The Beach Boys
"Pet Sounds" (1966)
Wouldn't It Be
Nice?/You Still Believe In Me/That's Not Me/Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My
Shadow)/I'm Waiting For The Day/Let's Go Away For A While//Sloop John B/God
Only Knows/I Know There's An Answer/Here Today/I Just Wasn't Made For These
Times/Pet Sounds/Caroline, No
"It's
time to get Bingo and Max The Singing Dog really wailing!"
I have a confession to make, dear readers. Despite
being as big a Beach Boy fan as any of you, I've never actually liked 'Pet
Sounds' that much. *Pause* Well, we seem
to be OK there so far, I expected the roof to fall in or some raging fans to
attack me or something. Let's try a little bit more: Indeed, that album put
me off for years because if the wretched 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' was meant to be
the best the band could muster then they didn't sound like a band I wanted to
collect.*Intermission* Well there's a
surprise - I mean even people who hate The Beach Boys have been saying such OTT
things about this album I thought the world would evaporate or we'd all become
transformed into animals in the San Diego Zoo for daring to say something
different. Let's try a little bit more: The best things about Beach Boys albums
are generally the harmonies - and there aren't many on this record, which is
generally a Brian Wilson solo record. The other best thing are the melodies and
that's only partly true of this record where so many nice ideas just get
swamped. Brian Wilson's genius for combining odd instruments together is heard
a lot across this album, but more often it's used in a sickly lush and overly
romantic way that ends up sounding annoyingly soft and artificial, like a bad
1940s movie rather than a great mid-1960s record. *Suspension* Hmm I'm warming
up now, let's throw a few more things in there: Plus the one thing that
everybody says is so great about this album is that it tells a whole 'story' of
love from joyous beginning to sad ending - but The Beach Boys had already done
that better on 'Today', plus 'Pet Sounds' includes everything in a 'jumbled'
order so you can't really trace the story properly (in my view the tracks
should run 1, 3, 4, 8, 5, 10, 9, 2, 11, 13) and what the hell do the two
instrumentals and 'Sloop John B' mean in that context or are we meant to expect
a romance in a sail-ship? *Hiatus*: I'm
really getting into the groove now: 'Pet Sounds' is a case of the Emperor's
new clothes - we keep being told by everyone how great it is and yet it's nothing
more than a poor repeat of what's gone before it in reference to 'Today' and a
far worse version of 'Smile' to come.
Alright, that's a little unfair and I know it's
unfair. There are some amazing moments on 'Pet Sounds' to be found scattered throughout
the record and I know it. The album is also home to one of all the all-time
Beach Boys classics in 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times', a song that's
impressively (and suitably) ahead of its times and 'God Only Knows' and the
lesser known 'Don't Talk' are both gorgeous sighing romantic ballads any album
would be proud to include. More than enough big names in the music business
(Paul McCartney among them) have called this their favourite album and they
know far more than I ever will. The moments when The Beach Boys do sing all
together is glorious and few people used an orchestra like Brian when he was
using it well. This is a record that sounds unlike any other ever made - honest,
open, nakedly emotional - and that alone earns it several bonus points. The
album's true hero too is all too often ignored though: it's not any of the
Beach Boys (not even Brian!) but lyricist Tony Asher who despite having never
written a song in his life (his trade was writing slogans for advertisements)
has the rare ability to put the in-expressible into words. The lyrics
throughout this album are phenomenal and already give this album more stars
than most but, here's the thing (to my ears at least) the words don't belong
with these songs or the production and Tony Asher might have been better off
with a musician who wasn't quite so...cloying, while Brian was always better
off with a writer who could think rather than feel.
The disconnect between the two is just too much for
me as yet another heart-tugging violin dripping with artificial sentimentality
arrives in view to 'tell' us how to feel and yet another performance ends up
sounding way too sophisticated and grand for the very lonely, simple,
vulnerable song hiding inside it. Orchestras have to be treated with care in
rock and roll and here, as with the equally regarded Moody Blues album 'Days Of
Future Passed' (which is also far worse than its reputation suggests), it's
used badly. This record doesn't rock. This record doesn't even roll. Instead it
sits there in a bath of its own tears, relegating the bits that could make it
both rock and roll (the harmonies, the guitar and the drums) as a sideshow. The
orchestra makes it too false to tug at my heart strings, much as I might admire
parts of it and love this album when I read it rather than hear it. I would
happily listen to every other Beach Boys album on repeat for hours (well, maybe
not 'Still Crusin' or 'LA Light' but, you know, most of them) and yet I
struggle to make it to the end of 'Pet Sounds' in one sitting because I'm just
not moved by it or have any true emotional connection to it. My rather grouchy
review this week is not because I hate 'Pet Sounds' (if nobody knew about it
and it remained 'that weird album from 1966 that didn't sell' I'd be defending
it - that's the nature of my 'job'), but because I'm tired of watching
everybody call this their 'favourite album from the 1960s' simply through peer
pressure when it's not even close to being the best Beach Boys album of the
1960s (even if I can't have 'Smile' I'd take 'All Summer Long' 'Today' 'Wild
Honey' 'Friends' and '20/20' over this one). So many people only own this album
and don't bother with the rest and still call themselves Beach Boys fans when
they're missing out on so much brilliance that really does pull at the heart
strings and take you to a place that's moving and gorgeous and wonderful. 'Pet
Sounds' just sits there, banging two coke cans together and calling it art.
I'll explain what I mean because most of you
probably disagree judging by the endless round of 'Classic albums' dedicated to
this one LP: the way I see it the main issue for a Beach Boys fan is this.
Brian is an intellectual instinctive writer. Goodness knows there's a lot of
emotion running through The Beach Boys' catalogue, but by and large it's
secondary to the thought process and Brian's musical curiosity: What instrument
goes here with what? What are kids today really thinking? How am I going to fit
enough space in the middle of this song to fit the whole band into it? Brian's
head (at least for most of the 1960s) is the ultimate problem-solver as, Gemini
Horse that he is, he works out a problem and solves it before most people have
even realised there is one yet through hard work, observation and thought. Most
Beach Boys albums are like this and they're spectacular: even when Brian is
poorly his charm and innocence as he describes his thought processes (rather
than his feelings) on his 'househusband' songs are what makes those works so
special. However Brian is, by and large, unsure of emotions and tends to either
use outside writers or feel worried about revealing so much of himself on his
own songs. He feels out of sorts when his cousin Mike and his dad Murry start
getting angry, by his own admission he struggled to express his emotion to his
teenage sweetheart Marilyn and can only really translate his feelings through
the language of someone else via the medium of music. In short, emotions are
things other people understand and know how to deal with - for Brian, a lot of
the time, they're a source of confusion and sorrow. Every other collaborator
Brian every worked with, from Gary Usher and Roger Christian through to Van
Dyke Parks and even his own cousin Mike, knew how to tap into Brian's character
and use emotion as one part of an overall essence in a song that's primarily
about chicks, cars or - in Van Dyke's case - the disintegration of society as
America tries to come to terms with her heritage displacing native settlers.
Feelings are there, but they're part of the mix, lost in the stereo, usually
there thanks to other people (though Brian, as a singer, does emote as well and
believably as anyone). 'Pet Sounds' puts feelings right up front and centre -
and Brian's unsure what to make of feelings (even if many of the songs were
written after chats with Tony Asher about hopes and fears) so he slathers them
with an orchestra because that's how feelings sound to him (mushy and
overpowering, right?) and crosses his fingers (or at least, that's what it
sounds like to me). People have assumed that 'Pet Sounds' is the 'real' Brian,
but I'm not convinced it is: 'Smile' is the real Brian, full of disconnected
loops of thoughts and puns and segmented ideas that somehow roll into one
moving whole that wouldn't sound anything on paper if any other writer was to
join the dots (Indeed that's why no one else ever joined the dots of 'Smile' -
only Brian could evermake that album). By contrast all of 'Pet Sounds' is
already there on paper if you read the lyric sheet - too often the album itself
comes over as slightly inferior window dressing. Or maybe it's just me: you see
my feelings don't come in neat piles, with an orchestra attached and a piccolo
solo. They sound more like a Who concept album on high volume, messy swirling
and chaotic and difficult as that is I would hate to lice in the
intellectualised world of 'Pet Sounds' my whole life. 'Pet Sounds' is by
contrast a cosy world where the only people who really get hurt are the
isolated, alienated protagonist on 'Times' and the mournful cry at the end of 'Caroline,
No'. Maybe it's my problem - but I can't write reviews from anyone else's point
of view, so I'm left with the feeling that too much of 'Pet Sounds' is
underwhelming and all but the very best of that doesn't actually move me at all
the way Brian and co usually can. If I was there in 1966 I'd actually agree
with Mike Love not to mess with the formula - not because The Beach Boys should
have stayed the same doing what they always did (they clearly couldn't be doing
that and wearing striped shirts in 1966 and they were always about improving
themselves, long before The Beatles turned up to give them competition) but
because this sounds like just a 'wrong' path to me. And it's not the audience
who couldn't keep up, it's the band.
