The album John Lennon once called the greatest of all time
The wistful tug-of-war to gain the ultimate musical crown in the 1960s was fraying but stronger than ever. Background noise couldn’t ever compete with The Beatles or The Beach Boys, two titans whose monumental contributions to the music and culture of the time will forever sit under the lens of appreciation, erupting from their respective continents and changing the landscape of popular music forevermore.
John Lennon and Brian Wilson might not be two figures often likened to one another, but their respective roles as musical visionaries and architects of groundbreaking albums often result in their groups being hoarded in the same analytical paragraphs. Their differences in temperament, namely Lennon’s self-assertive demeanour and Wilson’s animated, positive aura, underscore the diverse paths through which artistic genius can manifest.
Lennon’s boldness and outspoken nature propelled The Beatles to international popularity, while Wilson’s delicate spirit and colourful imagination fueled The Beach Boys’ emotional depth and ability to gain widespread resonance. Many might have expected such differences to have resulted in natural friction, with both figures occupying distinctive spaces and steering clear from ever crossing paths.
However, while they naturally formed direct competition that would be locked in over the course of their entire careers, they generally avoided any sense of sourness, with Lennon even openly praising the band and Wilson in particular for their innovative capabilities and gift for crafting forward-thinking music that was sure to withstand the test of time.
It’s possible that you could view each group as a necessary conduit to each others’ various successes: without Pet Sounds, The Beatles would have likely refrained from striving to outdo themselves, and without the Liverpudlian foursome, Wilson and the gang might have opted for complacency over revolution, safe in the knowledge that they were already better than most without even trying.
In 1966, The Beatles were on the fast train to experimentalism, reaching something that would surely be even better than anything they had ever done before. A few months prior to the release of Pet Sounds, The Beatles’ “pot album” Rubber Soul marked a major step forward in the band’s overall maturity, with songs that seemed more complex than ever before.
The year itself was somewhat controversial for the Fab Four, who offended some audiences with their infamous Yesterday and Today cover and Lennon’s predictions that “Christianity will go.” However, Revolver proved to be another step forward and groundbreaking in incorporating studio technology advancements into albums to explore new musical territories.
In the midst of all of this, Pet Sounds was The Beach Boys’ attempt at creating the greatest album ever made, a target that many – including Lennon – feel they struck without question. Although the album continued the many elements that made The Beach Boys gain a vast following to begin with, including their desire to churn out “surf music, surf music, surf music,” as Wilson once emphasised, it also featured Wilson’s natural inclination towards more heartfelt disparity.
At the time, an album filled with such an overt dichotomy between Californian joyful beats and overwhelmingly sad musings might have been a turn-off for someone like Lennon, whose mind was very much captivated by more monochrome ventures into socio-political topics and the haziness of LSD, Pet Sounds became a major focal point for him, so much so that he had to call Wilson immediately after it was released to tell him what he thought.
According to Wilson in an interview with The Guardian, Lennon dialled his number so that he could boast about the album, telling him it was the greatest one ever made. In fact, Lennon enjoyed the album so much, as he once explained, because it was so comprehensive, more than The Beatles could have ever dreamed of for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“It’s called the first concept album,” Lennon once said, discussing the ways that Sgt. Pepper’s obvious shortcomings managed to resonate still. “It doesn’t go anywhere,” he opined, “but it works because we said it worked, and that’s how it appeared.” Comparing the album with The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, he continued, “It’s not as put together as Pet Sounds, and it doesn’t have a concept.”
In Lennon’s view, describing Sgt. Pepper as a concept holds no meaning, a fact he can only prove by pointing at Pet Sounds, which, in his view, was a prime example of a neatly packaged album that knew exactly what it was trying to be. That said, the singer’s appreciation for Wilson’s artistry extended further than the album, as evidenced by his comments in 1965 about the musician being a master of the art whose prime talent is “using the voices as instruments.”
However, for Lennon and the other members of The Beatles, Pet Sounds was lightning in a bottle. According to Paul McCartney, the album is their magnum opus, one that “blew me out of the water.” He also boldly claimed that “no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard that album”, citing the ways that Wilson was able to pull off the things that musicians at the time felt were impossible.
As a result, McCartney changed the way he approached his own music, setting out to work on Sgt. Pepper, brimming with inspiration to create a record that was just as good, if not better. As he put it: “it set me off on a period I had then for a couple of years of nearly always writing quite melodic bass lines.” As a result, The Beatles pushed themselves harder, creating music that utilised all of their skill sets to the same calibre as Pet Sounds.
Sitting in their respective pools of legacy creations, it’s easy to view The Beach Boys and The Beatles as categorical competitors whose artistic abilities and industry opinions rarely intertwined, like chalk and cheese or night and day. However, while Pet Sounds revolutionised many aspects of popular music, like the art itself, John Lennon and the rest of The Beatles viewed it as the ultimate musical canon, a solidification of sheer genius that could never be replicated or executed to the same degree of effortless excellence.