Pet Sounds Comments from 1966

From Melody Maker July 30, 1966. Stars are asked to comment on Pet Sounds which had been released a few moths earlier.

Eric Clapton - The Cream
All of us, Ginger, Jack and I are absolutely and completely knocked out with Pet sounds. I consider it to be one of the greatest pop LPs to ever be released. It encompasses everthing thats ever knocked me out, and rolled it all into one. We're all gassed by it. Brian Wilson is without a doubt a pop genius.

Keith Moon - The Who
I think Pet Sounds illustrates the way one man's mind works - that of Brian Wilson. There's nothing revolutionary in the album, I don't think. Perhaps the only revolution is in the group itself - the way they've changed with the album. They are not so much a vocal group these days. Vocals, as such, have almost disappeared with this album.

Michael D'Abo - Manfred Mann
Basically I admire the ingenuity of the LP, but its not as revolutionary as people say. They've done a lot of unusual things, but there are one or two weak tracks. Not quite the rave people have made it out to be. It's a sort of Brian Wilson experimental combo. For me its not the same Beach Boys. They had more appeal as a group as they were before.

Andrew Oldham - Rolling Stones manager
I think that Pet Sounds is the most progressive album of the year in as much as Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade was. It is the pop equivalent of that. A complete exercise in pop technique. Personally, I consider it to be a fantastic album. The lyrics are tremendous. The way Wilson has suited them to the songs is outstanding. I see pop music as a form of escapism, and Pet Sounds is a great example of escapism.

Scott Walker - The Walker Brothers
I don't think its revolutionary. I don't even like it as much as the other Beach Boys albums.

Spencer Davis
It's fantastic. I've just bought it and finished playing it. "God Only Knows" is the most fantastic track on the album. Brian Wilson is a great record producer. I haven't spent my time listening to The Beach Boys before, but I am a convert now and I just want to listen to this LP again and again. Thirteen of the tracks are originals - which can't be bad.

The above are from The History Of Rock - 1966, a magazine currently out on newsstands.

And the below is from Crawdaddy, Issue 13, written by Paul Williams in 1968

The Beach Boys, a group that class prejudice prevents many of us from appreciating, released in the summer of 1966 an album called Pet Sounds, to me one of the very finest rock albums of all time. It was not exactly Far Out, but it was kinda subtle compared to previous Beach Boys stuff; and partly for that reason, and mostly because of timing, Pet Sounds was the first Beach Boys album in several years not to be a million seller. The timing factor was one not unfamiliar to us in 1967 -- the big hit on the album, "Sloop John B.," (was) made in December 1965, but beacuse of the amount of studio time required to do the album right, Pet Sounds wasn't released til June and lost its impact as a result. And the mere fact that the record was really beautiful wasn't enough to salvage the situation. Fans don't always care about that.

 

Never liked the album cover.
Wonder If there were any other options?
The music is of course a masterpiece.
But'i listen to Endless Summer (DCC Gold CD ) much more often.

 

The basic problem was that for 1966, The Beach Boys' fans had them pegged & figured out, or so they thought they did; "Little Deuce Coupe", "Fun Fun Fun", "Surfin' U.S.A.", "Help Me Rhonda", "Barbara Ann" and the rest was what they were all used to, and all of a sudden, here's this package of morose-sounding compositions like "Don't Talk", "Here Today","I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", even "Sloop John B" wasn't part of that earlier fun in the sun mindset. And once the chart position for the album was plopped on the desks of the top floor honchos, they freaked and in a panic rammed out the now-ridiculously-thrown-together "Best Of The Beach Boys Vol. 1". It needs to be forever emphasized that although it was NOT a flop, it wasn't what the record buyers of 1966 were expecting.

 

Scott Walker's comment is quite amusing. Okaaayyy, Scott -- so you much prefer the Surfin' Safari album to Pet Sounds? And I take it that you released a more memorable album than Pet Sounds?
Scott Walker, big talker.

 

That was his immediate take on it from 1966.
Who knows what he thinks of it now.
I have changed my mind on many things since 1966.
And Scott Walker has , indeed , made many memorable albums.

 

They are not so much a vocal group these days? WTH is Keith talking about?
Listen to "Wouldn't it Be Nice". Those vocals and harmonies are the finest they've ever done!

 

Yeah , but Keith's favorite was Barbara Ann wasn't it ?
I can see where he's coming from ( and no, I certainly don't agree ).

 

Out of every song? Barbara Ann?

 

I feel pretty sure that he's changed his mind since then. I'd be surprised, if he hadn't. I didn't say that he never made a memorable album; just that he never released an album that was more memorable than Pet Sounds.

 

You mean to say Wouldn't It Be Nice is better than Barbara Ann? Jeez, some people. (SNORT!)

 

I don't know why this surprises me - as I've always thought that Eric and Ginger and probably Ginger too have had very good musical taste and been open minded when it comes to music. Maybe it's because I rate Cream so very highly and their music is so unalike? Apart from a bit of harmonising on tracks like I Feel Free and Dreaming, from Fresh Cream... Great quote anyway and nice to know. I'd probably have assumed they were immersed in listening to classic and contemporary blues and jazz at the time.

 

I think he has a reputation then as a grouch. Still does.

 

I'm curious to know if there are official US sales figures from May 16-June 30, 1966. Why? Because I want to see how "bad" they really were to prompt Capital executives to rush that BOTBB Vol 3 out in July! What I'm saying is I cannot understand a record company bailing out on one of their too pop artists delivering such a great LP because of sales figures in a six week window! Yet Capital was still spending a lot of money for studio time post Pet Sounds for Brian in '66 so it looked like they still had his back. An enigma indeed almost 50 years later.

