Just cranked my late-night headphones all the way up to hear the 'wall of sound' on a late-night show music feature. It told me something: I have to write about a record album that haunts me to this day. The first LP I ever bought: Pet Sounds.
The album is on my all time faves list, which was I think the second or third post to this particular journal, back in late October. I still have the vinyl. There are only three or four I kept, just as mementos: Baden Powell's Solitude on Guitar, Stevie Wonder's The Secret Life of Plants, Robin Kenyatta's Girl from Martinique and Julian Bream's first lute record, a live one with Peter Pears. (yes, the same type of thing Sting did last year. I like Sting, but I don't think he gave Pears any competition in the singing-quality department.)
I've actually gone through the masquerade of trying to sell my Pet Sounds to collectors, until one finally told me it was far too battered to be believed, much less collectible. What's a little unique about it is that it's actually in mono. Capitol Records had a huge row with Brian Wilson over his recording Pet Sounds in mono. What's wrong with stereo? Nothing, but you need mono for the true "wall of sound" effect Wilson was going for. Capitol won the argument, but my copy is proof that Wilson actually got what he wanted at first.
Why was he going for the Phil Spector sound in the first place? Wilson's record is about young love, and for him, that meant Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee movies, wall-of-sound soul records like "River Deep, Mountain High," the head on your (if you're a guy) shoulder after the big game on Friday night, the whole late 50's/early 60's middle America bit. (That's why Wilson threw a fit when the label stuck "Sloop John B" on his masterpiece -- it's irrelevant and wrecks the continuity, almost. It actually provided a little needed comic relief before flipping the vinyl over at the end of the first side.)
Wilson was writing Pet Sounds after he retired from active performing with the Beach Boys. (His live-act replacement is pictured on the back of the original album cover, pretending to swallow a samurai sword.) Wilson teamed up with a lyricist who would later quit the music biz and become a psychologist. (A hint of Tony Asher's future career is given in the Pet Sounds number "I Know There's an Answer."*) With all that time to devote to creative work, Wilson set out to make a record that would be a statement, tell a story in songs, and be a real monument to the immense creative talent he'd worked so hard, largely on his own, to develop.
"Pet Sounds" turned most people off at the time. It had quirky songs with non-rock instruments like tympani and glockenspiels, featured dense orchestrations, and even included a strange sounding electronic instrument called a theremin.
When I first heard the song the theremin is on, it was in the family rec room on the family console stereo. The song's called "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times." On hearing the lyrics for the first time, I was immediately seized with uncontrollable sadness, but I held back somehow for hours, until bedtime, when the song kept replaying in my mind. I distinctly recall shoving my head into my pillow to stifle my howling sobs until I fell to sleep. I knew immediately when I heard that song, which is about as good a description of 'existential alienation' as I've ever encountered, that I could relate to that feeling totally, but could do absolutely nothing about it. I was 12 years old.
Since then, the album has essentially stamped its coin on my existence, in many ways. It set me on a course I can't get get off of -- being sort of like caught on the train disappearing into the Doppler effect at the end of "Caroline No." Even now, I write poems about love that are sequenced into stories, I maintain an acute "ear" for the unusual in music, I let my inescapable feeling of existential dissonance protect me from many of life's troubles (sometimes too well), I found in "love lost" a sense of victory that I can't sweep away. I let it sweep me away, instead.
I'm not saying I'm a better person for having bought and essentially absorbed Brian Wilson's masterpiece at such an early age. No way. I am saying this recording became an ineradicable event in my life. And, even though he'll never read it, I'd like to thank Brian Wilson personally for Pet Sounds. This record did not make my life better or worse in some ethical sense -- its music and lyrics just began to give my life a sort of context, essential for finding meaning therein. That's what art is for. Thank you, Brian.
Pet Sounds is on my list of all time faves because of its quality and its enduring effect on me. I'm listening to it now on CD (the modern-day stereo version, which is nice). But the record does not have anything near the grip that held me forty years ago. Now, it's just good music I recall fondly. I think that means growth. I hope so.
Speaking of growth, Brian Wilson has been labeled "the Mozart of Rock" because of his compositional ability. I've long felt that the label, like almost all labels, was misapplied. If anything, Wilson was "the Bela Bartok of Rock" -- as the Hungarian composer was also fond of using unusual instrument combinations, conservatively applied dissonance, and many other things that show up (uncannily, to me) in Wilson's music. One other odd connection: Bartok frowned on "electronic" instruments. But if you listen to one of the movements in (I think) "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste" you'll hear the string section emulate a theremin.
BTW, if you think theremins are strange esoterica (they're the woo-ooo sound in the original Star Trek theme), think again: the late Bob Moog built theremins as a hobby since his youth, and he even offered them (along with an effects pedal called a "MoogerFooger") for sale until he regained the legal right to resume manufacturing MiniMoogs just before he died. There's even someone in California (I forget her name -- hope she's still around) who could apparently play a bass theremin and make it "walk." A theremin basically is a wooden shoebox with some odd antennae sticking out of it that create an electronic field. You play it by (carefully) waving your hands around in the air. No frets, no fingerboard, no nothing. When Wilson put it on rock records, people thought he'd completely lost his mind. No, he was just way ahead of his time. Everybody else's misunderstanding (as a result) is what can drive you crazy.
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*Tony Asher did not write lyrics on "I Know There's An Answer." It turns out the instrument on the Pet Sounds song is actually an Electro-Theremin, played by its co-inventor, Paul Tanner. Ditto for "Good Vibrations". It uses dials instead of hand motions to modulate the instrument's tone. Also, the theremin-like sound on the original Star Trek theme is a vocal emulation by soprano Loulie Jean Norman. Also, the 'twangy guitar' in the title may have been the work of Barney Kessel.
*Tony Asher did not write lyrics on "I Know There's An Answer." It turns out the instrument on the Pet Sounds song is actually an Electro-Theremin, played by its co-inventor, Paul Tanner. Ditto for "Good Vibrations". It uses dials instead of hand motions to modulate the instrument's tone. Also, the theremin-like sound on the original Star Trek theme is a vocal emulation by soprano Loulie Jean Norman. Also, the 'twangy guitar' in the title may have been the work of Barney Kessel.
LJ orig.: 05/07/07
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