder and editor Jann Wenner printed an influential article that denounced the Beach Boys as \"just one prominent example of a group that has gotten hung up on trying to catch The Beatles. It's a pointless pursuit.\"[148] The article had the effect of excluding the group among serious rock fans[148][149] and such controversy followed them into the next year.[150] Capitol continued to bill them as \"America's Top Surfin' Group!\" and expected Brian to write more beachgoing songs for the yearly summer markets.[151] From 1968 onward, his songwriting output declined substantially, but the public narrative of \"Brian as leader\" continued.[152] The group also stopped wearing their longtime striped-shirt stage uniforms in favor of matching white, polyester suits that resembled a Las Vegas show band's.[153]\n
\nThe Beach Boys in 1968, left to right: Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Carl Wilson (top), Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston.\n
After meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris, Love and other high-profile celebrities such as the Beatles and Donovan traveled to Rishikesh, India, in February\u2013March 1968. The following Beach Boys album, Friends, had songs influenced by the Transcendental Meditation the Maharishi taught. In support of Friends, Love arranged for the Beach Boys to tour with the Maharishi in the US Starting on May 3, 1968, the tour lasted five shows and was canceled when the Maharishi withdrew to fulfill film contracts. Because of disappointing audience numbers and the Maharishi's withdrawal, 24 tour dates were canceled at a cost estimated at $250,000.[154]Friends, released on June 24, peaked at number 126 in the US.[155] In August, Capitol issued an album of Beach Boys backing tracks, Stack-o-Tracks. It was the first Beach Boys LP that failed to chart in the US and UK.[156]\n
In June 1968, Dennis befriended Charles Manson, an aspiring singer-songwriter, and their relationship lasted for several months. Dennis bought him time at Brian's home studio, where recording sessions were attempted while Brian stayed in his room.[157][158] Dennis then proposed that Manson be signed to Brother Records. Brian reportedly disliked Manson, and a deal was never made.[159] In July 1968, the group released the single \"Do It Again\", which lyrically harkened back to their earlier surf songs. Around this time, Brian admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital; his bandmates wrote and produced material in his absence.[160] Released in January 1969, the album 20/20 mixed new material with outtakes and leftovers from recent albums; Brian produced virtually none of the newer recordings.[161]\n
The Beach Boys recorded one song by Manson without his involvement: \"Cease to Exist\", rewritten as \"Never Learn Not to Love\", which was included on 20/20. As his cult of followers took over Dennis's home, Dennis gradually distanced himself from Manson.[162] According to Leaf, \"The entire Wilson family reportedly feared for their lives.\"[163]\n
In August, the Manson Family committed the Tate\u2013LaBianca murders. According to Jon Parks, the band's tour manager, it was widely suspected in the Hollywood community that Manson was responsible for the murders, and it had been known that Manson had been involved with the Beach Boys, causing the band to be viewed as pariahs for a time.[164] In November, police apprehended Manson, and his connection with the Beach Boys received media attention. He was later convicted for several counts of murder and conspiracy to murder.[165]\n
In April 1969, the band revisited its 1967 lawsuit against Capitol after it alleged an audit revealed the band was owed over $2 million for unpaid royalties and production duties.[166] In May, Brian told the music press that the group's funds were depleted to the point that it was considering filing for bankruptcy at the end of the year, which Disc & Music Echo called \"stunning news\" and a \"tremendous shock on the American pop scene\". Brian hoped that the success of a forthcoming single, \"Break Away\", would mend the financial issues.[citation needed] The song, written and produced by Brian and Murry, reached number 63 in the US and number 6 in the UK,[167] and Brian's remarks to the press ultimately thwarted long-simmering contract negotiations with Deutsche Grammophon.[168] The group's Capitol contract expired two weeks later with one more album still due. Live in London, a live album recorded in December 1968, was released in several countries in 1970 to fulfil the contract, although it would not see US release until 1976.[169] After the contract was completed Capitol deleted the Beach Boys' catalog from print, effectively cutting off their royalty flow.[166] The lawsuit was later settled in their favor and they acquired the rights to their post-1965 catalog.[170]\n
In August, Sea of Tunes, the Beach Boys' catalog, was sold to Irving Almo Music for $700,000 (equivalent to $5.59 million in 2022).[171] According to his wife, Marilyn Wilson, Brian was devastated by the sale.[172] Over the years, the catalog generated more than $100 million in publishing royalties, none of which Murry or the band members ever received.[173] That same month, Carl, Dennis, Love, and Jardine sought a permanent replacement for Johnston, with Johnston unaware of this search. They approached Carl's brother-in-law Billy Hinsche, who declined the offer to focus on his college studies.[174]\n
Sunflower, Surf's Up, Carl and the Passions, and Holland[edit]
\nThe Beach Boys in 1971; top left to right: Mike Love, Brian Wilson; middle left to right: Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson; bottom: Bruce Johnston.\n
The group was signed to Reprise Records in 1970.[175] Scott Schinder described the label as \"probably the hippest and most artist-friendly major label of the time.\"[176] The deal was brokered by Van Dyke Parks, who was then employed as a multimedia executive at Warner Music Group. Reprise's contract stipulated Brian's proactive involvement with the band in all albums.[177] By the time the Beach Boys' tenure ended with Capitol in 1969, they had sold 65 million records worldwide, closing the decade as the most commercially successful American group in popular music.[178]\n
After recording over 30 different songs and going through several album titles, their first LP for Reprise, Sunflower, was released on August 31, 1970.[179]Sunflower featured a strong group presence with significant writing contributions from all six band members.[180] Brian was active during this period, writing or co-writing seven of Sunflower's 12 songs and performing at half of the band's domestic concerts in 1970.[181] The album received critical acclaim in both the US and the UK.[182] This was offset by the album reaching only number 151 on US record charts during a four-week stay,[179] becoming one of the worst-selling of the Beach Boys' albums at that point.[183] Fans generally regard the LP as the Beach Boys' finest post-Pet Sounds album.[184] In 2003, it placed at number 380 on Rolling Stone's \"Greatest Albums of All Time\" list.[185]\n
In mid-1970, the Beach Boys hired radio presenter Jack Rieley as their manager. One of his initiatives was to encourage the band to record songs featuring more socially conscious lyrics.[187] He also requested the completion of Smile track \"Surf's Up\" and arranged a guest appearance at a Grateful Dead concert at Bill Graham's Fillmore East in April 1971 to foreground the Beach Boys' transition into the counterculture.[188] During this time, the group ceased wearing matching uniforms on stage,[189] while Dennis took time to star alongside James Taylor, Laurie Bird, and Warren Oates in the cult film Two-Lane Blacktop, released in 1971. Later in 1971, Dennis injured his hand, leaving him temporarily unable to play the drums.[184] He continued in the band, singing and occasionally playing keyboards, while Ricky Fataar, formally of the Flames, took over on drums.[190] In July, the American music press rated the Beach Boys \"the hottest grossing act\" in the country, alongside Grand Funk Railroad.[186] The band filmed a concert for ABC-TV in Central Park, which aired as Good Vibrations from Central Park on August 19.[191]\n
On August 30, the band released Surf's Up, which was moderately successful, reaching the US top-thirty, a marked improvement over their recent releases.[192] While the record charted, the Beach Boys added to their renewed fame by performing a near-sellout set at Carnegie Hall; their live shows during this era included reworked arrangements of many of their previous songs,[193] with their set lists culling from Pet Sounds and Smile.[194] On October 28, the Beach Boys were the featured cover story on that date's issue of Rolling Stone. It included the first part of a lengthy two-part interview, titled \"The Beach Boys: A California Saga\", conducted by Tom Nolan and David Felton.[195]\n
Bruce Johnston left the Beach Boys in early 1972, with Fataar and another ex-Flames member, singer and guitarist Blondie Chaplin, becoming official members of the band. The new line-up released the comparatively unsuccessful Carl and the Passions \u2013 \"So Tough\" in May 1972, followed by Holland in January 1973. Reprise felt Holland needed a strong single. Following the intervention of Van Dyke Parks, this resulted in the inclusion of \"Sail On, Sailor\".[196] Reprise approved, and the resulting album peaked at number 37. Brian's musical children's story, Mount Vernon and Fairway, was included as a bonus EP.[197]\n
\n
Greatest hits LPs, touring resurgence, and Caribou sessions[edit]
\n
After Holland, the group maintained a touring regimen, captured on the double live album The Beach Boys in Concert released in November 1973, but recorded very little in the studio through 1975.[198] Several months earlier, they had announced that they would complete Smile, but this never came to fruition, and plans for its release were once again abandoned.[199][nb 8] Following Murry's death in June 1973, Brian retreated into his bedroom and withdrew further into drug abuse, alcoholism, chain smoking, and overeating.[201] In October, the band fired Rieley.[202] Rieley's position was succeeded by Mike Love's brother, Stephen, and Chicago manager James William Guercio.[203] Chaplin and Fataar left the band in December 1973 and November 1974, respectively, with Dennis returning to drums following Fataar's departure.[204]\n
