"That the passing of Brian Wilson was quiet,
even normal,
felt like a relief,
and opened up a flood of thoughts and feelings
about the man's accomplishments,
and the meaning of the simple word sad."
Tom Smucker's Motivation to Revisit "Pet Sounds"
Pet Sounds is often understood as an ahead-of-its-time work of genius, overlooked in the USA as the crucial step from Rubber Soul to Sgt. Pepper.
Sort of true, but that doesn’t explain why Capitol records would indulge Brian Wilson with more than four months of studio time and the top of the heap LA pop studio musicians and then sabotage Pet Sounds less than two months after release with the pre-Pet Sounds mix of Best of the Beach Boys. Or why Pet Sounds would be an immediate hit when released in the UK.
I believe my confident 1960s country, thrown off kilter by the assassination of JFK, was thrilled and reassured to hear American rock ‘n’ roll reflected back to us by the two and a half upbeat geniuses from Liverpool. But my country, or at least the Capitol Records sales staff, was not ready for a very (white) American rock era sonic culmination whose key lyric is the pithy “Sometimes I feel very sad” from “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”.
 As I’ve written before, singer-songwriter-producer-arranger Brian Wilson, at his peak, used the LA recording studio, stuffed with musicians, as one big instrument that he played to reach an album length personal expression of love and connection and lots of loss and isolation and disconnection.It’s a 1966 celebration of full-strength USA affluence as an expression of 1966 USA individual anxiety and sorrow. A mix, perhaps, too hard for Capitol records to want to sell back then.
For an insider’s take on this particular lost affluence, here’s a thoughtful essay that Marc Ribot sent along back when I was looking for a blurb for my book
And one last complaint concerning misunderstood affluence.
Some upper class snobs, astonished by Brian Wilson’s complex chord changes, understand him but nevertheless dismiss him as a genetic accident. This music is inspiring, but it didn’t drop from the sky. Besides the cars, guitars, studios and surfing, part of the California affluence of the 1960s was an excellent statewide public education system. Brian got an F for writing Surfer Girl for his music composition class at his lower middle-class public high school. Be True To Your School.
Mark Dillon & I Interview Tom Smucker>>> Part Two>>> |
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