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The Great Pet Sounds Deception

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I see from the Uncut 200 Greatest Albums of All Time thread that the ubiquitous Pet Sounds continues to bestride the Best Album polls like a pop/psych Colossus.

Not everyone is in full agreement however, There follows a essay I wrote for the old blog which was sadly lost following the 48 Crash.

I hope it doesn’t cause too much offence to Beach Boys fans.

Now read on…

http://i.imgur.com/OYkduHx.jpg

5

Comments

  2. Remind me – when, exactly, was it that Pet Sounds became The Greatest Album In The History Of The World, Ever? It was just sort of foisted on us a few years ago when we weren’t really paying attention and has since become accepted wisdom, it seems.

    If I were a cynic, I might even venture that there seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of plaudits heaped on Pet Sounds and Brian Wilson’s increasingly strange behaviour. The rock monthlies love a good “rock star loses marbles” story after all and in recent years Wilson hasn’t disappointed them.

    I was reminded of just how bizarre the situation has become quite recently. Wading though the all-star Party At The Palace concert on DVD, I sat transfixed as a distressing scenario unfolded on the screen. No, I’m not talking about the Corrs taking diabolical liberties with The Long & Winding Road, or even a windswept Brian May mangling our beloved national anthem in dramatic fashion atop the battlements of Buck House, this was far more disquieting than that. I refer of course to Brian Wilson sleepwalking his way through a frankly baffling Beach Boys’ medley.

    Propped up behind a largely redundant keyboard in a comedy checked sports jacket, tie askew and hands flapping like a Thunderbirds puppet, Brian presented an extraordinary spectacle. It was compelling viewing that nevertheless left a slightly guilty aftertaste. This was car crash television of the most graphic kind.

    Ah, but I hear you say, we don’t care that Brian is a living incarnation of Forrest Gump and Rain Man these days, he’s a bona fide genius, isn’t he? We’re quite prepared to indulge him in his befuddled dotage because some of us remember the Beach Boys in their chart-topping heyday and, anyway, he gave us the indisputably wonderful Pet Sounds, didn’t he?

    Ah yes, Pet Sounds, I was wondering when you’d bring that up again. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of being beaten over the head with the bloody thing every time I open a music magazine. The dad rock monthlies never tire of telling us that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    While I will confess to owning a copy of Pet Sounds (two copies actually: an original mono LP as well as the CD) it has never been on particularly high rotation in our house and languishes in a dusty corner of the record collection, unloved and (except for occasional research purposes) largely unplayed. But hold on a minute, before we discuss the merits of Brian’s poll-rogering magnum opus, let’s backtrack a little.

    It’s not like I haven’t tried to warm to the Beach Boys and their music. Honestly, I really have. For more than four decades I’ve regularly made a concerted effort to understand what all the fuss is about. But almost without exception I’ve totally failed to find enlightenment.

    Back in the early days, I simply didn’t like the look of them. No offence guys, but when I first saw the band on Ready Steady Go circa 1964 I couldn’t believe how naff they looked. They weren’t cool or dangerous, they certainly weren’t sexy and they seemed about as far removed from the essence of rock & roll as it was possible to get back then (and you’re dealing with a man who had already seen Gerry and the Pacemakers live!)

    Ironically, I found myself empathising with the Boys at the time, mainly because superannuated RSG presenter Keith Fordyce was being unnecessarily rude to them during what laughably passed for an in-depth interview back then. But with their bad haircuts and deckchair striped shirts and they just looked so, well, fat and square.

    Ominously, Mike Love’s receding hairline required him to wear a hat even then, while tubby ol’ Carl and Brian were doing a passable impression of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. No doubt about it, compared to the likes of the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan, the Beach Boys weren’t exactly at the vanguard of mid-sixties chic.

    Worse than that, though, is how they sounded. Back in those barren pre-Dylan years I’d always studiously avoided American folk music. If you’ve seen the movie A Mighty Wind, you’ll know the kind of thing: three or four well-scrubbed college jocks in matching suits and ties performing Tom Dooley or some such nonsense in unfeasibly close harmony.

    Said outfit invariably had bad G.I.-style crewcuts and more often than not there was a banjo involved. Suddenly, here was a five piece band in candy striped shirts attempting a marginally rocked-up version of the same thing. To my teenage ears the early Beach Boys records sounded dangerously close to The Kingston Trio playing low-impact Chuck Berry covers.

