Fact #104880

PET SOUNDS by The Beach Boys
by Johnny Black

Pet Sounds, a new high water mark for studio creativity in the mid-1960s, became virtually inevitable on December 23, 1964.

With their latest single, Dance Dance Dance, bulleting into the US Top Ten, December had been an intensely busy month for the Beach Boys, shuttling across America between recording sessions, live gigs and tv appearances, but most of the pressure fell squarely on the shoulders of the band’s presiding genius Brian Wilson.

He was not only a performing band member, but also their songwriter, arranger and producer. As Brian’s brother Carl noted, “He never did like touring, ever. He didn't like flying, or being away from home or anything.”

Adding to his mental anguish was the fact that, at the start of the month, he had married Marilyn Rovell of Californian girl group The Honeys, but the relationship was already fraught with tension because Wilson was convinced that his new bride was having an affair with the band’s lead vocalist, Mike Love. Brian, a 22 year old survivor of parental abuse, found such burdens intolerable, and he had lately turned to marijuana in search of escape from his torments.

Two days before Christmas, The Beach Boys boarded a plane in Los Angeles, heading for a gig in Houston but, before it landed, Brian had snapped. He charged up and down the aisle, screaming abuse at staff, passengers and the other Beach Boys until his brothers wrestled him to the floor and, reluctantly, had him sedated.

Brian began seeing a psychiatrist and concluded that the best way to deal with his unbearable workload was to stop playing in the band. “It was bound to happen,” reckoned Carl philosophically, “He just said, 'I don't want to tour. I want to stay home. I want to make good music.'”

From that moment on, the studio was Brian Wilson’s home. He became increasingly aware that a recording studio could be as much of a creative tool as any musical instrument, and Pet Sounds became the embodiment of that philosophy.

Hand in hand with this realisation came another change in Wilson’s world view. In the spring of 1965, he took LSD for the first time, and told Marilyn that the experience had been a spiritual confrontation with God. Now the stage was set. Although it would ultimately wreak havoc with his already parlous mental state, the perceptual changes triggered in Wilson by the drug would directly contribute to his creativity over the coming months.

Although no firm plan – or even title - for Pet Sounds had yet entered Wilson’s head, the earliest recording to appear on the album took place on July 12, 1965 at Wilson’s favourite studio, Western Recorders in Hollywood. Beach Boy Al Jardine had brought Wilson a somewhat gloomy Caribbean folk song, The Wreck Of The John B. In the space of one day Wilson re-fashioned it as Sloop John B, using the finest West Coast session players available, pushing the tempo up and introducing an optimistic glockenspiel backing. “All we had to do was show up and sing,” recalled Jardine.

As instrumentalists, the other Beach Boys were beginning to find themselves effectively – and infuriatingly – redundant, but Wilson applied the same rigorous standards to himself. He was a perfectly capable bass guitarist but, for recording sessions, he used legendary sessioneer Carol Kaye. “Sure, I could play bass,” Wilson has explained, “but I could see the bigger picture if I left that to someone else so I could stay in the control booth and produce the session.”

However, even with Kaye on board, virtually every bass note was written by Wilson, and he had the final say on every aspect of the production. He was in total control and this would be the blueprint for every track on Pat Sounds.

It was around this time that advertising copy writer Tony Asher dropped by the studio and was introduced to Wilson. The pair threw some ideas around and Wilson – never a sophisticated lyricist - was sufficiently impressed by the young wordsmith to mentally file his name for future reference.

The instrumental parts for another Pet Sounds track, You Still Believe In Me, were recorded on November 1, under the title In My Childhood. Neither this nor Sloop John B were, however, recorded as part of Pet Sounds. They were simply tracks.

Everything changed on December 6, when The Beatles released their new album, Rubber Soul in America. In Wilson’s own words, “When I heard Rubber Soul, I said, 'I have to top that.' Then I did Pet Sounds and McCartney said, 'I'll top that with Sgt Pepper.'”

