The two most qualified musicians to claim the title of best pop songwriter of the second half of the 20th century they were born separated by two days and an ocean. James Paul McCartney, the oldest, came into the world on June 18, 1942 in Liverpool. Brian Douglas Wilson, the youngest, opened his eyes on June 20, 1942 in Inglewood, California. It would take 24 years for the two to meet face to face for the first time, but when that happened their fates were already closely linked: After all, the ambition and inventiveness displayed by the Beatles on the LP ‘Rubber Soul’ had inspired Wilson to write and produce the songs for the Beach Boys’ album ‘Pet Sounds’, one of which, ‘God only knows’ remains McCartney’s favorite piece of music to this day.
Arthur Conan Doyle said that talent instantly recognizes genius. In the mid-1960s, the Beatles and the Beach Boys knew each other as rivals in the race to push the boundaries of pop music, especially in aspects related to the composition and use of the study. The first to experience a dazzle was Brian Wilson, who after witnessing the thunderous irruption of the Beatles in the United States with ‘I want to hold your hand’, persuaded the rest of the Beach Boys that they should go further of the songs about beaches, girls and cars and sophisticated their recordings (‘I get around’ was the first fruit of this new impulse).
‘Girl don’t tell me’
In July 1965, the Beach Boys went a step further by including on their LP ‘Summer days (and summer nights!!)’ the song ‘Girl don’t tell me’in which they openly displayed the influence of the Beatles by launching an obvious nod to ‘Ticket to ride’, which had appeared as a ‘single’ in April. In fact, Brian Wilson wanted to send ‘Girl don’t tell me’ to the Liverpool quartet before recording it with his own group, but he ended up giving up for fear of being snubbed.
By then, the Beatles had already begun to pay attention to what Californians were doing, which on the album ‘Beach Boys’ party!’, a quirky collection of light-hearted tributes to their favorite songs released in October of the same year, included three Fab Four titles (‘You’ve got to hide your love away’, ‘I should have known better’ and ‘Tell me why’). On those same dates, the Beatles were immersed in the recording sessions of ‘Rubber Soul’an album in which the vocal harmoniesdetermining factors in the evolution of the incipient ‘sunshine pop’ scene, clearly reveal the imprint of the Beach Boys.
De ‘Rubber Soul’ a ‘Pet Sounds’
The appearance of ‘Rubber Soul’ in December 1965 was a new revelation for Wilson, who, in his 2016 autobiography ‘I am Brian Wilson and you are not’, defined it as “probably the best album in history”. “He sent me straight to the piano stool,” she wrote. After obsessively listening to the new Beatles LP (in its US version, which omitted four songs from the UK edition), the Beach Boys frontman had only one purpose in mind: to top it and make “the best album anyone has ever seen.” I would never have recorded.” The product of that endeavor was ‘Pet Sounds’. (Side note: The relationship between the two LPs was definitively sealed when in 1998 the fantastic power pop band from Baltimore Splitsville released an album titled… ‘Pet Soul’).
With its sublime combination of bright colors and unusual sounds, ‘Pet Sounds’ instantly captivated Paul McCartney and Beatles producer George Martin. “When I heard it, I was like, ‘Oh, God, this is the greatest LP of all time. What are we going to do now?’ Macca recounted years later. I put it on John [Lennon] Many times, it was impossible to escape his influence. It was the album of that time”. Both McCartney and Martin insistently repeated that ‘Pet Sounds’ had been a decisive source of inspiration when facing the totemic ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonley Hearts Club Band’but his imprint can already be seen on earlier recordings, such as the ballad by Paul ‘Here, there and everywhere’from the album ‘Revolver’.
Twenty days after this latest album hit stores in the United States, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson faces were seen for the first time. It was on August 28, 1966, in Los Angeles, at a party held at the home of former Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, who at the time had just moved to California and started working for the Beach Boys. George Harrison was also present. Wilson asked the two ‘beatles’ if he wanted to listen to his next ‘single’, an overwhelming pocket symphony entitled ‘Good vibrations’. Paul was dazzled by the complexity of the production, but couldn’t help but feel that the song lacked the emotional depth of ‘Pet Sounds’.
“You have to hurry up”
When the second meeting between the two musicians took place, on April 10, 1967, it was McCartney who had things to teach. A preview of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s, no less. All the confidence Brian had exhibited just eight months earlier had been shattered during the chaotic recording sessions for the ‘SMiLE’ album, a conceptual project of excessive ambition that had tested the fragile psychological balance of the ‘beach boy’. Macca’s appearance around the studio didn’t help matters. After offering to munch on some celery and carrots in front of the microphone to put the background sound to the song ‘Vega-Tables’, Paul sat down at the piano and played ‘She’s leaving home’. Not content with that, he played to his host an acetate copy of the final mix of ‘A day in the life’ and, at the end, he blurted out: “You have to hurry up with ‘SMiLE’. We are ready now.”
Very shortly after, Wilson decided to cancel the sessions of the ‘SMiLE’ project, which in the rock universe came to occupy a privileged place in the pantheon of legendary unfinished records. In a corner of the tortured mind of the Californian musician, the race between the Beatles and the Beach Boys was over and he had a winner. He was not him. Sinking deeper into a morass of mental health problems and addictions, Brian barely noticed McCartney’s rousing tribute to the beach boys in ‘Back in the USSR’song included in the double white album of the Beatles, 1968.
Despite the difficulties, Paul always tried to maintain a thread of contact with his American ‘rival’ even in the worst times of his psychological prostration. In 2000, when Brian was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, McCartney was chosen to deliver the introductory speech. Two years later, at a benefit gala held at the Century Plaza hotel in Los Angeles, both shared the stage for the first time to sing ‘God only knows’ as a duet. The song that in 1966 put Brian Wilson in touch with God. Paul McCartney’s favorite song.