Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Maybe I’m just being cranky, but the full-length music album is for all intents and purposes dead. You can blame whoever or whatever you want for it – the advent of the MP3 and à la carte downloads, record company greed, artistic lethargy – but any way you cut it, the importance of the long-form album just doesn’t carry the same commercial or artistic weight that it once did. And honestly, I’m not that cranky about it. It is what it is, music and culture is always changing. The stand alone MP3, mix-tape and “video album” have taken its place. But something has been lost.
When I was a kid – you know, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth – the album was the whole ball of wax. You spent the year waiting for the latest records from your favorite groups, lined up to buy it with other fans, and couldn’t wait to get it back home, sticking your thumbnail through the plastic shrink-wrap and trying not to get a paper cut so you could see what’s inside. Dating myself further, I was fortunate enough to grow up during the vinyl era, and I am one of those who maintain there is a magic to the 12” record format – the way the two 20 minute sides bookended the music and determined song length and sequence, and how its size gave artists and art departments a canvas to create the perfect (and sometimes imperfect) visual accompaniment to the revolutionary sounds caught in the grooves.
Amongst the rock critic cognoscenti (another dying breed) The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock albums of all-time. Its mix of angelic vocals, winsome lyrics, optimistic pop melodies and expert production is seen as one of the first great full-lengths of the ’60s rock era, and a crucial turning point as musicians began to take themselves and their music more seriously. The LP turned 50 last year, and in (somewhat belated) celebration, a new Showtime documentary titled The Beach Boys: Making Pet Sounds, premieres tonight and chronicles the albums creation and impact.
Originally produced as part of the BBC’s Classic Albums series, the documentary examines how The Beach Boys went from writing novelty songs about surfing, girls and cars (and any combination of the three), to creating a full-length pop album whose musicianship matched classical music standards and whose execution and production rivaled that of a Hollywood movie. For the most part, the “how” is singer, bassist, songwriter and producer Brian Wilson.
Worn out from years on the road and a seemingly endless run of hit singles, Wilson retreated to the studio in 1965. Competitively inspired by The Beatles and other British Invasion acts, Wilson honed his skills as a songwriter and arranger. He put down his bass guitar and, as the cliché goes, his new instrument was the recording studio. He also utilized the talents of The Wrecking Crew, the crack team of young Los Angeles session musicians who made their bones playing on hit records by Phil Spector, another of Wilson’s contemporaries and inspirations. Wilson would work on new song ideas with The Wrecking Crew, asking them to play the music in his head over and over until they got it right.
While The Beach Boys toured overseas, Wilson and lyricist Tony Asher worked on the songs that would become Pet Sounds. In Wilson’s words, “I tried to write something better than the surf songs and car songs.” Asher’s background was in advertising, and there’s something about the songs that is commercial in the best way possible, creating an emotional commonality most anyone could relate to. At the same time, there was a weariness and melancholy, which undercut the sunny Southern California melodies and gave them more artistic heft than the usual top 40 pop fluff. While not a concept album, the songs were still all of a piece, giving the album a beginning, middle and end.
The band got word while on tour that Wilson was working on something special. Back home the hard work began, as Wilson meticulously coached the band through cutting vocals for the orchestral pop he had spent months putting together. Described by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston as being “between a hipster” and a “famous British general,” Brian Wilson was a taskmaster in the studio, who “demanded everything from everybody.” Rhythm guitarist Al Jardine described the sessions as “total stress,” while Mike Love called them “a labor of love,” which is a nice way for the famously salty lead singer to say they were a pain in the ass.
Pet Sounds took 10 months to record and cost the then extravagant sum of $70,000, roughly equivalent to a half millions dollars today. Ironically, when delivered to Capitol Records, the band’s label didn’t hear a hit. While the album sold modestly at the time, its legend grew over the years. It almost single-handedly created the idea of “baroque pop,” and would directly inspire The Beatles’ celebrated 1967 concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Anytime an artist retreats into the studio to work slavishly on their “masterpiece,” they are trying to evoke the mystique and legend of Pet Sounds, whether or not the finished product lives up to the comparison.
Making Pet Sounds is studious and detailed, as you’d expect from the BBC. There’s no new revelations or insights, and it seems to gloss over some of the internal frictions within the band, especially between the chubby, awkward Wilson, and his jock-y cousin Love (who was allegedly resistant to Brian’s artistic ambitions). As a mere celebration of the album, however, it works. There had been good, even great rock and pop albums before it, but Pet Sounds was the first time a rock or pop group created a cohesive collection of songs which demanded its audience take it as seriously as a novel or film. Art and culture change with the times, there’s not a lot you can do about it, but an album tells a story and creates a world that a stand-alone song or EP simply can’t. Perhaps the long-form album no longer fits into the rapid-fire world of today, where we cherry pick our favorite songs to listen to on earbuds, reducing the artist’s months of sonic craftsmanship to a shrill buzz, but make no mistake, something has been lost.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
