A tribute to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who died on Wednesday. I’m playing his magnum opus, the 1966 album Pet Sounds followed by some deeper Beach Boys tracks from their post-surfer hits days, then closing with a mixture of well-known hits and album tracks. Many of those, picked by Wilson himself, were packaged on The Beach Boys Classics selected by Brian Wilson, a diverse collection released in 2002. I also drew from Greatest Hits Volume Three: Best of the Brother Years 1970–1986.
I plan to get to some Sly and The Family Stone material on my Monday June 16 show, a week after Sly Stone‘s passing, like Wilson also at age 82. My commentary on Pet Sounds, the rest of The Beach Boys material and some personal memories triggered by Wilson’s passing follows the track listings.
1. Wouldn’t It Be Nice
2. You Still Believe In Me
3. That’s Not Me
4. Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
5. I’m Waiting For The Day
6. Let’s Go Away For A While
7. Sloop John B
8. God Only Knows
9. I Know There’s An Answer
10. Here Today
11. I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
12. Pet Sounds
13. Caroline No
—————–
1. Add Some Music To Your Day
2. All Summer Long
3. The Warmth Of The Sun
4. In My Room
5. Busy Doin’ Nothin’
6. This Whole World
7. Heroes And Villains
8. We’re Together Again
9. Time To Get Alone
10. Marcella
11. Honkin’ Down The Highway
12. It’s O.K.
13. Good Timin’
14. Goin’ On
15. Do It Again
16. I Get Around
17. Rock And Roll Music (Chuck Berry cover)
18. California Girls
19. Do You Wanna Dance
20. Help Me Rhonda
21. Surfer Girl
22. Surfin’ Safari
23. Surfin’ USA
24. Good Vibrations
25. Fun, Fun, Fun
26. ‘Til I Die
27. Shut Down
28. Surf’s Up
29. Sail On, Sailor
My track tales/musical memories:
My formative musical listening years were shaped in large measure by my two older siblings in our family of five kids, me being the middle child ahead of two younger brothers. In their mid- to late teens at the time, my older brother and sister were experiencing the explosion of rock and pop music and culture, things like 1967’s Summer Of Love, at that age when one’s eyes and ears are truly opening and so I was fortunate to bask in the reflected glow of the great music to which they helped introduce me.
My older brother by eight years opened my ears to artists like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. My sister, four years older, turned me on to The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys which my older brother also liked but my sister played more often while he tended to lean towards heavier material. So, I got the best of both worlds.
I remember, age 5, seeing The Beatles and the Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show within months of each other in 1964 and hearing some of their early songs. But my sister was the one who truly introduced me to their records via the Stones compilation albums Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) and Flowers plus Beatles studio albums Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and, a bit later, Abbey Road. She never did own The Beatles (best known as The White Album) that I recall, silly sis, 🙂 but I heard it first via a friend and later bought it myself. Somehow, amid various moves and family members now spread throughout North America, I wound up in possession of and still have her original vinyl release of Abbey Road. It’s now somewhat unique in that it does not list the hidden track Her Majesty on the cover as subsequent re-releases do.
All of which in a roundabout down memory lane sort of way brings us to Pet Sounds which my sister also owned and is definitely tied to The Beatles. All artists influence each other and from what I’ve read, Brian Wilson was inspired at least in part by 1965’s Rubber Soul in creating Pet Sounds, out in 1966, which then inspired The Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney, to respond with Sgt. Pepper, released in 1967.
“The biggest influence on Sgt. Pepper was Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys,” McCartney was quoted as saying in a 1980 interview as related in the 1994 book of album-by-album/song analysis The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Beatles. “That album just flipped me. When I heard it, I thought ‘Oh dear, this is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?’ My ideas took off from that standard.”
Yet Pepper is/was a much more instantly accessible listen, at least for me and perhaps others in comparison to Pet Sounds. I instantly liked Wouldn’t It Be Nice and the traditional Caribbean cover Sloop John B but the rest of it, including the brilliant God Only Knows, took me a bit longer. But, like any great art, once you ‘get it’ it’s embedded forever. Such is the lasting and influential legacy of Wilson’s wonderful work, an album he considered a solo record.
It started a move away from the surfer hits that had sustained the Beach Boys to that point and made them stars and a consistent presence on the singles and album charts. The decline, at least commercially but I’d maintain definitely not musically, then set in where their albums sold progressively less while it could be argued their music advanced in many ways or, at least, took different, interesting directions. Yet while their commercial fortunes faded on home shores in America, Beach Boys albums from Pet Sounds forward consistently sold better in the UK and elsewhere than in the USA. That is, until the 1976 album 15 Big Ones that, driven by their top 5 cover of Chuck Berry’s Rock And Roll Music, made No. 8 on the US album charts but only No. 31 in the UK.
The Beach Boys later had a worldwide No. 1 hit with 1988’s Kokomo which Brian Wilson played no part in and while perhaps a guilty pleasure, yeah it’s catchy but it’s also latter-day Chicago-level schlock to me.
I’m closing things out with one of my favorite Beach Boys tracks, their top-50 1973 hit Sail On, Sailor which I think appropriate as Wilson sails off into the sunset. He co-wrote the song, one he said he didn’t like, yet he selected it for the aforementioned compilation The Beach Boys Classics selected by Brian Wilson, saying in the liner notes “I love how this song rocks.” And it does. It’s sung by Blondie Chaplin, briefly a member of The Beach Boys who starting in 1997 spent more than a decade as a touring musician with The Rolling Stones.