(Credits: Far Out / Ithaka Darin Pappas)
Sun 28 December 2025 20:30, UK
Artists aren’t always aware of when they are creating their ultimate masterpiece; The Starry Night was just another painting for Van Gogh, and Romeo and Juliet was merely one in nearly 40 plays concocted by Shakespeare. In a similar vein, Brian Wilson didn’t enter into Pet Sounds knowing that it would change music history forever.
Wilson’s songwriting talents were on full display right from the beginning of The Beach Boys’ journey to pop domination, but even still, Pet Sounds seemed to arrive entirely out of left field. After all, up to that point, the band had largely dealt in Chuck Berry-esque guitar riffs, an all-American image, and lyrics about surfing that feel almost parodical in hindsight. Seemingly, though, Wilson was yearning for something a little bit more ambitious.
The seeds of Pet Sounds were planted in early 1965 when, after years of immense pressure and exhaustive touring, Wilson chose to retire from the road entirely, focusing his attention solely on studio work. Inevitably, that extra time led Wilson down the path of some pioneering studio innovations, as well as some of the most ambitious songwriting of his entire career.
At the same time, though, Pet Sounds was partially spurred on by the songwriter’s doomed experiments with LSD, meaning that not only does Wilson not remember a whole lot of the album’s recording process, but it severely impacted his mental state going forward. In the years since, the songwriter has spoken repeatedly about his regrets about taking the drug, and how severely it affected him for the rest of his life, even if it did help produce his ultimate masterpiece.
Reportedly, Wilson doesn’t have any recollection of recording some of the album’s greatest moments of musical mastery, including ‘God Only Knows’ – arguably Wilson’s defining moment. During one 2007 interview, per Best Classic Bands, the songwriter was asked why performing that song live seems to get such a reaction from the crowd, to which he jokingly responded, “Because we’ve had a little practice.”
“Second of all, Carl [Wilson] is gone, and I have to carry what he used to carry. I have to carry the damn weight,” he continued. Another issue – or strength, depending on how you look at it – with performing the song, however, comes from the fact that Wilson struggles to recall the original recording.
“I don’t remember the recording session of it,” he shared. “Too far in the past to remember. I mean, ‘Here is your part.’ ‘OK.’ And, somehow, we got ‘God Only Knows’ done.”
By the sounds of it, ‘God Only Knows’ wasn’t all that much more notable in the process of Pet Sounds than any other track, despite being the record’s indisputable crowning jewel and, without wishing to sound sensationalist, one of the greatest songs of all time.
It certainly spoke to the genius of Brian Wilson that he would view a song as utterly perfect as ‘God Only Knows’ as being run-of-the-mill at best, but the fact that he cannot recall the moment when The Beach Boys perfected the song for the very first time in that Hollywood recording studio also spoke to the tragic nature of his degenerative mental health which plagued the songwriter throughout his time on Earth.
Related Topics