    Then there was the actual subject matter of the songs. Listening more closely to the lyrics, I gleaned that, in the early days at least, Brian and the boys were more than a little preoccupied with surfing, cars, sunshine and girls (it was something to do with coming from California, I later discovered). Well, I could just about relate to the last one, of course, but growing up in austere fifties Britain on a diet of Desperate Dan, grey flannel school shorts and Saturday morning radio featuring Uncle Mac endlessly playing Nellie The Elephant, the other three were something of an alien concept.

    Naturally, we post-war British teenagers had embraced American culture like a long-lost friend, especially their music, films and fashion. To some extent we also coveted the US lifestyle, which we perceived to be far more exotic and liberated than our own drab, drizzly existence. But certain aspects of the American Dream were so unattainable, or so far removed from our experience, that instead of originating from just across the Atlantic, they might as well have been beamed down from another planet.

    British teenagers simply didn’t own cars back then, so the hot rod references were totally lost on us. Neither did we have much of a clue about surfing, so it didn’t help that the apparently baffling terminology for both activities seemed to find its way into virtually every early Beach Boys’ song. As for keeping the summer alive, it was all we could do to manage a rainy week in Blackpool, usually with our style-cramping parents in tow.

    Such cultural divergences aside, the first song which really convinced me that I could never invite the Beach Boys into my heart was the loathsome Be True To Your School. Over yet another all-purpose I Get Around-style backing we were instructed to “Be true to your school, as you would to your girl”.

    What madness was this? Was Brian having a laugh, perhaps? Did American teenagers actually enjoy attending school? At the Joseph Goebbels Secondary Modern academy for the sons of steel-working gentlefolk in Sheffield the opposite was true. Throughout the 50s and 60s high schools serving council estates in the industrial north of England were in the business of turning out factory fodder and anyone who got any ideas above their station was brought down to earth very quickly indeed. I’m certain this grim scenario was played out in virtually every state school across Britain until a semblance of compassion dawned in the 70s.

    In reality Wilson’s overly sentimental song only served to underline his middle-class upbringing. Over in Britain we knew better and our academic experiences would later be summed up with much more grit and accuracy by John Lennon (Working Class Hero) and the posho Roger Waters (Another Brick In The Wall). Be true to your school? Bollocks to that!

    Then in 1966 Pet Sounds was thrust upon us and the Beach Boys’ standing was ratcheted up another couple of notches. Although charting well in Britain, the album didn’t immediately become the poll-winning touchstone it is now. That happened gradually over the years as the nostalgia industry began to flex its muscles. It certainly didn’t cause many waves in the circles I moved in and no one I knew actually owned a copy. Back in the days when an album was a serious financial investment or (if you were lucky) a birthday/Christmas gift, there was simply no room for risky impulse purchases such as an LP showing four geeky blokes (and Dennis) hanging around in, yes, a petting zoo.

    Nevertheless, when Paul McCartney raves about something, you simply have to sit up and take notice. For Macca to claim that Brian Wilson’s masterwork was a direct influence on Sgt. Pepper, well, it had to mean that something important was happening here. But just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was.

    At this point I must stress that not all of the music went over my head. I like to think I can recognise a good song when I hear it and must confess to being seduced by some of the more obvious Beach Boys’ singles such as the exquisite God Only Knows and Good Vibrations. But all the same, a hatful of classic 45s do not a life-altering experience make.

    In retrospect I imagine that McCartney was simply being magnanimous toward a fellow artist, but even if we (reluctantly) go along with the official line that Pet Sounds was streets ahead of almost everything else that was coming out of America during 1966, it was still nowhere near as vital and life-affirming as Rubber Soul (the album that Wilson claims inspired it), never mind Revolver or Sgt. Pepper. Play them all back-to-back if you don’t believe me.

    Listening today, Wilson’s finest (half) hour sounds little better than any number of other mid-sixties albums. Inside the nothing-to-write-home-about sleeve design is a record containing a core handful of good tunes padded out with aimless instrumentals and forgettable also-ran tracks, some of which appear unfinished. And let’s not forget that an outsider – Tony Asher – was drafted in to help Wilson write almost all the lyrics.

    Remove the two or three singles (fine songs, granted), from Pet Sounds and you are left with very slim pickings indeed. Ironically, one of the best tracks by far is Sloop John B, a traditional tune previously covered by every man and his dog including, tellingly, the aforementioned Kingston Trio.

