The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is a landmark rock-era album. It is praised for innovations in recording techniques. It is cherished for its melodies, songs, and meticulous arrangements. It is admired for pioneering a vision of the rock album as a thematic listening experience. Many modern listeners are surprised by the praise heaped on Pet Sounds. “Didn’t the Beach Boys do lame surf songs?” Music Man readers will know Pet Sounds is regularly rated in the top three albums ever.
The credit goes to Brian Wilson. Spurred on by The Beatles’ Revolver, Wilson ditched touring with the Beach Boys to concentrate on recording and producing Pet Sounds. Wilson used the Wrecking Crew for session musicians and Tony Asher helped with the lyrics. Wilson wrote all the music, except for Sloop John B – a cover of a Bahamian folk song popularized by the Kingston Trio. Wilson’s arrangement of Sloop John B is exquisite. The clip is from a 50th Anniversary Classic Album show on Pet Sounds.
That was 2016. Brian Wilson’s voice isn’t what it was in 1966 when Pet Sounds was released. Even so, Wilson’s musicality is such that his voice remains pleasing and commanding. Original band member Al Jardine, who sings the lead for the late Carl Wilson, is in fine voice. In the band’s heyday, Brian Wilson’s vocal arrangements could cause the Beach Boys to sound, in the words of producer Jack Good, “like eunuchs in a Sistine Chapel” – and where falsetto was needed, Brian stepped up to the mic.
Brian Wilson suffered a well-documented breakdown after the release of Good Vibrations, the even more innovative single that followed Pet Sounds. Part of the reason was Beach Boys Mike Love and Al Jardine’s resistance to Brian’s more adventurous recent musical explorations. Brian Wilson’s contribution to Beach Boys’ recordings diminished as he suffered physical and mental health setbacks. Let’s watch the original 1966 Sloop John B video, which was filmed specially for the UK’s Top of The Pops.
The video, directed by the band’s publicist Derek Taylor, was filmed at Brian Wilson’s LA home. Brian’s brother and bandmate, Dennis Wilson, was the cameraman. Some critics argue that “Sloop John B” should not have been included on Pet Sounds. They suggest that as a pioneering folk-rock arrangement, the track sits uneasily among the Baroque pop arrangements of what Jim Fusilli describes as reflective love songs, stark confessions, or tentative statements of independence. Others insist the track fits perfectly with the “general feeling of disorientation” that threads through Pet Sounds.
Towards the end of the twentieth century, Brian Wilson was regarded as a reclusive, damaged, lost genius of rock. Yet that’s when Wilson emerged as a solo artist; tentatively at first. He was damaged, no doubt. He sometimes appeared detached, almost dissociated, and his fine young tenor voice now emerged as a frail reedy baritone croak—not unlike Bob Dylan, Wilson once remarked. Despite his circumstances, Brian worked with good bands (often including Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin) and when he sang, his mastery of pitch and phrasing allowed him to sound recognizably like Brian Wilson.
In his second act as a solo artist, Brian Wilson toured Pet Sounds. Significantly, he performed and recorded a critically acclaimed, award-winning reconstruction of his legendary abandoned Smile album. Brian Wilson continued to perform and tour periodically—even on occasion with the remaining Beach Boys. His last concert was in July 2022. He is said to have sat “rigid and expressionless” on a stool. It has emerged that Brian Wilson has dementia. He is under a conservatorship. We can’t leave this article there. Music Man readers, here is the zany, dated video for Brian Wilson’s masterpiece, “Good Vibrations.”