The Beach Boys' greatest hits compilation album Endless Summer was released in June 1974 to unexpected success, becoming the band's second number 1 US album in October.[205][206] The LP had a 155-week chart run, selling over 3 million copies.[207] The Beach Boys became the number-one act in the US,[206] propelling themselves from opening for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the summer of 1974 to headliners selling out basketball arenas in a matter of weeks.[208] Guercio prevailed upon the group to swap out newer songs with older material in their concert setlists,[209] partly to accommodate their growing audience and the demand for their early hits.[210] Later in the year, members of the band appeared as guests on Chicago's hit \"Wishing You Were Here\".[211] At the end of 1974, Rolling Stone proclaimed the Beach Boys \"Band of the Year\" based on the strength of their live performances.[208][212]\n
To capitalize on their sudden resurgence in popularity, the Beach Boys accepted Guercio's invitation to record their next Reprise album at his Caribou Ranch studio, located around the mountains of Nederland, Colorado.[213][205][214] These October 1974 sessions marked the group's return to the studio after a 21-month period of virtual inactivity, but the proceedings were cut short after Brian had insisted on returning to his home in Los Angeles.[213] With the project put on hold, the Beach Boys spent most of the next year on the road playing college football stadiums and basketball arenas.[215][212] The only Beach Boys recording of 1974 to see release at the time was the Christmas single \"Child of Winter\", recorded upon the group's return to Los Angeles in November and released the following month.\n
Over the summer of 1975, the touring group played a co-headlining series of concert dates with Chicago, a pairing that was nicknamed \"Beachago\".[216][217] The tour was massively successful and restored the Beach Boys' profitability to what it had been in the mid-1960s.[218] Although another joint tour with Chicago had been planned for the summer of 1976,[217] the Beach Boys' association with Guercio and his Caribou Management company ended in early 1976.[219][nb 9] Stephen Love subsequently took over as the band's de facto business manager.[220]\n
Early in 1975, Brian signed a production deal with California Music, a Los Angeles collective that included Bruce Johnston and Gary Usher, but was drawn away by the Beach Boys' pressing demands for a new album.[221] In October, Marilyn persuaded Brian to admit himself to the care of psychologist Eugene Landy, who kept him from indulging in substance abuse with constant supervision.[222][223] Brian was kept in the program until December 1976.[224]\n
\nBrian Wilson behind Brother Studios' mixing console in early 1976\n
At the end of January 1976, the Beach Boys returned to the studio with Brian producing once again.[225] Brian decided the band should do an album of rock and roll and doo wop standards. Carl and Dennis disagreed, feeling that an album of originals was far more ideal, while Love and Jardine wanted the album out as quickly as possible.[225] To highlight Brian's recovery and his return to writing and producing, Stephen devised a promotional campaign with the tagline \"Brian Is Back!\", and paid the Rogers & Cowan publicity agency $3,500 per month to implement it.[226] The band also commissioned an NBC-TV special, later known as The Beach Boys: It's OK!, that was produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels.[224]\n
Released on July 5, 1976, 15 Big Ones was generally disliked by fans and critics, as well as Carl and Dennis, who disparaged the album to the press.[227] The album peaked at number 8 in the US, becoming their first top-ten album of new material since Pet Sounds, and their highest-charting studio album since Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!).[228] Lead single \"Rock and Roll Music\" peaked at number 5 \u2013 their highest chart ranking since \"Good Vibrations\".[219]\n
From late-1976 to early-1977, Brian made sporadic public appearances and produced the band's next album, The Beach Boys Love You.[229] He regarded it as a spiritual successor to Pet Sounds, namely because of the autobiographical lyrics.[230] Released on April 11, 1977, Love You peaked at number 53 in the US and number 28 in the UK.[231] Critically, it was met with polarized reactions from the public.[232] Numerous esteemed critics penned favorable reviews, but casual listeners generally found the album's idiosyncratic sound to be a detriment.[233]\n
Adult/Child, the intended follow-up to Love You, was completed, but the release was vetoed by Love and Jardine.[234] According to Stan Love, when his brother Mike heard the album, Mike turned to Brian and asked: \"What the fuck are you doing?\"[235] Some of the unreleased songs on Adult/Child later saw individual release on subsequent Beach Boys albums and compilations.[236] Following this period, his concert appearances with the band gradually diminished and their performances were occasionally erratic.[237]\n
At the beginning of 1977, the Beach Boys had enjoyed their most lucrative concert tours ever, with the band playing in packed stadiums and earning up to $150,000 per show.[238] Concurrently, the band was the subject of a record company bidding war, as their contract with Warner Bros. had been set to expire soon.[239][240] Stephen Love arranged for the Beach Boys to sign an $8 million deal with CBS Records on March 1.[241] Numerous stipulations were given in the CBS contract, including that Brian was required to write at least four songs per album, co-write at least 70% of all the tracks, and produce or co-produce alongside his brothers.[242][nb 10] Another part of the deal required the group to play thirty concerts a year in the U.S., in addition to one tour in Australia and Japan, and two tours in Europe.[242]\n
Within weeks of the CBS contract, Stephen was effectively fired by the band, with one of the alleged reasons being that Mike had not permitted Stephen to sign on his behalf while at a TM retreat in Switzerland.[243] For Stephen's replacement, the group hired Carl's friend Henry Lazarus, an entertainment business owner that had no prior experience in the music industry.[244] Lazarus arranged a major European tour for the Beach Boys, starting in late July, with stops in Germany, Switzerland, and France.[244] Due to poor planning, the tour was cancelled shortly before it began, as Lazarus had failed to complete the necessary paperwork.[245] The group subsequently fired Lazarus and were sued by many of the concert promoters, with losses of $200,000 in preliminary expenses and $550,000 in potential revenue.[246]\n
In July, the Beach Boys played a concert at Wembley Stadium that was notable for the fact that, during the show, Mike attacked Brian with a piano bench onstage in front of over 15,000 attendees.[247][nb 11] In August, Mike and Jardine persuaded Stephen to return as the group's manager,[249] a decision that Carl and Dennis had strongly opposed.[250][249] By this point, the band had effectively split into two camps; Dennis and Carl on one side, Mike and Jardine on the other, with Brian remaining neutral.[251][231] These two opposing contingents within the group \u2013 known among their associates as the \"free-livers\" and the \"meditators\" \u2013 were traveling in different planes, using different hotels, and rarely speaking to each other.[249] According to Love, \"[T]he terms 'smokers' and 'nonsmokers' were also used.\"[252]\n
On September 3, after completing the final date of a northeastern US tour, the internal wrangling came to a head. Following a confrontation on an airport apron \u2013 a spectacle that a bystanding Rolling Stone journalist compared to the ending of Casablanca \u2013 Dennis declared that he had left the band.[253] The group was broken up until a meeting at Brian's house on September 17.[231] In light of the lucrative CBS contract, the parties negotiated a settlement resulting in Love gaining control of Brian's vote in the group, allowing Love and Jardine to outvote Carl and Dennis on any matter.[231]\n
\nThe Beach Boys performing a concert in Michigan, August 1978\n
The group had still owed one more album for Reprise. Released in September 1978, M.I.U. Album was recorded at Maharishi International University in Iowa at the suggestion of Love.[254] The band originally attempted to record a Christmas album, to be titled Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys, but this idea was rejected by Reprise. These Christmas recordings would eventually be released in 1998 as part of the Ultimate Christmas compilation album. Dennis and Carl made limited contributions to M.I.U. Album; the album was produced by Jardine and Ron Altbach, with Brian credited as \"executive producer\".[255] Dennis started to withdraw from the group to focus on his second solo album, Bambu, which was shelved just as alcoholism and marital problems overcame all three Wilson brothers.[232] Carl appeared intoxicated during concerts (especially at appearances for their 1978 Australia tour) and Brian gradually slid back into addiction and an unhealthy lifestyle.[256][nb 12] Stephen was fired shortly after the Australia tour partly due to an incident in which Brian's bodyguard Rocky Pamplin physically assaulted Carl.[258]\n
\n
1978\u20131998: Continued recording and Brian's estrangement[edit]
\n
L.A. (Light Album) and Keepin' the Summer Alive[edit]
\nThe Beach Boys in 1979\n
The group's first two albums for CBS, 1979's L.A. (Light Album) and 1980's Keepin' the Summer Alive, struggled in the US, charting at 100 and 75 respectively, though the band did manage a top-forty single from L.A. with \"Good Timin'\". The recording of these albums saw Bruce Johnston return to the band, initially solely as a producer and eventually as a full-time band member. In-between the two albums the group contributed the song \"It's a Beautiful Day\" to the soundtrack of the film Americathon. In an April 1980 interview, Carl reflected that \"the last two years have been the most important and difficult time of our career. We were at the ultimate crossroads. We had to decide whether what we had been involved in since we were teenagers had lost its meaning. We asked ourselves and each other the difficult questions we'd often avoided in the past.\"[259] By the next year, he left the touring group because of unhappiness with the band's nostalgia format and lackluster live performances, subsequently pursuing a solo career.[232] He stated: \"I haven't quit the Beach Boys but I do not plan on touring with them until they decide that 1981 means as much to them as 1961.\"[56] Carl returned in May 1982, after approximately 14 months of being away, on the condition that the group reconsider their rehearsal and touring policies and refrain from \"Las Vegas-type\" engagements.[260]\n
\n
\n
\n
I think a lot of critics punish the band for not going beyond \"Good Vibrations\" ... they love the band so much that they get crazy because we don't top ourselves. ... [but] growth in this business is tough.\n
