Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)

They say I got brains

But they ain’t doin’ me no good

I wish they could

No regular reader of 2 or 3 lines will be surprised to find Pet Sounds on my list of the greatest albums released during the first half of rock’s “Golden Decade.”

If you spend an evening sampling the vast body of writing about Pet Sounds, you’ll learn a lot of interesting things.  

For example, you’ll learn that Paul McCartney and John Lennon were great admirers of Pet Sounds, but Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger were not.  (That makes sense when you compare Beach Boys records to the music put out by the Beatles, Who, and Stones.)

You’ll also learn that the Beach Boys’ record company was not enthusiastic about the album, which sold only moderately well in the U.S. and failed to garner even a single Grammy nomination.  (The Beach Boys were not big stars in the UK prior to the release of Pet Sounds, but it did very well in the UK.  The album reached #2 on the English album charts – the Sound of Music soundtrack kept Pet Sounds out of the top spot – and stayed in the top ten for six months.)

But you won’t learn why Pet Sounds is the greatest album in history by reading.  

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All the words in the world aren’t adequate to explain why Pet Sounds is so great.  The only way to get its greatness is to listen to it.  And not just once or twice.

But as great as Pet Sounds is, it could have been even greater.

The original plan was to include Brian Wilson’s magnum opus, “Good Vibrations,” on Pet Sounds.  But when it was time to finalize the album’s tracks, Wilson wasn’t satisfied with “Good Vibrations.”  

Wilson removed it from the album and replaced it with “Sloop John B.”  Al Jardine thought that decision was “a big mistake,” and Bruce Johnston believed that Pet Sounds would have sold much better if it had included “Good Vibrations,” which became the first Beach Boys to top both the U.S. and UK singles charts when it was finally released in October 1966 – seven months after the first of the roughly 20 recording sessions that were required to produce a recording that Wilson was happy with.

The “Good Vibrations” sessions utilized the talents of about 30 musicians, and consumed some 90 hours of tape – all that to produce a record that was just over three and a half minutes long.  (By contrast, the seven-minute-long “MacArthur Park” was recorded the following year in only two takes.)

But was it ever worth it.  “Good Vibrations” is like no other record ever made.  One might call it the Pet Sounds of hit singles.

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I first listened to Pet Sounds in 1966, when I was a shy and angsty fourteen-year-old.  

The last time I listened to it was more than fifty years later, when Brian Wilson performed the album in its entirety at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  (I have not listened to Pet Sounds since I attended that performance because I didn’t see how that experience could be topped.) 

Pet Sounds is first and foremost an album – not a collection of individual songs, which is what most albums are.  

It’s often referred to as a concept album, but it’s not like Tommy, or The Wall, or other concept albums – it doesn’t tell a story, or have a specific theme.

Here’s what Brian Wilson had to say about Pet Sounds as a concept album:

If you take the Pet Sounds album as a collection of art pieces, each designed to stand alone, yet which belong together, you'll see what I was aiming at. . . . It wasn't really a song concept album, or lyrically a concept album; it was really a production concept album.

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Wilson has put his finger on something essential here.  A few years ago, I stopped writing about songs and started writing about records.  

A great song doesn’t always make a great record.  To make a great record, you need a great song – but you also need great production.

Pet Sounds has a number of exceptional songs.  Wilson was a genius, but he was also an innocent – his compositions for Pet Sounds were complex and subtle, but appealed to the heart as much as to the head.  (John Cale of the Velvet Underground said that Pet Sounds was “adult and childlike at the same time,” and he was right.)

But what sets Pet Sounds apart from all other albums is Wilson’s exceptional production.  He threw in everything but the kitchen sink to give that record its unique sound – not only strings and horns, but also a theremin, a bicycle bell, a five-gallon water-dispensing jug, and barking dogs.  

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So . . . after telling you that words weren’t adequate to explain the greatness of Pet Sounds, what did I do?  I wrote a lot of words attempting to explain the greatness of Pet Sounds.  

Sorry about that, boys and girls – sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Click here to listen to Pet Sounds.