 

I assume that what prompted the OP's posting of that Pet Sounds article in the 1966 edition of Uncut's great NME series, The History of Rock, which is compiled of articles, columns, interviews and reviews from the pages of British music weeklies the New Musical Express and Melody Maker from that year. Between the rarely seen again photos and contemporaneous coverage of the pulsating music scene in Britain, it makes for terrific reading. For example, there's an interview from March 1966 with Lennon and McCartney, in the midst of Beatles sessions, describing the music that they are creating, for a new album to be called either Revolver or Magic Circles, as unlike anything heard before. Great, great stuff, and the 1967 edition just came out in the U.K.

 

I believe Moonie's favorite Beach Boys track was Don't Worry Baby. He covered it (very badly) on his solo album.

 

His quote sounds like something Mike Love would have said.

 

A fascinating bunch of quotes, revealing more about the artists they polled than about the album.

Did anyone carry out a similar exercise in the US at the time?

 

The Beach Boys management was is a heated dispute with Capitol over unpaid royalties, one that proved to have substantial merit. Questionable sales figures were central to the dispute, which boiled over to serious litigation that I suspect was the major cause of the non-release of Smile in 1966 and the group's lack of success on the charts. Capitol went through the motions to promote Pet Sounds, and its release shortly after of the first group best-of signaled that it viewed the group as at the end of its creative career, at least in Dexterland. Therefore, it's no shock that reliable sales figures for the first six weeks after Pet Sounds' release are nowhere to be found.

 

The thing is, putting together a Beach Boy playlist is sifting through the stuff on all their albums. Except Pet Sounds. That LP goes on INTACT. No other BB album I can say that about.

 

So where's your album that's as good as anything Scott Walker has done, that gives you the credibility to criticize him?

 

In that case, I still can't understand how Capital was so patient and generous financially in giving Brian months of expensive musician fees and studio time for Good Vibrations sessions and Smile? Somebody at Capital didn't think they were washed up. Though I never considered how strained the "air" in the room must have been due to the lawsuit.
I just remembered Capital recorded those November 66 Michigan shows probably because GV was selling and making money.

 

I assume that Capitol's generosity was a function of the fact that the group made it a lot of money and the label undoubtedly charged studio costs against royalties, which the greatest hits set would produce, along with substantial revenues for the Capitol suits. The intensity of the ill feelings from the dispute is evidenced both by Smile's non-appearance at Christmas and the fact that Heroes and Villians, the follow-up to October's sales sensation Good Vibrations, didn't come out until the following July, an eternity in those days, only after the litigation had been settled. Note that the Michigan live album never saw the light of day. By a stroke of luck, I took a bus to Ann Arbor and saw the show. Quite an event.

 

There definitely was a healthy bit of skepticism for decades, as seen in those quotes. Many years after the fact, establishment critics like Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau and Dave Marsh were still mentioning in print how the album (while good) wasn't the great masterpiece people made it out to be. I'm certain a good number of the Beach Boys' peers continued to feel that way, but it's easier to single out the critics because of the simple fact that they continuously write about this stuff (and air out their opinions) for decades.

I think what's elevated Pet Sounds to such a sturdier lofty position now is a combination of younger critics who appreciated the album more, and emerging artists who were clearly fans that were greatly influenced by it, especially in the UK (where it was always better received) and on the alternative front. From the mid-'90s to the mid-'00s, the impact of Pet Sounds became much more visible, especially among indie and alternative rockers that were becoming much more known to mainstream audiences.

 

pretty early on in their career too. the Melody Maker came out the day after Cream played their first ever gig. they must have been together all of 2-3 weeks at that stage.

 

I don't have any issues with the skepticism or dissenting opinions on this subject matter except for the fact I don't agree with them part. "Pet Sounds" was a departure from the Beach Boys sound but not the radical one that a lot of critics have made it out to be. It isn't as if they progressed overnight from songs about surfing and cars to melancholy songs about self-doubt which is the hallmark of "Pet Sounds". The progression was already taking place on albums like "Today" or "Summer Days" although Brian Wilson was still at that time mindful to cater towards the markets of the 45 r.p.m. single as well as radio. To be fair, when he was recording "Pet Sounds" while he was certainly making a statement in terms of putting together a complete work of art centered around the style of production he had been dabbling with in the previous year, he was still thinking in terms of the album being a hit record for the band. It wasn't the case due largely in part to the fact that Capitol Records decided not to get behind the album and instead through their concurrent release of a hits album may have impeded it's commercial success.

But Brian Wilson in 1966, was far ahead of most of his contemporaries in where he was trying to take his music. That is clearly to be seen now in the progression that took place between "Pet Sounds" and "SMiLE" in terms of not only the scope of both projects but also the intent behind them. "SMiLE" was the most ambitious pop project of it's day and one that with the benefit of hindsight we can clearly see was too far ahead of it's time to be properly appreciated during it's era and Brian Wilson was wise to scrap it. While you can make the argument that "Pet Sounds" could boast at least three potential hit singles, "SMiLE" would've only been able to offer the previously issued "Good Vibrations" as a certifiable radio smash hit. If anything you could argue that in 1966, Brian Wilson was progressing too quickly for his own good and that is where the opinions of the dissenters who wanted the Beach Boys to return to their surf and turf sound fade away. That really wasn't an option given where Wilson was at as an artist in 1966 as he had progressed far beyond that stage in his life to the point where recording and issuing that type of music would have been creatively stifling and eventually commercially devastating.

The old saying of that is "where the music had to go" is extremely appropriate in discussing Brian Wilson as an artist in 1966. It is because of that statement and with the benefit of hindsight that the evaluation of the music of this period finds itself nestled between awe, confusion and a great deal of tragedy.