On June 21, 1980, the Beach Boys performed a concert at Knebworth, England, which featured a slightly intoxicated Dennis. The concert would later be released as a live album titled Good Timin': Live at Knebworth England 1980 in 2002. In 1981, the band scored a surprise US top-twenty hit when their cover of the Del-Vikings' \"Come Go with Me\" from the three year old M.I.U. Album was released as a single.[262]\n
In late 1982, Eugene Landy was once more employed as Brian's therapist, and a more radical program was undertaken to try to restore Brian to health.[263] This involved removing him from the group on November 5, 1982, at the behest of Carl, Love, and Jardine,[264] in addition to putting him on a rigorous diet and health regimen.[265] Coupled with long, extreme counseling sessions, this therapy was successful in bringing Brian back to physical health, slimming down from 311 pounds (141 kg) to 185 pounds (84 kg).[266]\n
\n
Death of Dennis, The Beach Boys, and Still Cruisin'[edit]
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dennis had been embroiled in successive failed romantic relationships, including a tense and short-lived relationship with Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, and found himself in severe economic trouble resulting in the sale of Brother Studios, established by the Wilson brothers in 1974 and where Pacific Ocean Blue was produced, and the forfeiture of his beloved yacht. To cope with the combination of devastating losses, Dennis heavily abused alcohol, cocaine, and heroin and was, by 1983, homeless and lived a nomadic lifestyle. He was often seen spending much of his time wandering the Los Angeles coast and often missed Beach Boys performances. By this point, he had lost his voice and much of his ability to play drums.[267]\n
In 1983, tensions between Dennis and Love escalated to the point that each obtained a restraining order against the other.[268] Following Brian's readmission for Landy's treatment, Dennis was given an ultimatum after his last performance in November 1983 to check into rehab for his alcohol problems or be banned from performing live with the band again. Dennis checked into rehab for his chance to get sober, but on December 28, he drowned at the age of 39 in Marina del Rey while diving from a friend's boat trying to recover items that he had previously thrown overboard in a fit of rage.[269]\n
The Beach Boys spent the next several years touring, often playing in front of large audiences, and recording songs for film soundtracks and various artists compilations.[270] One new studio album, the self-titled The Beach Boys, appeared in 1985 and proved a modest success, becoming their highest-charting album in the US since 15 Big Ones. The Beach Boys was the group's final album for CBS. The following year they returned to Capitol with a 25th anniversary greatest hits album Made in U.S.A, which featured two new tracks, \"Rock 'n' Roll to the Rescue\" and a cover of the Mamas and the Papas' \"California Dreamin'\", with the latter featuring Roger McGuinn of the Byrds on lead guitar. Made in U.S.A eventually went double platinum.\n
Commenting on his relationship to the band in 1988, Brian said that he avoided his family at Landy's suggestion, adding that \"Although we stay together as a group, as people we're a far cry from friends.\"[271] Mike denied the accusation that he and the band were keeping Brian from participating with the group.[272] In 1987 the band scored a top-twenty single in collaboration with rap group the Fat Boys, on their cover of the Surfaris' \"Wipeout!\". The following year, the Beach Boys unexpectedly claimed their first US number 1 single in 22 years with \"Kokomo\", which topped the chart for one week.[273] The track was featured in the film Cocktail. Both \"Wipeout!\" and \"Kokomo\" were included on the band's next album, 1989's Still Cruisin', which went platinum in the US.[274] In 1991 the band contributed a cover of \"Crocodile Rock\" to the Elton John and Bernie Taupin tribute album Two Rooms.\n
\n
Lawsuits, Summer in Paradise, and Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1[edit]
Carlin summarized, \"Once surfin' pin-ups, they remade themselves as avant-garde pop artists, then psychedelic oracles. After that they were down-home hippies, then retro-hip icons. Eventually they devolved into none of the above: a kind of perpetual-motion nostalgia machine.\"[275] Music journalist Erik Davis wrote in 1990, \"the Beach Boys are either dead, deranged, or dinosaurs; their records are Eurocentric, square, unsampled; they've made too much money to merit hip revisionism.\"[276] In 1992, critic Jim Miller wrote, \"They have become a figment of their own past, prisoners of their unflagging popularity\u2014incongruous emblems of a sunny myth of eternal youth belied by much of their own best music. \u2026 The group is still largely identified with its hits from the early Sixties.\"[277]\n
Love filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian due to how he was presented in Brian's 1992 memoir Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. Its publisher HarperCollins settled the suit for $1.5 million. He said that the suit allowed his lawyer \"to gain access to the transcripts of Brian's interviews with his [book] collaborator, Todd Gold. Those interviews affirmed\u2014according to Brian\u2014that I had been the inspiration of the group and that I had written many of the songs that [would soon be] in dispute.\"[278] Other defamation lawsuits were filed by Carl, Brother Records, and the Wilsons' mother Audree.[279] With Love and Brian unable to determine exactly what Love was properly owed in royalties, Love sued Brian in 1992, winning $13 million in 1994 for lost royalties.[280] 35 of the group's songs were then amended to credit Love.[281] He later called it \"almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history\".[282]\n
The day after California courts issued a restraining order between Brian and Landy, Brian phoned Sire Records staff producer Andy Paley to collaborate on new material tentatively for the Beach Boys.[283] After losing the songwriting credits lawsuit with Love, Brian told MOJO in February 1995: \"Mike and I are just cool. There's a lot of shit Andy and I got written for him. I just had to get through that goddamn trial!\"[284] In April, it was unclear whether the project would turn into a Wilson solo album, a Beach Boys album, or a combination of the two.[285] The project ultimately disintegrated.[286] Instead, Brian and his bandmates recorded Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, an album of country music stars covering Beach Boys songs, with co-production helmed by River North Records owner Joe Thomas.[287] Afterward, the group discussed finishing the album Smile, but Carl rejected the idea, fearing that it would cause Brian another nervous breakdown.[288]\n
\nThe touring lineup of Mike Love and Bruce Johnston's \"The Beach Boys Band\", with David Marks, in 2008\n
Early in 1997, Carl was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer after years of heavy smoking. Despite his terminal condition, Carl continued to perform with the band on its 1997 summer tour (a double-bill with the band Chicago) while undergoing chemotherapy. During performances, he sat on a stool and needed oxygen after every song.[289] Carl died on February 6, 1998, at the age of 51, two months after the death of the Wilsons' mother, Audree.[290]\n
After Carl's death, Jardine left the touring line-up and began to perform regularly with his band \"Beach Boys: Family & Friends\" until he ran into legal issues for using the name without license. Meanwhile, Jardine sued Love, claiming that he had been excluded from their concerts,[291] BRI, through its longtime attorney, Ed McPherson, sued Jardine in Federal Court. Jardine, in turn, counter-claimed against BRI for wrongful termination.[292] BRI ultimately prevailed.[293]\n
In 2000, ABC-TV premiered a two-part television miniseries, The Beach Boys: An American Family, that dramatized the Beach Boys' story. It was produced by Full House actor John Stamos, and was criticized by numerous parties, including Wilson, for historical inaccuracies.[294]\n
In 2004, Wilson recorded and released his solo album Brian Wilson Presents Smile, a reinterpretation of the unfinished Smile project. That September, Wilson issued a free CD through the Mail On Sunday that included Beach Boys songs he had recently rerecorded, five of which he co-authored with Love. The 10 track compilation had 2.6 million copies distributed and prompted Love to file a lawsuit in November 2005; he claimed the promotion hurt the sales of the original recordings.[295] Love's suit was dismissed in 2007 when a judge determined that there were no triable issues.[296]\n
In late 2006, Jardine joined Brian Wilson and his band for a short tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds.[297]\n
\n
The Smile Sessions, That's Why God Made the Radio, and 50th anniversary reunion tour[edit]
\n
On October 31, 2011, Capitol released a double album and box set dedicated to the Smile recordings in the form of The Smile Sessions. The album garnered universal critical acclaim and charted in both the US Billboard and UK top-thirty. It went on to win Best Historical Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards.[298]\n
\nThe reunited Beach Boys performing \"Heroes and Villains\" in tribute to Smile\n
On December 16, 2011, it was announced that Wilson, Love, Jardine, Johnston and David Marks would reunite for a new album and 50th anniversary tour.[299] On February 12, 2012, the Beach Boys performed at the 2012 Grammy Awards, in what was billed as a \"special performance\" by organizers. It marked the group's first live performance to include Wilson since 1996, Jardine since 1998, and Marks since 1999.[300] Released on June 5, That's Why God Made the Radio debuted at number 3 on the US charts, expanding the group's span of Billboard 200 top-ten albums across 49 years and one week, passing the Beatles with 47 years of top-ten albums.[301] Critics generally regarded the album as an \"uneven\" collection, with most of the praise centered on its closing musical suite.[61]\n
The reunion tour ended in September 2012 as planned, but amid erroneous rumors that Love had dismissed Wilson from the Beach Boys.[302] Love and Johnston continued to perform under the Beach Boys name, while Wilson, Jardine, and Marks continued to tour as a trio,[303] and a subsequent tour with guitarist Jeff Beck also included Blondie Chaplin at select dates.[304]\n
Responding to a new European Union copyright law that extended copyright to 70 years for recordings that were published within 50 years after they were made, Capitol began issuing annual 50-year anniversary \"copyright extension\" releases of Beach Boys recordings, starting with The Big Beat 1963 (2013).[305]\n
