“Ultimate in production”: the best-produced album of all time, according to Jeff Lynne
Birmingham-born rock legend Jeff Lynne is one of those household names that seems to crop up just about everywhere. Throughout the 1970s, he surged to mainstream success thanks to his funky pop-rock stylings under the Electric Light Orchestra banner. The band remains popular to this day thanks to timeless hits like ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ and ‘Evil Woman’, but Lynne consolidated his legacy in a post-ELO production career.
Like many artists who opt for a post-fame production career, Lynne sought a little time out of the limelight in the 1980s. The limelight may well have been evaded, but when one finds work producing a former Beatle’s comeback album, it isn’t exactly a game of hide and seek. Impressed with Lynne’s work as songwriter and producer with ELO, George Harrison asked him to co-produce his eleventh studio album, Cloud Nine. The album was a commercial success, leading to a string of fruitful collaborations.
By the time Harrison welcomed Lynne to join the Traveling Wilburys in 1988, he had also offered his production talents to Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl. A collaboration with Paul McCartney on Flaming Pie and work on the Beatles’ Anthology collection lay in store, but perhaps Lynne’s biggest “pinch me” moment as a producer came just after Cloud Nine.
In 1987, just after finishing work on Harrison’s solo album, Lynne had offers flooding in, left, right and centre, but the most attractive of all was from a former Beach Boy. “Warner Bros asked me to produce Brian Wilson,” Lynne remembered in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I was like, ‘You can’t produce Brian Wilson. He’s the best producer in the world.’”
Despite feeling somewhat redundant in the company of production royalty, Lynne, of course, agreed to the opportunity. “I said yes, and I co-wrote a song with him,” Lynne recalled. “We wrote ‘Let It Shine’ at his house in Malibu.”
Since the late 1960s, Wilson had dealt with addiction and associated mental health issues. These woes seemed to reach a nadir of sorts in the 1980s. “He was really struggling in his life. It was horrible, and he was being treated badly,” Lynne remembered. As a longtime Beach Boys fan, the experience was bittersweet.
At the time, Wilson was under the strict supervision of Eugene Landy. The controversial psychiatrist diagnosed Wilson as a paranoid schizophrenic and used an array of damaging pharmaceuticals to assert his dominance and coerce. “You could see what a nice guy he was despite everything happening in the background,” Lynne reflected on his time in Malibu. “It was all very distressing.”
Lynne’s productional contributions to Wilson’s 1988 self-titled solo album were limited, but co-writing credits on ‘Let It Shine’ were not to be sniffed at. The album was uneven, receiving a tepid response from critics at the time. Yet, spiritually, Brian Wilson was touted as a successor to The Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece album Pet Sounds, thanks to its psychedelic leanings and progressive synthesiser-laden production.
Given his deep adoration for Pet Sounds, Lynne would undoubtedly have accepted such a comparison with open arms. If The Beatles paved his way as a musician, Wilson and George Martin inspired his production aspirations. Speaking to The Quietus in a past feature, Lynne discussed his favourite albums of all time, lauding Martin’s work on Revolver. However, Pet Sounds seemed to come out on top as the “ultimate in production”.
Pet Sounds was considered a compositional marvel, with Wilson’s contrapuntal harmonies inspiring a generation of songwriters and producers. The Beach Boys leant on rock tradition to please the fans but brought a crucial nuance to proceedings that dropped jaws and brought the fight to The Beatles as transatlantic rivals. “I remember it was ’66, and in some parts, it sounds like an old dance band,” Lynne added, discussing Pet Sounds. “I’d think, ‘Wow!’ That’s so old-fashioned yet so brand new at the same time.”
Listen to ‘God Only Knows’ from The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds below.