    Of course, if we’re being brutally honest, there really was no one else worthy of giving the Fabs a run for their money back in the mid 60s. Dylan and the Beatles were influencing each other in equal measure to be sure, but in reality they were working in different fields entirely. The Stones hadn’t quite hit their songwriting stride and were still a few years away from their world-conquering peak. Frank Zappa, another declared McCartney influence, was about to record his second album Absolutely Free, but although he was light years ahead of the pack musically, his records were never going to trouble the chart compilers or the wider record-buying public.

    It may seem like a one-sided contest looking back now, but in 1965/66 only Brian Wilson could keep Paul McCartney on his toes. Even so, Macca’s unswerving enthusiasm for Pet Sounds was worrying and it left a nagging doubt that endures to this day.

    In recent years the public’s Diana-esque obsession with damaged and/or prematurely dead rock stars (cf Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain, Peter Green, Jeff Buckley, Amy Winehouse etc) has translated into big business for the record companies and a continuous parade of front covers for the dad rock monthlies. Naturally we’ve seen a veritable glut of Brian Wilson product of varying quality hit the shelves.

    Pet Sounds has been endlessly repackaged in all manner of permutations including, God help us, a quadruple CD box set which even includes an instrumental version of the album. Meanwhile we’ve seen endless Wilson solo material culled from his numerous comeback live performances and even several recreations of the ill-fated Smile album.

    And throughout it all Pet Sounds continues to bestride the “best album” polls year after year with monotonous regularity.

    Let’s hear from those who can explain the popularity of the this album.

  4. I don’t like it. I’ve tried many times. Remains on the iPod in case it’s wonders one day reveal themselves but for the last 25 years….nope, nothing there.

    Now, The Beach Boys 20 Greatest Hits? Now THERE’S a record!

  5. I love The Beach Boys. When those voices blend round a simple tune, something heavenly happens in my head. As a consequence I own loads of their albums. Every single one has something exquisitely beautiful on it. But, they are all flawed. Pet Sounds is amongst my least favourite. The cut-up mosaic of many layers in the music, makes me feel unwell and considering Brian is a bassist, it sounds very tinny to my ears. In addition, apart from Sloop John B and God Only Knows, the harmonies seem out of kilter.

  6. I’m with you 100% Conchmeister. It’s the rottenest album sleeve in history and bar a few singles across their entire history I’ve never understood the critical awe for these square looking overrated berks – except that they’re ‘all-American’, and there’s nothing that Americans like than that.

    The front cover of this month’s ‘Record Collector’ asks us to consider ‘Is Mike Love an unrecognised genius?’ I can answer that without reading the feature in question.

    Nevertheless, Mike did come close to (a) genius once, when he appeared on an NYC TV show in 1974 with John McLaughlin also as a guest. The pair were arm-twisted into this unlikely duet:

      • Hi Hen,
        I like many see Astral Weeks as a once off classic but always found it hard to listen to.
        Actually the musical equivelant of Citizen Kane.
        File under classic but never take out.
        However, under the Christmas tree I got the Remastered Astral Weeks.
        I must say i now find it a much easier listen.
        I think I found the original too dense even though there were not many instruments involved.
        The remastering has opened it out to use a wine buff phrase it has now been decanted and this makes it a far easier listen.

    • Great idea Kid. But let’s choose the sacred cows that we slaughter from a variety of decades.

      We don’t just want a Swinging Sixties Bloodbath.

      Stockholm’s best record shop is called Pet Sounds (yet further evidence of the esteem in which the album is held) so when I saw the OP I wondered why Mr Concheroo was having a go at them.

    • Another vote for this being a regular series. I’d also like to see the reverse: albums that are routinely left off the top hundred list that should be given more attention. It would give me an excuse to gush about Siamese Dream.

      Personally, I think Astral Weeks is a total masterpiece and I play it regularly.

  10. Ooh looks like I may be the only one to love it, the wistfulness, the feeling of a lost youth, the lost loves and looking forward to adulthood with excitement and fear. And the slightly unhinged quality which pervades the whole record. It is totally beautiful.

    It isn’t my favourite album but it is a masterpiece.

  11. You are wrong.

    How songs like Don’t Talk, Here Today, Let’s go away for a while, Caroline No etc can be dismissed as filler beggars belief.

    This is mainly a Brian Wilson solo album, and nothing to do with how the Boys looked in 63 or how Brian looks/behaves today. It was his/their 11th album in 4 years and already light years from songs about cars, surfing and schools.

    Just beautiful songs, masterfully arranged and produced that stands at the pinnacle of what pop music can produce.

