Original subtitles

We experimented on Pet Sounds and tried to write

something better than the surf songs and car songs.

It taps into all those feelings that we have as we're growing up,

that somehow he's been able to express musically and lyrically.

♪ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older?

♪ Then we wouldn't have to wait so long ♪

Pet Sounds to me is this beautiful marriage of a child-like innocence,

emotional vulnerability and an adult sort of musical genius.

♪ I keep looking for a place to fit in

♪ Where I can speak my mind ♪

It was different to anything that was going on at that time.

It was the leader and everybody followed that.

♪ I know there's an answer

♪ I know now but I have to find it by myself ♪

Brian was the master of the studio.

No one was his equal.

It'll always be somewhere as long as you can hear music.

♪ If you should ever leave me

♪ Though life would still go on, believe me ♪

One of the greatest songs I've ever heard.

That's the genius of it.

People think, "Oh, I can do that," but they can't.

It's something that only Brian could do, you know.

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

My dad played a lot of music. He taught me how to play...

That kind of a bassline. Like boogie-woogie music.

He had a song called His Little Darling And You.

♪ He must return to his queen bee

♪ For his little darling and me ♪

He wrote that song.

And then he said, "Do you like it?" I said, "I love it."

He had a father in Murry Wilson who was classic showbiz.

There was a lot of pressure on him on many levels

to keep the family business going.

As children, Mike and Brian would frequent the family sing-alongs.

Even back when they were little tykes.

They'd be in their car together singing the stuff on the radio

and making up silly words.

So it was automatic.

Just like it was automatic

when Dennis was tossed the drumsticks

and he became a drummer overnight.

All of it just fell in.

Brian's cousin Mike would help him

with the words in the very beginning.

They had a lot in common with their taste.

There were the earlier rock and roll hits

that were an inspiration to so many of us.

Chuck Berry and Little Richard and The Everly Brothers.

Those three were big influences on both,

you know, The Beatles and The Beach Boys as well.

We had the additional influence of The Four Freshmen

who did this amazing harmony.

Brian loved The Four Freshmen so much.

♪ Day by day

♪ You're making all my dreams come true

♪ So come what may I want you to know ♪

The Four Freshmen taught me how to sing, you know, like, high falsetto.

And Brian just melded that sweet vocal harmony kind of a thing

into something that was just sensational.

♪ Surfin' is the only life

Mike was big into doo-wop.

With the "bom boms" and the "doop doops."

♪ Bom Bom Dit Di Dit Dip Bom Bom Dit Di Dit Dip ♪

It started when we were asked to do a folk song.

And we said, "Well, we like folk music,"

"but we're really more into R&B and rock and roll."

Brian and I got around the piano

and came up with the song Surfin'.

A very simple song.

♪ We're going surfin'

- ♪ Bom bom dip di dit. - ♪ Surfin'

- ♪ Bom bom dip di dit. - ♪ Surfin'

- ♪ Bom bom dip di dit. - ♪ Surfin' ♪

It was an R&B-influenced song

with the "bom bom, dip-di-dip-di-dips."

But it was about surfing. It was a way of life.

A way of dress, a way of talking, an attitude...

A lifestyle.

Capitol were looking for younger acts.

Murry Wilson, The Beach Boys' dad,

had sent in a demo record to Voyle Gilmore

who was then head of A&R at Capitol.

And Voyle gave it to Nick Venet,

who was one of our producers there, to listen to.

Nick came running into my office and said, "You gotta hear this."

You know, he says...

I listened to it. It just knocked me out.

And I said, "Oh my gosh, we gotta sign them right now."

"Before we lose them." You know?

And we did Surfin' and it did really well in about half a dozen markets.

But then Surfin' Safari became a reasonably big hit.

♪ Let's go surfin' now Everybody's learning how

♪ Come on a safari with me ♪

The sun was always shining, for a start.

And everybody was gorgeous.

And on the beach and all of that.

I never aspired to go surfing or anything like that, frankly.

Just to be there, see all these people

and maybe go on a date with a guy like that,

would be smashing. That's what we liked.

I spoke to Brian about it after,

and he said, "I love the lifestyle, I'm an observer."

Loved the sunshine, the whole fashion thing that goes with it.

"But I'm not into surfing because I don't swim."

That was a bit of a revelation.

And then Surfin' USA in 1963 was number one.

Surfing and girls... Girls. Big on girl songs.

So, and school...

So, it kind of appealed to everyone, really, didn't it?

The Midwest, they didn't know from surfing.

It was the hot rod songs that got those guys going.

♪ Little deuce Coupe You don't know what I got

♪ Well, I'm not braggin' babe so don't put me down

♪ But I've got the fastest set of wheels in town

♪ When something comes up to me he don't even try

♪ 'Cause if I had a set of wings man I know she could fly

♪ She's my little deuce coupe

♪ You don't know what I got ♪

They loved the surfing records, they loved the hot rod records.