Click here to buy Pet Sounds from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Caroline, No" (1966)

I remember how you used to say

You'd never change

But that's not true

[NOTE:  The surprise about me choosing to include "Caroline, No" in this year's group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME is that it's taken me this long to do that.  I love "Caroline, No" so much that I've featured it in on 2 or 3 lines twice.  It's the original 2010 post that appears below.]

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"Caroline, No" is the 100th song to be featured on 2 or 3 lines.  As my regular readers know, I take such milestones VERY seriously.  

I recently read a review of a new edition of Mark Twain's autobiography, and learned that Twain had said this about the "system" of autobiography that he developed:

[T]he law of the system is that I shall talk about the matter which for the moment interests me, and cast it aside and talk about something else the moment its interest for me is exhausted.  It is a system which follows no charted course [and] which is a complete and purported jumble – a course which begins nowhere, follows no specific route, and can never reach an end while I am alive. 

Mark Twain

I think Twain has written an excellent description of 2 or 3 lines. 

This what the reviewer had to say about Twain's system:

[T]his discursive ramble through his life proves nothing so much as that what interested him at any given moment is not necessarily of interest to anyone else.  Reading [Twain's autobiography] is like being trapped in a locked room with a garrulous old coot . . . who loves the sound of his own voice and hasn't the slightest inclination to turn it off.  The best passages are funny or thoughtful or touching or outspoken, sometimes all at once, but others are merely buzzes, hums and drones.

This is also an excellent description of 2 or 3 lines, n'est-ce pas?

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When I was given my first CD player on Christmas 1991, I was also given my first two CDs – one of which was the legendary Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds.  

Click here for a song from the other CD.

The last wish of Andy Lippincott, a gay character in Doonesbury who was dying of AIDS, was to live long enough to hear Pet Sounds on CD – a wish that came true just in time for him:

I bought the Pet Sounds LP in 1967 or '68, I think – so I was quite familiar with it when I was given the CD.

Pet Sounds is the album that I most associate with my teenage angst.  I had a pretty bad case of it, and when the symptoms were at their most severe, I would often put Pet Sounds on my parents' Magnavox console stereo and lie on the floor with my head directly under it.

My putative reason for doing this was to maximize the stereo effect – I'd hear the two channels very sharply separated that way.  But my real reason was because it seemed like a good way for me to hide from the world – literally (by physically putting my head into a confined space and hiding my face from view) and figuratively (by drowning out all my mental anxiety and apprehension with the sounds of the Beach Boys).

I don't have my Pet Sounds LP any more.  I gave it to my high-school girlfriend when I left for college.  This is still one of my most characteristic moves – I often attempt to communicate my feelings by quoting from songs or books.  (Other people's words articulate what I'm thinking so much better than I can.)

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There's no other album that affects me like Pet Sounds does.  It immediately transforms me into the 16-year-old version of myself.  

That's both good and bad.  And even if it's more bad than good, I can't resist listening to it every so often.

I can't really explain why Pet Sounds affects me the way it does.  If you have the album and feel like I do about it, I don't need to explain it – you get it.

If you have it and don't think it's anything special . . . well, I have nothing more to say to you.

If you're not familiar with it, PLEASE buy it or download it or get it from your local library or listen to all the songs on YouTube or whatever.  

"Caroline, No" is the final song on the album, which has been praised by Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Elton John, and many others.

Several music magazines have ranked it as the #1 album of all time, and  a panel of top musicians, songwriter, and producers assembled by the British music magazine Mojo in 1995 – 30 years after it was recorded – voted it the greatest album ever made.   

Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the #2 album of all time, behind only Sgt. Pepper – which Beatles' producer George Martin said was the Beatles' attempt to equal Pet Sounds.

(Sorry, Beatles – you failed!)

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Brian Wilson, who wrote "Caroline, No" with the help of Tony Asher, said it was his favorite song on the album and "the prettiest ballad I've ever sung."  The song was initially released as a Brian Wilson single – not a Beach Boys single.  

Although Pet Sounds is a Beach Boys album, the other members of the group had a very limited role in creating it.  Wilson and Asher wrote virtually all of the words and music to the album's songs, and the backing tracks were recorded by a group of very skilled and prolific studio musicians (known collectively as "The Wrecking Crew").

