The Recording of The Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds"

I don’t know about you, but I love The Beach Boys. I love the music, the vocals, and feeling I get from the music. All of the frequencies mix together in such a perfect way; I am mentally and emotionally transported to a hot day in the sand. Coincidence? I think not, but it does make you wonder what it was about those albums that were so great and so different from all the other material out there. After having passed the half way mark of my graduate studies, I tend to believe everything has been pre-planned and thought out extensively. I think The Beach Boys are the best example of this theory. What seems so effortless and free is actually very calculated and strategic. I began to study some of the early history surrounding The Beach Boys to gain a better understanding of their production style, and a grasp of what I imagine their overall goal as artists would have been. First, let me address all of the die-hard fans in my audience. This single blog post would have to be my entire life’s work to even begin to shed some light on all of the happenings that led to, what I believe to be the pivotal point in the band’s career. I will however focus on the eleventh studio album “Pet Sounds”. Widely recognized as one of the most influential records ever released in pop music and has been ranked number one in several top music magazines’ lists of greatest albums of all time. Rolling Stone ranked it number two in it’s 2003, 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Ok, now that we are all on the same page about the album we can get down to business. How was the thing recorded that made it stand out among the already stellar Beach Boys catalogue? Curse my inquisitive mind, I had to start digging. Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys principal song writer and future mega producer, was in the song writing process with a few other gentlemen including; Tony Asher, Terry Sachen, along with Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, and Mike Love between 1965 and 1966. The backing tracks were recorded over a four-month period in major Los Angles studios like; Gold Star Studios, Western Studios, and Sunset Sound. Brian Wilson had developed his own production methods over the years, but an obvious major influence was Phil Spector and his respected “Wall of Sound” technique for recording. Wilson even stated that he named the album using Phil’s initials “PS”. Wilson was using the new Ampex 8-track recorders to layer sounds. Wilson’s production on “Pet Sounds” was to record the instrumental backing tracks as a live ensemble direct onto a 4-track recorder. Brian Wilson’s engineer Larry Levine has stated that Wilson would typically mix these tracks live, as they were being taped. Wilson would often double instruments like bass, keyboards, and guitar, blending them with reverb and echo to make unique sounds. Wilson always mixed the final versions of his recordings in mono, as did Phil Spector. He believed that mono mastering offered more control sonically over the final audio product, regardless of speaker placement and sound system quality. Oh yea, he was also mostly deaf in his right ear. I find it very interesting, the majority of the most beautiful music ever created, were all written by people with a hearing disability. The backing tracks he had recorded were then dubbed down onto one track of an 8-track. This was done at Columbia Studio because at the time they were the only facility in LA with an 8-track. I found a very cool quote by Mike Love, one of the great long-time members of The Beach Boys saying, “We worked and worked on the harmonies and, if there was the slightest little hint of a sharp or a flat, it wouldn’t go on. We would do it over again until it was right. (Brian) was going for every subtle nuance that you could conceivably think of. Every voice had to be right, every voice and its resonance and tonality had to be right. The timing had to be right. The timbre of the voices just had to be correct, according to how he felt. And the he might, the next day, completely throw that out and we might have to do it over again.” I think the point is crystal clear here. I admire and respect Brian Wilson for these reasons; I also found the answer to my question. What made all of those Beach Boys albums so great? What made “Pet Sounds” stand out from all of those great albums? One thing is the conscious, unstoppable, unwavering effort to capture the most perfect audio possible. Another thing is having the ears and the audio knowledge to know when a take is good or bad. When those takes are great, but not perfect, having the bravery to take it all over again. All of these, plus the talent level only given at birth, oh yea! I suggest going back to those older Beach Boys albums and working your way up to “Pet Sounds”. Try and critically listen to what is actually going on with those recordings. There is way more than just great songs there, some of the most brilliant engineering and audio capture ever in the history of recorded music. I hope you find this topic as interesting as I did and go find out more about the classic recordings of the great artists some of us were so blessed to have been able to enjoy. I will be there this weekend at Universal Studios in Orlando Florida to see The Beach Boys live in concert, I can’t wait! Good vibrations everybody, until next time…