I'm talking about the marketing guys, and the promotion guys

who had to go out and promote these things.

I can remember when Brian

wanted to put out, I think it was Little Surfer Girl.

And our promotion guys, were all,

"This is gonna kill it. It's a ballad."

Brian said, "No, this is gonna..."

Surfer Girl was a wonderful record.

I copied The Four Freshmen's singer. The high singer...

And I wrote Surfer Girl like...

♪ Little surfer...

♪ Little one

♪ Made my heart come all undone

♪ Do you love me? Do you, surfer girl? ♪

So you had your surfing and your beach life, your car songs.

But also everybody had to go to school.

So we wrote a song, Be True To Your School.

♪ So be true to your school now

♪ Rah rah rah Be true to your school

♪ Rah rah rah Be true to your school ♪

I mean, we had our education pretty much set out for us.

Uh, Brian was our music teacher,

and just being on the road was our road scholar stuff.

We were on the road 100 days a year or more.

And in the studio that many.

So it was getting tough.

I think Brian went through a crisis. I mean, the end of '64,

The Beach Boys had been touring relentlessly,

as they did in those days. They used to work those bands so hard.

And the British Invasion scared him to death.

He thought, it's all over.

The Beatles are gonna take it over and that's it. We're out of business.

And he was the centre of this group.

He was the main man with The Beach Boys.

So, in addition to doing all the work in the studio and the writing,

he'd have to do all the publicising and all the promoting.

Look at all those jobs he had.

And anybody would cave in at some point.

That's too much.

We observed him being quite unhappy,

being out on the road and away from home.

And not everyone's suited for that life.

He couldn't handle a lot of the things that went along with that.

Like, the travelling. The loudness of it, it'd hurt his ear.

He was having trouble hearing out of his... He was deaf in one ear.

I saw him have a breakdown on an aeroplane.

I was sitting right next to him,

thinking, "Well, this is it! It's over."

"He's not gonna recover from this."

Well, I wanted to spend more time at my house.

Write songs at home.

And...

So I told the guys, "I'm gonna stop touring."

And nobody could sing like Brian in terms of that falsetto

and he played the bass with us in our live shows.

And so it was not a happy occurrence

to see him leave the live group.

Capitol, on the other hand, was thinking...

"Well, if he can make more records"

"and make 'em as good or better than they are,"

"there's an upside to that."

So there wasn't a great deal of worry

as far as Capitol was concerned.

Brian Wilson's decision to get off the road and to get into the studio

is one of the most profound moments in rock history.

'Cause it really is when Brian Wilson, I think, intuitively decided

that he was gonna be an artist.

Then he could spend more time writing,

arranging and recording the tracks

which we would sing when we would come back off of the tour.

He found that his instrument was the recording studio.

You could really hear instrumentation that was unique to rock music.

And I personally think that the opening strains of California Girls

is like an overture.

It sounds symphonic to me,

just the whole dynamic of it and it's beautiful.

♪ Well, east coast girls are hip

♪ I really dig those styles they wear

♪ And the southern girls with the way they talk

♪ They knock me out when I'm down there ♪

Brian was growing exponentially

out of that three to four year time period since we started.

He really... Boy, he blossomed.

Yeah, everybody could see Brian evolve as a songwriter, composer.

He even said so himself,

when our first album was just released.

And he was already talking about down the road

when he was going to produce all this wonderful music.

And he just kept true to his word.

♪ I wish they all could be California

♪ I wish they all could be California girls ♪

The Beach Boys were, up till that point,

sort of an embodiment of the California dream.

And the success of "girls, surf, car, school"

brought in the ability to have budgets

to keep recording and experimenting,

and now he's got a pack of brilliant musicians in the studio.

Most people know them as The Wrecking Crew.

And they were, basically, the top LA session players.

People who'd come up through the jazz scene,

who played on everything from Sonny and Cher

to Frank Sinatra to The Mamas and The Papas,

a lot of Phil Spector's records... They were on pretty much everything.

He didn't rely on the Beach Boys band so much any more

because he didn't have to.

The minute those guys were on the road,

he was really in the lab experimenting.

One of the tracks he did was Sloop John B

which, the idea for that came from Alan Jardine.

Growing up as a teenager in Hawthorne, California,

we were all mesmerised by this evolution of folk music

that happened around late '50s, early '60s.

And here comes the amazing trio, The Kingston Trio.

♪ We come on the sloop John B

♪ My grandfather and me

So I wanted to share my joy of that with the guys.

And I started messing around with some folk songs again.

And, by golly, that darn ol' Kingston Trio stuff started coming back.

♪ Well, I feel so broke up

♪ I want to go home ♪

Al Jardine loved folk music so much,

and when he was in high school,

he would sing the Kingston Trio music

and he always wanted to record it.

Without Al's interest, I don't think Brian would've ever recorded it.

I thought if I put it in his language...