    Sloop John B is the worst thing on the album. The Beatles had Lennon, McCartney and Martin. Wilson did it all (with help from lyricists).

  13. You and I are very different people Marge.

    Don’t bother telling me about something you don’t like as if it’s fact rather than opinion. It is not the emperor’s new clothes and uou’re a very naughty boy

  14. Great piece, JC. I particularly enjoyed your observations about their perceived ‘squareness’. The ‘barbershop’ vibe was very overpowering. I’m also rather mystified at the acclaim it receives, though I do love great swathes of their work. Nick Kent helped me see them anew and cut through the cheese and the corn.
    I watched the ‘Wrecking Crew’ documentary recently (recommended) and noted that the players were uniform in their opinion that Brian was a ‘genius’. His work on the, still sublime, ‘Good Vibrations’would back that up as it still sounds startling today, 50 years after its release.

  15. Your real argument should be not with Brian Wilson, but with the professionally (or semi-professionally) opinionated champions of what is, in my view, an occasionally sublime, generally solid and eminently listenable piece of work. I speak as someone who loathed the Beach Boys in 1966, for many of the reasons you cite, and who will never have have very much of their stuff. Then again, I honestly can’t work up much energy for the what’s-the-greatest-album-of-all-time? question. Makes me feel as if I’m pitting musicians against each other.

  16. I’ve never bothered listening to it, as I never found that band very interesting, so I can’t say if I agree or not with your assessment of it. But that was some laugh-out-loud funny writing!

  19. Trying to objectify the subjective is basically as pointless as trying to push smoke up a pipe with a fork.
    Lists of the ‘greatest’ works of art be they albums, paintings, books etc. are at best useful in creating debate at there worst a utterly useless load of twaddle that through the endless repetition of the same old chestnuts sets ‘taste’ in stone.
    All they demonstrate is a consensus of opinion and woe be upon the head of anyone who dares to question the validity of an ‘icon’.
    As an aside the Mona Lisa is not the greatest painting ever created. It’s bloody dull.

          • The very one. It’s rather splendid. I would recommend it to all the wistful hearted and those with unglogged lug holes.
            El Hombre pointed me at it for which kindness I tip me cap to the great man.

            • Rab is one of the great underrated songsmiths these isles have produced (well, Scotland).

              Just got hold of his first five albums on vinyl, so having a Rabfest over the festive period and seeing him perform in Tynemouth come March ’16.

              • I agree! I too, have been having a RabFest over the last 3 or 4 years. I have nothing on vinyl but have most of the CDs. When you go to see him he has a pile of CDs at the merch table and he does bundle offers. I like the live ones best as it’s just him and his guitar….the studio ones ‘Standing Up’ and ‘ Standing Up Again’ are more or less just him with his guitar too. Good choice of cover versions too.

  20. I loved the singles, ever since my sis bought Surfin’ USA, to hell with the awful image, and, hell, did they look every bit as naff as portrayed. They were my guilty secret until Pet Sounds fooled all the critics into making ’em cool. Even tho’ they still weren’t. That took Holland and the Live (1973) album, ironically as the resident genius became sidelined by circumstance. Dennis, beards and the Fataar/Chaplin and those 4 centre pages in NME did all that, and for a brief spell they ruled my taste. Then of course Dennis, then Carl were dead, with Mr Love stealing the crown and they were shite, image wise and, now, material wise. I have a couple of Wilson solos, Love and Mercy and another from soon after, with snatches of excellence on them, but, sadly, like the o.p., the sight of Brian now evokes more pity than pleasure, his carbon-copy backing (and fronting) singers failing to hide the rot.

  22. Off the point more than a bit, but I saw Vertigo for the first time the other day on TV. This now tops the critics poll in Sight and Sound as the best film of all time, so I thought I’d watch it. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about –it wasn’t terrible, but it was one of the weakest Hitchcock films I’ve seen. Slow and too long, and a lot of the emotional drive actually came from Bernard Herrmann’s score.

    The last section where James Stewart takes control of Kim Novak’s appearance seemed tacked on. But I wonder if this is what the critics like, as there is a belief that this is how Hitchcock treated his leading actresses. Just as the legend of Brian Wilson might explain some of the obsession with Pet Sounds, so perhaps this film is so highly rated because it is thought to give an insight into Hitchcock’s personality.

    There certainly has been some sort of transformation in the film’s standing. It wasn’t a commercial or critical success on its release, and didn’t enter the Sight and Sound poll at all until the 1980s. Maybe a film that can be analysed in some way, will always be more popular with critics than one that just entertains, like the much superior, to me, The Lady Vanishes, which was shown a few days later.