In the past Beach Boys records have used
instrumentation as colour and extra complexity to impress fans and peers alike
so they go 'ooh, this sounds good!' 'Today' is the perfect example of how to
use an orchestra in rock and roll - it stays in the background until sweeping the
characters up in string-laden warm arms or sobbing alongside them right at the
point when it's supposed to, when the narrators of [106] 'Kiss Me Baby' realise
that their petty fight is really small fry compared to the huge overwhelming feeling
in their hearts and when Dennis Wilson, of all people, reveals that behind his
stud muffin exterior lies a romantic crooner looking for the perfect soulmate [108]
'In The Back Of My Mind'. The orchestra is hidden, subconscious and slightly
dangerous, because it's not thinking, it's being. You always feel as if the
still-teenagers-no-honest Beach Boys are doing their best to run away from the
very adult lushness and responsibility kicking and screaming at their door but
that it will catch up with them in the end. On 'Pet Sounds' there's no break
from the orchestra, which makes it feel rather like an uncomfortable job
interview for being an adult: do you have what it takes to cope with a world
this crazy? Well, no. No, I don't. That's why I'm listening to a band who till
now have been all about surf and turf (well, turf covered in girls and cars
anyway). Though rock and roll instruments - the sound of teenagers, even on an
album half a century old - do play across this album, they're subservient to
the 'adult' instruments: a ukulele part here, a tambourine there, a flute or
piccolo solo everywhere. The orchestra dictates everything and like many
orchestras when allowed off the leash it seeps everywhere, with messy emotion
getting in the way of all the fun and hugeness relegating the humble things the
band are trying to say to a tiny corner in the bottom of the audio screen.
These are, at heart, tiny songs about feeling small, lonely, misunderstood and
wondering whether you're going to stay with your girlfriend for the rest of
your life and grow old together or whether something's going to go wrong because
you've already rowed three times this week and you're not even married yet (The
Beach Boys had already done this theme far better on 'When I Grow Up To
Be A Man' incidentally). They're hopes, dreams and fears - they're meant to
sound small and under-nourished and a little powerless. But the use of so much
orchestra, so many session musicians and so much flipping Phil Spector-style
echo (which Brian never did truly learn how to use, though he admired it
greatly) everything sounds massive when it should just sound small. This album
would be beautiful if remixed one day to sound just that, small and humble, the
way the songs feel like they ought to be. Instead it feels grandiose and large
and unwieldy. No wonder this album took so many years to be celebrated as a
'classic': the whole sound is off-putting (at least to me) and it takes a whole
before the true greatness of the record shines through.
Tony Asher is responsible for a majority of that
greatness. His ability to understand the insecurities of every teenager and
early twenty-something and to make these songs sound remarkably un-patronising
once you're past that age should have made him one of the single most respected
lyricists of his age. It's a tragedy that the only musical gig he could get
after the 'failure' of this album was writing songs for The Partridge Family TV
Show (I kid you not). As has been said before many times there's a whole story
across this album and he captures every plot point brilliantly (even if they're
in the wrong order). There's the impatient youngster of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?',
the young idealist of 'That's Not Me', the loved-up romantic of 'Don't Talk',
the blissful how-did-I-ever-live-without-you? of 'God Only Knows', the first
fight of 'I'm Waiting For The Day', the angry 'Here Today', the suddenly grown
adult of 'I Know There's An Answer', the all-gone-wrong-can't-believe-you're-still-with-me
narrator of 'You Still Believe Me', the misunderstood where-did-everybody-go?
recluse of 'I Wasn't Made For These Times' and ultimately the parting of
'Caroline No' when innocence is long gone. I can see why so many people love
this album because everyone's gone through at least one of these stages and
most of us have been through them all, multiple times. Goodness knows where the
sleepy holiday of 'Let's Go Away For A While', the James Bond themed title
track and the sea-sick 'Sloop John B'
fit in though. And yet the genius of 'Pet Sounds' is that it all 'reads' real
enough for us to think that no one has ever been through them before and the
narrator is talking only to us. 'Pet Sounds' is an album that's had it's heart
broken so many times and yet it's still split between the usual Beach Boys
dichotomy of hope and depression that represents a realist's view of romance
and yet also why the high points of living are still important enough to go
through the low points for. The album title even implies that it's all part of
our animal instinct, some primal desire that makes us fall in and out of love
that human beings just can't help (although in reality the title was Mike
Love's indignation at being forced to make yet another take and complaining
that his cousin 'must have the ears of a dog' because it sounded ok to him two
hours ago and he wants to go home!) Tony nobly said once that he was just the
'messenger' for Brian's music, but that's unfair - no other collaborator got
Brian to open up quite so readily about his feelings and though history has
recorded this album as being pure Brian, I'm willing to bet that there's actually
more of Tony Asher on here. Had 'Pet Sounds' been a book of poetry it would
have been first class.
Thematically the theme of this record is loss and
illusion, specifically about the moment when partners try to mix their
different lives together in a marriage (did we mention Brian had been married a
year when he started this album? The timing being almost exactly coinciding
with his breakdown, which was as much about the marriage as the workload). On
most of the tracks the narrator is either waiting for his first love to be old
enough to marry or pining over her when his second love doesn't work out and
every track comes with twinges of melancholy about the fact that things didn't
happen the way he always dreamed of growing up. 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' is as
much about 'gee I wish my illusions were real' as 'I wish I was older'. 'Don't
Talk' has Brian still living inside his head and imagining the perfect love -
the 'words we both could say' aren't needed, both because the feelings are
strong enough on their own and perhaps (unspoken) because the moment the couple
find out they have different visions of the future their illusion is shattered.
'Caroline, No' is the moment when it all goes wrong - when Brian realises that
asking someone to stay the same as they were on their wedding day is not
practical or possible or remotely fair, inspired by Marilyn's hairdresser
messing up her usual hairdo and cutting it short to cover up the mess - Brian
didn't like it and wanted her to stay the same forever! However on the other
side of the coin both 'God Only Knows' and 'You Still Believe Me' show that
love isn't doomed to failure or a fleeting illusion - that belief, trust and
support can be the making of someone and offer stability in a world that's full
of confusion. It's certainly a journey this album, which is why the passing
train at the end of the record (while Brian's own dogs Banana and Louie, who sound
very like our own Bingo and Max but less drunk, bark their heads off at it) is
so apt: life is fleeting and though we can bark at change and 'progress' all we
like, there's nothing we can do about it. No wonder this album only became such
big news later: you weren't meant to say things like this or think about
growing older in the 1960s; only The Kinks were doing anything similar and
'Village Green Preservation Society' won't be here for another two years yet.
People are wrong if they think that 'Pet Sounds' is all about love though as
many of the best tracks don't mention it all. 'That's Not Me' and 'I Know
There's An Answer' are about growing up and thinking for yourself, even if it
ends in the foggy isolationism of 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times'. If ever
there was an instruction manual for coping with the obstacles of life then it
would read like 'Pet Sounds', which is a warm arm around the shoulder and a
comforting 'been there, done that, gone to the zoo and got the T-shirt' bit of
recognition from authors to listener. If it had stayed like this then I could
so see why 'Pet Sounds' is as loved as it is: few albums are as brave or as
open about how tough life really is or how many things you have to learn rather
than be taught. Truly 'Pet Sounds' is a phenomenal work in the psychological
sense even if it isn't always musically.