Jardine, Marks, Johnston and Love appeared together at the 2014 Ella Awards Ceremony, where Love was honored for his work as a singer.[306][better source needed][307] In 2015, Soundstage aired an episode featuring Wilson performing with Jardine, Chaplin, and Ricky Fataar at The Venetian in Las Vegas.[308] In April, when asked if he was interested in making music with Love again, Wilson replied: \"I don't think so, no,\"[309] adding in July that he \"doesn't talk to the Beach Boys [or] Mike Love.\"[310]\n
In 2016, Love and Wilson published memoirs, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy and I Am Brian Wilson, respectively. Asked about negative comments that Wilson made about him in the book, Love challenged the legitimacy of statements attributed to Wilson in the book and in the press.[311] In an interview with Rolling Stone conducted in June 2016, Wilson said he would like to try to repair his relationship with Love and collaborate with him again.[312] In January 2017, Love said, \"If it were possible to make it just Brian and I, and have it under control and done better than what happened in 2012, then yeah, I'd be open to something.\"[313]\n
\nJohnston and Love performing as the Beach Boys in 2019\n
In July 2018, Wilson, Jardine, Love, Johnston, and Marks reunited for a one-off Q&A session moderated by director Rob Reiner at the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles. It was the first time the band had appeared together in public since their 2012 tour.[314] That December, Love described his new holiday album, Reason for the Season, as a \"message to Brian\" and said that he \"would love nothing more than to get together with Brian and do some music.\"[315]\n
In February 2020, Wilson and Jardine's official social media pages encouraged fans to boycott the band's music after it was announced that Love's Beach Boys would perform at the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nevada on animal rights grounds. The concert proceeded despite online protests, as Love issued a statement that said his group has always supported \"freedom of thought and expression as a fundamental tenet of our rights as Americans.\"[316] In October, Love and Johnston's Beach Boys performed at a fundraiser for Donald Trump's presidential re-election campaign; Wilson and Jardine again issued a statement that they had not been informed about this performance and did not support it.[317]\n
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Selling of the band's intellectual property and 60th anniversary[edit]
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In March 2020, Jardine was asked about a possible reunion and responded that the band would reunite for a string of live performances in 2021, although he believed a new album was unlikely.[318] In response to reunion rumors, Love said in May that he was open to a 60th anniversary tour, although Wilson has \"some serious health issues\", while Wilson's manager Jean Sievers commented that no one had spoken to Wilson about such a tour.[319] In February 2021, it was announced that Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, and the estate of Carl Wilson had sold a majority stake in the band's intellectual property to Irving Azoff and his new company Iconic Artists Group; rumors of a 60th anniversary reunion were again discussed.[320]\n
In April 2021, Omnivore Recordings released California Music Presents Add Some Music, an album featuring Love, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, and several children of the original Beach Boys (most notably on a re-recording of The Beach Boys' \"Add Some Music to Your Day\" from 1970's Sunflower).[321] In August, Capitol released the box set Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf's Up Sessions 1969\u20131971.[322] In 2022, the group was expected to participate in a \"60th anniversary celebration\". Azoff stated in an interview from May 2021, \"We're going to announce a major deal with a streamer for the definitive documentary on The Beach Boys and a 60th anniversary celebration. We're planning a tribute concert affiliated with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and SiriusXM, with amazing acts. That's adding value, and that's why I invested in The Beach Boys.\"[323]\n
On Mike Love's 81st birthday, Jardine once again hinted at a possible reunion on his Facebook page by stating that he was \"looking forward\" to seeing Love at the \"reunion\".[324] However, while a reunion ultimately did not occur in 2022, Capitol released the Sail On Sailor \u2013 1972 box set in December; following on from the Feel Flows box set, which focused on Sunflower and Surf's Up, Sail On Sailor focused on Carl and the Passions and Holland.\n
In January 2023, the tribute concert mentioned by Azoff in 2021 was announced as being part of the \u201cGrammys Salute\u201d series of televised tribute concerts.[325] On February 8 \u2013 three days after the 2023 Grammy award ceremonies, A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys was recorded at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California and subsequently aired as a 2-hour special on CBS on April 9. Present for the taping were Wilson, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, and Love \u2013 this time not as performers but as featured guests, seated in a luxury box at the theatre, overlooking tribute performances covering the gamut of their catalog by mostly contemporary artists. According to Billboard, the program had 5.18 million viewers.[326]\n
In July 2023, the Beach Boys announced a limited edition to their book, The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, set to be released in 2024. It will feature exclusive interviews, archived photos, live shots, as well as archived texts from late members Carl and Dennis Wilson.[327]\n
In Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, musicologist Daniel Harrison writes:\n
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Even from their inception, the Beach Boys were an experimental group. They combined, as Jim Miller has put it, \"the instrumental sleekness of the Ventures, the lyric sophistication of Chuck Berry, and the vocal expertise of some weird cross between the Lettermen and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers\" with lyrics whose images, idioms, and concerns were drawn from the rarefied world of the middle-class white male southern California teenager. ... [But] it was the profound vocal virtuosity of the group, coupled with the obsessional drive and compositional ambitions of their leader, Brian Wilson, that promised their survival after the eventual breaking of fad fever. ... Comparison to other vocally oriented rock groups, such as the Association, shows the Beach Boys' technique to be far superior, almost embarrassingly so. They were so confident of their ability, and of Brian's skill as a producer to enhance it, that they were unafraid of doing sophisticated, a cappella glee-club arrangements containing multiple suspensions, passing formations, complex chords, and both chromatic and enharmonicmodulations.[106]
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The Beach Boys began as a garage band playing 1950s style rock and roll,[328] reassembling styles of music such as surf to include vocal jazzharmony, which created their unique sound.[329] In addition, they introduced their signature approach to common genres such as the pop ballad by applying harmonic or formal twists not native to rock and roll.[330] Among the distinct elements of the Beach Boys' style were the nasal quality of their singing voices, their use of a falsetto harmony over a driving, locomotive-like melody, and the sudden chiming in of the whole group on a key line.[331] Brian Wilson handled most stages of the group's recording process from the beginning, even though he was not properly credited on most of the early recordings.[19][332]\n
\nA Rickenbacker 360/12 identical to the 12-string guitar used by Carl Wilson in the early to mid-1960s\n
Early on, Mike Love sang lead vocals in the rock-oriented songs, while Carl contributed guitar lines on the group's ballads.[333] Jim Miller commented: \"On straight rockers they sang tight harmonies behind Love's lead ... on ballads, Brian played his falsetto off against lush, jazz-tinged voicings, often using (for rock) unorthodox harmonic structures.\"[333] Harrison adds that \"even the least distinguished of the Beach Boys' early uptempo rock 'n' roll songs show traces of structural complexity at some level; Brian was simply too curious and experimental to leave convention alone.\"[106] Although Brian was often dubbed a perfectionist, he was an inexperienced musician, and his understanding of music was mostly self-taught.[334] At the lyric stage, he usually worked with Love,[335] whose assertive persona provided youthful swagger that contrasted Brian's explorations in romanticism and sensitivity.[336] Luis Sanchez noted a pattern where Brian would spare surfing imagery when working with collaborators outside of his band's circle, in the examples \"Lonely Sea\" and \"In My Room\".[337]\n
Brian's bandmates resented the notion that he was the sole creative force in the group.[338] In a 1966 article that asked if \"the Beach Boys rely too much on sound genius Brian\", Carl said that although Brian was the most responsible for their music, every member of the group contributed ideas.[339] Mike Love wrote, \"As far as I was concerned, Brian was a genius, deserving of that recognition. But the rest of us were seen as nameless components in Brian's music machine ... It didn't feel to us as if we were just riding on Brian's coattails.\"[340] Conversely, Dennis defended Brian's stature in the band, stating: \"Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his fucking messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's everything.\"[341]\n
The eclectic mix of white and black vocal group influences \u2013 ranging from the rock and roll of Berry, the jazz harmonies of the Four Freshmen, the pop of the Four Preps, the folk of the Kingston Trio, the R&B of groups like the Coasters and the Five Satins, and the doo wop of Dion and the Belmonts \u2013 helped contribute to the Beach Boys' uniqueness in American popular music.[346] Carl remembered that Love was \"really immersed in doo-wop\" and likely \"influenced Brian to listen to it\", adding that the \"black artists were so much better in terms of rock records in those days that the white records almost sounded like put-ons.\"[39]\n
