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Sat 3 October 2026 0:30, UK
The idea that Brian Wilson woke up one day and decided to create Pet Sounds is a bizarrely enduring misconception within the realm of pop music. In reality, the seeds of that transcendental masterpiece were planted long before The Beach Boys ditched their striped shirts and surfer tunes.
In fairness to that misconception, no other band – particularly within the pop-rock scene of early 1960s America – made as substantial a leap in their output as The Beach Boys did from their surf-centric early days to the studio experimentation of Pet Sounds. If you contrast that LP with any of the group’s earlier hit records, you could be forgiven for mistaking them as two entirely different groups.
It was, in truth, a concoction of influences, ranging from Wilson’s ill-fated experiences with LSD to his infatuation with Phil Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ that sparked the beginnings of Pet Sounds. Even so, the album would never have come to fruition were it not for its predecessors, such as 1963’s Surfin’ USA – an album which, while successful, hasn’t been the subject of quite as much intense and unending praise as Pet Sounds.
Surfin’ USA was far from being a failure. On its release in March 1963, in the months just before the British invasion began to take root in the States, the record managed to climb to number two on the US album chart, and peak at a still-impressive 17 in the UK. As if that wasn’t enough, it also contained a few hits and future Beach Boys classics, its title track being the prime example.
In a creative sense, though, the LP wasn’t reinventing the wheel. While it did show some degree of innovation and progression in comparison to the band’s earlier albums, it was still very much a commercial-forward, pop-centric album, the prevailing aim of which seemed to be to sell a multitude of copies and continue to build the band’s ever-increasing reputation within the pop-rock world.
Crucially, though, the album marked one of the first instances of Wilson stepping into the production seat, even if it was Capitol Records’ Nick Venet who took the primary production credit on the record. “By the time I got to the album, Surfin’ USA,” Wilson wrote in the liner notes that accompanied its first CD issue, “I was more experienced at producing.”
He added that the album’s predecessor, Surfin’ Safari, was “practice for me”.
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It was also on the 1963 album that Wilson’s perfectionist tendencies came to the forefront. “I didn’t like second-rate vocals,” he said. “It was either the best or nothin’, in my opinion. The boys picked up. We had a good understanding between us and I was their leader.”
The musical mastermind went on to affirm, “Production-wise, this album was an early Brian Wilson production.”
Without those experiences creating Surfin’ USA, then, you could certainly argue that Wilson might never have had the confidence or the expertise to produce the intricate and ambitious Pet Sounds barely three years later.
That album might have taken the musical realm by surprise, but its creation certainly didn’t come entirely out of the blue, if you pay attention to Wilson’s earlier output with The Beach Boys.
