Boys (1993); 4-CD box set Pet Sounds Sessions: Remastered (1997)
Further reading: Brian Wilson And The Beach Boys: The Complete Guide To Their Music (John Tobler, 2004); The Beach Boys Pet Sounds 33 1/3 (Jim Fusillli, 2005); www.thebeachboys.com
Download: iTunes
Tony Asher thought it was a joke when someone at his ad agency told him Brian Wilson was on the phone, one day late in 1965. He’d played some songs for Wilson several months earlier, but since then had dumped songwriting for a more profitable gig as a copywriter. But Wilson couldn’t have been more serious. He’d just heard The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and decided he wanted to make a meaningful album of his own – without the aid of The Beach Boys’ resident sun-and-fun lyricist Mike Love, who was on tour with the rest of the Boys.
Recent exposure to heavy doses of LSD-25 had also boosted Wilson’s interest in mind-expanding music that would affect people on a deeper level. Wilson remembered Asher and felt that he was a writer who could give a voice to his musical introspection. He couldn’t have been more right.
‘It’s fair to say that the general tenor of the lyrics was always his and the actual choice of words usually mine,’ Tony Asher told Nick Kent. ‘Brian was constantly looking for topics that kids could relate to. Even though he was dealing with the most advanced arrangements, he was incredibly conscious of this commercial thing, this absolute need to relate.’
As the fluffiest of all Beach Boys’ hits, Barbara Ann, was topping the British and American charts, Brian began tinkering with a song called Good, Good Vibrations and another called God Only Knows. When Mike ‘Don’t Fuck With The Formula’ Love returned from Japan to lay down his vocal tracks, he pronounced it ‘Brian’s ego music’. It’s true that I Know There’s An Answer was originally called Hang On To Your Ego (until Love insisted the lyrics be changed, and Brian’s chauffeur Terry Sachen obliged) but what Love hated most about Pet Sounds was its LSD influence. He later asserted that ‘some of the words were so totally offensive to me that I wouldn’t even sing ’em’. Actually, Brian didn’t need many of Love’s vocals, because he could do all the parts himself. When Brian wasn’t singing, he was arranging the orchestra, creating dense, lush arrangements that owed at least as much to Nelson Riddle as they did to Jack Nitzsche.
With the notable exception of Sloop John B (a hit single that Capitol stuck on the album against Wilson’s wishes), every song on Pet Sounds evinced a spiritual tenderness that opened new doors in rock. ‘I thought of it as chapel rock,’ Wilson later explained, ‘commercial choir music. I wanted to make an album that would stand up in ten years.’
Make that 37 and counting.
John Mayall’s Blues Breakers
Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton
The commercial breakthrough of British blues.
Record label: Decca
Produced: Mike Vernon
Recorded: Decca Studio 2, London; April 1966
Released: July 1966
Chart peaks: 6 (UK) None (US)
Personnel: John Mayall (v, g, hm); Eric Clapton (g, v); John McVie (b); Huey Flint (d); Gus Dudgeon (e)
Track listing: All Your Love (S); Hideaway; Little Girl; Another Man; Double Crossing Time; What’d I Say; Key To Love; Parchman Farm (S); Have You Heard; Rambling On My Mind; Steppin’ Out; It Ain’t Right
Running time: 37.32
Current CD: Universal 9841801 is a 2-CD set with mono and stereo mixes of the album plus numerous live sessions and unreleased tracks.
Further listening: A Hard Road (1967) with Peter Green shows the band flourishing post-Clapton; Cream’s Wheels Of Fire (1968) is Eric at his acid blues best.
Further reading: Strange Brew: Eric Claption And British Blues Book 1965–1970 (Christopher Hjort & Charles Horton); www.johnmayall.net
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
‘I was arrogant, and I had an accelerator going,’ says Eric Clapton, explaining his dizzying ascent to star status in 1966. Eric Clapton quit The Yardbirds in March 1965; within a month, Mayall had sacked his guitarist Roger Dean, and persuaded Clapton to join up. Clapton describes Mayall as ‘a real father figure. I grew a hell of a lot in a short period of time with his help.’
Mayall and producer Mike Vernon played Eric the latest records by Freddie King, Otis Rush and other Chicago greats. As well as copping their riffs, Clapton aimed for a similar density of sound. Seeing Freddie King photographed with a Gibson Les Paul, Clapton bought a second-hand Les Paul Sunburst and combined it with a newly-designed Marshall amp, to achieve a radically new sound; distorted, creamy and sustained: ‘I wanted some kind of thickness that would be a compilation of all the guitarists I’d heard, plus the sustain of a slide guitar,’ he remembers.
A June 1965 single, I’m Your Witchdoctor, demonstrated the band’s raw power and helped Vernon persuade Decca to re-sign them. When they entered Decca’s Studio 2 the following April they were all at their peak.
The songs included covers of Mose Allison, Little Walter, Ray Charles, some Mayall originals and Robert Johnson’s Rambling On My Mind – Clapton’s vocal debut. ‘He was a little reticent about singing it,’ remembers Mayall, ‘but I had no doubts whatsoever.’
There was one hurdle to clear. To achieve his sound, Clapton had to drive his Marshall amp to unprecedented volume levels. Freelance engineer (and future Elton John producer) Gus Dudgeon was staggered by his insistence on positioning the microphone – and refusing to turn it down. Vernon let Clapton have his way. Mayall credits this as crucial: ‘Mike had the foresight not to mess with something that was happening live, to just get it down on tape, keeping all the spontaneity and feel.’
Before the album ended its 17-week stay in the British charts, Eric Clapton had already left to form Cream. Mayall had the ideal replacement lined up in the shape of Peter Green. Neither party would ever look back.
The Beatles
Revolver
The next great leap forwards for the Fab Four.
Record label: Parlophone
Produced: George Martin
Recorded: EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London; April 6–June 21, 1966
Released: August 5, 1966 (UK) August 8, 1966 (US)
Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 1 (US)
Personnel: John Lennon (rg, o, v); Paul McCartney (b, ag, v); George Harrison (g, v); Ringo Starr (d, v); Geoff Emerick (e); John Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hesse (vn on Eleanor Rigby); Stephen Shingles, John Underwood (va); Derek Simpson, Norman Jones (c); Amil Bhagwa (tabla on Love You To); Anyana Deva Angadi (sitar); Eddie Thornton, Ian Hamer, Les Condon (t on Got To Get You Into My Life); Alan Branscombe, Peter Coe (ts); Brian Jones, Marianne Faithfull, Patti Harrison, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, Terry Condon, John Skinner (v on Yellow Submarine)
Track listing: Taxman; Eleanor Rigby (S); I’m Only Sleeping; Love You To; Here, There And Everywhere; Yellow Submarine (S); She Said She Said; Good Day Sunshine; And Your Bird Can Sing; For No One; Dr Robert; I Want To Tell You; Got To Get You Into My Life; Tomorrow Never Knows
Running time: 34.59
Current CD: Parlophone CDP 7 46441 2
Further reading: Revolution In