Another significant influence on Brian's work was Burt Bacharach.[347] He said in the 1960s: \"Burt Bacharach and Hal David are more like me. They're also the best pop team \u2013 per se \u2013 today. As a producer, Bacharach has a very fresh, new approach.\"[348] Regarding surf rock pioneer Dick Dale, Brian said that his influence on the group was limited to Carl and his style of guitar playing.[349] Carl credited Chuck Berry, the Ventures, and John Walker with shaping his guitar style, and that the Beach Boys had learned to play all of the Ventures' songs by ear early in their career.[350]\n
In 1967, Lou Reed wrote in Aspen that the Beach Boys created a \"hybrid sound\" out of old rock and the Four Freshmen, explaining that such songs as \"Let Him Run Wild\", \"Don't Worry Baby\", \"I Get Around\", and \"Fun, Fun, Fun\" were not unlike \"Peppermint Stick\" by the Elchords.[351] Similarly, John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful noted, \"Brian had control of this vocal palette of which we had no idea. We had never paid attention to the Four Freshmen or doo-wop combos like the Crew Cuts. Look what gold he mined out of that.\"[352]\n
Brian identified each member individually for their vocal range, once detailing the ranges for Carl, Dennis, Jardine (\"[they] progress upwards through G, A, and B\"), Love (\"can go from bass to the E above middle C\"), and himself (\"I can take the second D in the treble clef\").[353][nb 13] He declared in 1966 that his greatest interest was to expand modern vocal harmony, owing to his fascination with a voice to the Four Freshmen, which he considered a \"groovy sectional sound.\"[353] He added, \"The harmonies that we are able to produce give us a uniqueness which is really the only important thing you can put into records \u2013 some quality that no one else has got. I love peaks in a song \u2013 and enhancing them on the control panel. Most of all, I love the human voice for its own sake.\"[355][353] For a period, Brian avoided singing falsetto for the group, saying, \"I thought people thought I was a fairy...the band told me, 'If that's the way you sing, don't worry about it.'\"[356]\n
In the group's early recordings, from lowest intervals to highest, the group's vocal harmony stack usually began with Love or Dennis, followed by Jardine or Carl, and finally Brian on top, according to Jardine,[357] while Carl said that the blend was Love on bottom, Carl above, followed by Dennis or Jardine, and then Brian on top.[39] Jardine explains, \"We always sang the same vocal intervals. ... As soon as we heard the chords on the piano we'd figure it out pretty easily. If there was a vocal move [Brian] envisioned, he'd show that particular singer that move. We had somewhat photographic memory as far as the vocal parts were concerned so that [was] never a problem for us.\"[357] Striving for perfection, Brian insured that his intricate vocal arrangements exercised the group's calculated blend of intonation, attack, phrasing, and expression.[358] Sometimes, he would sing each vocal harmony part alone through multi-track tape.[359]\n
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[Love] had a hand in a lot of the arrangements. He would bring out the funkier approaches, whether to go shoo-boo-bop or bom-bom-did-di-did-did. It makes a big difference, because it can change the whole rhythm, the whole color and tone of it.\n
On the group's blend, Carl said: \"[Love] has a beautifully rich, very full-sounding bass voice. Yet his lead singing is real nasal, real punk. [Jardine]'s voice has a bright timbre to it; it really cuts. My voice has a kind of calm sound. We're big oooh-ers; we love to oooh. It's a big, full sound, that's very pleasing to us; it opens up the heart.\"[39] Rock critic Erik Davis wrote, \"The 'purity' of tone and genetic proximity that smoothed their voices was almost creepy, pseudo-castrato, [and] a 'barbershop' sound.\"[276]Jimmy Webb said, \"They used very little vibrato and sing in very straight tones. The voices all lie down beside each other very easily \u2013 there's no bumping between them because the pitch is very precise.\"[361] According to Brian: \"Jack Good once told us, 'You sing like eunuchs in a Sistine Chapel,' which was a pretty good quote.\"[353] Writer Richard Goldstein reported that, according to a fellow journalist who asked Brian about the black roots of his music, Brian's response was: \"We're white and we sing white.\" Goldstein added that when he asked where his approach to vocal harmonies had derived from, Wilson answered: 'Barbershop'.\"[362]\n
Biographer James Murphy said, \"By most contemporary accounts, they were not a very good live band when they started. ... The Beach Boys learned to play as a band in front of live audiences\", eventually to become \"one of the best and enduring live bands\".[363] With only a few exceptions, the Beach Boys played every instrument heard on their first four albums and first five singles.[13] It is the belief of Richie Unterberger that, \"Before session musicians took over most of the parts, the Beach Boys could play respectably gutsy surf rock as a self-contained unit.\"[28]\n
As Wilson's arrangements increased in complexity, he began employing a group of professional studio musicians, later known as \"the Wrecking Crew\", to assist with recording the instrumentation on select tracks.[364] According to some reports, these musicians then completely replaced the Beach Boys on the backing tracks to their records.[13][365] Much of the relevant documentation, while accounting for the attendance of unionized session players, had failed to record the presence of the Beach Boys themselves.[365][366] These documents, along with the full unedited studio session tapes, were not available for public scrutiny until the 1990s.[366]\n
Wilson started occasionally employing members of the Wrecking Crew for certain Beach Boys tracks during the 1963 Surfer Girl sessions \u2013 specifically, on two songs, \"Hawaii\" and \"Our Car Club\".[367][13] The 1964 albums Shut Down Volume 2 and All Summer Long featured the Beach Boys themselves playing the vast majority of the instruments while occasionally being augmented by outside musicians.[13] It is commonly misreported that Dennis in particular was replaced by Hal Blaine on drums.[366][368] Dennis's drumming is documented on a number of the group's singles, including 1964's \"I Get Around\", \"Fun, Fun, Fun\", and \"Don't Worry Baby\".[369] Starting with the 1965 albums Today! and Summer Days, Brian used the Wrecking Crew with greater frequency, \"but still\", Stebbins writes, \"the Beach Boys continued to play the instruments on many of the key tracks and single releases.\"[13]\n
Overall, the Beach Boys played the instruments on the majority of their recordings from the decade,[366] with 1966 and 1967 being the only years when Wilson used the Wrecking Crew almost exclusively.[13][366]Pet Sounds and Smile are their only albums in which the backing tracks were largely played by studio musicians.[13][370] After 1967, the band's use of studio musicians was considerably reduced.[13] Wrecking Crew biographer Kent Hartman supported in his 2012 book about the musicians, \"Though [Brian Wilson] had for several months brought in various session players on a sporadic, potluck basis to supplement things, the other Beach Boys generally played on the earliest songs, too.\"[371]\n
The source of the longstanding controversy regarding the Beach Boys' use of studio musicians largely derives from a misinterpreted statement in David Leaf's 1978 biography The Beach Boys and the California Myth, later bolstered by erroneous recollections from participants of the recording sessions.[366][nb 14] Starting in the 1990s, unedited studio session tapes, along with American Federation of Musicians (AFM) sheets and tape logs, were leaked to the public. Music historian Craig Slowinski, who contributes musician credits to the liner notes of the band's reissues and compilations, wrote in 2006: \"[O]nce the vaults were opened up and the tapes were studied, the true situation became clear: the Boys themselves played most of the instruments on their records until the Beach Boys Today! album in early 1965.\"[366] Slowinski goes on to note, \"when painting a picture of a Beach Boys recording session, it's important to examine both the AFM contracts and the session tapes, either of which may be incomplete on their own.\"[366]\n
During the period when Brian relied heavily on studio musicians, Carl was an exception among the Beach Boys in that he played alongside the studio musicians whenever he was available to attend sessions.[373] In Slowinski's view, \"One should not sell short Carl's own contributions; the youngest Wilson had developed as a musician sufficiently to play alongside the horde of high-dollar session pros that big brother was now bringing into the studio. Carl's guitar playing [was] a key ingredient.\"[374][nb 15]\n
The band members often reflected on the spiritual nature of their music (and music in general), particularly for the recording of Pet Sounds and Smile.[376] Even though the Wilsons did not grow up in a particularly religious household,[377] Carl was described as \"the most truly religious person I know\" by Brian, and Carl was forthcoming about the group's spiritual beliefs stating: \"We believe in God as a kind of universal consciousness. God is love. God is you. God is me. God is everything right here in this room. It's a spiritual concept which inspires a great deal of our music.\"[378] Carl told Rave magazine in 1967 that the group's influences are of a \"religious nature\", but not any religion in specific, only \"an idea based upon that of Universal Consciousness. ... The spiritual concept of happiness and doing good to others is extremely important to the lyric of our songs, and the religious element of some of the better church music is also contained within some of our new work.\"[379]\n
Brian is quoted during the Smile era: \"I'm very religious. Not in the sense of churches, going to church; but like the essence of all religion.\"[377] During the recording of Pet Sounds, Brian held prayer meetings, later reflecting that \"God was with us the whole time we were doing this record ... I could feel that feeling in my brain.\"[380] In 1966, he explained that he wanted to move into a white spiritual sound, and predicted that the rest of the music industry would follow suit.[381] In 2011, Brian maintained the spirituality was important to his music, and that he did not follow any particular religion.[382]\n
Carl said that Smile was chosen as an album title because of its connection to the group's spiritual beliefs.[379] Brian referred to Smile as his \"teenage symphony to God\",[383] composing a hymn, \"Our Prayer\", as the album's opening spiritual invocation.[384] Experimentation with psychotropic substances also proved pivotal to the group's development as artists.[385][386] He spoke of his LSD trips as a \"religious experience\", and during a session for \"Our Prayer\", Brian can be heard asking the other Beach Boys: \"Do you guys feel any acid yet?\".[387] In 1968, the group's interest in transcendental meditation led them to record the original song, \"Transcendental Meditation\".[388]\n