Put it in a way that he'd understand it,

and give it a little oomph.

You know, a little power, a little change...

Get off the folk rhythm, get onto the Beach Boy rhythm.

He actually showed Brian the chords and so on, like that.

This is probably how I played it.

A little more tempo.

And here's the difference.

There's the key. There's the turnaround

that actually makes the vocals work.

They become matchable because we've added a minor.

And we did it together.

I told him I would adapt the melody and make an arrangement to it.

The next day, he had an arrangement done on it.

He surprised the hell out of me.

And he came up with quite a stunning track.

Let's have the flutes one more time.

Could I hear...

One more.

- Right there, don't move. - Don't move.

All right, let's make it. Here we go. Sloop John B.

♪ We come on the sloop John B

♪ My grandfather and me

♪ Around Nassau town we did roam

♪ Drinking all night

♪ Got into a fight

♪ Well, I feel so broke up

♪ I want to go home

♪ So hoist up the John B's sail

♪ See how the...

Down beats... Unheard of, just down beats.

♪ ...captain ashore

♪ Let me go home

♪ Let me go home

Building a track was something that Brian was very good at.

It was a very simple part, obviously, it would get more elaborate.

And, except for the intro, the horns and the flutes haven't played yet.

They will come in here.

♪ The first mate he got drunk

♪ And broke in the Cap'n's trunk

♪ The constable had to come and take him away

It's somehow the visualisation of being on that ship,

watching those waves, watching the sails.

To me, it's all visual.

Just something to spice up the feeling

of being on the ocean.

So, we're towards the end of the song.

And you'll see that Hal's part changes.

Now, another 16 bars, we want it... We want it bigger.

And it's still changing.

It's a little rougher seas, maybe.

And it's getting bigger and bigger,

and now I'm playing straight eighths with two drums,

which is one of the tricks I always did with The Beach Boys.

Snare drum and a floor tom-tom.

So you're getting the highs of the snare, the lows of the floor tom-tom.

♪ So hoist up the John B's sail

♪ See how the mainsail sets ♪

He didn't invite me to the session,

which I thought was kind of rude,

but, you know, I quickly forgave him.

Because he was on a roll, man. He was on fire.

So, you know, I just backed off.

I thought, "You know what? He got it. I got through."

And that was the main thing.

What you see with The Beach Boys right before Pet Sounds

is that rock and roll was about getting a hit.

It was always about the next hit.

And just giving you something that maybe sounded enough like the last one

to get another hit.

Oh, man, we became a touring jukebox.

Yeah. We were like a jukebox band.

Really, that idea of the rock and roll album was just beginning to exist.

You know, it's really The Beatles, around Rubber Soul,

step up the game in a major way.

Anything and everything The Beatles did was worth paying notice to,

and it was an inspiration. Rubber Soul in particular.

Brian Wilson is very introspective, melancholy...

Might have been afraid to express himself that way.

The Rubber Soul album by The Beatles,

I think, might have sparked Brian,

opened a little window for him.

♪ Nowhere Man, please listen

♪ You don't know what you're missing

♪ Nowhere Man The world is at your command ♪

"Maybe I can be introspective in my art",

"and express my melancholy through songs and stuff."

You could see there that he was, you know...

Something's going on in this guy's head.

It's not the average "My girlfriend left me at the high school dance."

There was something more going on.

I experimented on Pet Sounds.

I tried to write something better

than the surf songs and car songs.

Maybe my favourite Brian song of all time is

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times.

It's where he hits the truth.

♪ I keep looking for a place to fit in

♪ Where I can speak my mind

The first line.

How many people in this world haven't felt that way?

"I'm looking for a place to fit in."

"I'm just looking for a place where I can speak my mind."

I think that really crystallises

um, a lot of the impetus behind Pet Sounds,

that Brian was finding a place to really express himself.

♪ I've been trying hard to find the people

♪ That I won't leave behind ♪

That was like a social statement, like saying,

I thought I was a little bit out of time.

I thought I was a little ahead of my time.

We had talked about that idea even before

we did some of the other songs.

So I think it was something that kinda came up occasionally,

as we were discussing lyric ideas.

They're not clever-clever.

None of the lyrics on Pet Sounds are clever-clever.

They would just get right to the heart,

and say what they've got to say.

♪ They say, I got brains

♪ But they ain't doing me no good

♪ I wish they could ♪

It just had a feeling of like,

"I wish I could find people that could help me find a cooler place."

It's a simple song.

But when you hear the vocal stuff on it,

it's not a simple song, it's not that easy to do.

The harmonies are the distinctive quality of The Beach Boys' recordings.

I think that's the one thing that's very unique to The Beach Boys.

The refinement of the harmonies,

and the closeness of the harmonies,

and the warmth of the harmonies, and the blend.

There's something that is in their DNA, I guess, you know.

They come from the same heritage.

The singing is an expression of yourself, your feelings.

And so, me and my brothers sang together.