The Emperor's New Clothes and cold shoulder I have
with this album isn't with the songs at all but the way they're put onto
record. I bought the pricey 'Pet Sounds Sessions' box set when it came out in
the hope of discovering more about why people loved this album so much - and I
admit the vocal-only mixes are superb and came close to changing my mind with
all the extraneous noise removed.
But I still can't get past the backing. Heard
on their own these tracks are just lots of ideas being thrown together and
Brian's usual ability to make music out of the most unusual combinations deserts
him. The band are clearly thirty takes past their best on almost all the
finished versions, however disciplined they are and I'd much prefer The Beach
Boys themselves to have made this raw and honest record, however sloppy. The rhythm
on this album is hopeless - that's what comes of having the drums drowned out
by multiple percussionists and that banged can of coke of doom (on the start of
'Caroline, No' if you were wondering). There are too many 'false' moments that
get in the way of the music's true heart as Brian compensates for not being
able to 'feel' by 'overthinking' (to be fair, I do the same a lot) by using too
much emotion even when it's obviously false: there's a sax solo on 'Caroline,
No' that's so insincere it just causes the emotional interest in the song to
plummet, while I haven't listen to the butchered false grins of 'Wouldn't It Be
Nice?' in years the sheer artificiality hurts my ears so much the first time
and the 'I wanna cry' break on 'You Believe In Me' is the most intellectual sob
in the history of music, even hitting all the notes in the scale bang on in
order instead of letting fly with real feeling. In case you're wondering what I
mean, have a listen to the flop single [132] 'The Little Girl I Once Knew'
written by Brian alone and released between the far sillier [131] 'Barbara Ann'
and [144] 'Sloop John B'. As a song it's virtually the same as 'Caroline, No'
though not as heartfelt or intelligent.
But it gets me everytime in a way little on this album does: the innocence of
the vocals, the sudden jerky full stops that interrupt the flow and the
carnival atmosphere played on just rock and roll instruments: it sounds like a
teenager trying not to grow up. 'Pet Sounds', though written to largely the
same demographic, is an adult pretending to be a teen.
Though 'Pet Sounds' is an emotional album at the
core, the performances really aren't - they're inhibited and afraid to let go,
which is unusual for rock and roll and especially for 1960s Beach Boys. Even
the harmonica - one of the greatest and most soulful instruments in rock and
roll - is used to sound like the most obvious soundtrack-to-a-silent-movie-punchline
rather than delivering the blues. Ironically the one instrument that's
perfectly cast across the whole of the album is the other-worldly theremin of
'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times' - because, unusual as the sound is, that's
exactly what the narrator is feeling, isolated and misunderstood; by contrast I
can guarantee that most teenagers don't yearn to marry their girlfriends in
future adult life to the sound of a xylophone as they do on 'Wouldn't It Be
Nice?' The famous line is that, as a producer, Brian was teaching classical
musicians 'to play like rock musicians' but that's not true - instead he taught
rock musicians to be classical musicians and that's what my ears can't handle.
'Pet Sounds' reads like an emotional investment, but it comes over like an
opportunity to show off. Even Brian's knack for writing gorgeous melodies has
largely deserted him, with only the pure beauty of 'God Only Knows' and the
throbbing intimacy of 'Don't Talk' up to his highest standard. Everything else
is a saxophone solo or an extra take away from greatness and all the excitement
and energy has left the room. Even The Beach Boys themselves, usually enough of
a source of energy by themselves, only get into these songs sporadically -
Mike's gutsy vocal on 'That's Not Me' is impressive considering his mixed
feelings about these sessions while Carl is so perfectly cast on the shy but
triumphant 'God Only Knows' you wonder why it took so long to cast him (Brian
was all set to sing the song at first and reportedly all the band were
'auditioned' for it) and Brian's own adult sigh is lovely on the original of
'Caroline, No' (pointlessly speeded up on the suggestion of dad Murry to make
Brian sound 'younger' - that's so not the point of the song at all!) That's it
though, in terms of band appearances, with even Brian sounding less than his
normal stellar self. The rest of the time they've been told to sing this
section so many times they've forgotten what this album means.
Some listeners - probably you - actually like that
sort of thing, in which case fine; you
don't need me to tell you what you can or can't like and you can dismiss this review
as grumpy witterings from someone whose lost the plot or never heard what you
hear. That's fine: I'll content myself with loving 'LA Light Album' in a way
that no others fans seem to get or going to my grave telling you why 'Trans' is
Neil Young's greatest LP not his worst, honest. Maybe you've discovered
something buried in this album I haven't found yet and that's ok: if I ever
find it I'll be sure to update this review and tell you. But for me music has
to be real or there's no point making it: I love lush and beautiful as much as
the next reviewer but that only works when the songs have to be done that way;
when the narrator's so head over heels he can't think straight (as per 'Don't
Talk') - trying to make an impatient teenager or someone determined to make
their own way in the world calls for The Beach Boys as rockstars, not
classicists. Strange as it may sound I'm not alone either: I've, rather
nervously, asked a few of my fellow reviewer friends their opinion on this album
and a few of them have reviewed it before me and I think all of them agree with
me, if not always for the same reasons. 'Pet Sounds' is an album that the
average casual music fan likes a lot. But if you're enough of a mad passionate
record collector to not only buy up most of The Beach Boys albums but also buy
this book/read this article online then statistically it seems you're more
likely to feel a bit left out when it comes to this album which seems to be for
'other' people who can't hear the beauty in the more raw and ragged songs and
can see past the spit and polish. Interestingly, responses seem to be the other
way round for this record's sort-of sequel 'Smile' (a much more intellectual
and therefore suitably grandiose album that feels a lot more 'real' despite
coming from the head rather than the heart): if you're a true blue record
collector you love it; if you're a casual music fan you'll wonder why it had to
be cobbled together from so many different itty bits and why it sounds so odd.
There is, of course, no right or wrong answer to any of this (and I do know a
couple of people who love both - and some people who hate everything The Beach
Boys ever made, poor souls), but I've noticed this 'Sounds v Smile' gene come
into play lots of times and its fascinating to watch and ponder about for hours
and hours (I would get out more honest but I'm, uhh, 'waiting for the day').
In all my haste to explain why the likes of 'Sloop
John B' doesn't rock my boat, I haven't really explained about how this album
came about and why. Brian was so inspired by The Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' that he
set out to write an album that would match it with 'absolutely no filler'. That
doesn't seem quite true of either LP ('Rubber Soul' included the 'Help!'
outtake 'Wait' because the band couldn't think of anything better and I'm not
that convinced by Ringo co-write 'What Goes On' either'; similarly the very
definition of 'filler' on Beach Boys albums are instrumentals and though more
technically proficient this album's two instrumentals are just as much filler
as [26] 'Stoked' and [46] 'Boogie Woodie'; outtake 'Trombone Dixie' sounds
better than either to my ears) however it got Brian thinking, which was all
that mattered. Brian was, by this point, around a year after his
plane-orientated 'nervous breakdown' that saw him quit the touring band and
concentrate on making music in the studio (his 'replacement' Bruce Johnston
joins the studio band here too and makes his second real appearance on the coda
of 'God Only Knows', which is about as important an introduction as you can get
in any band's catalogue). Brian knew that he wanted to make the next Beach Boys
album a shade deeper, after 'filler' albums 'Summer Nights' and especially
'Party' (an album made in three days to make up for the many months Brian had
gone overboard making this one how he wanted it), but he knew his cousin
probably couldn't help him (to be fair once he got going Mike Love was as adult
and emotional a writer as anyone, but not back in 1966 when he was writing
lyrics in a hurry before going out looking for girls he wasn't). Brian kept an
eye out for a lyricist, while tinkering with three instrumentals (the two made
the album and 'Trombone Dixie') and the new single 'Sloop John B'.
