Well I feel so broke up, I want to go home
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
...with an album I've actually heard. Well done me, eh? However, I only listened to it to see if it deserved its reputation and I remember being distinctly "huh?" about it.
#2: Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys (1966)
“Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?” Confronted with his bandmate’s contempt, Wilson made lemonade of lemons. “Ironically,” he observed, “Mike’s barb inspired the album’s title.”
Barking dogs – Wilson’s dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles’ masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older,” on the album’s magnificent opening song, he wasn’t just imagining a love that could evolve past high school, he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself.
I can't remember if I actively didn't like this album or if I was just left feeling "what's all the fuss about?" but either way I was interested to revisit it, particularly having experienced so many "great" albums recently with differing results.
1. "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
Obviously I like this track - I'm not a monster, after all
2. "You Still Believe In Me"
Fine, but not really anything more than fine.
3. "That's Not Me"
Again, it's fine.
4. "Don't Talk"
Some nice soaring vocals on this one - I'd go as far as saying it's "better than fine"
5. "I'm Waiting For The Day"
This is a bit of a creepy song, but I quite like the vocal arrangement.
6. "Let's Go Away For A While"
And we're back to "fine" - although I was quite intrigued by it because I'd forgotten there was an instrumental track on this album.
7. "Sloop John B"
I really like this song - it's obviously bobbins, but it's really good bobbins. And, I never knew it was traditional Carribean folk song - but I do now!
8. "God Only Knows"
And, yeah - I obviously love this one as well
9. "I Know There's An Answer"
I didn't particularly like this track - but it's possibly just suffering in comparison with the previous two.
10. "Love Is Here"
Yeah, I liked this one.
11. "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"
This was just a bit of a mess for me - and some of the singing seemed surprisingly dubious.
12. "Pet Sounds"
An odd instrumental, and no mistake.
13. "Caroline, No"
And yeah, I quite liked this one.
So, having relistened to it a couple of times, I'm pretty certain I don't hate it and it certainly has some great tracks on it. But it also has some perfectly fine tracks which don't, for me, particularly add anything. I think my problem is really with people like Rolling Stone saying things like "With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing, and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented — and in several senses, perfected — the notion that an album could be more than the sum of its parts" - I basically think it's a "nice" album with some great tracks on it - "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B" & "God Only Knows" are obvious classics - but I'm remain completely mystified by all the praise it gets. And I'm not really sure what more I can say about it - I suspect Wikipedia will manage to find a bit more though.
Oh yes - overtaking Sgt Pepper, we have a new longest Wikipedia entry (and it's the longest one on the list - #1 has a pathetically small entry in comparison). And it resulted in a further listen as well, because I'd been listening to the remastered stereo versions of the tracks, but originally they were issued in mono which I didn't suspect would do them any favours (and I can confirm that it most definitely doesn't) - apparently the stereo version wasn't made available until 1997, which just seems weird. There's a reasonable amount of discussion about it being a concept album, although it seems that most people think the concept is "not having any shit tracks on it" - maybe that was a novelty back then. The section on the album cover is an interesting one - I've always thought it's a jarring picture and it turns out that pretty much everyone agrees with me (at least the record company didn't get their way on the album name - they wanted to call it Our Freaky Friends). San Diego Zoo were apparently very unkeen on allowing the animals to be used and only relented when the band "explained that animals are an 'in' thing with teenagers". I'm sorry, what?!? And, amusingly, after the session, the group were banned from the zoo for mistreating the animals (but mistreating animals is not amusing, kids). The cover also popularised the Cooper Black font, which went on to be used for a lot of other things in this period (and is used by easyJet today).
The album was not well received either critically or commercially in the US, but rather better so in the UK thanks to some nifty promotional work involving some Beatles and Stones. It peaked at #2 in the UK - it was kept off the top by The Sound Of Music soundtrack, which was in the middle of a 2 YEAR run in which it was either #1 or #2 in the charts. All told, TSOM soundtrack spent 70 weeks at #1 and if you think that's somewhat unbelievable, the South Pacific soundtrack has spent 115 weeks at #1 - between November 1958 and January 1961, it spent 7 weeks at #2 and all the rest of the time at #1. Wow - just wow. Anyways, back to Pet Sounds - it's obviously highly regarded now, but it certainly took its time getting there with the album going out of print in 1974 and was pretty much ignored until the 90s when, for some not-at-all clear reason people started to pick up on it. The legacy section goes on and on forever - feel free to read it if you have a very high nonsense threshold. And one final "wow, those were strange times" fact - they were really worried about including the word "God" in the title of "God Only Knows" because the thinking was that no-one would ever play it if they did.
The group's Wikipedia entry is very lengthy indeed, so obviously I'm going to be very unfair and pick out selected random snippets. Like the fact that they recorded a song written by Charles Manson - his somewhat murder-y habits didn't them any favours on the popularity front for a bit. On a slightly more upbeat note, they were the best selling US act of the 60s, having sold 65 million albums in that period (which is quite a few) but there weren't half chucking the albums out for a phase - they did 3 a year from 1963-5. There are a lot of references to Brian's "troubles" - his Wikipedia entry is unsurprisingly also impressively long. And finally, I think we can all agree with this statement - "Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing tendency to recontextualize the Beach Boys outside of their typical iconography". All I can say is that I'm pleased no-one has ever tried to recontextualize me outside of my typical iconography...
"Customers also listened to" a lot of people with big cars and surfboards, none of whom have troubled this list in the slightest. For me, this is easily the best of their 3 entries on the list - It's The Beach Boys Today! is bearable, but Wild Honey was just awful and entirely without merit. And I liked it a lot more than I remembered liking it, but I remain completely mystified by the adoration it receives now - particularly when you consider how it was completely ignored for a very long time. I know we (OK, I) don't allow greatest hits albums but the band hold a special place in my heart from the days when my Dad had 20 Golden Greats (I think) on 8 track and, given that it was released in 1976, the weather at the time would have been suitable Californian (although I don't remember him having a surfwagon) and that's the album I'd go back to for some Beach Boy goodness.
Just the one to go - can you guess what it is? If I hadn't looked ahead, I think I'd be scratching my head trying to think what it might be...
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