The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful,[10][389] and influential bands of all time.[390] They have sold over 100 million records worldwide.[391] The group's early songs made them major pop stars in the US, the UK, Australia and other countries, having seven top 10 singles between April 1963 and November 1964.[392] They were one of the first American groups to exhibit the definitive traits of a self-contained rock band, playing their own instruments and writing their own songs,[393] and they were one of the few American bands formed prior to the 1964 British Invasion to continue their success.[392] Among artists of the 1960s, they are one of the central figures in the histories of rock.[394] Between the 1960s and 2020s, they had 37 songs reach the US Top 40 (the most by an American group) with four topping the Billboard Hot 100; they also hold Nielsen SoundScan's record as the top-selling American band for albums and singles.[395]\n
Brian Wilson's artistic control over the Beach Boys' records was unprecedented for the time.[396] Carl Wilson elaborated: \"Record companies were used to having absolute control over their artists. It was especially nervy, because Brian was a 21-year-old kid with just two albums. It was unheard of. But what could they say? Brian made good records.\"[129] This made the Beach Boys one of the first rock groups to exert studio control.[397] Music producers after the mid-1960s would draw on Brian's influence, setting a precedent that allowed bands and artists to enter a recording studio and act as producers, either autonomously, or in conjunction with other like minds.[398]\n
In 1988, the original five members (the Wilson brothers, Love, and Jardine) were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[10] Ten years later, they were selected for the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.[399] In 2004, Pet Sounds was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being \"culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.\"[400] Their recordings of \"In My Room\", \"Good Vibrations\", \"California Girls\" and the entire Pet Sounds album have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[401]\n
The Beach Boys are one of the most influential acts of the rock era.[175] In 2017, a study of AllMusic's catalog indicated the Beach Boys as the 6th most frequently cited artist influence in its database.[402] In 2021, the staff of Ultimate Classic Rock ranked the Beach Boys as the top American band of all time; the publication's editor wrote in the group's entry that \"few bands ... have had a greater impact on popular music.\"[403]\n
\nThe Beach Boys appearing in a 1963 Billboard advertisement\n
Professor of cultural studies James M. Curtis wrote in 1987, \"We can say that the Beach Boys represent the outlook and values of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon teenagers in the early sixties. Having said that, we immediately realize that they must mean much more than this. Their stability, their staying power, and their ability to attract new fans prove as much.\"[392] Cultural historian Kevin Starr explains that the group first connected with young Americans specifically for their lyrical interpretation of a mythologized landscape: \"Cars and the beach, surfing, the California Girl, all this fused in the alembic of youth: Here was a way of life, an iconography, already half-released into the chords and multiple tracks of a new sound.\"[404] in Robert Christgau's opinion, \"the Beach Boys were a touchstone for real rock and rollers, all of whom understood that the music had its most essential roots in an innocently hedonistic materialism.\"[147]\n
The group's \"California sound\" grew to national prominence through the success of their 1963 album Surfin' U.S.A.,[405] which helped turn the surfing subculture into a mainstream youth-targeted advertising image widely exploited by the film, television, and food industry.[406] The group's surf music was not entirely of their own invention, being preceded by artists such as Dick Dale.[407] However, previous surf musicians did not project a world view as the Beach Boys did.[397] The band's earlier surf music helped raise the profile of the state of California, creating its first major regional style with national significance, and establishing a musical identity for Southern California, as opposed to Hollywood.[408] California ultimately supplanted New York as the center of popular music thanks to the success of Brian's productions.[396]\n
A 1966 article discussing new trends in rock music writes that the Beach Boys popularized a type of drum beat heard in Jan and Dean's \"Surf City\", which sounds like \"a locomotive getting up speed\", in addition to the method of \"suddenly stopping in between the chorus and verse\".[331]Pete Townshend of the Who is credited with coining the term \"power pop\", which he defined as \"what we play\u2014what the Small Faces used to play, and the kind of pop the Beach Boys played in the days of 'Fun, Fun, Fun' which I preferred.\"[409]\n
The California sound gradually evolved to reflect a more musically ambitious and mature world view, becoming less to do with surfing and cars and more about social consciousness and political awareness.[410] Between 1964 and 1969, it fueled innovation and transition, inspiring artists to tackle largely unmentioned themes such as sexual freedom, black pride, drugs, oppositional politics, other countercultural motifs, and war.[411]Soft pop (later known as \"sunshine pop\") derived in part from this movement.[412] Sunshine pop producers widely imitated the orchestral style of Pet Sounds; however, the Beach Boys themselves were rarely representative of the genre, which was rooted in easy-listening and advertising jingles.[413]\n
By the end of the 1960s, the California sound declined due to a combination of the West Coast's cultural shifts, Wilson's professional and psychological downturn, and the Manson murders, with David Howard calling it the \"sunset of the original California Sunshine Sound ... [the] sweetness advocated by the California Myth had led to chilling darkness and unsightly rot\".[414] Drawing from the Beach Boys' associations with Manson and former California governor Ronald Reagan, Erik Davis remarked, \"The Beach Boys may be the only bridge between those deranged poles. There is a wider range of political and aesthetic sentiments in their records than in any other band in those heady times\u2014like the state [of California], they expand and bloat and contradict themselves.\"[276]\n
During the 1970s, advertising jingles and imagery were predominately based on the Beach Boys' early music and image.[415] The group also inspired the development of the West Coast style later dubbed \"yacht rock\". According to Jacobin's Dan O'Sullivan, the band's aesthetic was the first to be \"scavenged\" by yacht rock acts like Rupert Holmes. O'Sullivan also cites the Beach Boys' recording of \"Sloop John B\" as the origin of yacht rock's preoccupation with the \"sailors and beachgoers\" aesthetic that was \"lifted by everyone, from Christopher Cross to Eric Carmen, from 'Buffalo Springfield' folksters like Jim Messina to 'Philly Sound' rockers like Hall & Oates.\"[416]\n
Pet Sounds came to inform the developments of genres such as pop, rock, jazz, electronic, experimental, punk, and hip hop.[417] Similar to subsequent experimental rock LPs by Frank Zappa, the Beatles, and the Who, Pet Sounds featured countertextural aspects that called attention to the very recordedness of the album.[418] Professor of American history John Robert Greene stated that the album broke new ground and took rock music away from its casual lyrics and melodic structures into what was then uncharted territory. He furthermore called it one factor which spawned the majority of trends in post-1965 rock music, the only others being Rubber Soul, the Beatles' Revolver, and the contemporary folk movement.[419] The album was the first piece in popular music to incorporate the Electro-Theremin, an easier-to-play version of the theremin, as well as the first in rock music to feature a theremin-like instrument.[420] With Pet Sounds, they were also the first group to make an entire album that departed from the usual small-ensemble electric rock band format.[421]\n
According to David Leaf in 1978, Pet Sounds and \"Good Vibrations\" \"established the group as the leaders of a new type of pop music, Art Rock.\"[422] Academic Bill Martin states that the band opened a path in rock music \"that went from Sgt. Pepper's to Close to the Edge and beyond\". He argues that the advancing technology of multitrack recording and mixing boards were more influential to experimental rock than electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, allowing the Beatles and the Beach Boys to become the first crop of non-classically trained musicians to create extended and complex compositions.[423] In Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop, Mark Brend writes:\n
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Other artists and producers, notably the Beatles and Phil Spector, had used varied instrumentation and multi-tracking to create complex studio productions before. And others, like Roy Orbison, had written complicated pop songs before. But \"Good Vibrations\" eclipsed all that came before it, in both its complexity as a production and the liberties it took with conventional notions of how to structure a pop song.[424]
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The making of \"Good Vibrations\", according to Domenic Priore, was \"unlike anything previous in the realms of classical, jazz, international, soundtrack, or any other kind of recording\",[425] while biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote that it \"sounded like nothing that had ever been played on the radio before.\"[426] It contained previously untried mixes of instruments, and was the first successful pop song to have cellos in a juddering rhythm.[427] Musicologist Charlie Gillett called it \"one of the first records to flaunt studio production as a quality in its own right, rather than as a means of presenting a performance\".[85] Again, Brian employed the use of Electro-Theremin for the track. Upon release, the single prompted an unexpected revival in theremins while increasing awareness of analog synthesizers, leading Moog Music to produce their own brand of ribbon-controlled instruments.[428][nb 16] In a 1968 editorial for Jazz & Pop, Gene Sculatti predicted that the song \"may yet prove to be the most significantly revolutionary piece of the current rock renaissance ... In no minor way, 'Good Vibrations' is a primary influential piece for all producing rock artists; everyone has felt its import to some degree\".[150]\n