Always curious to meet other musicians his age and
used to staying behind working when most sensible people were in bed, Brian met
Tony Asher one morning overseeing the recording of some new jingles and invited
him in to have a listen to his playbacks for the day. Though Tony wrote the
music for the jingles really (the words weren't up to much), Brian was struck
by his intelligence and thoughtfulness and discovered they had a mutual pal in
Loren Schwartz (one of many Wilson party hangers-on in this period). Brian
asked Tony if he fancied writing songs deeper than usual Beach Boys hits - no
big deal, if they didn't work out, they could bin them! At first Brian
considered writing an album of autobiography and started with a song known as
'In My Childhood' (a backing track was recording in readyness before the lyric
was changed - which is why there's a bicycle horn at the end of the 'second'
version 'You Still Believe In Me!') However Brian felt the song didn't quite
work and probably feared Mike Love's ridicule ('Whose gonna be interested in
your life story, huh?!') Which is where the decision to make this an 'everyman'
album came in. Both Asher and Wilson were recently married and big thinkers,
arguably over-thinkers, and both admitted to the other their worries about whether
they'd made the right decision, whether they'd fallen for the right girl and
whether they would always be happy the way they wanted to be. Slowly these
conversations drifted, as they so often did with Brian, into piano 'feels'
while Tony tried to feed in bits of their mutual conversations into words (I
don't know about you but I'd love to hear the songwriting demos one day if they
still exist - a hesitant, faltering, primitive version of 'Pet Sounds' seems
like just the way to hear it without the orchestra and complexity!) Selling
these songs to the other Beach Boys was more of a struggle though. Contrast to
general opinion Mike Love didn't tell his cousin to get lost or refuse to sing
on the album (aside from 'Hang On To Your Ego', which he refused to sing on as
a 'drugs' lyric - it got changed to 'I Know There's An Answer') and actually
gave Brian more praise that he probably had in his life up until that point
(while Dennis and Carl, particularly, adored it), but Mike did explain his
worry that their teenage audience wouldn't 'dig' it and there was general
murmurings that perhaps this record should be a solo work. For a while it was,
with a 'test' single of 'Caroline No' (with the vocals-less 'Let's Go Away For
A While' on the back) released under Brian's name. When this flopped Capitol
and the rest of the band insisted: this was beach Boys or nothing (even so,
only 'Smile' and 'Beach Boys Love You' feature quite so many Brian Wilson lead
vocals; Mike was reportedly hurt that he wasn't asked to sing more, while
Dennis and Al barely featured at all except for the odd background vocal).
Actually it was very nearly nothing. Capitol weren't
that keen on the album either and predicted an early death, with-holding most
of their usual promotional money and insisting on an album cover at the zoo to
appeal to younger fans (which didn't help sales either - they all saw the goats
and said 'are you kidding me?!') and releasing a 'greatest hits' set mere weeks
after 'Pet Sounds' came out to kill off sales. Capitol pushed for the title
too, named after Mike's suggestion, even though Brian and Tony didn't like it -
actually it's rather fitting if you take it as either a subversive play on man
being a typical primordial beast with animalist urges but also the intelligence
to be confused by what he feels and hears; the fact that it's also a (probably
unintended) pun on 'heavy petting, music-to-make-out-to' which is what this
album is all about under the air of respectability on the surface, also makes
it highly apt. Carl's spot-on comment of the time: 'Well, you sure couldn't
call it 'Shut Down Volume Three!' American fans were confused and were starting
to drop The Beach Boys a little bit anyway (though next release 'Good
Vibrations' won most of them over again) and most of the world followed suit,
except in Britain where Bruce Johnston stopped off on a solo publicity tour,
leant copies to every pirate radio station he could find and The Beatles came
out in favour of it (with help from press officer Derek Taylor who plugged it
to all his friends too). As a result the album did quite well in the UK, but
lousy elsewhere and became a bit of a cult album amongst fans - not that
respected, not that revered, but never openly hated either. It was 'Good
Vibrations' that had people dancing and with jaws stuck open with astonishment;
by contrast 'Pet Sounds' was only ever cool because it was Paul McCartney's
favourite album and he was sport enough to say so even at the time. Even an
after-the-fact coupling of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' and 'God Only Knows' did
relatively poorly the first time round, peaking at a US high of #8 (the same as
overlooked 1965 single 'Dance Dance Dance' for comparison's sake and far
below made-in-a-minute 'Barbara Ann').
So when did this album start appearing at the top of
'1000001 classic albums you must hear before you die even though you'll die
earlier by going bankrupt collecting all these obscure records and going
without food and heating to pay for them and finding out most of them simply
appeal to the lowest common denominator anyway' lists? In 1979 and the peak of
the new wave movement, oddly enough. Rolling Stone Magazine were doing one of
their usual end-of-an-era polls and ran a typical column on people's best
albums, with each of the reviewers given space to plug their favourites. Dave
Marsh went to town on the album (the 1972 re-issue was reviewed quite
positively in the same magazine, even if it was called 'dated'), people suddenly
sat up and listened, looked out the album for themselves and slowly the album
edged it's way towards to the top of the listings. There was a point in the
1990s when every rock documentary made some mention of 'Pet Sounds' and people
fell over themselves to call it their 'favourite' ev-uh record and thus the
cult became the mainstream and Brian proved that he really wasn't made for his
times after all, but for about thirty years or so hence.
Is 'Pet Sounds' really that good though? Really? I
mean it's clearly too good and made with too much love and attention to wallow
in the back of people's record racks un-played for all those years and the UK
record sales are closer to what this album deserves than the US sales, but the
best album of all time? (Give or take usual suspects 'Sgt Peppers' 'Revolver'
'Astral Weeks' 'Dark Side Of The Moon' or 'OK Computer' depending which poll
you're using). Hardly. The mood that comes across is so often entirely
different to the mood you're meant to be feeling, with music and especially
production going in such a different direction to the lyrics that's it more
confusing than anything else. There are some tracks, such as 'Wouldn't It Be
Nice?' and the two instrumentals which are just irritating, like a hyperactive
toddler grasping at your sleeve and wanting you to feel what they're feeling,
without the joy or beauty they're obviously intended to have and which The
Beach Boys usually provide in the 1960s. Even the greatest moments, like the two
true superlative compositions 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times' and 'God
Only Knows', somehow feel as if they should be something more - or less, being
too pretty by half. A bit more rock, a few more rough edges and a chance to
hear The Beach Boys harmonies front and centre instead of being drowned out by
a tuba would have helped this record's standing in my eyes (and ears) no end.
And yet there is undeniably something compelling about 'Pet Sounds' even to me:
the songs' sharp directness, the utopian longing for something that everyone in
this album knows can never be fulfilled ut which doesn't stop them looking for
it in vain anyway and the bittersweet nature of being a teenager with so much
of your life to come ahead of you, good and bad. So, yes, there is in short, a
lot to love in this album. I can see why it appeals to so many. I can see why
Brian worked so hard on making his vision come true. And I can see why such an
unusual sounding album had to wait so long before getting the respect it
deserved (and then some, on top). I know now, but I had to find it by myself
rather than simply take it for granted from my peers. I still prefer 'Smile'
though.
Most of the time I love my 'job'. Instead of keeping
all this stuff in my head where these thoughts are always playing, I get to
bore other people with it by putting things on paper. On occasion though I have
a real issue with something one of my 'pet' bands release - normally that's ok
because everyone else is confused by them too (what was Neil Young thinking on
'Greendale' or The Rolling Stones on 'Black and Blue'?) but every so often I
come across a song that I hate which everyone else seems to live. I'm afraid
'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' is one of my real bogey tracks. This is where the
'falseness' I've been describing really comes into play the most and it's
utterly depressing because the old-look Beach Boys would have handled it so well.