    • Both films, of course, rely heavily on the Abbess Ex Machina (You might say Hitch made a “habit” of treating his actresses poorly; Vertigo is like an instructive video about how blondes have more fun while girls in glasses have nun).
      Christmas is great for the old movie Gong Show game: 2001 and Casablanca over the holidays, Citizen Kane is on tomorrow.

    • My main problem with Veryigo is that it has that dreadful sequence where ‘what happened at the top of the tower’ has to be explained and shown on the screen. I generally enjoy Hitch (my favourite of his being the superbly glamorous To Catch a Thief) but don’t understand the fuss about Vertigo. Or Pet Sounds for that matter.

  24. As The Beach Boys’ presence has only ever registered in the corner of my eye, it never occurred to me before that their gimmick, having claimed the “Beach Boys” moniker while themselves being so very obviously not the board-bestriding bronzed Adonis of the mind’s eye, was to adopt the appearance of deck chairs.
    You’ve made me smile, Johnny – and more so than the album of the same name…

  25. I’ve never got the fuss. It has the sublime ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Sloop John B’ and ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ but I never sit and listen to the whole thing.

    For me ‘Surf’s Up’ is the one where all the planets lined up; I often listen to that all the way through.

    • One of life’s great mysteries. I’ve never understood how anyone doesn’t understand how perfect Pet Sounds is. Surf’s up, great though it is, doesn’t compare (it also has the farrago that is Student Demonstration Time, Mike Love’s pathetic attempt to be ‘hip’ and ‘relevant’).

    • ‘The sublime ‘God Only Knows’, and ‘Sloop John B’, and ‘Wouldn’t it be Nice’.’ Well yes, exactly. Chuck in ‘Caroline No’, ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder)’ and ‘I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times’ and you already have a record that few others could match.

      That said, I’ll admit it doesn’t mean anything like as much to me as the Beatles contemporary records, or Dylan’s, or Astral Weeks all of which I listen to often. Maybe it just resonates more for Americans than Brits?

  26. Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but I disagree on this one. My first real formative musical epiphany came at the age of 6, listening to my parents’ tape of 20 Golden Greats. I loved it all, but the later stuff scattered through the album blew my little mind – God Only Knows, Heroes and Villains, Good Vibrations and Break Away. Fast forward to my first year in London, aged 18. Someone in a magazine (probably Q or NME) was talking up Pet Sounds, so I went out and bought the tape.

    I think, even in mono, it’s one of THE headphone albums. It captures perfectly that time: the transition between innocence and experience, between teenager and adult, between pop and psychedelia. Its lyrics are that rare thing: almost totally vulnerable. Compare that with their contemporaries.

    OK, so they started out as a bunch of squares in matching suits. They didn’t look that good. The cover was average at best. That possibly makes Pet Sounds even better – it’s all about that celestial, multilayered music. And they could sing a bit too.

    Now, get me onto other critics’ faves and I’ll tear them to shreds. Marquee Moon? Horses? Trout Mask f**cking Replica? Pah!

    • I’m completely with you here TrypF, as regards Pet Sounds at least; you’ve expressed very well the reasons why I love it. We part company when you get to your last paragraph, however. Horses is a masterpiece. Fact.

  27. That was an excellent and well-argued piece, @johnny-concheroo. Thanks for posting it.

    For what it’s worth, I think ‘Pet Sounds’ is a bit better than you think, but it’s not as good as some critics would claim.

    I think the best Beach Boys music (that astonishing collection of singles) is as good as pop music gets.

    • Agreed, @raymond. I really like the Beach Boys but I find PS a bit… “wot, really? Is this it?”

      But then I think that about quite a few 60s shibboleths. Very few “classic” records from that decade seem to me to be as good as the critics (or the people who were kids at the time) claim, and it’s a faintly irritating feature of The Respected Rock Critic (b. circa 1940-something) that the music of their youth is always Topp.

      For me, the most interesting thing about Wilson is his Spector obsession and his use of the Wrecking Crew, who are a bit of a special interest of mine. I do find it fascinating how an instinctive but musically illiterate savant like BW interacted with these consummate professionals who read music like English and as often as not half-wrote the records on which they played. But to hear Hal Blaine and Tommy Tedesco tell it, Wilson really did have it all in his head.

      A nice lengthy and regular essay though, JC 😉 I largely agree with it. But Good Vibrations and God Only Knows still make the entire thing worth the price of entry alone.