Because we're a family, three brothers and my cousin, Mike.

So we blend together very well, very good.

Al Jardine, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson,

it's those timbres.

In fact, now slide me in there.

Now there's six.

And listen to, on the Pet Sounds album,

this track called I Just Wasn't Made For These Times.

There's six of us singing.

♪ Each time things start to happen again

♪ I think I got something good goin' for myself

♪ But what goes wrong?

♪ Sometimes I feel very sad

♪ Sometimes I feel very sad

♪ Can't find nothin' I can put my heart and soul into ♪

And there's a quality and a blend about the voices

that nobody has copied.

There've been tribute bands, who've obviously copied them,

but nobody's been able to reach that height of...

To me, it's quite jazzy, and that's one of the reasons I like it.

But that height of sophistication, musically, and the sound,

ah, it was unique.

♪ I guess I just wasn't made for these times

♪ I guess I just wasn't made for these times

♪ I guess I just wasn't made for these times ♪

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times

is kind of an artistic statement,

saying, "I am not going to fit in to my times."

"I'm going to determine them."

And he did.

He did, The Beatles did, and Bob Dylan.

They all stopped trying to make pop music

in the traditional sense, and tried to make art.

And that's why popular music became art.

♪ Lucky Lockets are such fun

♪ Tiny kiddles in each one ♪

I met Brian Wilson the first time at Capitol Recording Studios.

I was working for an advertising agency,

it was part of my job.

I was doing jingles and writing commercials.

That was it. That was the whole jingle, and it was two notes,

and so effective.

And so I go outside the studio and I walk down the hall,

and I guess I just ran into Brian,

and the two of us were standing there, we started talking.

He said, "Hi, how are you?"

"Hi, how are you?" That's a Brian thing.

And I said, "Great. How are you?"

"What are you working on?" And he said, "We're doing some stuff...

"Hey, you wanna listen to this?"

I was very impressed with some of the stuff I heard in that session

because they were not finished tracks.

It was sublime. I mean, it was really...

I couldn't have imagined anything better.

Tony was a very mellow person. He was a very nice guy.

Kind of low-key, he wasn't a real peppy guy, he was kinda low-key.

I went back to doing what I was doing,

and I didn't know if I'd see him again.

A few weeks later, I got a phone call.

I was surprised, because I thought, "Why would he be calling me?"

Just to say, "Hey, it was fun the other day," or something?

It didn't seem to make sense.

He was good with words from his advertisements.

I asked him if he could write lyrics, he said, "Sure I can write lyrics."

And he said, "Well, I'm just sitting around at the piano."

"I thought maybe you might wanna do some stuff together."

"The boys are in Japan."

And he said, "I don't really have anybody to write with."

So he came to my house, and we started writing Pet Sounds.

♪ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

♪ Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

♪ And wouldn't it be nice to live together

♪ In the kind of world where we belong

♪ You know it's gonna make it that much better

♪ When we can say goodnight and stay together ♪

Tony Asher's contribution is fantastic.

He's a marvellous writer.

Well, I knew he was great.

He liked the way I wrote melodies, and I liked his lyrics.

We wrote during the day.

And he would come to my house, and he'd have his paper and his pen.

I would write a little bit,

then he wrote a little lyrics.

He must have just felt it was someone who would listen to him,

and who could help channel him through lyrics.

They're all great, and I really like the work that Tony Asher did.

The fact that Brian just meets a guy who's in advertising,

and somehow ends up writing

some of the most important lyrics of all time with this man, Tony Asher,

that are timeless. It's just, uh...

It's kind of inexplicable.

Well, he had the knack for making people feel good.

I thought that was a nice, young idea for a song

which is, you know, "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older?"

When I was 14 and I came into the business,

well, I was 14 and whatever I'd have done, I thought I was so grown-up.

We were. The girls anyway. The fellas...

But we thought we were so grown-up.

We wanted to be older, and be able

to be free to do this and to do that.

Not have our parents tell us "No, you can't."

Asher was clever in that way,

in the way he led an ambiguity to his lyrics,

which had, essentially, a very simple message taken at face value.

If you go into it, you'll find

there's a more spiritual side to it,

and a more complex message coming across.

The album is the sound of him trying to sort of explore

becoming an adult.

Because I think he may have had a sort of delayed go at that.

Great song.

Here's the explosion.

You're trying to get Hal to play the intro the way you want.

Right.

Hal, here's how I want to do it.

It's like this.

- Three, four... - Boom...

I wanted Hal to hit the drums as hard as he could,

so we can get an echo.

♪ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

♪ Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

♪ And wouldn't it be nice to live together

♪ In the kind of world where we belong

Everybody was doing that.

It was double voicing, double tracking.

So we wanted to do like everybody else.

♪ ...and stay together

♪ Wouldn't it be nice...

The thing I've loved about this track

is that when you take the leads out...