The opening surf guitar lick is an obvious nod to the past, but the band of
1964 or 1965 would never have allowed it to have been played so badly or
drenched in such Spector-echoey repetitiveness. And then there's the drums:
they don't whallop, just thump, as if Hal Blaine has just woken up out of a
deep sleep. The Beach Boys harmonies are all over the place and drowned out by
the sea of piano, accordions, basses and percussion. Brian's lead vocal is his
most shrill and unpleasant until the 'Dr Landy' years in 1980s (when any old
vocal will do if it gets Brian's therapist a paycheck). Even the attempt to go
all symphonic falls flat because, unlike the gorgeous opening to 'California
Girls', this isn't an opening or a peek into what the essence of the song really is behind the mask but a
whole load of noise that's running out of control and is simply too big. There
is a great song in here, touching on the old Beach Boys themes of love and fear
and impatience, as the narrator longs to grow older so he can be an adult, get
married and be 'happy' even though you can tell from the restless energy and
the unusual minor key switch near the end of the verse (dispelled by the yell
of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' dream every time) that he already knows that growing
up doesn't work that way. Tony Asher's lyric is as spot on as teenage worry
gets, but Brian's melody doesn't suit this song: it's full of wide sweeping
languid notes that don't match this song's impatience and restless energy but
have been sped up to sound like it anyway. Almost all Beach Boys songs are
crafted with love and care, but this one hasn't been in terms of composition
and in terms of arrangement has been over-crafted to the point where all the
joy has been sucked out of everything. And joy is meant to be the whole point
of this song which is crying out to be fleet of foot but instead sounds as if
it has the world on its shoulders. Wouldn't it be nice if this song was, you
know, as nice as everyone says it was?
'You Still Believe Me' somehow manages to become the
best mix of melody and lyric on the album, even though the melody and backing
track were recorded around a completely different song and despite the fact
that this was the first piece Brian and Tony ever wrote together. Originally
the song was 'In My Childhood' and came complete with bicycle bells o the fade
(which, unusually, were left in the final mix down of the song where they make
for an odd yet atmospheric coda). You can hear a lot of The Beatles' 'In My
Life' in the melody - and we know that 'Rubber Soul' (it's parent album) was
Brian's starting point for this project. However, just as John Lennon started
out trying to write a different song entirely and only wrote his lyric after a
late night snooze in which all his abandoned ideas coalesced into something
more universal, so 'Believe' turns into a song that's less about Brian and more
about the people he relies on in his life. Brian knew he wasn't perfect husband
material - he worked hard in those days, had big parties with lots of his doping
friends (whom his wife hated) and already considered himself a little bit odd
after a childhood spent with poor hearing and abusive parenting. Though
everyone always calls 'Pet Sounds' an album of honesty, this is the really
honest moment in which he speak-sings to Marilyn that 'I'm very aware you've
been patient with me' and that he tries to do his best, he really does, 'but
somehow I fail myself'. In the single best arrangement touch on the album Brian
hums along to a plucked piano (that took forever to get right according to the
outtakes!) like a bank of angels and then sings solo, fragile and alone, until
a stunning Beach Boys chorus enters on the 'still believe in me' chorus line.
Brian's not as alone as he thinks he is and the result is terrific. However
even here the arrangement is so big it's cloying: this should be a simple and
vulnerable little song and instead it's covered in a fog of harpsichords, oboes
and bicycle bells. Plus Brian's very musical howl of pain (followed by Mike's
echo) is everything that's 'wrong' with this album - this should be so real it
hurts and instead everything has been tidied and sorted into a musical scale.
Brian should have believed in the capacity of his real feelings to move other
people instead, but that said there's no denying the beauty of Tony Asher's
lyric which is sensitive without being cloying.
'That's Not Me' is the closest thing to a rocker on
the album. It's an extension of the lonely fragile narrator we've already heard
in a few Brian Wilson songs by now ('Don't Worry Baby' 'In My Room') who feels
out of place in world too matcho and dog-eat-dog for him. It's also about
finding your place in the world and realising that you've bitten off more than
you can chew - the narrator is homesick and over-ambitious, realising that he's
only trying to please his 'girl' and the world's too big a place for him.
However interestingly Brian hands this lyric over to Mike to sing and it
actually works really well - Love mastered double-tracking quicker than the
rest of the band and he attacks this song with the same bravado as on this
album's polar opposite 'I Get Around', hinting that it's all 'bluff'. Even the
rhythm recalls 'I Get Around', so it's a shame that yet again the band overcook
what should have been a relatively straightforward simple song and plaster it
with echoey surf guitars, bass rumbles, a Hammond organ that's at least ten
years out of date and a complicated tambourine part that's just distracting.
For all that though this song works well too, with a magical moment in the
middle when Brian takes over for a line 'Pete Townshend in The Who' style on
the line 'you needed my love and I know that I left at the wrong time' and
later 'I'm glad that we went now we're that much more sure that we're ready',
like a Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder ('When you wish upon a surfer girl'
remember) telling what he 'really thinks'. Plus a second magical moment when
this staccato, aggressive, punchy song finally lets go on the long held notes
on the word 'dreaaaaaaaam', as if this is the one thing to hold on to that
isn't falling apart. Again, remix this song with half the instruments missing
and I'm a huge fan but the finished product? Bah - it's lost all the emotion
again! Given that all the band were actually involved in playing this one (with
Brian on bass) new boy Bruce was nominated to 'direct' the session from the
control room floor!
Thankfully emotion comes into play nicely on the
stunning 'Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)', the one pure romantic
nugget on this album that deserves the lush arrangement Brian gives it here (in
fact the song is even prettier without the lyric and just the strings and is
the highlight of the 'Pet Sounds Session' set). Two Brians, using slightly
dodgy double-tracking, asks his girl simply to lean back on his shoulder and
enjoy the moment. Depending on how you read this song this is either two lovers
so telepathic they don't need voices to communicate with or Brian's narrator is
so lost in the fog of what might be in their future lives to come that he
doesn't want to find out what she's 'really' like and ruin the moment - for as
long as she stays silent he can dream that they're a perfect match. Either way
this lyric is so simple it's profound and one of the best on the album, nicely
matching this song's long drawn out sobs. The moment when a swooning Brian
urges his girl to listen to his heartbeat as if it's the most profound thing in
the world is beautiful and builds up to what should be a terrific climax - and
yet the song's biggest problem is that we don't get a percussive heartbeat at
all, but a full lush arrival of the strings which overpower the song
completely. How much better would it have been if Hal Blaine's drums had slowly
burst into life right on cue? Brian's a touch shrill too and really should have
re-done both vocals over again (indeed I'm amazed he didn't given his
perfectionist tendencies on so much of the rest of the record). That's the
performance though - as a song this is faultless. Listen, listen, listen! The
track released under the name 'Unreleased Background Vocals' on most CD
re-issues of the album is actual Brian's multiple vocal demo for this song so
the session musicians could hear the 'feel' he wanted.
Tony didn't write the lyric for 'I'm Waiting For The
Day' - this song was a last minute addition written to a Mike Love lyric to try
and calm the singer down a bit (and a re-write of a song copyrighted as long
ago as February 1964!) In a way you can tell - Mike tries hard to write in the
album 'style' and very nearly gets away with it, but you can kind of tell that
this song's tale of jealousy, split and reunion isn't as autobiography as some
of the others on the album. Brian sings it in a very odd manner too, as if he's
trying to hide his emotions even though this song is arguably as emotive as any
on the record, as if keeping his distance (oddly enough I've thought that for
years but only now discovered that Brian agrees with me and says it's the one
vocal on the album he didn't like. I doubt we agree on much else on this album,
though!) Once more the orchestra gets firmly in the way, with a Mantovani-style
arrangement that tries to be lush and romantic, even when the lyric is actually
quite realistic and brutal by this album's standards, about the narrator and his
lover working out whether they can forgive the other for straying or not. By
contrast just listen to how much punchier the song is after the false ending
when a bunch of 'dooby doo aaaahs' and a real live rock band (well, organ drums
and bass anyway) start playing and Brian actually starts having fun on the
vocals, perhaps reflecting what he's secretly thinking ('You didn't think I
could sit around and let him take you!' he screams, in comparison to the slow
keeping-it-together tone of the rest of the track). If only this bit had come
earlier I'd really like this song, but this is not a track born for piccolos
and flutes, it needs to be harder and angrier for the 'trick' of Brian
'pretending' to be a nice guy and covering up his real feelings to work.