Brian Wilson in 1966

Asher's former girlfriend was named Carol, and the song was originally written by Asher as "Carol, I Know."  Wilson misheard him and thought the title was "Caroline, No," and he and Asher decided they liked that better.  

I loved "Caroline, No" long before I had a daughter named Caroline.  As far as I recall, the song had nothing to do with our naming her that.  (I think my wife liked the name and – therefore – so did I.)

The song is clearly about a girl who no longer is in love with the singer – her feelings have changed, leaving the singer (who is still in love with her) to pine for the good old days.

For me, it's about Caroline – and all my children – growing up all too quickly.  And once your children have grown up, you're not young any more – maybe that's the real issue here, at least for me.

My youngest is only 16, and a sophomore in high school – so at least I have him for a couple of more years.  After he leaves, I have to wait for grandchildren, and who knows how long that will take.

Click here to listen to "Caroline, No."  (Please excuse me if I don't stay around and keep you company while you listen to it.  I'd probably embarrass us both if I did.)

Click here to buy "Caroline, No" from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Heroes and Villains" (1967)

I’ve been in this town so long

So long to the city

The day after Brian Wilson died, a group of Washington Post arts and entertainment writers put together a list of their 14 favorite Wilson songs.

That list includes “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline, No” – which would probably be the four records I’d choose for the Beach Boys’ Mt. Rushmore if there were such a thing.  (Kudos to the writer who picked “Caroline, No” – I think it’s very underappreciated.)

Brian Wilson in 1961

But some of their other selections are real head-scratchers.  

Take “Barbara Ann.”  (Please!)  “Barbara Ann” is a lot of fun to sing along with after a night of binge drinking.  But if you play it when you’re sober, it loses its appeal after about 30 seconds.  Also, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . which should have disqualified it from consideration.

“Sloop John B” should have been given the title “Sloop John B-Side.”  It has a certain loosey-goosey charm, but there’s really no there there.  Once again, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . so why would you include it on a list titled “14 essential Brian Wilson songs”?

Finally, there’s “This Whole World,” which was released on the Sunflower album in 1970.  Like a lot of Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds songs, it’s distinctive and interesting.  But in the final analysis, it doesn’t really work – the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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What Brian Wilson songs that weren’t included on the Post’s list are on my MUCH BETTER favorites list?

The most puzzling omission from the Post list is “I Get Around,” which is the quintessential Beach Boys pre-Pet Sounds single.  And it sounds just as fresh today as it did in 1964.

“Let Him Run Wild” – which was the B-side of “California Girls” – was almost as perfectly conceived and executed as “I Get Around,” but the moods of the two records couldn’t be more different.  While “I Get Around” is about cool guys doing cool guy stuff, “Let Him Run Wild” is about uncool guys with hopeless crushes on girls who are waaaaay out of their league.  (Guess which of those groups I was a member of when I was in high school?)

I’d fill out the rest of my list with additional Pet Sounds selections.  (The Post’s list includes four tracks from Pet Sounds, but that’s not nearly enough.)  

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I talk a lot about Pet Sounds – which is far and away the greatest pop music album ever.  

Brian Wilson in 1977

[Sgt. Pepper?  Are you freakin’ kidding me?  Sgt. Pepper has “A Day in the Life” – the best Beatles song ever – and a few other winners.  But there are several very weak tracks on that album – especially “When I’m Sixty-Four” (Paul McCartney at his most annoying) and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (John Lennon at his most so-full-of-sh*t-that-his-eyes-are-brown).]

If I had to pick just one additional Pet Sounds track to add to the Post’s list, it would be “Here Today.”  

But I don’t have to pick just one.  So I’m also going to include “You Still Believe in Me,” “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting for the Day,” and “I Know There’s an Answer.”

Don’t worry – I didn’t forget “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”  Like “In My Room” – which is included on the Post’s list – that song is a cri de coeur from deep within Brian Wilson’s troubled mind.  But while the singer of “In My Room” will likely outgrow his teenage angst some day, the singer of “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” is a mature adult who has come to realize that his fear and anxiety will be with him for the rest of his life.