Wilson had noticed that every track on Rubber Soul seemed to have been recorded with the same care and attention normally lavished on a single. Until this time, pop albums were regarded by the music industry as a way to cash in on hit singles. Rock’n’roll was regarded as a passing phase, so an album tended to consist of nine formulaic tracks quickly recorded to fill up the space between two or three carefully created singles.

Wilson now decided that his next album would meet and even exceed the quality levels set by Rubber Soul, so that the entire album would stand as a coherent and creative whole.

Within days, Wilson was back in Western Recorders finishing off Sloop John B. After trying out every member of the band on lead vocals, he decided to do it himself (much to Jardine’s dismay), and paid guitarist Billy Strange $500 to add a distinctive 12-string guitar backing.

For most of January 1966, The Beach Boys were touring the Far East, leaving Brian in Los Angeles, where he took full advantage of their absence to push ahead. On January 18, he entered Western to work on the instrumental track Let’s Go Away For A While. Pet Sounds was officially under way.

Wilson had also now begun working with Tony Asher as a lyricist, sometimes presenting him with complete instrumental tracks, sometimes just with melodies or even fragments of melodies. “The general tenor of the lyrics was always his,” says Asher, “and the actual choice of words was usually mine. I was really just his interpreter.”

By the 22nd Brian had shifted to Gold Star studios and moved on to another new song, Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Mark Linett, who produced the later stereo and 5.1 surround sound versions of Pet Sounds, points out that the richness of sound on tracks made at Gold Star came, to some extent, from the relatively small size of the studio. “You hear these huge records that Brian and Phil Spector made and you think it must be an enormous space,” he explains. “Well, no, it's a very small space, because that allowed the coincident information to be useful. If you were in a huge room like Studio 1 at Western, the bounceback from instruments to the other mics would have been objectionable, whereas in a small room, it added another dimension.”

Returning to Western on the 24th, Wilson laid down tracks for the haunting ballad You Still Believe In Me. In his ongoing efforts to find new sounds, he devised a piano introduction which required sessioneer Larry Knechtel to play the keyboard while another musician clambered inside the piano and plucked the strings to make them ring out.

The Beach Boys’ Far Eastern tour ended with a gig in Hawaii on the 29th, after which they took a well-earned rest, while Brian ploughed on with the new album.

The collaboration with Asher was proving fruitful. Listening to Brian speak about his high school crush on a girl called Carol Mountain, Asher had written a lyric titled Carol I Know, but Wilson mis-heard the phrase and sang it as the much more poignant Caroline No. One of the pair’s loveliest songs, recording of Caroline No was started on January 31.

Suitably refreshed after their break, the other Beach Boys joined Brian in Western Studios on February 9. As Asher has pointed out, they were “hoping for and expecting more of what had been hits for them all along.“

Instead they were confronted by a radically more sophisticated style and sound, which didn’t seem to require any input from them other than their voices. “We were a surfing group when we left the country,” observed Al Jardine, “and now basically we came back to this new music."

Asher has confirmed that the band was unenthusiastic about the new songs, and couldn’t understand why their proven hit-making formula needed changing. “There was resistance,” Wilson revealed. “There was a little bit of inter-group struggle. It was resolved in that they figured it was a showcase for Brian Wilson, but it was The Beach Boys. In other words, they gave in.”

Wilson was back in Western on the 11th without the other Beach Boys, working on what he has described as, “one of the sweetest, most loving songs that I ever sang,” - Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)

During a session on the 14th, Wilson made his first use of an electro-theremin in the backing for I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times. Played by another sessioneer, Paul Tanner, the instrument was a variation on an earlier device invented in the 1920s by Russian scientist Leon Theremin. Both instruments emit the same eerie sound, halfway between a violin and a soprano voice, but the original theremin was apallingly difficult to master, because pitch and volume were varied by the performer’s hands moving around in a magnetic field generated by the instrument. Accurate production of notes was much simpler on the electro-theremin which used a slider control for pitch and an amplifier for volume.

