The Beach Boys
Pet Sounds

I love the way this opens, that meandering little line and then the huge Spector-kinda drums and vocals. I’m so glad the Beach Boys are now a by-word for production awareness, or at least the later stuff, or everything post-this. My proper introduction to them was Wonderful Steve in York who I’ve lost touch with and still miss, and still “check” my own songs out with him while I’m writing them, to wonder what he’d say about it. We sang “Wouldn’t it be nice” at a wee gig at the Grapes in York, before it got flooded and re-done. When I went back to York for a wander around en route back to Edinburgh at a strange time in my life (in the snow, another life), I went to the Grapes, but didn’t go in, just walked past it.

When I started hanging out with Steve, I’d have many afternoons (usually Thursdays) where he and I would sit in his flat, smoking, drinking tea, eating this amazing coleslaw he made (with radishes and walnuts) listening to endless different versions of Beach Boys songs. He had the studio session box set of Pet Sounds, and would talk me through each vocal line, explaining how they all slotted and locked together. There’s a very Baroque feel to the arrangements of the Beach Boys songs which Steve demonstrated to me. The music must always be moving towards something...

Of course the glamorous and tragic story of Brian Wilson’s demise (Steve went to see him in a gig, where the first song was “Staying bed like Brian Wilson” by Bare-naked Ladies, covered by the man himself and all done through that weird halfway smile he has…) adds to the “legend” of this album. When “Smile” was finally released (oh we have a long time till we get to the on No skips though…), there was a documentary about the album, and of course it made reference to this (it’s impossible not to, it’s one of those albums; any writing about pop music requires it). I remember Chris at the time asked if he could borrow the album, but he said it disappointed him, he was expecting something more. I can understand that, so much is made out of the “innovation”, the “ground-breaking” nature of the album, so without knowing the songs and appreciating the mix and arrangement, I don’t think it’s possible to see beyond the l’il bike bell in “You still believe in me” as a marker of this innovation…

Some of these songs were covered by Sofia Van Otter (not too sure of the spelling) and Elvis Costello. Unfortunately it’s one of the many albums an ex-boyfriend mocked until I disposed of it humbly agreeing it was twee and shit. Or, to rephrase it, it’s one of the albums I carry in my mind for when I’m in second hand or cheap shops to reclaim… but the arrangement that was done on that covers album made use of a light operatic voice, and arranged each song in a “Chamber” way, reduction to a cello and a piano; and approaching each piece as if it were Schubert or Delius…it’s almost depressing in a way though, it wasn’t just Dan, I remember reading a lot of reviews of the album at the time saying similar things – as if people are frightened of music out of its usual context. Arrangement is all, and I know I’m a Virgo but it’s still true. As a species we pay so much attention to environment, and to re-imagine a piece we know, but to address it differently, afford to it the gravity normally reserved for dead composers…well it’s wrong isn’t it? The fact remains that the songs are beautiful, the woman’s voice is beautiful, and there’s nothing separating musics from each other apart from ignorance.

The daring involved in such a sweeping orchestral instrumental number in the middle of it all…it is kind of the intermission point – were they thinking in Act 1/Act 2? Now the Sloop John B song…I know this is a kind of sing-along happy song, but it still frightens me. When we were tiny small kids, if our holidays overlapped, or we were ill, we usually had to go along to Therese’s school and sit quietly at the back of whatever class she was teaching. As a result I have a lot of memories of her singing folk songs with her class from these books with green (book 1) and red (book 2) covers, bound with those white spring-things at the side. Songs about the Titanic, about “Oh my lovely Nellie Gray, they have taken her away and I’ll never see my darling anymore”, Henry the Eighth…and the Sloop John B. It sticks in my mind, I’m sure I was ill and felt tired and bored and young and frightened with all those big Salford kids tearing around the place, but the lyrics of abandonment and hopelessness in Sloop John B terrified me, and I still remember the sea-sick feeling of lurching between the lovely music and the horrifying words. I’m sure that’s an aesthetic that stays with me.

And then God only Knows. When Steve began playing me the Beach Boys, I’m sure I said “Oh yes, I know them”, but only really sat up and listened when this appeared, I’d never heard it before. I’d read about it, but never heard it. Of course I rather fell for Steve within this period, and the song took on other resonances. We did sing it at a few gigs together, but when he got together with a South African born-again Christian, she took offence at us singing it and abruptly we dropped it from the set list. And shortly after fell out of touch, but I still remember him beaming in his flat as the voices and voices and voices tumble over each until the fade-out comes (he hated fade-outs and always told me off for my reverence for the Hey Jude fade-out) before leaping across the room and saying “Let’s play it again!”

I do love the Beach Boys. I’m also grateful for when Van Dyke Parks was unleashed into their world, and everyone else’s as a result. Minus Heroes and Villains. I’m sorry but that’s an awful bloody song. Some of the lyrics here are interesting, but there’s still a boy-girl/boy-girl feel to them, rather than the great and glorious “Come velvet overtaken me, dim chandelier awaken me to a song dissolved in the dark” of Surf’s Up…watching Eurovision last night, and the Top of the Pops special about previous Eurovision entries, we were listening to a guy whose name I can’t remember, but he sang in a rather Tim Buckley way about how lonely and sad he felt…in a similar way “I just wasn’t made for these times” and “In my room” (a different album but which one?) bring in a brooding that’s not related to any rebellious heroics, but just a miserable guy who wants to close the door and have everyone leave him alone…there was a surge of that in the 60s, not now, that’s gone. There’s that neo-liberal optimism. There’s another dissertation waiting to be done – charting the dominant emotions of popular music and comparing them to political events…watching a happily roller-skating couple from 1982, or a trio of green-tights-clad ladies singing happily in 1984 when I know now more and more what was happening in that scary era…are the inane songs a reaction to wide=spread terror and economic chaos, and are the miserable leave-me-alone songs related to increasing social freedoms and rising prosperity? Or is that too simple?

It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die, could I ever find in you again the things that made me love you then…there’s still a boy-meets-girl flavour of these songs but maybe it’s more about (as some-one said…where did they say it?) the pain of discovery of pain.