Brian and Pet Sounds was a huge inspiration to Rupert so it seems appropriate to post his own words on the subject, an extract from his forthcoming book:
In 1966 an album arrived that changed everything, not just for the band responsible, but for the very nature of pop music.
The Beach Boys had defined the essence of pop: superficial in the extreme, dressed-up with harmonies, instant-appeal arrangements with little depth. Releasing 10 albums in 3 years across 1962-1965, the Beach Boys were an amazing band on a good day and never off the radio.
Brian Wilson’s decision to work on a new album while the band were out touring the previous album, is well-documented. He was just one of the singers: fortuitously, he and his brother Carl, had remarkably interchangeable voices. Brian left the entrapment of his band and stayed for weeks in the relatively new playground of a recording studio, to achieve without interference.
Brian’s goal was to find a palette of sounds so he could paint the world’s first commercial sonic painting. Not an eclectic exercise aimed at fellow cultists, but a deliberate attempt to use his songwriting skills, fashioned for years with his rather superficial band, in combination with an unlimited set of new tools.
Before then, all pop music seemed to be borne out of a handful of basic instruments: two electric guitars, electric bass, and drums. Maybe the odd Farfisa or Hammond organ, or occasional decorations like strings and horns. Brian Wilson did something completely different. By overlapping one melody played by three different instruments that would not normally be played together, he created new sounds. Not just main melodies, but lines and figures within the arrangement.
He painted this picture with amazing production and recording techniques for their time, back when it was hard to do so with no gadgets. Brian had a miniscule fraction of the sound-treatment possibilities that we have today, and his palette of pre-synths (although he used a theremin on Good Vibrations soon after) was made of existing instruments drawn from an orchestra as much as a ‘beat group’.
As such, he single-handedly built a song suite borne out of the explosive key elements of pop’s evolution into rock. Whilst he struggled to reflect the changing times lyrically, he led the way both in terms of musical arrangement and what was still to be called ‘record production’.
Brian Wilson was a sound painter in the truest sense of the expression, creating a gorgeous, beautiful sonic landscape. The music was light and airy, with depth as well. Here, in one album, was a work of such sonic vision as to leave every other music-maker on planet Earth gasping! It was as if every other pop record made until that time seemed suddenly reduced to the simple 3-chord, two guitars, bass and drums mould.
Brian showed that you could be more ingenious than just having one clever trick. Just as black and white changed to colour, so did the equipment become part of the sound. That was his legacy.