The following day saw the entire band rendezvous at the petting paddock in San Diego Zoo to shoot the album’s cover. The best that can be said of the result is that it has a certain naïve charm, and it ties in with the title, which Wilson says was chosen, “because we specialised in certain sounds. It was our best - the songs were our Pet Sounds.”

Later the same day, they re-assembled in Western and recorded That’s Not Me, a song whose lyric deals with Wilson’s rationale for giving up touring. The track is remarkable for being the only one on Pet Sounds to feature the band playing its own instruments, although even here they were augmented by session players.

With the album sessions in full swing, Wilson now set to work on Good Vibrations, but this classic single would not be completed in time to be included on Pet Sounds.

Much of the next month and a half was occupied by the band adding its vocals under Brian’s supervision. Recalling this long and painstaking process, Mike Love has stated, “If there was a hint of a sharp or flat, we would have to do it again until it was right.” Frequently, Wilson would stop the group to pick up on some tiny error which no-one else had even noticed.

Even at this point, however, there were three new songs still to be recorded, Here Today, I’m Waiting For The Day and, taking pride of place, God Only Knows.

After a couple of days of Brian working on backing tracks without the band, they joined him in Columbia Studio A on the 10th. “When I walked in on God Only Knows,” remembers Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, “I realised that something wonderful was happening.”

The song wasn’t completed until a month later when Carl Wilson recorded his transcendently beautiful lead vocal, widely regarded as his finest moment with the band. With God Only Knows in the can, Pet Sounds was effectively complete.

It was released on May 16 but, although now recognised as a benchmark album, it stalled at No10 in the US chart because Capitol Records simply didn’t get behind it. “They didn’t promote Pet Sounds,” reasons Bruce Johnston, “because they said it wasn’t commercial and people wouldn’t understand it.

The British audience liked it better, sending it to No2, and unswerving British devotion to Pet Sounds seen it re-evaluated over the years, often topping critics polls as the best album of all time. In Paul McCartney’s own words, “It blew me out of the water”, and there’s no question that it set a new benchmark which The Beatles now felt they would have to beat.

Speaking of Pet Sounds some years later, The Beatles’ producer George Martin observed that, “It gives you an elation that is beyond logic.” And that, surely, is the point at which music intersects with magic.

(Source : by Johnny Black, first appeared in the book Albums by Backbeat Books, 2007)




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Carl Wilson (Beach Boys) : It certainly was a groundbreaking album. It was just so much more than a record; it had such a spiritual quality. It wasn't going in and doing another top ten. It had so much more meaning than that.

Brian Wilson(Beach Boys) : To this day, when I listen to Pet Sounds, I'm proud of how much love we put into that record.

Carl Wilson : Capital Records were a little bit afraid of it, because they probably?thought they'd lose a market or a segment of people. They said, 'Give us some?bubblegum music, because that's your great thing and we can get on the charts with?that.'

Anyway, for us, [Pet Sounds] was the best we could do at the time, and we?thought it was good for us, so it just happened. They [Capitol] were very resistant?to going forward musically. We were really angry with them. Brian just couldn't?understand how they couldn't be into it. We just sensed that we wanted to improve,?wanted to make good music.

Up until that time it was mostly singles. He wanted to make albums. That was really before albums became a thing, I think it really took The Beatles for people to get hold of the idea that you could buy albums and that was a great form of entertainment.

Paul McCartney : It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. I love the album so much.

George Martin (producer, The Beatles] : The first time I heard Pet Sounds, I got that kind of feeling that happens less and less as one gets older and more blase ... that moment when something comes along and blows your mind. Hearing Pet Sounds gave me the kind of feeling that raises the hairs on the back of your neck and you say, 'What is that? It's fantastic!' It gives you an elation that is beyond logic.
(Source : not known)

Andrew Loog Oldham (manager, Rolling Stones) : Pet Sounds was the guv'nor. Just when we thought we'd said it all, Brian Wilson came along with this and moved us forward. It remains a tremendous accomplishment.

I remember Paul McCartney waiting in my house for Lou Adler to arrive from LA with an acetate of Pet Sounds that Brian Wilson had given to him for us. We shared the acetate