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One final note.

I’m probably doing Wilson a disservice by not including any of his post-1966 songs on my favorites list.

Brian Wilson in 2017

But I never bought any of the Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds records.  And while I’m sure there are some good songs on those albums, I can’t imagine that any of them are good enough to displace any of the songs on my list.

Feel free to try to make me change my mind – as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have no problem admitting it when I’m wrong about something.  (The last time that happened was in 1982.)

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I decided to feature “Heroes and Villains” today even though it didn’t make my favorites list.  

It’s a real tour de force record – in some ways, it beats “Good Vibrations” at its own game.  But in the final analysis, there’s a little too much sound and fury in “Heroes and Villains.”  And while that sound and fury doesn’t signify nothing, it doesn’t signify as much as “Good Vibrations.”  

To put it another way, “Heroes and Villains” is analogous to witnessing a dog delivering a sermon – the fact that it’s a dog speaking is so remarkable that you tend to overlook the fact that the points he makes aren’t all that persuasive.

Click here to listen to the version of “Heroes and Villains” that was released in 1967 on the Smiley Smile LP.  (There are a number of longer versions, one of which was released on the 2004 Brian Wilson Presents Smile album.)

Click here to buy “Heroes and Villains” from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Pet Sounds" (1966)

[NOTE: I’ve gone to relatively few live concerts in my life – I’ve mostly listened to recorded music.  There are several reasons I prefer recordings to live performances.  For one thing, I figured out long ago that you could buy a lot of record albums for the price of a concert ticket. 

When I do go to a concert, I’m usually motivated by bucket-list considerations – I want to be able to say that I saw a favorite group up close and personal.  That explains why I’ve gone to live shows by The Rolling Stones, Kinks, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, X, and a few others.

But I think the concert experience that I treasure the most was seeing the late Brian Wilson at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in 2018.  Here’s a slightly-edited version of the 2 or 3 lines post I wrote shortly after seeing Wilson.]

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A few days ago, Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” stopped at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Wilson and his band – including original Beach Boy Al Jardine, who met Wilson at Hawthorne High School almost 60 years ago – were originally scheduled to perform at the Kennedy Center in May, but had to postpone that show and several others when Wilson needed emergency back surgery.

Brian Wilson and Al Jardine

The years have not been kind to the 76-year-old Wilson’s body.  He needed help from his assistant to walk to the white Yamaha grand piano that had been positioned front and center on the Kennedy Center stage.  Once he took a seat at the piano, he didn’t move until the end of the no-intermission, two-hour-long show, when his assistant returned to help him walk offstage.

The years haven’t been kind to Wilson’s voice either.  At times, he struggled to sing on pitch.  

But none of that mattered.  HE'S BRIAN F*CKING WILSON, the genius who created Pet Sounds – which is the greatest album in the history of pop music.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see him perform live and in person.

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The concert got off to a great start with “California Girls,” which was followed by other pre-Pet Sounds hit singles (including “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and “I Get Around”).  

Those songs couldn’t be more dated.  They depict a southern California teenage-boy-centric world that became extinct decades ago – assuming it ever really existed.

Brian Wilson masters “Pet Sounds” in 1966

Did the Beach Boys and their buds really sit around and debate the relative merits of hip east-coast girls, midwestern farmers’ daughters, and northern girls who “keep their boyfriends warm at night,” before deciding that tanned, bikini-clad California girls are the “cutest girls in the world”?   (I’m sorry, but to me there is no higher compliment for a young woman than “cute.”)

And did the hot-rodders who spent their weekends going from town to town in search of street-racing action really eschew going steady because “it wouldn't be right to leave [your] best girl home on Saturday night”?

The lifestyle the Beach Boys sang about in those songs was as foreign to a kid growing up in Joplin, Missouri, as life in Paris or Tokyo.  God knows I wanted to experience it, but that wasn’t happening.

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Latter-day Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin then joined Brian and the boys to sing “Feel Flows” and “Sail On, Sailor,” which teed it up nicely for what the audience had been waiting for: a performance of all 13 tracks of Pet Sounds.

