Post 3a: DUAL CLASSIC REVIEW 3: Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Classic Review: Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

CLASSIC/10

CLASSIC/10

And with this review, I try something different than the standard album review. This might be a little rough, but bear with me. Here I will discuss two albums at once, as both of these masterpieces share quite a few similarities. In addition to the blindingly obvious, such as time period, genre, fame, and legacy, these were both some of the must influential and important albums in the history of modern music. I am not exaggerating here, as I am prone to do when discussing things about which I am passionate. I am not making a joke. Without these two albums, modern music does not exist. These are objectively the most important two albums in modern music. So sit down and start reading. This is the one lesson you need to have learned if you want to talk with anybody that is more than just a casual fan of music.

In case you really do not know anything about music, here is some background on these two bands. The Beatles were a band from England who began their career making excellent, low brow, catchy pop music and then started taking drugs and made the most innovative and commercially successful music in modern history. The Beach Boys were a band from California, USA who began their career making excellent, low brow, catchy pop music and then started taking drugs and made the most innovative and commercially successful music in modern music. With both of these bands, think as if One Direction, but far more popular, just released an album one day and started sounding like an even more innovative Animal Collective, but somehow still retained their popularity. And then make that even more unbelievable, as such a transformation had never happened before. For any more background, read the Wikipedia links attached to their names. Both are good reads, albeit a bit long. 

Due to the sheer amount of music to discuss here (twenty six songs) I am not going through each album song by song, as I usually do. This review is more about the albums as complete entities, rather than as a collection of individual songs. Basically, this review is more about history than music. It is more vital for understanding the course of modern music to view them as such, as these are the two most innovative pop albums of not only their time but of modern music. Before these albums, the album as a format was little more than an excuse to resell previously released singles at a higher price point (see previously mentioned band One Direction). Albums had the singles, and then they had a bunch of throwaway padding to back them up. From this point forth in music, every song on an album was to be flawless, representative of an artist's maximum effort each time. Before Pet Sounds, music was not art. Music did not strive to be particularly innovative, or to be held on the same intellectual plane as classical music or high art. 

Pet Sounds was recorded from July 12, 1965 – April 13, 1966, almost entirely by Brian Wilson, the absolutely insane but brilliant mastermind behind The Beach Boys. In 1964, Wilson, whose innate mental instabilities (which were then aggravated by absolutely depraved amounts of drug use) have become public knowledge in the years since the 60s, suffered a panic attack while on a plane flight. This particularly unnerving episode, as well as a few debilitating incidents in the years before, caused Wilson to resign for a while from touring. This sudden rush of free time allowed Wilson to focus on his production and songwriting, which were his main contributions to the band in the pre Pet Sounds era of their career. Also to note is the fact that this is when Brian Wilson started getting high like his blood was made of acid and cocaine. An actual story features Brian being convinced by his brother, Dennis, to purchase $15,000 of cocaine at one time. In 1960s money. To give a sense of perspective, calculated for inflation, $15,000 in 1965 is the equivalent of about $113,000 in 2015. Try to picture $113,000 of cocaine in one room being purchased by one of the biggest rock stars on the planet. I'd rather not. Anyways, Wilson started writing most of his music under the influence of whatever his infinite riches could purchase him. While this wrecked havoc on his already fragile mind, it worked wonders for his music and Brian Wilson began churning out more innovative and innovative music that peaked with Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds was an instant critical and commercial success in England, yet flopped in both regards in the USA. This is largely due to Capital Records completely wetting the bed in regards to marketing the album, as it was so different than anything else on the market that they had no idea how to promote it. Talk about being a victim to one's own genius. Now, as you read the next part consider how different the musical landscape of the time was from today. Music was not art. Rock n roll was dance music, not made for deep listening. Genres did not cross, and production techniques consisted of little more than recording every instrument, throwing it all together in the studio, and then mixing it a little bit so one instrument did not overpower the others. Suddenly, along comes Brian Wilson. In addition to the standard rock instruments of guitar, bass, drums, piano, voice etc., Pet Sounds features sounds from instruments/not quite instruments like the theramin, flute, harpsichord, barking dogs, Coca Cola bottles, dog whistles, and even trains. Individual songs featured entire orchestras. Genres noticeably covered on the album include psychedelia, pop, baroque, folk, jazz, avant-garde, ambient, progressive rock, classical, middle eastern/Indian, and rock. "God Only Knows" is not composed of actual, identifiable chords, has no key, and is still somehow one of the most beautiful pop songs every written. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is arguably my favorite pop song of all time and features enough instrumentation for an entire album. There are entire essays that I could write on the album's experimenting with melody, song structure, harmony, timbre, chord voicings, and innovative production techniques, but I will not get into those. The album costed, adjusted for inflation, the equivalent of $510,000 in today's money. A price like that was unheard of at the time, and still sound slightly ridiculous. The album is also noted as one of the first concept albums, which means that it tells a story and shares a constant theme throughout. This was accomplished to a degree in the lyrics, which tell a loose story about love, but is mainly connected in the production. By creating a cohesive theme of production, Brian Wilson managed to create a concept album through his instrumentation, a feat which has only been accomplished by a few artists since.