      • Thanks Bob, you know I love you really.

        But here’s the thing. I’d probably love Pet Sounds a whole lot more if the sublime Good Vibrations was actually on the album.

        For years I’d convinced myself it was on there too.

      • Come on , bob, even Stephen Hawking has scientifically proven, beyond dispute, that the ’60s and ’70s were the golden era for rock, pop and soul. Feel free to make the argument for the artists of your, more recent, youth.
        If you fail to convince me otherwise, you’ll be the lucky recipient of my 18 cd anthology of white-boy Blues. (Plus additional DVD of guitar solo face-gurning)

  29. Some people will never ‘get’ PS because it doesn’t really have any ROCK GUITAR!! on it. It doesn’t offer enough opportunities for poodle-haired gurning, putting your foot on a monitor, wearing spandex and a studded belt… it’s just too straight and ‘nice’ for some folks.

    I think it’s genius.

  30. Literally my least favourite thing in the universe is Rock Guitar (or at least, the vast majority of it), so I’m pretty sure that’s not my reason.

    It’s just, Pet Sounds is just a tiny bit boring.

  33. I was at Roskilde in 2005 and one of my pals wanted to see Brian Wilson. Having heard all the horror stories, my enthusiasm was lukewarm but , as happens at a festival, I tagged along.

    My hopes were not raised by the bloke in a ghastly Hawaiian who shuffled on stage. He looked every inch the casualty I had read about. His comments to the audience just reinforced the impression.

    But once he and his very tight, enthusiastic , young band got singing he was transformed. The voice was stull there. I never saw the Beach Boys in the days before they lost the plot but they probably sounded something like this.

    There were a lot of naff moments in their career, but at their best they were a stupendous pop band with some magnificent songs.

    • I went to see him for the complete Smile tour. The band were breathtaking. Brian looked and sounded fragile but the band and the crowd swept him along. It was very emotional.

    • With you on that, @kaisfatdad. Saw BW about the same time, at the Eden Project, and it was one of the greatest gigs of my life. The Wondermints did a great job propping up the old boy; the band had real bollocks, which I suspect might not have been the case with the actual Beach Boys. Listening to Good Vibrations being played live (or liveish) on a balmy if slightly damp Cornish evening in that setting was just perfect.

      As for Pet Sounds, it’s always left me feeling a bit listless, like a lot of others. And I *hate* Sloop John B. Sounds of Summer is the only Beach Boys album I own, and I’m happy with that.

      But isn’t this thread simply a shameless attempt to flush out @h-p-saucecraft?

      • Enjoyed reading about the Eden Project gig, Mike.

        And also loved your theory about the Concheroonian Conspiracy. That JC is as wily as George Smiley.

        Here’s one of my absolute favourites tracks from Pet Sounds, the last song Caroline No: a meditation on love and the passing of time.

        A very far cry from California Girls.

  34. Pet Sounds is good, but as you suggest the songs (which is the point of an album isn’t it) sound a bit limp and unfinished.
    Sonically, I’m sure it is magnificent – but being somewhat un-musical, it goes tune, lyrics, production (I can recognise good vs bad production, but that’s about as much as I can manage).
    Yes I own it but rarely listen to it – I don’t think it can hold a candle to Rubber Soul, Revolver, Highway 61 (or indeed any 60s album that routinely makes the Top 20 of All Time).

  35. I’ll get back to y’all but, one thing, the colours and the font used makes ‘Pet Sounds’ easily the best album/CD cover I’ve ever seen.

    It’s one of the reasons I have so many copies of the thing.
    I can never resist buying it.

  36. And the thing is, it isn’t the best Beach boys album. The subsequent run of 6 albums from Smiley Smile to Surf’s Up are all excellent (occasional clunkers notwithstanding) and all better than Pet Sounds.

  37. Glad to hear that you enjoyed that BW show, Tigger.

    I think JC is onto something about Pet Sounds being hyped up by a certain generation of rock journalists. But at the same time, I feel we owe pop perfectionist Brian Wilson a lot.

    Yes, I’m biased. I was there as he developed from someone who wrote superb songs about Californian girls and cool cars to the almost comically obsessive sonic pioneer of the Smile period.

    At that time few people took pop music that seriously.

    • Beach Boys fans are so lucky in that, despite all his problems, Brian kept enough of his “facilities” (as my mum used to say) to be able to perform the songs close enough to the originals on stage.

