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Anniversary, Brian Wilson, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

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Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

Released May 16, 1966

Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

Fun Fun Fun

For five years Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys had given us fun (fun fun) songs. As an East Coast kid, the sunny surfing imagery intoxicated me: girls in bikinis, the Pacific Ocean, funny cars…and did I mention girls in bikinis.

Little did we realize Brian’s internal turmoil, that he had to endure paternal abuse. The loss of hearing in one ear may have been the physical result, but the psychological impact would be life-long.

We likely also didn’t realize the Brian had left live performances up to the rest of the group. Various fears and a need to create led to his decision to stay in LA.

Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

1965’s tipping point

Bob Dylan had gone electric in 1965. He’d declared that he wasn’t goin’ to work on Maggie’s farm no more. Little did this 15-year-old realize what that change meant. Dylan and the Beatles met and while the Beatles were already electric and in 1965 they went Dylan: writing songs that meant something to them as well as, hopefully, something to us.

That was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul with songs like “Norwegian Wood,” “Girl,” “I’m Looking Through You,” and “In My Life” fans heard something different than “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

So did Brian Wilson and he decided he’d up the ante and create something even better. Many say he did, but not right away. Mike Love for one felt Brian Wilson was heading in a nowhere direction. Sales of the album, while good, were not what their previous albums had done. Even the single “Caroline No” was released as a Brian Wilson song, not a Beach Boy song.

Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

Studio Studio Studio

Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds

It took Wilson months to produce Pet Sounds. With his band mates on the road, he used LA’s famous Wrecking Crew to create the sounds he wanted. And they, despite an often meandering search, helped him find and create that sound.

Side one: 

  1. Wouldn’t It Be Nice
  2. You Still Believe In Me
  3. That’s Not Me
  4. Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder
  5. I’m Waiting for the Day’
  6. Let’s Go Away for Awhile
  7. Sloop John B
 Side 2:

  1. God Only Knows
  2. I Know There’s an Answer
  3. Here today
  4. I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
  5. Pet Sounds
  6. Caroline No
Brian Wilson Pet Sounds

Masterpiece

Today the world acknowledges Pet Sounds as a masterpiece [Rolling Stone magazine article]. Just as Rubber Soul had inspired Wilson, Wilson in turn inspired the Beatles whose barking dogs on Sgt Pepper’s echo and acknowledge Pet Sound‘s influence.

Much later, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney said about Sgt Pepper: “We were fed up with being Beatles. We were not boys, we were men… artists rather than performers.”

So too Brian Wilson and we are forever indebted to him for that artistry and inspiration.

Brian Wilson Pet Sounds
Anniversary, Music of the 60s

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

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Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

July 1968

Eric Burdon

Eric Burdon with the Animals were part of the British Invasion in 1964. Their “House of the Rising Sun” stuck an earworm into  American teenagers’ heads that still resides there. What Boomer can hear those first few guitar notes without immediately recognizing the song? Perhaps it was one of the first licks you learned on guitar? (click and see!)

American blues dominated the Animals’ early albums, but like Bob Dylan’s job on Maggie’s farm and John Lennon’s Norwegian wood lover, Eric Burdon did not stay with the girl he brung to the dance.

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

Eric Burdon & the Animals

With his release of Winds of Change (the title echoing,  of course, Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin” as well as his line in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”), Burdon allowed the times to change his content.

Such compositions as “The Black Plague” and “San Franciscan Nights” signaled those changes.

The Twain Shall Meet

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

1968. The Vietnam war raged and demonstrations regularly filled streets. Campuses seemed to have become places to sit in to protest, not to sit in a desk.

In May, MGM record released Eric Burdon and the Animals single, “Sky Pilot.” The following month, the song would be part of the “The Twain Shall Meet” album.

Even more than the popular “Monterey” on that album [Burdon’s reflections on the Monterey Pop Festival, an event he and the Animals performed at], “Sky Pilot” is the album’s strongest song.

Sky Pilot

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

He blesses the boys

As they stand in line

The smell of gun grease

And the bayonets they shine

He’s there to help them

All that he can

To make them feel wanted

He’s a good holy man

In some ways the song is as powerful as Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Hendrix’s performance declared that those who were anti-Establishment were also entitled to our nation’s anthem.

“Sky Pilot” (particularly with its inclusion the traditional bag piped “All the Bluebonnets Are Over the Border”) questions not only war, but whether God was on our side, or whether God’s self-appointed representative, the Sky Pilot, was even on God’s side.

Released as a two-sided single, many radio stations stated that its length too long and style not “pop” enough.  Be that as it may, the song remains among the elite of anti-war songs.

The whole band wrote the song: Eric Burdon, Vic Briggs, John Weider, Barry Jenkins, and Danny McCulloch

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

All the Blue Bonnets

It is interesting to listen to just the bag pipes song after listening to the Animal’s song with its inclusion.

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot
Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al, Today in history

Beatles Shakespeare

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Beatles Shakespeare

April 28, 1963
Excerpt of Paul and John speaking parts of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from the Around the Beatles TV special.

The many roads musicians travel are not necessarily the weed, whites,  and wine-filled ones that fans imagine. The key to breaking through is exposure. Performances night after night can fine tune a group’s show and songs, but small venues provide small audiences.

True in the 60s as it is today, electronic media can reach far more ears and eyes than those nightly gigs. Given the chance, a group will jump, however reluctantly, onto whatever opportunity presents itself.

So it was for the Beatles.

Being able to perform songs was the obvious and key part. John, Paul, George, and Ringo did not realize that dressing up and performing Shakespeare was also part of deal.

Beatles Shakespeare

Around the Beatles

The morning of  April 28, 1963 the soon-to-be-Fab Four showed up at Rediffusion’s Wembley Studios, London.  They rehearsed and did a radio interview before the show’s taping.

The “story” was supposed to be set in the Globe Theatre in the round, thus the show’s name.

Jack Good was the director. He would later give us the TV show Shindig!.

From the Beatles Bible site: The Beatles took part in two segments in the show: a musical set and a spoof of Act V Scene I of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison also mimed a trumpet fanfare at the start of the show, before Ringo Starr appeared with a flag to set off a cannon ball. The group also introduced PJ Proby’s performance.

For the Shakespeare spoof, Lennon took the female role of Thisbe, McCartney played Pyramus, Harrison was Moonshine and Starr played Lion. Incidentally, McCartney later owned a cat he named Thisbe.

Beatles Shakespeare
Ringo setting off the cannon at the show’s start

The Beatles lip-synced Twist And Shout, Roll Over Beethoven, I Wanna Be Your Man, Long Tall Sally, Can’t Buy Me Love, and did a medley that included: Love Me Do, Please Please Me, From Me To You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. They closed with their cover of the The Isley Brothers’ Shout, the only time their performance  of the song was recorded.

The show aired on May 6, 1964.

Beatles Shakespeare

PJ Proby

Ironically, the person who got the biggest immediate media bump was American singer PJ Proby who performed “Walking the Dog” and “Cumberland Gap.”