Oh dear. Suddenly the orchestra gets a whole track
to itself and 'Let's Go Away For A While' sounds to my ears like an attempt by
Brian to match what his father was up to the jazz lounge album 'The Many Moods
Of Murray Wilson'. The thing is though, Murray spent his life listening to
these types of records - Brian's just an interested outsider, curious as to
what bits fit together to make up those sounds but without any real instinctive
feel for the genre. So instead we get 'The Beach Boys jazz party album' in
miniature, complete with a surf guitar that doesn't fit at all and more raucous
percussion. The 'idea' behind this song was that the lovers were 'stressed' and
needed a vacation and dreamed of taking one together and just doing nothing -
whether they actually go or not, at least they thought about it was the idea.
It was also an in-joke, as early in the songwriting partnership Tony leant
Brian an album by hip comedian John Brent titled 'How To Speak Hip' in which
one of the lines was ';if everyone went away for a while then we'd have world
peace!' That's a nice concept, but this instrumental only really says as much
in the title not in the music, where this piece could really be about anything
without any feelings of travel or relaxation (or maybe I've just been on the
wrong sorts of holidays?!) The entire performance was recycled on Neil Young's
film and soundtrack 'Journey Thru The Past' in 1972, weirdly. Oh and
interestingly, despite Brian never mentioning any lyrics and indeed calling
this his 'favourite instrumental' of all the ones on all The Beach Boys
sessions, Capitol timesheets that came to light in 1995 proved that a session
to add vocals to this track was booked during the last day - which became the
day of mixing instead. No one knows what the lyrics would have sounded like!
Meanwhile, over on side two, the whole concept has
gone to pot. Capitol insisted that latest single 'Sloop John B' be on the album
even though it really shouldn't be here at all - or indeed part of The Beach
Boys discography. A traditional song much covered by everybody, it's too
obvious a choice for a band who were always trying to do something different
with each single and another backward step to 'cover' songs to follow 'Barbara
Ann' (even if Brian still got a credit for 'arranging' a traditional song). To
be fair the arrangement is what - nearly - saves the song, as the band's
harmonies criss-cross to exciting effect and Brian throws lots of extra in
verse by verse to keep the song entertaining till near the end. But once again
the song doesn't rock the way it should: this is a song that should have the
band themselves for and aft, not port and starboard and this time an even
simpler tale of homesickness on the high seas creaks under the weight of too
many instruments, with the flat flutes particularly sour. Al Jardine was the
one who recommended the song to Brian, having been trying to steer the band in
a more folk-rock direction for a while and says he was shocked when he heard
the backing track which wasn't at all what he expected (along with the two
instrumentals 'Sloop John' was the first Beach Boys song to be recorded in this
elaborate orchestral way). Al also expected, perhaps naively, to be the Beach
Boy to sing it and the track would have suited his slightly sour voice more
than the falsetto Brian gives the track here - actually the elder Wilson
'auditioned' most of the band to see whose vocal would work best before
cheekily nominating himself for most of the song - I bet that went down well
with Mike! Outakes on the 'Pet Sounds' set feature a rather moody vocal from
Carl and Brian singing all the way through, even the verse Mike gets on the
final product. The finished version sounds better, but in context of the
sterling work The Beach Boys had been releasing on 45 rpm single across the
past few years this track seems like a step backwards in any version, with the
band drowning rather than swimming when it came to inspiration.
Thankfully 'God Only Knows' is there to take the
pain away. 'God Only Knows' is always there to take the pain away. Underneath
all the controversies (this was the first song to use the word 'God' in a lyric
and in a few countries received a radio ban), underneath another largely
superfluous and fussy arrangement, underneath an often audibly nervous Carl
Wilson singing only his second lead on a Beach Boys song, lies perfection. Some
say this is the loveliest suicide note ever written (in one sense it sounds as
if the narrator isn't just imaging the worst, the worst has happened - 'the
world could show nothing to me so what good would living do me?'); others that
it's actually a goodbye' song (what other romantic love song starts off with
the line 'I may not always love you'?); others still that this is a song more
at face value and, like 'You Still Believe In Me' a song of gratitude for love
and support. The warmest moment on 'Pet Sounds' by a country mile, it's the
track that makes the rest of the album 'work' - without this expression of what
true love means what would be the point about worrying over when love starts,
when it ends or what we have to do with our lives to be in a position to have
it at all? It's also the least cluttered of the orchestra songs here and
therefore the most immediate - though even then Brian had to be urged to pare
back his ideas for the tune (early versions features Brian's wife and sisters
in law The Honeys and a full Beach Boy chorus plus 23 musicians and a noisy
tag, the latter included on the 'Pet Sounds Sessions' set; the final version
features 16 and just Brian and Bruce singing along with Carl. Sometimes the
best things really do come in the smallest packages.
Perfect sequencing has this track at the heart of
the album too where it belongs (even if it makes 'Sloop John B' sound even more
flippant). Like those other great AAA love songs 'The Air That I Breathe' and
'Maybe I'm Amazed' (a McCartney song clearly influenced by his favourite ever
song on his favourite ever album), this song manages to be simple yet profound
and personal yet universal, as Brian again salutes Marilyn for standing by him
no matter what. Thankfully, unlike 'You Still Believe In Me', the romance goes
both ways, with Brian (via Carl) telling her that regarding their love 'you'll
never need to doubt it - I'll make you so sure about it'. Though 'God' is only
mentioned in passing and never specified (it's an expression, not a religious
message) this song does have a certain spirituality to it and the feeling that
something bigger than the couple is at work and guiding them. Brian's single
best melody on the album is equally inspired, having so much fun exploring
every nook and cranny of the chord structure he's given himself that it's a
delight as the song balances being rooted and supportive but also footloose and
fancy free. In short, 'God Only Knows' has everything and considering his
nerves a not-yet-twenty-year-old Carl Wilson makes his brother proud on a song
that could have been tailor made to his soft romantic tones. God only knows
where this album, The Beach Boys career and music in general would be without
it. One of the album highlights by a country mile.
While Brian struggled with some of the other
arrangements on 'Pet Sounds', he was luckier with the songs which tended to
fall into place quite naturally. All except 'I Know There's An Answer' which
took a while to get right. One of the things Brian talked about with Tony was
his growing interest in soft drugs - the sort of things every musician was
taking in 1966, though in The Beach Boys Brian was on his own (he should have
formed a club with Hollie Graham Nash!) The first draft for this lyric, named
'Hang On To Your Ego' and sung begrudgingly by an angry Mike Love (who hated
all drugs), was pure drug taking chatter - the title came from the idea of
holding on to yourself so you didn't 'drown' in LSD-fuelled thoughts of
collective consciousness (which is kinda what happened to Syd Barrett and in
many ways what happened to Brian a year later, fuelling undiagnosed
schizophrenia according to his doctors: the original draft of this song ended
with the lament '...But I know you're going to lose the fight' which seems
poignant in retrospect). Though Tony wasn't a drug taker either he picked up on
Brian's drug parlance well - too well for Mike who demanded a second go and
feared not just poor sales but copycat drug overdoses from fans. Even though
what people miss is that at its heart 'Ego' is an anti-drug song: Brian can see
so much creativity but people go too far, 'they trip through the day and waste
all their thoughts at night' while speaking to anyone on drugs he finds them
'defensive'. It's as if he got Tony to write this original lyric from his
cousin or even his wife's point of view. The second lyric is superior anyway,
fitting in less with the way Brian was living his life and more about this
album's everyman figure, trying to fit in and discovering that growing up isn't
what he thought it would be like. Brian keeps the complaints that people
pretend to be nice 'but inside are so uptight' but moves on to talk about
'safety zones' and instead of hanging on to his ego the narrator 'knows'
there's a right way of living but it's not the way his elders and peers tell
him it is. Instead of being taught Brian has to 'learn' how to live life his
way - which is in itself a pretty sneaky way of getting his comments on a drug
lifestyle past the censor to those that 'know' anyway. Once again, though, the
backing track lets the song down - this should be sharp-edged and punchy,
liable to crack at any moment - and instead it's a sleepy lagoon of percussion
that rub all the hard edges away and more strings, plucked this time. Only the
harmonicas capture the ear and only then because they make such an odd sound,
more like a croaking frog as they jump on this song and shake it to pieces en
masse. I know there's a great song in here somewhere, but it's on the lyric
sheet and in the combination of Mike's churlish scowl and Brian's adamant
falsetto - not the backing.
