The Beatles song that left Brian Wilson in tears: “I’ve never heard anything like this in my life”
In the 1960s, practically every rock band wanted to be The Beatles, or at the very least, sought to knock them off their lofty perch. In the UK, The Rolling Stones caught up with their Liverpudlian rivals as a rival hit-making machine but always maintained a degree of respect, given that John Lennon, Paul McCartney and the gang knocked down the first barriers for the British Invasion. The Beatles also gave the Stones one of their early hits with ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, lest we forget.
Across the Atlantic, Beatlemania reached a similar pitch following the band’s televisual debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. All the same, many Americans didn’t take too kindly to these British folk beating them at their own game. With talent at the ready and the marketing machine well-oiled, a highly fruitful transatlantic chart race ensued throughout the mid-1960s.
The frontrunners in this friendly race were The Beatles and California’s surf-rock stars The Beach Boys. Of course, The Monkees had a nibble, too, but as an engineered response to The Beatles for a television programme, it would be difficult to take them seriously enough for this particular contest.
Brian Wilson, the principal composer for The Beach Boys, made his most significant discographic dent in 1966 with Pet Sounds. The album was a true tour de force, blending contemporary pop trends with a psychedelic nuance and groundbreaking contrapuntal harmonies. The album seemed to light a candle beneath The Beatles’ feet, energising their imminent Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions.
Speaking to the Stones’ guitarist Ronnie Wood in a 2013 interview, McCartney praised Wilson’s ingenuity and addressed their friendly rivalry as a vital creative catalyst. “Brian Wilson proved himself to be a really amazing composer,” he beamed. “I was into chords, harmonies and stuff at that time and we ended up with this kind of rivalry. We put a song out, Brian would hear it, and he’d do one.”
McCartney added that the rivalry was “nice”, noting that a similar dynamic appeared within The Beatles. “Me and John, we’d try to top each other all the time,” he said. “But [Brian] eventually came out with ‘God Only Knows’ that was a sound stomper on Pet Sounds. I just think it’s a great song… melody, harmonies, words.”
‘God Only Knows’ remains one of McCartney’s favourite songs and greatest envies. However, Pet Sounds may not have been quite so monumental if The Beatles hadn’t previously stoked green flames of envy behind Wilson’s eyes. The American legend recalled that Pet Sounds was an attempt to match The Beatles’ sterling work on Rubber Soul. “It had such a cool vibe, and I wanted to do something similar to it, and that’s how I came up with Pet Sounds,” he noted in a 2017 interview with The Beatles Story.
The question that remains to be answered definitively is whether The Beatles managed to get one up on Pet Sounds. As more of a Beatles fan myself, I would say ‘A Day in the Life’ trumps anything on Pet Sounds, but I’m no compositional expert. In Brian Wilson’s humble opinion, it was ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ that had the last laugh.
Wison first heard the Magical Mystery Tour single while driving in his car. He was high on sedatives at the time, but the song’s otherworldly perfection brought a tear of awe and envy to the musician’s eye. “I was on one of those pills, downers, and I was really relaxed, and when ‘Strawberry Fields’ came on the radio, I locked in with it,” Wilson remembered. “I had to pull over in my car to the side, and I said, ‘I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.'”