- Right. - And just play the backgrounds,

- and the backing track, if you will. - Right.

It's such an amazing...

Where are the voices? The background?

There they are.

The Beach Boys.

♪ Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up

♪ In the morning when the day is new

♪ And after having spent the day together

♪ Hold each other close the whole night through ♪

Yeah.

Wouldn't It Be Nice, total stress.

Brings back good memories.

That was one that just was never quite right.

And just... In his mind, he just didn't hear it.

He wasn't hearing it.

"Guys, you can do better than that."

Brian was between a hipster

and one of your famous British generals that was tough.

He was tough. He demanded everything from everybody.

Wouldn't It Be Nice is upbeat and fabulous. It's a great arrangement.

We worked many hours perfecting the harmonies on that one.

That was a labour of love, that's for sure.

Do you remember why you decided

to put Mike back in the bridge on Wouldn't It Be Nice?

Yeah, because I wanted him to take part in that song. - Right.

♪ Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true

♪ Baby, then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do

♪ We could be married

♪ And then we'd be happy... ♪

I was stunned sometimes

by how much he had going on in his head that I never dreamed was there

because... You can't hear it, until you can hear it.

I wanted to record Wouldn't It Be Nice at Gold Star

because that has a good echo chamber, and I like the echo.

Be My Baby, Brian has probably listened to that

more than he's listened to any other song

or songs combined.

He would play it repeatedly, incessantly.

He was mesmerized by Be My Baby, by The Ronettes,

but produced by Phil Spector.

And then, the bassline...

It had a great bassline and a great melody and a great singer, Ronnie.

- ♪ So won't you, please? - ♪ Be my, be my baby

- ♪ Be my little baby. - ♪ My one and only baby

- ♪ Say you'll be my darlin' - ♪ Be my, be my baby

- ♪ Be my baby now. - ♪ My one and only baby

♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh

Phil had a huge impact on him.

Brian loved that Wall of Sound that Phil Spector had.

He loved the records that Phil Spector made,

and Phil was a genius, too. He was making hit after hit after hit.

♪ Be my, be my baby

- ♪ Be my little baby. - ♪ My one and only baby ♪

Phil Spector got word about us.

And Phil came, we started working at Gold Star for Phil.

Almost everything we touched with Phil Spector became giant hits.

Big hits.

And he was calling this the Wall of Sound.

There would be four or five guitar players,

three or four piano players, always one drummer,

two bass players, he liked to use an upright bass player

with a Fender bass player.

And then he would have a percussion section.

And that was it, we were all in one room, but it made a wonderful sound.

And Brian fell in love with that sound.

He wanted the same enthusiasm.

He wanted the same musicians.

There were four or five of us who were always with Brian.

The Wall of Sound, you have to give

Phil Spector credit for building it.

But I think the wall that Brian built

was more textured and much more subtle.

There's just sort of a musicality to Brian's work

that goes beyond what Spector ever dreamed of.

♪ I came along when he broke your heart

♪ That's when you needed someone

♪ To help forget about him

Well, I wanted to mix up a love song with a happy song.

Put the two together.

It's too easy to give all the credit to Brian and Tony Asher.

I'm Waiting For The Day is great, that's not Tony Asher,

that's an example of Mike having real skill as a writer.

We were dealing with emotions.

I'm Waiting For The Day is a beautiful way

of saying that you can find something special in someone,

and they may not be ready at that moment in time to engage.

But you find that they're worth waiting for.

♪ I kissed your lips

♪ When your face looked sad

♪ It made me think about him

♪ And that you still loved him so

Brian is such an artist,

that he allowed the genius of these players

to also come into the equation.

No one appreciated these great players more than Brian.

This was the very beginnings of rock and roll, remember.

Many musicians refused to play rock and roll music.

They said it's junk, it's garbage, it's rotten, it's dirty.

Because they were always in suits and ties, very straight, no smoking.

Who knew that we were gonna move in

and take over this kind of thing?

And then the guys that were doing

all the movie calls, the film calls, said,

"Those guys are gonna wreck the business."

The tracking was fun, I think, for him.

Because he got to hang with The Wrecking Crew,

and just experiment to heck, and spend as much money as he wanted.

You know, he was like a kid in a candy shop.

These players could play anything.

And Brian just had this baby symphony pool

of amazing musicians to work with.

♪ I'm waiting for the day when you can love again ♪

It was extremely unusual to see a female musician working in the studios.

Carol Kaye was a stand-out woman

in her own right in that capacity.

She was the best, she was better than any men around.

So why not use the best?

I always loved that walking line.

In fact, go like this...

Carol Kaye's bass sound is a really subtle undertone

to a lot of Pet Sounds.

But it's there like an anchor, it's there in I'm Waiting For The Day.

Quite driving guitar and drums, like really pushing the song along,

and then you've got her cool bass notes in there just anchoring it,

you know, keeping it grounded.

Well, she was very creative and she played right on the beat.