'Here Today' is perhaps the weakest song here. No
classic album should come with the rhyming couplet 'You know I hate to be a
downer, but I'm the guy she left before you found her!' and the backing is even
sillier than usual, with Carol Kaye's usual exquisite bass playing reduced to a
wobble and far too much keyboard banging on all at the same time. It's kind of
a psychedelic 'She Loves You' this song but with larger emotional stakes as the
third party isn't the narrator's friend but his exes' new lover. Talking out
loud about where all the hope and innocence of the first side went wrong, this
should be the turning point on 'Pet Sounds', but instead it just comes over as
just another anti-love song. The chorus about impermanence is sung in such a
rigid way it misses the point completely - this is a song that should be always
changing but the closest we get to that is the paranoid instrumental section in
which for once on this album nothing much happens (it's based on a Bach fugue,
apparently - Brian's in rock and roll, the world's greatest musical art form,
he shouldn't be pitching his ideas so 'low'!) The 'twist' in this song is that
the narrator clearly still things for the lover who spurned him and wronged him
and he's deeply jealous at watching another man go through what he once went
through, 'remembering things like they were'. But that isn't clear on this song
- instead it's a loose thread left dangling that isn't really picked up on and
is easily Tony's weakest lyric for the album (he admitted later that it was his
one lyric for the album he 'couldn't identify with' and that Brian didn't like
his original lyric, condensing it down to a much simpler idea). At least this
short song is over with quickly though, here and gone so fast. 'Caroline, No'
served the love-gone-wrong theme perfectly well on it's own - we don't need a
second track making the same point so clumsily and we certainly don't need it
at this stage in the album where it sounds so out of place. This is also the
scene of perhaps the biggest engineering disaster on any Beach Boys record -
no, not the famous coughing this time but a very noisy discussion between Bruce
Johnstone and a teen magazine photographer that plays throughout the instrumental
break - or at least it is on the original mono, it got taken out of the stereo
mix (to be fair it's more interesting than what the organ's playing!)
'Pet Sounds' was once voted quite highly on a poll
of 'albums guaranteed to make you cry'. Notwithstanding the fact that The Spice
Girls is what makes me cry the most (in pain!), the one track on this album
that gets to me every time without fail is 'I Just Wasn't Made For These
Times'. For once the lyric, melody and arrangement are all perfectly in alignment
and saying the same thing: this is the sound of someone on their own, but
trapped in a world that isn't taking any notice (just as Brian's double-tracked
vocal sleepwalks his way through a mammoth every changing landscape of sounds
that don't take any heed of what he's up to at all - listen to the backing
track sometime, it comes across as an entirely different song). Lyrically too
this is the bravest song on the album by some margin: all the love songs,
though deeper than the usual Beach Boys teenage romances, are still
identifiable but this song is something different. Brian (via Tony)'s narrator
is alone, a pioneer, longing to find someone who cares as often, thinks as
deeply and sees and hears as he does. Even though Brian was hugely popular ain 1966
and went to more parties than the Royal Family, he still cut a lonely figure by
most accounts, always searching for the collaborator who knew what he was
feeling and thinking (Van Dyke Parks was still the closest he came to finding
his own mixture of thoughts and feels), with the rest of the band staying at
the same point in their journey and the his new wife just wanting him home, not
exploring the inside of his head and the outside world in equal measure.
Brian's composure, held throughout the rest of this album, breaks on his single
best 'Pet Sounds' vocal as at last he commits to the music and breaks your
heart with the words 'sometimes I feel very sad'. The lyric is kind of
prophetic too: in 1966 everything Brian had touched turned to gold (with the exception
of forgotten singles 'Ten Little Indians' and 'The Little Girl I Once Knew' -
even so The Beach Boys never spent longer outside the top five than three
months up until the end of 1966) and yet here he complains that everything he
puts together, sooner or later, falls apart. He gets the inspiration to 'change
things around, to make the world a happier and more beautiful place - but all
gets is puzzled looks from 'fair weather friends'. As if to prove the point,
three Brians sing lead on this song as if there's no one else up to the job and
the hard-to-hear lyric sung near the end ('Can't find anything to put my heart
and soul into' and 'People don't wanna hear where I'm at!') is the perfect
contrast, effectively the sound of Brian arguing with himself. Melodically too
this lovely lilting song is the perfect vehicle for such a lyric: it's like a
long sigh, stretching even Brian's powerful lungs almost to breaking point. The
use of the theremin (months before the even more lauded solo on 'Good Vibrations')
is also perfect: of course the solo should come from a pioneering sound that
had never been heard before (except on Hammer Horror films) - it's
other-worldly bleary-eyes is perfectly cast for the role and the instrument was
never better used by anybody than here, a ghost in a world that works to a
different sound. Of course, typically, this gorgeous song is the one on the
album that most fans claim not to like - I guess as a reviewer too I just
wasn't made for these times. Whatever anyone else says, it's a fantastic song
and one of The Beach Boys' all-time best moments.
Unfortunately the 'Pet Sounds' title track is one of
the worst. Originally titled 'Run James Run', Brian toyed with sending it into
the producer of the James Bond franchise, but decided better of it - just as
well because it would have been one of the weirdest, weakest Bond themes. What
it sounds like is one of The Beach Boys' early surfing guitar instrumentals
injected with LSD, only instead of Carl's excellent work we get session-man Jerry
Cole who just isn't up to the job or loose enough over a typically dull 'Pet
Sounds' backing of horns, strings and so much percussion it's hard to tell
where the main beats of this track actually are. Brian says he wanted to make a
film score the way Henry Mancini (who worked on the Bond themes) would sound if
he worked with Phil Spector, but the end result is pure Beach Boys filler, with
a boogie woogie riff that isn't that appealing played over a backing that
sounds as if it couldn't care less. Easily the worst thing on the album, even
'Trombone Dixie' would have been preferable over this one - at least that had a
proper tune! This is also the first of two consecutive songs to feature Hal
Blaine hitting coca-cola cans for a percussive effect, but it's an effect that
works much better on...
Lost love lament 'Caroline, No'. Brian was, as we've
already seen, a nervy husband - unsure if he was marrying too young, or to the
right girl and his insecurities only grew worse as his music and his drugs tool
him further away from Marilyn. As it happens their love was strong enough to
take not only these differences but Brian's future collapse too and the pair
remain married right up until the 1990s. However Brian didn't know that then
and back in 1966 feared that he could already see the cracks in their
partnership. Matters came to a head when Marilyn's hairdresser made a mistake
and cut her hair short and badly - the couple were obsessed with each other's
hairdoes (Marilyn always says that's what first attracted her about Brian back
when she was just another Beach Boys fan) and agreed to keep the same ones
their whole life through. When the mistake happened Marilyn didn't think much
of it (she wanted to grow it back anyway) but in his fragile state of mind it
devastated Brian who saw it as a 'sign' that the woman he married wouldn't
always stay the same person. 'Marilyn' became 'Caroline' to keep the song less
personal, although it's still close enough to the original to make it clear how
personal this song is with its lines of betrayal and bitterness. For the second
time on the album Brian talks about crying and he sounds more like he means it
this time - but the curse of 'Pet Sounds' rears its head again as the most
artificial instrument (the saxophone) plays its most artificial solo in rock
and roll history straight after this line. Only Brian's held caterwaul at the
end (on a painful extended cry of 'nooooo!') sets the song right again, before
the backing band sadly play out, coca-cola cans at the ready, as time ticks
down to the inevitable. Brian was desperate for his wife to hear his hard work
and kept 'Pet Sounds' from her until the album was mixed and finished and they
stayed up all night listening to it over and over. Though she adored 'Don't
Talk' and 'God Only Knows' (the two songs most obviously written for her) she
cried through this track as she heard for probably the first time all the
thoughts that had been running through Brian's head that he hadn't expressed to
her directly. In a way 'Caroline, No' is a cruel way to end this record. Yes it
makes sense that the arc of a relationship described on the record should end
in failure, but this isn't a record that even began to tell its plot in order
and it feels ugly this song, as if Pet Sounds' ultimate message is telling us
not to bother because love will always fall apart in the end. Despite what we
said earlier about 'God Only Knows; being the heart of the record, that song
belongs here, even if 'Caroline, No' itself gets the perfect ending with
Brian's own dogs barking at the bad 'vibrations' (seriously, that was what
Brian was getting at - his mother Audree had been telling him about how dogs
only bark at certain people they distrust and how they'd suddenly started doing
it to someone she knew so he must have 'changed'; this is where 'Good
Vibrations' comes from too) and a train rushing past, running on to a new
destination to start the same journey all over again, though perhaps with less
innocence than was heard on 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' Famously this song was sped
up on the advice of father Murray who thought Brian sounded too old and this
song too sad (this was said to be the only comment he made on an album Brian
had been eager to play him). Not for the last time Wilson senior was wrong and
Brian should have found the answer by himself - the original speed mix
(included on the 'Sessions' box set) is so much more moving somehow, even if
the pitch isn't that different and the two mixes only have a few seconds
difference.
