People often ask me (if only!), what’s the best album you ever bought?
I don’t have to think: it’s Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ finest hour.
I was very sceptical of the band because my mother used to tell me, probably on the basis of something someone once told her without any evidence, that the Beach Boys couldn’t really sing and whilst their albums were good, they couldn’t replicate the sound live. I believed that for years because my mum told me and mums don’t tell lies, do they?
I was a teenager by the time I realised that she might have got things a little wrong and a trip to Wembley Stadium in 1975 was the clincher.
Midsummer’s day 1975, it was very warm and friend Nick and I got the train to London to see Midsummer Music.
The bill went:
Stackridge
Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
Joe Walsh
The Eagles
The Beach Boys
Elton John
And the ticket cost a fiver.
We arrived to a packed – and I mean packed – stadium shortly after 12.00 and Stackridge were into their set, baffling the audience with their unique Bristolian sound.
The awful PA system put paid to much of Chaka’s set and Joe Walsh was similarly afflicted. And I was distracted by the sight of a beautiful woman standing next to us wearing nothing more than a pair of bikini bottoms. I can assure you I did not stare at her breasts for more than an hour or so before she went off to get a drink (and I a cold shower). I digress.
The sun was high in the sky when the Eagles came on, all sitting on stools at the front of the stage, playing Peaceful Easy Feeling and Take It Easy and, oh god, you remember the rest.
They were a little known American band who also supported Neil Young at the Bristol Hippodrome. I wonder what happened to them?
The sun began to set behind the twin towers when the Beach Boys came on and ran through all there classics. So my mum was wrong: they really could sing after all. I never got round to asking her what on earth she was thinking about!
After that show, which was somewhat marred by Elton John playing his new album in its entirety (we left then), I was in love with all things Brian Wilson (even though he wasn’t actually at Wembley).
I bought all the vinyl and quickly realised Pet Sounds was a truly astounding piece of work and it was all but a Brian Wilson solo album. And what was Brian when he wrote it? 23? 24? How can someone of that age write God Only Knows, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Caroline No? It was just impossible.
Pet Sounds is not a themed album, but it might just as well be. It bombed in America because all they wanted was more songs about cars and girls but in England we loved it. And it endured. As I listen today, the album has not aged a day.
Years later, meeting Brian Wilson after seeing him and his stunning band play the album live in Bristol and London and my life seemed all but fulfilled.
Do not think that Pet Sounds is all he wrote and as a band they grew. Sunflower is the greatest band album with Holland a step behind and of course Smile was finally completed.
No record collection is complete without it.