She wouldn't like flub up, she would play right on the beat.

When we used to record in those days, we made decisions.

Nothing was left to later because we only had three to four tracks.

If you were putting the rhythm all on one track,

you got your sounds, you've put your delays in,

you did your echo, you did it live,

and that's the sound I hear in my head, that's what I want, let's record it.

♪ It starts with just a little glance now

♪ Right away you're thinkin' 'bout romance now

♪ You know you ought to take it slower

♪ But you just can't wait to get to know her

♪ A brand new love affair is such a beautiful thing

♪ But if you're not careful think about the pain it can bring

It's very much the album of someone in their 20s,

that youthful exploration of love.

And there's existential angst in there.

I was uh... Experiencing, you know, love,

and having those kinds of... I mean, it was that time in my life.

The quest of the mid-'60s was to define what love is.

Uh, that's what the counterculture was all about.

It feels genuine to me when I listen to that stuff.

♪ Right now you think that she's perfection

♪ This time is really an exception

♪ Well, you know I hate to be a downer

♪ But I'm the guy she left before you found her ♪

We experimented with the musicians a lot, you know.

It was all experimentation,

and went on and on for about two months to get the album recorded.

He had different relationships with different people,

this from the best I can tell.

And that's why he would go from studio to studio

searching out a particular feeling that he was looking for.

And that was a real departure

because all the other Capitol artists had to record at Capitol,

or it was a slap in the face of Capitol.

But we let him record where he wanted to record.

He was bringing in great records.

Brian never came in before 2:00.

It was almost always at Western Studios, Studio Three,

which was a small studio.

And he'd say, "I have a new song."

"I'm writing a new song and I wanna record it."

You would start out...

He basically knew where it was gonna go.

A lot of times we didn't know, and you gotta remember

that we were looking at songs that didn't have titles on it.

It was just the chord sheets,

or maybe a few sketched out lines that Brian would write.

I would hand them all their manuscript papers that I wrote.

Then I'd take each guy and say,

"Let me hear the bass player play it for a minute."

And we'd get them. Then I'd do the guitar players and the pianos,

then the horns.

I talked to them individually and collectively.

They were all good, good for it, for me.

He would sing parts to the guys and they would write it down.

He would lay out the rhythm the way that he wanted it,

and the basslines. I mean, he would work the chart in the room

before he went into the control room.

Because he had it up here.

They took my direction. I'd tell them what to play, and they'd play it.

That's organ, tack piano together.

There were always three pianists.

And there was a special tuning that we arrived at.

So I worked with the piano tuner to try different things,

and I did put tacks on the head of each...

- Yeah. - Each hammer.

And Brian immediately was attracted to it,

and it became kind of a signature sound.

♪ ... Love is here today

♪ And it's gone tomorrow

♪ It's here and gone so fast ♪

They knew he was a special guy, musically.

And sometimes they'd help him write something down in a part,

but it was all up here, in his head,

and he somehow communicated it to all the players.

And sometimes, "Brian, we can't do that."

And then they'd play it, I'd get, "That's pretty good, Brian."

It was so cool.

I would try to develop the arrangement

to fit the song, the melody.

I would write the melody,

then I would try to make the arrangements

kind of like surround the melody.

And we started getting reports about it.

"Brian's doing something really special, guys. He really is."

But we were touring Japan.

As soon as we got back, we began to listen to the material.

He couldn't wait for us to get down to the studio.

He didn't care about jetlag or any of that stuff.

Didn't mean anything to him.

But it was sobering. We had to really buckle down.

Now in the case of Here Today and about half of Pet Sounds,

Brian cut the vocals at CBS up the street.

I think primarily because they had

the only one one-inch eight-track in town.

I have a couple three-tracks of backgrounds.

♪ Right away you're thinkin' 'bout romance now

- They're probably doubled or tripled. - Doubled, yeah.

I think he's a visionary.

He's a musical visionary, as well as a social...

In a social context as well, a visionary.

Uh...

He sees things I don't think the rest of us see.

And hears things, certainly, that we don't hear.

So, he's one of those special...

He's got a special receiver going on up there in his brain.

Brian truly is the most gifted music person that I've ever met.

I hate it when they call him genius, because...

And they're right, but don't do that.

That's too big of a load to carry on your shoulders,

but he's so gifted.

He didn't realise his talent.

I still think he doesn't.

One of the magical things about Brian

is he was able to describe, without having it on the written page,

exactly the sound that he heard.

Boy, then you'd hear them

as they were transformed, really, in that process.

It was... It was staggering.

Then when he heard it, that was it,

and that was The Beach Boys sound.

I don't know what your definition of genius is,

but he certainly might be.

I think genius just means clever.

I don't think it has any real meaning.

It just means you're good at something, genius. Like, you know...

Like Albert Einstein was a genius.