      If only Peter Green had been able to keep his guitar chops as well honed. But unfortunately they all but disappeared along with his marbles and his several re-launchings were sad, disappointing affairs.

      I remember a great NME photo caption from the 70s. It showed a confused-looking Brian sitting at a club table and Paul McCartney was seen leaning into the booth shaking his hand.

      Paul: “Great to see you Brian. I’ve always been a big fan”

      Brian: “And you are?

  38. I’ve always struggled to connect with some of these ‘Classic Albums’ we’re supposed to like and like most people I choose my own classics as I move through life. Sometimes they match the ‘critics choice’ (Songs in the Key of Life, Velvet Underground and Nico, Loveless) and sometimes they don’t (Pale Saints ‘In Ribbons’, Cardiacs ‘Sing to God’, Spring Heel Jack ‘There Are Strings’ etc etc I’m sure you can all pick your favourites that would never make a Top 10,000 never mind 100)
    however I do love Pet Sounds – there is something haunting, curious and oddly affecting that hovers around that record that hits the spot for me – and given that my previous knowledge of The BBs when I heard it (at Uni in the 90s) was Wipeout, Kokomo and the big hits – I was suitably taken aback by it.
    I seldom play it though as it’s too nice, too pretty – the post PS albums perhaps stand up to repeated listening perhaps because you get more input from the rest of the group – Smiley Smile (better than Smile- fact), Holland , Surfs Up etc.

  39. Yes, I am sure that part of the reason Pet Sounds appears so frequently in “best of” lists is because people think it should be there. Albeit if people are voting anonymously it can’t just be peer pressure. Probably more down to the fact that most polls tend to be won by something that was hardly anyone’s first choice.

    In fairness, Pet Sounds is far from the only album that appears to outpunch its weight, albeit its legend has grown over time. On the other hand, loads of lauded early albums by the Stones, Kinks etc sound about as convincing to my ears as Pat Boone’s rocknroll covers.

  40. I think it’s fair to say that the album as a cohesive art form didn’t really come into its own until 1966/67

    Very few of the big pop bands/artists of the 50s and 60s made consistently good long players.

    That’s excluding the Beatles and Dylan of course who always made great albums.

    • Good point. And as ip33 mentions above, there is a considerable thematic unity to many of the songs: growing up and the transition to adulthood. And it is a pop album for (young) adults rather than teenagers. No shortage of those these days: Jools’s Later is full of that kind of artist. But in the mid 60s that was something rather new.

  41. I think albums like Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, Forever Changes et al remain in these lists because of their uniqueness as much as anything, along with their influence. Loads of musicians of the time, and later, often quote those albums as having a huge affect on them (e.g. Pet Sounds on Macca), and they remain totally of themselves – there are simply no other albums like them in rock/pop and even the artists themselves never repeated the trick. Personally, I find it astonishing that Pet Sounds doesn’t move some the way it does me, but I’m not going to try and convince you here – it’s like arguing about religion or politics….

  43. Strangely enough Pet Sounds is one of the few ‘canon’ albums that actually lived up to expectations when I first heard it.

    Thought it was brilliant, musically but also lyrically really chimed with late teen feeling of wondering where and how you fit in to the world around you.

  44. That was one of the best if not the best essay I have read on this site and have to nod in total agreement. For me The Bech Boys have written and performed 2 classics in God only Knows and Good Vibrations. The only other song of theirs that really grabs me is You still believe in me which I happen to think has a killer melody.
    The rest is a bunch of half decent singles, cheesy rubbish and a reputation in pop history that is largely undeserved.

    Not sure which irritates me more Pet Sounds appearing at top of list or OK Computer another piece of overrated tosh that routinely appeared on these lists.

  46. Not surprised the results almost duplicate the Mojo poll from 1995 and other similar articles, I suspect that they are all asking the same general pool of writers and editors each time.

  47. The polls only have the same lists because those are the sources most of us are more likely to read. If you check the NME or Q, say, they are very different. Surprisingly though NME has Pet Sounds higher than any Dylan, Morrison, Young, or Beatles other than the White Album and Revolver.

  50. Could kill two birds with one stone here.
    Someone wanted more new stuff in this Top 200, many think ‘Pet Sounds’ should be lower…….so where’s ‘Smile’ from 2011?

    New album, as far as I’m concerned.
    Scandalous.

