{"id":801401,"date":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801401\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","slug":"the-1966-album-paul-mccartney-roger-waters-and-eric-clapton-called-the-greatest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801401\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1966 album Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, and Eric Clapton called the greatest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Chris Hakkens<\/p>\n

Tue 13 October 2026 16:00, UK <\/p>\n

The art<\/a> of creating a good song was almost second nature to some of the greatest musicians of all time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one needed to teach someone like Paul McCartney the mechanics of what songwriting was supposed to be like, because there\u2019s a good chance that he could manage to write a better song in a shorter time than it takes most of us to make a decent meal. It all came from the magic in his fingers, but some of the biggest songwriters that came after him seemed to be after the same sonic muse that he was.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exaggerating to say that The Beatles set the template for the modern pop song in many respects, but a lot of that came from them being influenced by whatever was happening at the time. They weren\u2019t afraid to throw something strange into the mix that they heard from some other band, but the 1960s were changing at an alarming rate by the time the Summer of Love got underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest names in psychedelia were starting to come out of the woodwork, and there weren\u2019t many people who seemed closer to The Beatles than Eric Clapton. He was already a friend of George Harrison, but there was a good chance of running into nearly any legend in Abbey Road Studios at the time. The Beatles may have started changing the world yet again with Sgt Pepper, but a few rooms over, Roger Waters was already starting to woodshed his songwriting chops in Pink Floyd<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

All of them were looking to make music that no one had heard before, but they were also all struck by what was coming from America. The British invasion had triggered a chain reaction happening overseas, and while the biggest names in British rock still ruled the airwaves, there weren\u2019t many musicians who heard Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys who weren\u2019t left absolutely stunned by what they heard.<\/p>\n

This was the sound of pure beauty, and Macca realised that he had a lot more lessons to learn as a songwriter, saying<\/a>, \u201cI figure no one is educated musically \u2019til they\u2019ve heard Pet Sounds. I love the orchestra, the arrangements \u2013 it may be going overboard to say it\u2019s the classic of the century \u2013 but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways.\u201d And for someone just starting to become a songwriter, Waters was equally stunned by what he was hearing.<\/p>\n

Syd Barrett did the lion\u2019s share of the writing in Floyd at the time, but Waters couldn\u2019t believe anyone could properly understand the impact that the record had on him, saying, \u201cAlong with Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds completely changed everything about records for me.\u201d So, for someone like Clapton who had just begun his songwriting journey, nothing could set the bar higher than hearing Wilson\u2019s way of inverting chords and showing people what rock and roll harmony could do.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

He was only looking on in awe, and compared to the blues, there was some magic there that Clapton had never heard, saying, \u201cI consider Pet Sounds to be one of the greatest pop LPs to ever be released. It encompasses everything that\u2019s ever knocked me out and rolled it all into one. Brian Wilson is, without a doubt, a pop genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for an album that has been praised to hell and back, it does help that the record actually earned that accolade. Wilson was making some of the most gorgeous music that the rock world had ever heard, and there aren\u2019t many people who can listen to tunes like \u2018God Only Knows\u2019 or \u2018Caroline No\u2019 and not feel something when the band start layering those harmonies on top of each other.<\/p>\n

This was an album that came around only once in a generation, and even though Wilson never reached the same heights as that album ever again, those 13 songs are enough to put him in the conversation of the greatest American musicians of all time. So many people have tried to figure out something like this, but this is the kind of creative ingenuity that you have to go back to people like Bach to really equal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Chris Hakkens Tue 13 October 2026 16:00, UK The art of creating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19405,186263,30627,29764,96,36499,128,6470,34789,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-186263","tag-beach-boys","tag-brian-wilson","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-clapton","tag-music","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-roger-waters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}