On the Subject of Geniuses

Ryan, great post. I sort of had this conversation on my blog a few weeks back. Basically, I called out anybody willing to call Pet Sounds anything less than a... lemme find the quote here: "a work of staggering genius."

My cousin Jesse, who's a cool cat, asked me where Pet Sounds stood in comparison to Revolver or Sgt. Pepper's which is some heavy questioning. Seriously, how do you answer that without hurting your brain or at least losing cool points with the hipster set?

My initial response to this was as follows:

While it makes no sense, I love Pet Sounds more than either of them. There's such an amazing feeling of melancholy, even in the upbeat songs. Plus, it's sooo layered. I was listening to the sessions and it blew my mind how intricate everything is, despite feeling, at first blush, to be simple little, "teenage symphonies to God," as Brian Wilson once described them as.

Revolver is great pop music, amazing pop music (maybe my favorite Beatles album) and Sgt. Pepper's is a masterpiece, but, for my money, it's all about Pet Sounds.

Mainly because as brilliant as Sgt. Pepper's is, it feels a bit... academic at times. It's a little too self-aware, whereas Pet Sounds is effortlessly itself. Sgt. Pepper's is, to my ears, a little removed from human feeling. Revolver has some vitality to it, but in my mind, Pet Sounds is pure, unfiltered feeling. I don't know if that makes sense, but... there it is.

I think that this is as good of a beginning as any.

See, what makes Pet Sounds so special to me is something you touched on in your post, and that's the fact that Brian Wilson was, for all intents and purposes, blazing a new trail into the woods of art pop, a woods that, within the next decade, he would become irretrievably lost in for the next few decades. Let's be honest here, the Beatles weren't really laying anything on the line when they recorded Rubber Soul. Sure, it expanded the boundaries of pop music in the late-60's, but it's not too far off from the trail they'd blazed in previous albums. It's the natural conclusion to what they'd been doing (I think For Sale is the anomaly of the early catalog - a hiccup on the way to enlightenment... though it's a fun album of covers and the like, it's not really a progression at all). Take the opening riff to "Daytripper," which is fairly indicative of where they were headed on their next album, 1965's Rubber Soul.

Revolver, I think, pushes the envelope a bit. It starts to get a little more esoteric ("Tomorrow Never Knows," "Love To You") but it's still pretty much pop dressed up in a Magritte bowler hat for a little psychedelic flavoring. It stretches the sound, but not to any point where they may be doing something overly personal or adventurous. They're just doing what they do best: making the catchiest, rockingest pop music ever recorded. They're doing it on drugs, but they're not doing anything too far off from what they've been doing. At no time do they, to paraphrase the Jason Lee character in Almost Famous, "F with the formula."

Which brings us to Pet Sounds. If the Beatles were just expanding their palette, Brian Wilson was redefining his, if not discarding it completely. The Beach Boys were, and still are, known for their early surfing and hot-rod songs. They are tied, for better or worse, to the innocence of being a teenager in the early 60's America eternally and for good reason. The songs are fun, energetic and symphonic all at once. They're overblown and understated. They're a distillation of America as we'd like to be: optimistic, young, daring, enlightened and energetic. And while those songs are great examples of Brian's skill as a pop producer - a 20-something shaggy-haired and bespectacled Phil Spector acolyte who grew up with the ocean constantly ringing in his one good ear - they're just that: examples of his production talent. To use an awkward analogy, Brian's early work was putting a tuxedo on a cactus: it looks fun, but you wouldn't want to dance with it all night long. If the early songs defined so precisely what it means to be a teenager in America, what happens when those teenagers grow up? What then?

While you can hear echoes of it in the two albums preceding it ("In the Back of My Mind," from the Beach Boys Today, "You're So Good To Me," from Summer Days (& Summer Nights!)), it wasn't until Pet Sounds that Brian managed to find the balance between the maturity he and his band mates were facing and the lush symphonies in his head. Which is why, to me, it's so much more revolutionary than any of the Beatles late-60's output, which, while staggering, lacks the depth that Pet Sounds has, both sonically and emotionally.

Pet Sounds was an artistic gamble. Brian decided that he'd marry the complex, mature themes of the life he was going through to the baroque pop he'd been hearing in his skull. For a young man whose entire career was based on fun songs about girls, cars and surfing, it was not only unprecedented, but slightly self-destructive to release an album of grown-up "symphonies," especially when all the record company wanted was an album of fun songs to get the kids' cash. It's like a butcher all of the sudden deciding he's going to start selling cupcakes. It doesn't bode well for his business. And for Brian and the Beach Boys, it didn't. He had gambled and he had lost.

Pet Sounds was, for all intents and purposes, a commercial flop in the United States. It gained popularity in Britain, but the Beach Boys are America's band. For Brian, who didn't tour, didn't leave Southern California, this probably didn't matter. He'd opened himself up, in an unbelievably intimate way, to the world, and America - his world - had completely ignored him.

This explains why his next project, the beleaguered Smile saw him retreating further into the hipster posturing that the Beatles would perfect on Sgt. Pepper's. Imagine the feeling when the family and friends who comprised the Beach Boys, and whose careers rested on Brian's ability to write them profitable pop songs, returned from tour to hear the psychedelic Gothic road-trip that was Smile. Imagine the rejection when those closest to you tell you that your masterpieces just aren't that important to them. It's like Woody Allen's character in Stardust Memories: "I liked you earlier surfing songs better."

I think that the best example of the difference between Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's can be surmised by a look at the album covers. On one hand you have the Beatles all dolled up in their psychedelic band-leader outfits, surrounded by counterculture icons from throughout time. They want you to know that not only are they totally "now," but they're "then." They're Poe, they're Dylan, they're Marilyn Monroe and W.C. Fields and Walt Whitman and James Dean. They're artists. They're poets. They're icons dammit! And they're clever icons! If there's anything that separates me from the genius of Sgt. Pepper's, (and it is a genius album, don't misinterpret my critique for dislike... it's mind-blowing, but distant) it's the sneaky feeling that "these guys really want to let me know how clever they are."

Contrast that with the cover of Pet Sounds: five guys at a petting zoo, not altogether comfortable with having baby goats jump all over them. There's no elaborate scenery, no hip culture references, no Pendelton shirts or surfboards, just the Beach Boys, now a little bit older, a little bit cooler. The Beach Young Men. Just the Beach Boys trying their damnedest to hold on to the last fleeting moments of youth before the totality of grown-up life and all the madness it entails comes crashing down on them. And if that's not art you can identify with, then I don't know what is.

Basically, Sgt. Pepper's is the cool kid you'd want to be seen hanging out with; Pet Sounds is the kind of guy you'd sit up all night talking to about whatever young people talk about anymore.

Anyway, so yes, I agree with you. In my usual long-winded, comma-heavy, rambling way. I'm sure there are holes all through my argument, but it's after 1 a.m. and I'm sleepy. And also, yeah, I'll go on Antiques Roadshow with you if you go on America's Next Top Model with me. Remember to shave your legs. Peace out.