The Beach Boys: Many Happy Returns To 'Pet Sounds'

When classic album polls roll around, the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ is invariably not just near the top but sometimes sitting pretty at the summit. Now 50 years old, it emerged at a time when there was no shortage of future classics on the shelves. It was released the same day as Bob Dylan’s ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and in the same year as a defining statement by the Beatles, who often appeared as both admirers of and creative antagonists for Brian Wilson. John, Paul, George and Ringo certainly had something to do with the Beach Boys’ masterpiece.

With 11 studio albums already to their name, the Beach Boys had become the darlings of America with a stream of bright, preppy hit singles: Surfin’ USA, Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, Help, Me Rhonda, California Girls, Barbara Ann. Each one was a radio staple and can be recalled with ease, such is their legacy.

But in December 1965 the Beatles released their sixth studio collection,‘Rubber Soul’. The effect it had on Wilson was notable. “I really wasn’t quite ready for the unity,” he said. “It felt like it all belonged together. ‘Rubber Soul’ was a collection of songs…that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed.” Wilson, inspired by what he saw as the benchmark being raised, resolved to make the greatest rock ‘n’ roll album of all time in response.

The time was right for such a bold statement, but that doesn’t detract from the risks Wilson took in realising his vision during a period when his band was viewed as a hit factory. Still in his early 20s, he had just a year earlier announced his retirement from touring after suffering a mid-flight panic attack en route to Houston.

His work would yield a record that sought to elevate the humble pop song to a position of high art, while also exploring new sonic textures and tangents. From its orchestration to its use of unusual instrumentation and an overarching theme - a relationship traced from wistful beginning to brittle end - ‘Pet Sounds’ existed as a single entity in a manner that the band’s single-heavy repertoire had always previously prevented.

It went so far the other way, in fact, that popular opinion suggests some of the band’s other members weren’t particularly enthralled by it. I Know There’s An Answer, which stemmed from Wilson’s LSD use and was initially called Hang on to Your Ego, reportedly wasn’t a hit with Mike Love, who labelled it a “doper song”. Love has, since this time, dismissed the idea that he didn’t like ‘Pet Sounds’, and that it created conflict within the group, but the contrast between it and the band’s early work remains stark.

On this occasion, Wilson’s musings were interpreted and focused by lyricist Tony Asher, whose advertising jingle background has often been suggested as a factor in his snappy insight when parsing the long conversations he’d conduct with the songwriter. "It's fair to say that the general tenor of the lyrics was always his and the actual choice of words was usually mine,” Asher told Nick Kent. “I was really just his interpreter."

Prior to the album’s release, Caroline, No was issued as a single under Wilson’s name. On the album, the song is the closing track and provides a lingering note of lost innocence. Its place as an introduction to the album, then, intertwined a thematic ending with a chronological beginning. It enjoyed limited success, reaching #32 in the US singles chart upon its March 1966 release, yet it’s since been substantially heralded, with Rolling Stone listing it at number 214 in their 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time feature just over a decade ago.

The single’s mixed response in the US would extend to the May release of the album. ‘Pet Sounds’ at first puzzled the public and critics alike in the band’s home country, with both apparently expecting more of the same. With people desperate to pigeonhole the new album, descriptions of what lay within varied wildly. It was tagged as psychedelic rock, symphonic rock, experimental rock, baroque pop, psychedelic pop and acid rock, to name but a few. Across the pond, though, critics immediately warmed to it and it became a fixture in the upper reaches of the album chart.

Seemingly at odds with the rest of a psychedelic album that’s reminiscent of a lucid, kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic dream, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and God Only Knows would later be paired for release as a single of peerless quality. But not before Capitol Records had knee-jerked into action after low initial sales. Reportedly displeasing Wilson, the label released a Beach Boys hits compilation weeks after the arrival of ‘Pet Sounds’, giving the album’s shift in focus little time to settle.

The Beatles, meanwhile, had been busy readying their own latest release, ‘Revolver’, an album that would become even more revered than ‘Rubber Soul’. But Lennon and McCartney would also get an early taste of ‘Pet Sounds’ at the hotel room of Bruce Johnston, who has said the duo immediately asked for it to be played again. This ‘counter-inspiration’ would later see the Beatles get to work on their own psychedelic masterpiece, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.

The mammoth operation to produce ‘Pet Sounds’ had seen in the region of 60 session musicians utilised, in addition to the band themselves. From the iconic cover shot, taken in San Diego zoo, to Wilson’s pioneering looping techniques and complex arrangements, to the stunning singles, the album represents a pivotal point in pop history. The rivalry and mutual appreciation that drove on both Beach Boys and the Beatles, too, cannot be underestimated. Many Happy Returns.

Related News