A little later a little band known as The Beatles decided to stop touring. Their massive popularity had caused their shows to be too loud, and the band could not hear themselves play on stage, This had caused their playing skills to become sloppy, which embarrassed the band. In addition, they were hugely controversial, which had gotten to the point where it endangered the band when they were traveling. When in Japan, a battalion of 35,000 police officers were assigned to protect the band from fans. This sudden rush of free time led to the band separating for seven weeks in order to pursue personal interests and find inspiration in their own ways. It is here that Paul McCartney, the Brian Wilson of sorts for The Beatles, developed the concept of a fictional band decided to write an album from the perspective of this fictional band. Inspired by Pet Sounds, which was actually heavily inspired by an earlier Beatles record, Rubber Soul, Paul set out to write an equal to Pet Sounds (his words not mine) in both scale, innovation, and skill. McCartney's ambition, as well as a literally limitless studio budget, allowed McCartney/producer George Martin to not just push the limits of production as established by Wilson in the year prior, but to take them and break them in half over his knee, like Bane does to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises. A song not included on the album even featured one version of the song played on top of another. The Beatles recorded a sad version of the song and a happy version and layered them to create a song. If that doesn't sound particularly innovative to you, take my word for it. That is some next level stuff. 700 hours of hard work later, Sgt. Pepper's was finished. Unlike Pet Sounds, this album took no time to receive its glory. The album was immediately a commercial success and was hailed as an instant classic by nearly all critics. 

A large part of the reason why I chose to review these records together is because they were directly related, and made by bands who were directly related. The bands listened to each other's music, and regularly stole ideas from one another. The first time McCartney heard "God Only Knows" he broke down crying, and still maintains that it causes him to lost control of his emotions when he hears it. I have heard unconfirmed stories that the first time Brian Wilson heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" he attempted to ram his car into a tree, because the song had accomplished everything he was living to do in his music. Both albums were directly influenced by the work of the other band, and openly so. Both displayed unparalleled ambition and innovation, and are landmark records of their time. Both were also instrumental in the development of music and culture as a whole. The Beatles especially are seen as primary influences of culture and music, but The Beach Boys have seen their fair share of credit, especially in modern musical movements and recent fixations on pop over other genres. 

I am of the opinion that nearly any album released since the mid 1960s owes some sort of debt to these two albums. Go ahead. Try it. Name an album, and I can give you a link to one of these albums. It is like finding a person's bacon number. How is black metal related to Sgt. Pepper's? Well black metal would not exist without thrash metal which was created by a few bands, one of which went by the name Megadeth. Frontman of Megadeth, Dave Mustaine, has cited The Beatles as a large influence on his music. Experimental jazz music? The jazz undertones of Pet Sounds helped to open the public's tastes towards a jazz, leading to a more widespread acceptance of the genre. The influence of these two albums is all reaching, to say the least. 

The importance of these two albums on modern music is hard to understate. Yet, I almost feel as if I am over hyping the albums. Many who listen to them claim that they do not understand their reputation. This is due to a little something similar to the Seinfeld Is Unfunny trope. These albums have been so copied and have proven so influential that they sound derivative and unoriginal. Viewing these albums for what they are, pieces of music now over half a century old, is vital. Another fault when appreciating albums of this nature arise from the average person's inability to appreciate the subtleties of such music. TJ Jenkins from Wichita probably does not understand the brilliance of using non-diatonic chords and inverted chords in "God Only Knows". I can guarantee he never realized that when the line "God only knows what I'd be without you" is sung, the chord progression changes from the unconventional inverted thirds and non diatonic chords to the more conventional progression A–E/G#–F#m7–E, signalling an added emphasis on that line in particular. I bet he didn't notice the constantly changing key, which moves between A major and E major, or that the song ends with perpetual rounds, which was a very uncommon technique for the time. If none of that made sense to you, and it shouldn't make any sense, then you understand why some people might not fully grasp the brilliance of some of these songs.

The best advice I can possibly give to a person who has not heard these albums is to simply go out and listen, keeping in mind their age. I really do believe that even today these albums contain songs that will amaze casual and dedicated listeners, as long as one keeps an open mind. Listening to Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's is almost like a rite of passage for music, similiar to reading The Republic by Plato or studying the Mona Lisa: if you keep an open mind you will probably enjoy it, and even if you don't, that is just too bad. This is a lesson that you do not choose to have.