Discussing Smiley Smile, Daniel Harrison argues that the album could \"almost\" be considered art music in the Western classical tradition, and that the group's innovations in the musical language of rock can be compared to those that introduced atonal and other nontraditional techniques into that classical tradition. He explains, \"The spirit of experimentation is just as palpable ... as it is in, say, Schoenberg's op. 11 piano pieces.\"[430] However, such notions were not widely acknowledged by rock audiences nor by the classically minded at the time.[431] Harrison concludes: \"What influences could these innovations then have? The short answer is, not much. Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20 sound like few other rock albums; they are sui generis. ... It must be remembered that the commercial failure of the Beach Boys' experiments was hardly motivation for imitation.\"[431] Musicologist David Toop, who included the Smiley Smile track \"Fall Breaks and Back to Winter\" on a companion CD for his book Ocean of Sound, placed the Beach Boys' effect on sound pioneering in league with Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby, and My Bloody Valentine.[432]\n
Sunflower marked an end to the experimental songwriting and production phase initiated by Smiley Smile.[433] After Surf's Up, Harrison wrote, their albums \"contain a mixture of middle-of-the-road music entirely consonant with pop style during the early 1970s with a few oddities that proved that the desire to push beyond conventional boundaries was not dead,\" until 1974, \"the year in which the Beach Boys ceased to be a rock 'n' roll act and became an oldies act.\"[433]\n
For the artier branches of post-punk, Wilson's pained vulnerability, his uses of offbeat instruments and his intricate harmonies, not to mention the Smile saga itself, became a touchstone, from Pere Ubu and XTC to REM [sic] and the Pixies to U2 and My Bloody Valentine.\n
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\u2014 Music critic Carl Wilson (no relation to Brian's brother)[434]
In the 1990s, the Beach Boys experienced a resurgence of popularity with the alternative rock generation.[438] According to Sean O'Hagan, leader of the High Llamas and former member of Stereolab, a younger generation of record-buyers \"stopped listening to indie records\" in favor of the Beach Boys.[439][nb 18] Bands who advocated for the Beach Boys included founding members of the Elephant 6 Collective (Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo, and of Montreal). United by a shared love of the group's music, they named Pet Sounds Studio in honor of the band.[441][442]Rolling Stone writer Barry Walters wrote in 2000 that albums such as Surf's Up and Love You \"are becoming sonic blueprints, akin to what early Velvet Underground LPs meant to the previous indie peer group.\"[443] The High Llamas, Eric Matthews and Saint Etienne are among the \"alt heroes\" who contributed cover versions of \"unreleased, overlooked or underappreciated Wilson/Beach Boys obscurities\" on the tribute album Caroline Now! (2000).[443]\n
The Beach Boys remained among the most significant influences on indie rock into the late 2000s.[444]Smile became a touchstone for many bands who were labelled \"chamber pop\",[434] a term used for artists influenced by the lush orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Lee Hazlewood, and Burt Bacharach.[445]Pitchfork writer Mark Richardson cited Smiley Smile as the origin point of \"the kind of lo-fibedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters.\"[446] The Sunflower track \"All I Wanna Do\" is also cited as one of the earliest precursors to chillwave, a microgenre that emerged in 2009.[447][448]\n
The Wilsons' California house, where the Wilson brothers grew up and the group began, was demolished in 1986 to make way for Interstate 105, the Century Freeway. A Beach Boys Historic Landmark (California Landmark No. 1041 at 3701 West 119th Street), dedicated on May 20, 2005, marks the location.[450]
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On December 30, 1980, the Beach Boys were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 1500 Vine Street.[451]
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On September 2, 1977, the group performed before an audience of 40,000 at Narragansett Park in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which remains the largest concert audience in Rhode Island history. In 2017, the street where the concert stage formerly stood was officially renamed to \"Beach Boys Way\".[452][453][454]
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On September 21, 2017, The Beach Boys were honored by Roger Williams University and plaques were unveiled to commemorate the band's concert on September 22, 1971, at the Baypoint Inn & Conference Center in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The concert was the first-ever appearance of South African Ricky Fataar as an official member of the band and Filipino Billy Hinsche as a touring member, essentially changing the Beach Boys' live and recording act's line-up into a multi-cultural group. Diversity is a credo of Roger Williams University, which is why they chose to celebrate this moment in the band's history.[455][456]
^Nick Venet said that none of the members, including Dennis, surfed until after the fact.[9]\n
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^Since he did not appear on the first performance by the band that would become \"the Beach Boys\", most historians discount him as a true founding member of the group.[13]\n
\n
^The only songs the group recorded were two Morgan compositions, \"Barbie\" and \"What Is a Young Girl Made Of?\"[18]\n
\n
^He remembered \"flipping out [over the Beatles]. I couldn't understand how a group could be just yelled and screamed at. The music they made, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' for example, wasn't even that great a record, but the[ir fans] just screamed at it. ... It got us off our asses in the studio. [We] said 'look, don't worry about the Beatles, we'll cut our own stuff.\"[43] He recalled that he and Love immediately felt threatened by the Beatles, believing that the Beach Boys could never match the excitement created by the Beatles as performers, and that this realization led him to concentrate his efforts on trying to outdo them in the recording studio.[44]\n
\n
^Contracts at that time stipulated that promoters hire \"Carl Wilson plus four other musicians\".[56] Additionally, in February, July, and October, Brian rejoined the live group for one-off occasions.[57]\n
\n
^For example, critics from Rolling Stone were wary of the group's changing music, with Ralph J. Gleason writing in January 1968: \"The Beach Boys, when they were a reflection of an actuality of American society (i.e., Southern California hot rod, surfing and beer-bust fraternity culture), made music that had vitality and interest. When they went past that, they were forced inexorably to go into electronics and this excursion, for them, is of limited scope, good as the vibrations were.\"[121]\n
\n
^Music critic Kenneth Partridge blamed the lack of \"edginess\" on the group's early records for why they are \"rarely talked about in the same breath as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and when they are, it's really only because of two albums\".[127]\n
\n
^Pursuant to the terms of their record contract, when the group missed their May 1973 deadline to deliver the Smile album, Warner Bros. deducted $50,000 from the band's next advance.[200]\n
\n
^According to Gaines, Guercio may have been fired because members of the group \"felt Caribou was being overpaid\", although \"many observers suggest the Beach Boys followed an old pattern of jettisoning personnel when their financial situation improved.\"[220] Biographer Mark Dillon states that the tour evaporated due to Dennis' budding romance with Karen Lamm, the ex-wife of Chicago keyboardist Robert Lamm.[217]\n
\n
^According to Gaines, \"When Brian signed the contract, he cried, knowing he would now have to go back to the studio full-time.\"[242]\n
\n
^Love later explained that he had been \"in a state of extreme sensitivity\" after learning that his girlfriend was in a vegetative state following \"a horrific car accident\".[248]\n
\n
^At a concert in Perth, Carl was so inebriated that he fell over mid-performance. The next day, he apologized for his poor performance on national television.[257]\n
\n
^Starting with the 1970 sessions for the Surf's Up album, Stephen Desper remembers the emerging corrosive effects of Brian's incessant chain smoking and cocaine use: \"He could still do falsettos and stuff, but he'd need Carl to help him. Either that or I'd modify the tape speed-wise to make it artificially higher, so it sounded like the old days.\"[354]\n
\n
^The statement in question was, \"from 1963 through 1966 Brian used studio musicians on the instrumental tracks.\"[372][366]\n
\n
^Carl's lead and rhythm guitar playing is featured on several of the band's singles, including \"I Get Around\", \"Fun, Fun, Fun\", \"Don't Worry Baby\",[375] \"When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)\", \"Do You Wanna Dance?\", and \"Dance, Dance, Dance\".[374]\n
\n
^Even though the Electro-Theremin was not technically a theremin, the song became the most frequently cited example of the theremin in pop music.[429]\n
\n
^In 2015, Wilson was asked about punk rock and responded: \"I don't know what that is. Punk rock? Punk? What is that? ... Oh yeah. I never went for that. I never went for the fast kind of music. I go for the more medium tempo. Spencer Davis, I liked that.\"[436]\n
\n
^When asked how he felt about \"reintroducing Brian Wilson as an alternative music hero and getting people back into Pet Sounds and SMiLE,\" O'Hagan mentioned that a \"few of the touring American bands have told me that we did have such an impact, especially in LA.\"[440]\n
^Sanchez 2014, pp. 91\u201393, \"credible perspective\"; Kent 2009, p. 27, origins, \"single most prestigious figure\"; Love 2016, p. 146; Gaines 1986, p. 152, British success\n
^Lewis, Randy (November 4, 2005). \"Mike Love sues Brian Wilson\". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved August 4, 2013.\n
^Sterdan, Darryl (December 16, 2011). \"Beach Boys gear up for reunion\". Sun Media. Archived from the original on July 9, 2012. Retrieved December 16, 2011.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)\n
Miller, Jim (1992). \"The Beach Boys\". In DeCurtis, Anthony; Henke, James; George-Warren, Holly (eds.). The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music. New York: Random House. ISBN9780679737285.