♪ Hang on to your ego

♪ Hang on, but I know that you're gonna lose the fight

♪ They come on like they're peaceful

♪ But inside they're so uptight

♪ They trip through the day

♪ And waste all their thoughts at night

♪ Now how can I say it

♪ And how can I come on

♪ When I know I'm guilty?

There was a lot of LSD around.

Brian heard that sometimes the acid gives you certain colours

that you didn't know existed, et cetera, et cetera.

I think he was experimenting a little bit then, too.

He told us that he was doing acid during California Girls. "Oh!"

I was very sceptical about doing any of that stuff,

and looked askance at

anything having to do with that kind of drug culture influence.

♪ Hang on to your ego

♪ Hang on, but I know that you're gonna lose the fight ♪

Mike disagreed on Hang On To Your Ego,

which allegedly is, if you take LSD,

you have to hang on to your ego.

He didn't really think that fit the image

of The Beach Boys, to allude to that.

To me, that was a little too drug-influenced.

This track has been subject to all kinds of speculation and contention

that this was the track that got fought over,

and that Mike didn't like the lyrics.

♪ They come on like they're peaceful

♪ But inside they're so uptight ♪

Why don't I do a Jimmy Durante?

♪ They come on like they're peaceful

♪ But inside they're so uptight ♪

Okay, I'm sorry.

Do a take for our roll-ins. I'd love a take like that

- as soon as we're done, okay? - Check.

All I was saying is I would make my feelings known

if I felt it was going too far out on a limb, lyrically or conceptually,

having some relationship to some kind of drugs and stuff like that.

I didn't know what an ego was at the time, but I learned very quickly.

So I came up with an alternative lyric called I Know There's An Answer.

♪ I know there's an answer

♪ I know now but I have to find it by myself ♪

But the two exist.

And I Know There's An Answer is what came out on the Pet Sounds issue.

It is my great suspicion that the experimentation that had to happen

for Brian to become the great artist that he was

had nothing to do with chemicals.

If drugs made you a genius, we'd have a lot more Pet Sounds.

And we do not.

He didn't necessarily explain what it was he was trying to do.

But he acknowledged that this was different stuff.

He said, "I don't wanna keep doing the same stuff over and over."

If you went back and looked at all of the Beach Boys stuff

that was created prior to that,

there was a sameness to it.

And it was good, very good

and it wasn't like anybody was getting tired of it, really.

I don't think.

But, you know...

Mike said, "Don't fuck with the formula."

He said, "Why are we trying to... We've got this great thing"

"and until somebody can show me that it's not working,"

"why are we fumbling around trying to find something else?"

Well, that's not a crazy question.

I mean, that's a reasonable question to ask.

But, um... But Brian saw it in a whole different way,

which was, "God, I've done that. It's boring, I'm tired of it."

That was something that would never have occurred to Mike.

He said, "Don't mess with the formula."

I said, "I want to advance to a better music place."

We wouldn't have had as good an album if I didn't. You know?

Part of that, I think, led to me getting a bad rap

for, quote-unquote, not liking Pet Sounds

or something, which is absolute...

You know, it's just absolute falsehood.

'Cause not only did I name the album "Pet Sounds,"

and went with Brian to present it to Capitol Records,

but I sang on every single song that was sung on.

I was very satisfied. Tony was, too.

We both were. We both thought we really achieved a good album.

Brian and I went off to Capitol Records to play it for Karl Engemann

who was the A&R man for Capitol Records.

Capitol Records loved The Beach Boys.

I mean, they didn't criticise them in any way,

except they thought that maybe going in the direction of Pet Sounds

wasn't something that was...

It wasn't gonna be as wonderful as the hot rod records,

the surfing records, those kinds of things.

I couldn't understand why they didn't like it. I said, "This is good music."

They said, "It's not commercial music."

Brian thought it would never be released

because Capitol wanted that surf thing.

That's what was selling.

So they didn't release it and a little bit later, a few weeks later,

they said, "Okay, we'll release it."

So they released it on the market and it didn't sell very good.

It hadn't gone the same height on the charts as some of the prior records.

So Capitol, right away, in order to make quota,

they hurried and put out a Best Of The Beach Boys.

We were in competition with our history.

The faith of the label was right there, everybody.

"We have Pet Sounds out."

"By the way, we're going to put out."

"Best Of The Beach Boys volume one."

Can you believe that?

It's just so asinine.

It didn't do as well as some of the other albums

and it might have if there had been more

of a spirit within the company that.

"This is great. We'll push this thing"

"we'll take it where it should be."

It's not what we were expecting.

We're actually grateful for that.

My God, why do you want only what people expect?

How sad that is.

They just didn't understand it.

The direction,

they didn't know what to do with it.

They're a marketing firm.

How do you market The Beach Boys with Pet Sounds?

"Well, we'll send you down to the San Diego Zoo"

"we'll photograph you with a bunch of damn goats."

I mean, what's that all about?

That was the biggest miscarriage of justice of all.