  51. Just goes to show that artistic ‘Best of’ lists are both compelling and pointless. Pet Sounds may or may not be the greatest album ever made but it will forever appear in the Top 10 lists until I depart this earth. I mean what does ‘Best’ mean ? If we are talking best TV sets, cd players, washing machines there would be things you could objectively measure but music, books, films ?
    Interestingly today I found a list of my top 25 albums that I put together for a MOJO competition in 1995 (I had to also submit a review of one of them – if you must know American Gothic by David Ackles – and it still reads rather well). Anyway I was surprised to find that Pet Sounds wasn’t in there. It probably would be today – so what does that say ?

    My top 10 in 1995 was:

    10. Bryter Layter
    9. Santa Barbara – The High Llamas ( WTF !!??)
    8. Blood on the Tracks
    7. Forever Changes
    6. Countdown to Ecstasy
    5. Hunky Dory
    4. Hot Rats
    3. American Gothic
    2. Veedon Fleece
    1. Whats Going On

    Apart from the rather mysterious inclusion of the Llamas (who often sound more like late period Beach Boys than the Beach Boys)- I suspect these will all hover around my Top 50 at any point in my life from here on in.

  52. I’m hearing you on What’s Going On. Marvin Gaye’s my favourite male vocalist, and it’s got some undeniable classics, but there’s also a lot of directionless warbling that I’ve skipped for years.

  53. And here’s that train wreck of an interview I referred to in the original; post at the start of the thread.

    It’s from Ready Steady Go in 1964 and features Keith Fordyce giving the Boys a right old grilling.

    The interview starts about two mins in, after I Get Around. At one point Fordyce actually asks Brian “What do you think of this country?”

    Judging by his attitude, he clearly thinks pop stars are morons who deserve to be talked down to, headmaster-style.

    • Well, that’s Keith Fordyce for you. I never understood how he got that gig in the first place. He was 35 when RSG started, which as we both know is no age at all, but he was 15 years older than Cathy McGowan. He was BBC through and through, presumably regarded as a safe pair of hands when dealing with all this youth nonsense, but he really didn’t have a clue, as that interview shows. Why didn’t they get a hip young gunslinger in from Radio Caroline, like, er, Tony Blackburn or, er, Simon Dee? Cathy McGowan wasn’t much better, mind you – I’m not sure my toes have fully uncurled from some of her interviews.

      What struck me was how good the Beach Boys were. No idea how ‘live’ it was, but they definitely weren’t miming to the actual records.

      • Keith Fordyce, Pete Murray, David Jacobs. They were all old school DJs who just happened to be in the right place at the right time when pop came along.

        Brian Matthew was another old stager. Although he was actually pretty good in the Beatles era, he got a bit wobbly when psych/prog came along and started announcing tracks in what he fondly imagined was the new lingo of the kids.

        So he’d come out with sphincter-tightening stuff like “And that was the fantastically beautiful Traffic, with Hole In My Shoe”

        Then of course there was Jimmy Savile….

        • Back to the clip. There’s Al Jardine with his Fender Jaguar the surfer’s favourite guitar and Carl Wilson with a very early 1964 Rickenbacker 12-string.
          Brian’s bass technique is quite unorthodox, notice how he always picks over the fretboard, instead of over the pick-ups

            • He’s now 87. Yet he’s not the oldest regular presenter on BBC radio. That (unless anyone knows better) would be Nicholas Parsons, still chairing Just A Minute at the age of 92 (and doing it beautifully).

            • I liked Brian. He was genuinely enthusiastic and clearly the Fabs were genuinely fond of him. The pirate radio DJs who, in the main, actually liked the music they played were miles ahead of the Beeb old stagers who saw themselves as just another branch of light entertainment.

        • Just about the only aspect of Jimmy Savile’s career that was honest was the blatant indifference he showed towards music. As a self-promoting opportunist it was merely a means to an end. Not that he was the only one DJ with that mindset – there was the truly repugnant DLT for instance – but he was probably the first.

  54. To hell with the iconoclastic lynch mob.

    I listen to Pet sounds 3 or 4 times a year. Fantastic songs, great harmonies as ever, and some wonderful sad moments. Who gives a fuck about the cover – all their covers were naff.

    Beatles seemed to think it was pretty good.

    Astral Weeks is a masterpiece – I play it less often than other Van because it is so intense, so wordy that to listen you really need to sit down and concentrate . It can be quite draining.

  55. On the subject of Brian Matthew, he is surely the only person who has appeared on official releases by The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Rolling Stones (when they get around to having an official BBC release, that is), The Pretty Things, The Yardbirds, The Zombies, presumably Bowie and Bolan……

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