Saturday, February 15All That Matters

Brian Wilson gives Beatles producer George Martin access to the original tracks for God Only Knows. Martin impresses Wilson with his real time remix of the classic.

by DariusMDeV

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Brian Wilson gives Beatles producer George Martin access to the original tracks for God Only Knows. Martin impresses Wilson with his real time remix of the classic.


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23 Comments

  • Here’s my take as some random guy who is obsessed with music from that time period:

    I see the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as the “Big 3” that changed Western music to the point that everything before that time and everything after that time (the mid-to-late 1960s) are from two entirely different eras.

    The Beatles generally (and deservedly) take the top spot for the way they changed music forever and how much they accomplished in so little time.

    Out of everyone within those Big 3 groups though, **Brian Wilson was the single most brilliant and talented musician and songwriter.** He could really do everything and understood the possibilities of music theory on a much more complex level than anyone else alive.

    Unfortunately, he had so much working against him: his father was massively abusive to the boys and he likely dealt with extreme PTSD in his life. I imagine this contributed to pushing him over the edge with drugs (along with other aspects I’ll talk about) and he really never recovered mentally after the 60s.

    Wilson was also incredibly competitive and saw the Beatles as his creative arch nemesis. He was outmatched by default, because while he was the most creative genius, he was really working on his own in terms of composition and production. On the other hand, the formation of the Beatles was the single greatest meeting of *two* minds in musical history with Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who composed almost everything together. John was more creative than Paul, while Paul had the vision and drive to bring it all together and fill in John’s gaps. So Wilson was fighting 2 vs 1. Then add in George Martin to perfect the production, and it was really 3 vs 1. They were so good at what they did, that simply by observing and learning and competing to be included, George Harrison managed to become a brilliant songwriting force on his own by the end.

    So after Brian Wilson released *Pet Sounds* in 1966, which took everything out of him and was the pinnacle of his creative success, he was greatly affected when the Beatles released *Revolver* only shortly thereafter. *Pet Sounds* is generally considered better and more significant than *Revolver*, but it was close and he must have realized that he couldn’t stop and would have to do even better somehow on the next one. He worked tirelessly on the next song ‘Good Vibrations’ and released it as a single later in 1966 with plans to include it on a fully developed follow up album for 1967 called *Smile*.

    Meanwhile, the Beatles managed to completely record and release *Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* before Wilson could get close to finishing *Smile*. Before *Sgt. Peppers* was finished, two songs from recording sessions were released as singles: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’. (Side note: while *Sgt. Peppers* by itself is considered by some to be the greatest album of all time, many don’t even realize that ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were recorded as part of the album. George Martin has rightfully said that leaving those two songs off the album was “the biggest mistake of (his) professional life.” Just imagine what the legacy would be if they were included.)

    When ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were released as a combined A-side & B-side single in the months following ‘Good Vibrations’, and knowing that they were only previews of the recording sessions of a larger album in the works, I think Brian Wilson broke down under the pressure of knowing he simply couldn’t keep up no matter what. What single person could keep up, regardless of how great their genius was?

    After *Sgt. Peppers* was finally released, the recordings for *Smile* had bigger and bigger issues while Brian Wilson descended into depression, bizarre behavior and intense use of psychedelics. Eventually the *Smile* album was permanently shelved and the Beach Boys released a toned down version called *Smiley Smile* that was basically an entirely different album that the rest of the band had to work to put together.

    Brian Wilson never really recovered after that, nor did the Beach Boys (though I would argue the rest of the band did release some relatively unknown but awesome stuff in the early 70s with a couple new band members from South Africa).

    Wilson’s other creative nemesis was Phil Spector, who’s Wall of Sound production style he tried to emulate on *Pet Sounds*. I imagine the final nail in the coffin for Wilson was when Phil Spector himself produced the Beatles last album *Let It Be* from 1968-1970 to critical acclaim.

    Brian Wilson and the never released/completed *Smile* album and really the whole Beach Boys saga is one of the saddest and most frustrating “what if” stories in all of music history, if not the *most* frustrating.

    The craziest side-story to the whole Beach Boys tale is the connection to the Manson Family, but I’ll leave that for another comment. I will note that the song ‘Never Learn Not to Love’, released as a single by the Beach Boys in 1968 and credited to Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, was an altered version of a song about tension between the Wilson brothers written by Dennis’s new hippie friend Charles Manson.

    **EDIT**: I don’t want to diminish the contributions to modern music that artists outside of my designated “Big 3” delivered. There were many, many other musicians during that time that contributed to the changing era in major ways, though I’d argue the “Big 3” were the most important. I will say the Motown output of the 1960s could be considered just as influential as any of those three groups, and while Motown releases involved numerous recording artists, the majority of big hits were written and produced by the songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. So Holland-Dozier-Holland should probably be considered the fourth of the “Big 4” in my book.

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