After the album was mixed,

Bruce was off to England.

I took two copies of Pet Sounds with me.

With the sole intention of promoting the album

and playing it to people for the first time.

Derek Taylor was our publicist and he just set up

about 25 interviews for me.

I got to meet him at the Waldorf Hotel.

Journalists came over. I think that's probably how I met Keith Altham.

And one of his people came and said,

"Lennon and McCartney are in your room,"

"they want to hear the album. Can you go up and play it to them?"

I played them the album and they heard it two times,

and they were delightful.

He played it to them twice. They loved it.

Paul McCartney said God Only Knows was the perfect song.

This will be take one.

Take one, God Only Knows.

One... Two...

Okay, could we go to the spot where the...

That spot.

Well, that part was...

And it was bothering Brian.

And we had done it a number of times.

And my suggestion was,

"Brian, why don't we play it short?"

He said, "What do you mean?"

Almost pizzicato.

Brian. Yeah.

Why don't we do it short? Like this.

We'll try it.

Yeah, I remember that.

- Yeah. - Don Randi kind of came up with that.

- Right. - To play it staccato.

It's so musical that it's a pleasure to play with it.

I don't think Brian ever realised

that what he was doing was so incredibly wonderful.

God Only Knows makes a deep love song

because Tony Asher had a lot of love in his heart.

He wrote great love lyrics.

Match made in heaven for those two.

They could evolve something like that.

And to such perfection.

One of the greatest love songs of all time

begins with "I may not always love you."

Which is the antithesis of what people want in a love song.

We held each other up to a certain standard

and said, "We don't wanna do that same old stuff."

You know, another love song, "I love you because..." You know, whatever.

So that's how when I would come up with a line

like, "I may not always love you,"

Brian might have said at that time,

"What?"

But he would only have said it once.

If I said, "Don't worry about it, Brian, that's a good line,"

he would have said, "Okay."

And then he would have listened to it a few times and say, "Yeah, I like it."

I think "I may not always love you" was the great line,

yeah, that he wrote.

♪ I may not always love you

♪ But long as there are stars above you

♪ You never need to doubt it

♪ I'll make you so sure about it

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you

I'm surprised Brian didn't sing it himself.

But he wanted Carl to have it.

♪ Though life would still go on, believe me

♪ The world could show nothing to me

♪ So what good would living do me

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

Carl had an ethereal voice. Beautiful.

Brian understood the great character

of the voices in The Beach Boys,

and wrote to those characters beautifully.

And it's not like Brian was the best voice for all of his songs.

I remember when I first ever heard the record of God Only Knows.

When that came out, I was blown away.

Again, the harmonies, the intricacy

of the arrangements, it was wonderful.

And to actually be asked to go on tour with them was a thrill.

And now come the backgrounds.

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you

♪ If you should ever leave me

♪ Though life would still go on believe me

♪ The world could show nothing to me

♪ So what good would living do me?

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you

I think they liked the lyrics.

It's a great love song, a great love lyric.

They all told me they liked it. They said, "I love this song."

They told me that.

There's Bruce.

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

And there's a part you didn't use.

Right.

I always liked it.

- I didn't use that. - No.

You know, the first time I really got

what he was doing was God Only Knows.

We talked about

something very esoteric within... Like a family.

When a brother has a secret, but allows you to know it in an art form.

He was able to organise his thoughts...

To a point where they were hypnotic but yet entertaining,

meaningful and spiritual, too.

For want of a better phrase,

it's where rock and roll becomes a religious experience.

The sentiment that he has in it towards, like,

God only knows how much I love you, you know, only God knows.

Because it's a feeling within myself that nobody else can know,

except God.

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

I was so inspired that I wrote a great album.

I knew people would like it, I knew they would.

Half a century later,

we're still reckoning with this record because

Brian went as deep as pop music can go.

It put the standards up.

It said, "This is how good it can be."

"You better go away and think about it,."

"Mr Lennon and McCartney, Mr Jagger and Richards, Mr Townshend."

"You better go away and think about what you're doing next"

"because it could be this good."

It was something that hadn't been done before

and everything else came after that.

It took 20 years for it to go platinum.

It was ridiculous how long it took.

And yet at the same time it was regarded so highly.

One of the great albums of all time, maybe the greatest album of all time.

It's a piece of art.

Sonic art, vocal art that'll last forever, it has everything in it.

It has really fabulous chord structures, arrangements,

performance,

great songs to sing.

He did something with Pet Sounds to me, all right.

He opened the door for a lot of people.

Especially me.

A lot of people are uplifted by it.

He grew immensely during that time.

And he's being rewarded for it now, 50 years later.

Isn't that nice?

My love for music inspires me. I love music.

♪ I had to prove I could make it alone now

♪ But that's not me

♪ I wanted to show how independent I've grown now

♪ But that's not me

♪ I could try to be big in the eyes of the world

♪ What matters to me is what I could be to just one girl ♪