Schinder, Scott (2007). \"The Beach Boys\". In Schinder, Scott; Schwartz, Andy (eds.). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN978-0313338458.
Stebbins, Jon; Rusten, Ian (2013). The Beach Boys in Concert!: The Complete History of America's Band On Tour and Onstage. Backbeat Books. ISBN978-1617134562.
Berry, Torrence (2013). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 2. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-1941028995.
\n
Berry, Torrence (2014). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 5. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-1941028063.
\n
Berry, Torrence (2015). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 7. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-1941028100.
\n
Berry, Torrence and Zenker, Gary (2013). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 1. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-0989334457.
\n
Berry, Torrence and Zenker, Gary (2014). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 3. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-1941028018.
\n
Berry, Torrence and Zenker, Gary (2014). Beach Boys Archives, Volume 4. White Lightning Publishing. ISBN978-1941028025.
\n
Cox, Perry D. (2017). Price and Reference Guide for the Beach Boys American Records (By Perry Cox, Frank Daniels & Mark Galloway. Foreword by Jeffrey Foskett). Perry Cox Ent. ISBN978-1532348570.
\n
Cunningham, Don; Bielel, Jeff, eds. (1999). Add Some Music to Your Day: Analyzing and Enjoying the Music of the Beach Boys. Tiny Ripple Books. ISBN978-0967597300.
\n
Curnutt, Kirk (2012). Icons of Pop Music: Brian Wilson. Equinox Publishing, Ltd.
McParland, Stephen J., ed. (2001). In The Studio with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys: Our Favorite Recording Sessions: A Look at Various Recording Sessions by The Beach Boys, 1961\u20131970. CMusic Books.
Toop, David (1999). Exotica: Fabricated Soundscapes in a Real World: Fabricated Soundscapes in the Real World (1. publ. ed.). London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN978-1852425951.
\n\n\n\n",
+ "page_last_modified": " Sat, 16 Mar 2024 06:15:04 GMT"
+ },
+ {
+ "page_name": "The Beach movie review & film summary (2000) | Roger Ebert",
+ "page_url": "https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-beach-2000",
+ "page_snippet": ""The Beach" is a seriously confused film that makes three or four passes at being a better one and doesn't complete any of them. Since Leonardo DiCaprio is required to embody all of its shifting moods and aims, it provides him with more of a test than a better film might have; it's like a triathlon ...\"The Beach\" is a seriously confused film that makes three or four passes at being a better one and doesn't complete any of them. Since Leonardo DiCaprio is required to embody all of its shifting moods and aims, it provides him with more of a test than a better film might have; it's like a triathlon where every time he spies the finish line they put him on a bicycle and send him out for another 50 miles. There is an echo here from \"Trainspotting,\" a better film by the same director, Danny Boyle, in which f/x are used to send the hero on a plunge into the depths of the world's filthiest toilet. There the effects worked as comic exaggeration; here they're just goofy. The early scenes deliberately evoke the opening of \"Apocalypse Now,\" with its sweaty closeups, its revolving ceiling fans and its voice-overs with DiCaprio trying to sound like Martin Sheen. In a fleabag hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, a fellow traveler (Robert Carlyle) tells him of an island paradise, hard to find but worth the trip.",
+ "page_result": "\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Beach movie review & film summary (2000) | Roger Ebert\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"The Beach\" is a seriously confused film that makes three or four passes at being a better one and doesn't complete any of them. Since Leonardo DiCaprio is required to embody all of its shifting moods and aims, it provides him with more of a test than a better film might have; it's like a triathlon where every time he spies the finish line they put him on a bicycle and send him out for another 50 miles.
The early scenes deliberately evoke the opening of \"Apocalypse Now,\" with its sweaty closeups, its revolving ceiling fans and its voice-overs with DiCaprio trying to sound like Martin Sheen. In a fleabag hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, a fellow traveler (Robert Carlyle) tells him of an island paradise, hard to find but worth the trip. Will his journey borrow from a Joseph Conrad novel (Victory, say), as \"Apocalypse Now\" borrowed from Heart of Darkness? No such luck. DiCaprio's character, named Richard, recruits a French couple in the next room and as they set out for the legendary island, the movie abandons Conrad and \"Apocalypse,\" and borrows instead from \"Blue Lagoon\" on its way to a pothead version of \"Lord of the Flies.\" This is the kind of movie where the heroes are threatened by heavily armed guards in a marijuana field, and that's less alarming than when they jump off a ledge into a deep pool. Later they'll go swimming in glowing clouds of plankton, and Richard will face a shark in one-on-one combat.
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Many of the scenes look, frankly, like time fillers. Richard and his new French friends Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) arrive safely at a sort of retro hippie commune where the pot is free, the bongos beat every night and all is blissful on the beach, watched over by the stern eye of Sal (Tilda Swinton), the community's leader. It's paradise, Richard tells us--except for his lust for Francoise.
So will this become a love triangle? No, because Francoise, once enjoyed, is forgotten, and besides, Etienne only wants her to be happy. Those French. A later encounter with Sal is more like plumbing than passion, and both sex scenes are arbitrary--they aren't important to the characters or the movie.
But then many of the sequences fall under the heading of good ideas at the time. Consider, for example, a strange interlude in which Richard becomes the hero of a video game, stomping through the landscape in computerized graphics. There is an echo here from \"Trainspotting,\" a better film by the same director, Danny Boyle, in which f/x are used to send the hero on a plunge into the depths of the world's filthiest toilet. There the effects worked as comic exaggeration; here they're just goofy.
What is important, I guess, is Richard's evolution from an American drifter in the Orient into a kind of self-appointed Tarzan, who takes to the jungle and trains himself, well aware that a movie so pointless and meandering will need contrived violence to justify the obligatory ending. In a paroxysm of indecision, the film's conclusion mixes action, existential resignation, the paradise-lost syndrome and memories of happier days, the last possibly put in for studio executives who are convinced that no matter how grim a movie's outcome, it must end on a final upbeat.
Watching \"The Beach\" is like experiencing a script conference where only sequences are discussed--never the whole film. What is it about, anyway? There are the elements here for a romantic triangle, for a man-against-the-jungle drama, for a microcosm-of-civilization parable or for a cautionary lesson about trying to be innocent in a cruel world. The little society ruled over by Sal is a benevolent dictatorship--you can be happy as long as you follow the rules--and that's material for satire or insight, I guess, although the movie offers none.
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There is one extraordinary development. One of the commune guys is bitten by a shark, and when his anguished screams disturb the island idyll of the others, Sal simply has him moved out of earshot. This event suggests the makings of another, darker movie, but it's not allowed to pay off or lead to anything big.
Maybe that's because the whole film is seen so resolutely through Richard's eyes, and the movie doesn't want to insult its target demographic group or dilute DiCaprio's stardom by showing the character as the twit that he is. In a smarter film, Richard would have been revealed as a narcissistic kid out of his depth, and maybe he would have ended up out in the woods where his screams couldn't be heard.
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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