Overall, then, 'Pet Sounds' has some truly brilliant
ideas and a couple of the best songs The Beach Boys ever released. However I
have the same problem with it that I do whenever I hear some casual fan
pronounce 'Sgt Peppers' as the best album The Beatles ever made and they
dismiss all the other ones that are actually better. The truth is 'Pet Sounds'
catches a general public mood like no other Beach Boys record. There are no
references to surfers or cars and there's none of the charming but fan-only
insights into the narrow world of Brian Wilson in bed which happens later.
People assume too, I think, that just because something has an orchestra
slapped on it then it must be 'art', but actually the orchestra is what gets in
the way of this album and the thing that makes it truly dated and not as
timeless as people call it (in the same way 'Sgt Peppers' is just that shade
too summer of love to make much of an impact post 1967, though clearly at the
time the album was the perfect mirror of the times). They say that anyone whose
loved and lost can identify with 'Pet Sounds', but actually I feel far more
emotional resonance with 'The Beach Boys Today' than I do with this record -
there not every song worked but those that were meant to be emotional
absolutely moved me in lyric, melody and form. Here there's always something
working against this album, an over-laden arrangement or a clumsy couplet or a
weak (by Beach Boys standard) melody that means 'Pet Sounds' is always pulled
back to earth before it can soar (maybe that's why it's set in a zoo?) I don't
hate this record by any means but I must confess I still don't understand it or
see inside it the things that so many other people are said to see. For all of
the talk of this record's ambitions it's still just a bunch of love songs and
only really comes together when those love songs comes from the head not the
23-piece orchestra; equally for all the talk of elaborate complex arrangements
Brian had done far better than this on past Beach Boys records - not just
'Today' but parts of 'All Summer Long' 'Summer Nights!!!' and 'Shut Down Volume
Two' as well (horn drenched 'Our Car Club' is way more complex than anything
here). In his haste to make this revealing Brian also sang way too much of this
album himself - the record really comes alive when Mike and especially Carl get
involved too and make this less of a personal record and more of a universal
one. Frankly any record without much Beach Boys harmony presence is a bad
record in my book, even one made with as much love and care as this one. This
record isn't terrible by any means, but 'Pet Sounds' is a lot nearer to being
the worst Beach Boys album than the best one in my book, without the band's
usual lopsided charm, goofy humour, big hearted ballads or funky rock and roll
songs to keep it upright. Most of you - maybe all of you - will probably
disagree with me and hey, that's OK. Albums mean different things to different
people - and though I still struggle to come to terms with the fact that fans
don't always agree with my esoteric choices neither of us has to be 'right' and
this isn't a competition. Whatever gets you through the night is alright, even
if it's a 20 piece orchestra playing poor James Bond themes. But the one
message that comes through from this album co clearly and strongly is that we
should be thinking for ourselves and being true to what we believe or 'that's
not me' - and 'Pet Sounds', I'm afraid, isn't me at al. Now 'Smile' on the
other hand...
Other Beach Boys reviews from this site you might be interested in reading:
'Surfin' Safari' (1962) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/news-views-and-music-issue-28-beach.html
'Surfin' USA' (1963)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-beach-boys-surfin-usa-1963.html
'Surfer Girl' (1963) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-beach-boys-surfer-girl-1963.html
'Little Deuce Coupe' (1963) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/09/the-beach-boys-little-deuce-coupe-1963.html
'Shut Down Volume Two' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-beach-boys-shut-down-volume-two-1964.html
‘All Summer Long’ (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-beach-boys-all-summer-long-1964.html
'Beach Boys Christmas' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/xmas-bumper-issue-revised-beach-boys.html
‘All Summer Long’ (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-beach-boys-all-summer-long-1964.html
'Beach Boys Christmas' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/xmas-bumper-issue-revised-beach-boys.html
'Today' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-beach-boys-today-1965.html
'Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!!!!!!!) (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-65-beach.html
'Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!!!!!!!) (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-65-beach.html
'Party!' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-beach-boys-party-1965.html
'Smiley Smile' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-beach-boys-smiley-smile-1967-album.html
'Wild Honey' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-115-beach.html
'Friends' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-21-beach-boys-friends-1968.html
'20/20' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-84-beach.html
'Sunflower' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-36-beach-boys-sunflower-1970.html
'Wild Honey' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-115-beach.html
'Friends' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-21-beach-boys-friends-1968.html
'20/20' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-84-beach.html
'Sunflower' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-36-beach-boys-sunflower-1970.html
'Surf's Up' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-beach-boys-surfs-up-1971-album.html
‘Carl and the Passions – So Tough’ (1971) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-beach-boys-carl-and-passions-so.html
'Holland' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-55-beach-boys-holland-1973.html
'Holland' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-55-beach-boys-holland-1973.html
'Love You' (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-beach-boys-love-you-1977.html
'Pacific Ocean Blue' (Dennis Wilson solo) (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-97-dennis.html
'Merry Xmas From The Beach Boys!' (Unreleased) (1977)
'Pacific Ocean Blue' (Dennis Wilson solo) (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-97-dennis.html
'Merry Xmas From The Beach Boys!' (Unreleased) (1977)
'M.I.U Album' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-beach-boys-miu-album-1978.html
'L.A.Light Album' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-75-beach-boys-la-light-album.html
'L.A.Light Album' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-75-beach-boys-la-light-album.html
'Keeping
The Summer Alive' (1980)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-beach-boys-keeping-summer-alive-1980.html
'The
Beach Boys' (1985) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-beach-boys-1985.html
'Summer
In Paradise' (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beach-boys-summer-in-paradise-1992.html
'Smile' (Brian Wilson solo) (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_06_29_archive.html
'That Lucky Old Sun' (Brian Wilson solo) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/news-views-and-music-issue-55-brian.html
'Smile Sessions' (band outtakes)(2011) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/news-views-and-music-issue-142-beach.html
'Smile' (Brian Wilson solo) (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_06_29_archive.html
'That Lucky Old Sun' (Brian Wilson solo) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/news-views-and-music-issue-55-brian.html
'Smile Sessions' (band outtakes)(2011) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/news-views-and-music-issue-142-beach.html
'That's
Why God Made The Radio' (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-beach-boys-thats-why-god-made-radio.html
The Best Unreleased Beach Boys Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-beach-boys-unreleased-songs-top.html
The Best Unreleased Beach Boys Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-beach-boys-unreleased-songs-top.html
A
Complete (ish) Guide To The Beach Boys' Surviving TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-beach-boys-complete-ish-guide-to.html
Solo/Live/Compilation/Rarities
Albums Part One 1962-86 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/beach-boys-sololivecompilationunrelease.html
Solo/Live/Compilation/Rarities
Albums Part Two 1988-2014
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/beach-boys-sololivecompilationunrelease_25.html
Non-Album
Songs Part One 1962-1969 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/beach-boys-non-album-songs-part-one.html
Non-Album
Songs Part Two 1970-2012 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/beach-boys-non-album-songs-part-two.html
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