That album kicks off with the rollicking, up-tempo, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” which is followed by “You Still Believe in Me” (a slow song).  Next comes another fast-slow pair of songs – “That’s Not Me” and “”Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder).” 

The "Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary
World Tour" band on  stage

After “I’m Waiting for the Day,” which is a real tour de force, the audience had a chance to catch its emotional breath during “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” (an instrumental) and “Sloop John B” (which is the only non-original song on Pet Sounds).

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The audience rose to its feet and burst into applause when it heard the opening notes of “God Only Knows,” the first track on side two of the album.

The woman sitting to my left had warned me before the show started that she would cry when “God Only Knows” was played.  I told her that I might join her because that was the song that my oldest son and his wife had chosen for their first dance together at their wedding reception – hearing me play the album when he was a child had apparently made an impression on him.  (That story was enough to start her tearing up.) 

“God Only Knows” is a tough act to follow, but the next three songs on the album – 

“I Know There’s an Answer,” “Here Today,” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Time” (a song that seems to sum up Brian Wilson’s troubled life) – are just as good.

Pregaming in my car on the
drive to the Kennedy Center

Next was the album’s title track – today’s featured song – a catchy, lighthearted instrumental that allowed the audience to gather itself before what was the emotional high point of the evening for me: “Caroline, No,” the closing song on Pet Sounds.

Paul McCartney has said that “God Only Knows” is his favorite song of all time, but I think “Caroline, No” is better.  Who are you going to listen to – Paul McCartney or me?

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There was no way for Wilson and his band to top Pet Sounds, but we sixty-somethings in the audience weren’t ready to go home yet.  So they gave us “Good Vibrations” – which took longer and cost more to record than the entire Pet Sounds album – and several more classic pre-Pet Sounds singles (including “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Barbara Ann,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun”).

Wilson then closed the show with a solo performance of “Love and Mercy,” the opening track of his eponymous debut solo album (which was released in 1988).  

“Love and Mercy” also provided the title of the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic, which included some amazing scenes depicting the 23-year-old wunderkind (portrayed by Paul Dano) supervising the recording of Pet Sounds.  If you haven’t seen the movie, DROP EVERYTHING AND WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!

While you’re at it, watch the 2017 Showtime documentary, Making Pet Sounds.  Click here to watch the trailer for it.   

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The “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” kicked off in Auckland, New Zealand, on March 26, 2016.  

By the time the tour ends later this month, Wilson and company will have performed over 200 times in over two dozen countries – including Japan, Finland, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Iceland.

Why is Brian Wilson is putting himself through this ordeal?  

My ticket

It’s not because he enjoys airline travel.  (His assistant once asked him what went through his mind as they took off on a flight, and Wilson answered, “Don’t blow up, don’t blow up, don’t blow up!”)

And it’s not because Wilson needs the money – his net worth is estimated at $75 million.

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Wilson has a long history of mental illness – which was probably caused at least in part by his taking LSD and other drugs when he was younger – and suffers from auditory hallucinations.   His recent autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, suggests that he may continue to tour and perform because it helps him cope with the voices in his head that tell him “terrible and scary things.”

“Songs help me with my pain,” he writes in that book. “Music happens and the voices stop happening.”

He talks about dragging out performance of “Good Vibrations” because “any minute playing ‘Good Vibrations’ is a minute I don’t have to feel afraid or tired or haunted.”

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The title of this blog refers to the two or three lines from each post’s featured song that are quoted at the beginning of that post.  So you may wonder why I’ve chosen to feature an instrumental that has no lyrics for me to quote.   

They tell you to live in the moment.  But I often find that the anticipation of an event is more satisfying than the event itself.  For me, the best part of a vacation is the night before it begins – because once the vacation starts, I find myself counting the days until it ends.

The same is true of music.  Once you hear the opening notes of a song, it’s only a matter of a few minutes before that song is over.  But if the song never begins, it can never end.

“Pet Sounds” immediately precedes “Caroline, No” on the Pet Sounds album.  Every time I listen to it, I’m anticipating hearing the best song on the best pop album of all time.  

That’s why I’m featuring it on 2 or 3 lines today.

Click here to listen to “Pet Sounds.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.