When Brian Wilson and a cast of dozens, including a 55-piece orchestra, perform his masterpiece, “Pet Sounds,” in its entirety Saturday at the Chicago Theatre, it will mark the realization of a dream for many of his fans and something of a vindication for Wilson himself.
More than 30 years after its creation, “Pet Sounds” looms larger than ever as one of the greatest rock albums ever made. It’s a testament to the creative vision of Wilson, who wrote, orchestrated and produced the 1966 Beach Boys album, which inspired the Beatles to create “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Though the album set a new standard for pop music–a lushly orchestrated song cycle about one young man’s coming of age–it represented an abrupt break with the sunny hitmaking formula that had made the Beach Boys one of the biggest bands of the ’60s. That commercial risk and its fallout cost the band–and especially Wilson–dearly.
Upon its release, the album had doubters on every level. Wilson’s record company didn’t want to hear melancholy ballads in lieu of the Beach Boys’ surf-and-cars anthems and instead quickly followed “Pet Sounds” release with a Beach Boys greatest hits album, effectively killing any chance it had to make much of an impact in the marketplace.
The Beach Boys themselves were shaken by what they saw as an esoteric indulgence by their erstwhile breadwinner. And the record-buying public simply took a pass. “Pet Sounds” barely cracked the Top 10 when it was released, and its swift descent off the charts marked the beginning of the end of the Beach Boys’ commercial dominance.
Soon after “Pet Sounds” was released, Wilson began his slide into drug addiction, mental illness and decades of turmoil, exacerbated by lawsuits involving, among others, his onetime psychologist, Eugene Landy, and his Beach Boys bandmates, notably Mike Love.
Yet now “Pet Sounds” is widely regarded as a masterpiece, a major influence on three generations of musicians with its poignantly personal subject matter, gorgeous melodies, unconventional chord changes, orchestral scope and inventive arrangement ideas.
Paul McCartney has said, “Nobody is educated musically until they’ve heard `Pet Sounds.’ … It is a total classic.”
“`Pet Sounds’ stands for God in the world of music–the perfect, pure, most rare kind of thing,” says Matthew Sweet.
For Wilson, 58, the work has been a mixed blessing. “Living up to my name has been hell for me,” he says.
His wife, Melinda, amplifies the point: “Everybody that talks to Brian, it’s always `Pet Sounds,’ `Pet Sounds.’ Yeah, it’s a great record. But how many times can you make it?”
Recently, the Wilson family, including two adopted daughters, ages 3 and 2, moved back to Los Angeles after spending two years in suburban St. Charles.
There, they established a working relationship with their neighbor, producer Joe Thomas; Wilson recorded his 1998 comeback album, “Imagination,” with Thomas in the singer’s home studio. But Wilson’s wife recently sued Thomas seeking to dissolve his partnership with her husband and alleging that Thomas took advantage of the Wilson name.
Thomas filed a counter suit seeking $5 million in punitive damages.
It’s another sad, confusing chapter in a life filled with litigation. But the relationship had its benefits. With Thomas’ encouragement, Wilson not only jump-started his recording career, he performed his first concert ever without the Beach Boys, in 1998 in St. Charles. “Frankly, he was scared,” says Paul Mertens, Wilson’s saxophonist, of that performance. “But he got through it.”
Now, Wilson is touring regularly. “I’ve overcome some of my stage fright–though I’m still a little bit scared before I go on,” he says. But once on stage, “It’s a kick.”
The proof is in a new double CD, “Live at the Roxy Theatre,” available through Wilson’s Web site (www.brianwilson.com). Recorded last fall at the famed Sunset Strip club in Los Angeles, it finds Wilson in high spirits, bantering with the crowd and proudly introducing his music.
And why not? “Live” is a connoisseur’s survey of Wilson’s career, focusing not so much on overly familiar Beach Boys hits as relative rarities such as “Caroline No” and “Love & Mercy.”
The disc also shows that Wilson isn’t at the top of his game anymore as a vocalist; his once immaculate tenor now wobbles occasionally in search of a note. But the backing band, which includes Chicago musicians such as Mertens and Scott Bennett, former Beach Boy guitarist Jeffrey Foskett and the Los Angeles quartet the Wondermints, never lets its leader down, casting a safety net of harmony and instrumentation that does justice to Wilson’s most ambitious material, including “Good Vibrations” and the title track from “Pet Sounds.”
Now that same band, augmented by an orchestra, will take on all 13 tracks from “Pet Sounds” in an ambitious two-month tour. Many of the songs have never been performed in concert before; Wilson says he hasn’t sung at least one of the album’s tracks, “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” since he recorded it. Complicating matters is that the music was never transcribed; now Mertens, who also performs with Poi Dog Pondering, has been charged with the daunting task of writing arrangements for the 55-piece orchestra based on listening to “Pet Sounds” countless times over the last two months.
“I feel the weight of that responsibility, because I’ve come to appreciate just what a masterpiece it is,” the saxophonist says. “A lot of music I like has a daring looseness to it, as if you were eavesdropping on the moment of inspiration. I hear that in the music of people like Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Bob Wills. In the realm of pop music, few records have that spiritual quality, but `Pet Sounds’ does.”
To make “Pet Sounds,” Wilson broke out of his routine of working with the Beach Boys, who weren’t brought into the sessions until the music was completed, and instead chose as his lyricist Tony Asher, a commercial jingles writer for an ad agency. Out of this unlikely collaboration came some of the greatest pop songs ever written, including “God Only Knows,” “Caroline No” and “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder).”
“A lot of love went into that,” Wilson says of “Pet Sounds.” “It was made for people to feel and experience love. Spiritual love. I tried so hard to get that love out of me.”
Wilson shuts his eyes and clenches his fists. “I squeezed it out of my soul. I squeezed and squeezed. It was right there in the studio. It was one of the most loving albums I’ve ever made.”
Beneath that childlike sincerity is a formidable musical intellect. That’s apparent not only from listening to the complex arrangements on “Pet Sounds,” but, according to Mertens, it’s still very much in evidence working with Wilson today.
“Brian would sing parts to the horn section, and if someone would be a little off, he’d hear it,” Mertens says. “He knows exactly what notes he wants to hear in his mind. Once during sound check, he was in midconversation when someone asked him what a particular five-note baritone sax line was in `California Girls,’ and he sang the part instantly, without thinking about it. He has these savant-like moments of musicality.”
On stage, the saxophonist says, Wilson has gone from being “nervous and scared” to “getting up from the piano and dancing around, cracking jokes and talking to the audience at every opportunity.”
Wilson has other challenges. He takes medication daily to control his mental illness and describes the moment when he wakes each day as “terrifying.” Often he does not feel right with his world until midafternoon. But he’s on an exercise regimen, running two miles daily, and “it’s getting my head together,” he says. “I’m getting there, slowly but surely.”
One thing is apparent from seeing Wilson on stage: If he is ever to get “there,” his music will be part of the healing process. On the new live album, he sings, “Music, when you’re alone/Is like a companion/For your lonely soul.”
What motivated Brian Wilson to create “Pet Sounds”? Look no further than those three lines.
