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I have another theory as to why Best of the Beach Boys was released 7 weeks after Pet Sounds and it has nothing to do with Pet Sounds. Best of the Beach Boys was released on July 5, 1966. Three weeks earlier this happened... On June 10, Capitol launched "Operation Retrieve", recalling all copies of the LP Yesterday... and Today from distributors to replace the offending image, as well as items such as promotional posters. The total cost to Capitol of replacing the cover and promotional materials was $250,000 (equivalent to $2.35 million in 2023), wiping out the company's initial profit. All copies were ordered shipped back to the record label, leading to its rarity and popularity among collectors. On June 14th, Capitol sent a memo to reviewers asking them to disregard the artwork and quoting Alan Livingston's explanation that "The original cover, created in England, was intended as 'pop art' satire. However, a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation." 2 "failed" releases does not make a record company happy especially if those 2 biggest bands ever are losing money for the company. I'd say Capitol knew the Beach Boys compilation would make them quick money to offset the initial loss of the Yesterday... And Today release. The Best of could be put together quickly and out in stores for the summer. I'd say it was just a record company figuring out a way to keep profits and cash flow coming through the company. I'd say the track listing is on purpose so as not to diminish any future potential sales of Pet Sounds material. The Beatles release was also 7 months from Rubber Soul so Capitol was really counting on a huge profitable summer. Instead, the company's balance sheets were in the hole and that is a big sum of money to lose so quickly. Because of the Beach Boys popularity at the time, this release of the Best of would stop the hemorrhaging.
Hey, John, Darian sent me your theory and I'm glad you posted it here. I think it's very credible. Doesn't explain their hesitance to release WIBN, but it could relate to it.
Well done ! You are correct that Bruce deserves a great deal of praise for successfully marketing Pet Sounds in England . He , quite simply, knew to whom he could “sell “ the album…… other musicians . Even in The Beach Boys leanest of times , other musicians have always appreciated Brian’s genius and the group’s unequaled vocal talents .
Adam, can I just say I could listen to you for hours! You have a brilliant way of bringing information to your audience. Thanks for all you've done. I look forward to more!
The cover design didn’t help them sell the records. I was in record stores in 1966 and passed over the album and only got it months later when one of my friends raved about it.
I thoroughly enjoyed both parts of this. You made it very interesting and your personal and personable style really shine through. If you used the dialogue exactly as is in the videos to make a book, I'd buy it yesterday !
Aw bless you! Well, every time I think about doing a book, I think about how algorithms these days make it impossible to reach the audience that want to read it...it's tough to be an independent these days. Thanks so much for watching!
My first girlfriend won a copy of Pet Sounds at a high school dance in October 1966. She was very impressed with it. Her copy was the first time I heard the whole thing in 1967.
I find that story (and the timing of it) really interesting, given that the album supposedly wasn't expected to appeal to the band's teen/female audience.
Steve Douglas was a staff producer. He may have had the ear of a key A&R person but I don't think he had much power to funnel a single through Capitol's system on his own. On the Today album, Brian is singled out on the front cover. The label was in on making Brian the star of the band. It wasn't surprising to me when Caroline, No appeared as a Brian single in early '66.
I was going to wait until you had released all your Pet Sounds videos before commenting on them. But two of the key issues you raised are quite important to me and my appreciation of the band and the album. First, the band's reaction to the album. And how the guy's initial attitudes are reasonable and totally understandable from their perspectives. I feel quite fortunate that my journey with the Beach Boys music started with my mum's copy of that EMI edition of The Best Of.. it continued with other compilations which mostly just expanded on the pre Pet Sounds hits plus the singles from that album and Good Vibrations. But it wasn't until the 1990 CD reissue that I got to hear Pet Sounds. God Only Knows had given me some indication of where this was going (Good Vibrations, strangely, had not) but as I listened to the album, I could understand it was good music, and got that it was a unified sound or balance of many sounds way in advance of anything they had made prior (that I had heard). But I felt I didn't have the same immediacy in getting turned on by each individual track first time like befor. I was sort of blocked by thinking, "Was this a good idea? What made them make it this way, and this good?" Meaning, I hadn't felt like I had been adequately primed or prepared to digest the intentions and appreciate the commitment in making this record. Like I'd missed a homework assignment crucial to negotiating a test. I felt left behind a little. It took a little while to realise that A) I in fact had perhaps missed a few homework assignments 🤭 and B) It wasn't that Brian was doing things differently to the way you should expect him to. It was that he was doing things NOBODY had done or had reasonably expected anyone would or could do in the pop realm at that time. And it wasn't a trick. It was serious. A serious risk taken on all our behalfs. Including Brian's band mates. Anyway I won't go into all the ways I came to appreciate PS as the outright best. But I do have to admit that I sympathise ENTIRELY with the guy's initial reactions to the album as you surmised them. Second. The contrasting perception of the Beach Boys in the UK/Europe and in the States respectively. I think it's true that the band have always been considered generically American rather than Californian. I think that's because, rightly or wrongly, the British have had a general impression of the states and American lifestyle being basically more carefree. Understandable when post war the UK and Europe were reconstructing and austere. While in the US it was boomtime. So the beach boys singing about idyllic California didn't necessarily make us think geographically or socially. The US is the best and California supposedly offers the best the US can offer . so why wouldn't the most successful and popular US pop group sing about it? It wasn't until I took a vacation on the west coast and spent a few days each in Seattle, SF and LA and inevitably experiencing both the shocks and the cultural similarities in each city. I think only then did I get the significance of California specifically to the beach boys success and realised that to many US fans the band represents to them what the British see them as representative of in the US in general. But there's a reason why they were so successful in doing that, even though the California thing was not appreciated in the same way by us over here. As someone once brilliantly said "With specificity you get universality. (...with universality you get cafeteria food.)" If they hadn't sung and made music for and about what they knew, how they felt, and about what they liked to do where they were at that time, it's doubtful they would ever have been as successful. I think.
Never understood why they fired Derek Taylor. If anything, by the latter half on '67, then in '68, '69, and '70, they really needed him. Between the non-release of Smile, the pullout from Monterrey Pop Festival, and the "bunt instead of a grand slam" of Smiley Smile, they really needed intense image massaging here in the US.
As per the closing title cards in the BB Disney+ doc, Pet Sounds was “certified Gold in 2000. Two weeks later, it was certified Platinum.” Was that a slip up that the producers either didn’t catch or didn’t bother to vet?
@@walruswasrob I don't know the answer but I would assume the numbers were there before 2000 for platinum, and it was just the time it took between the two to do the second certification. Very dramatic but slightly misleading /confusing wording on Disney's part.
Sinatra had not been on Capitol since 1960, when he started Reprise, but undoubtedly his old Capitol LPs were still selling well. The death of Nat King Cole in February 1965 was a big blow to Capitol. The Beatles and BBs were definitely now the biggest sellers on the label, so their non-plussed reaction to Pet Sounds is inexplicable. They could not have thought the BBs were passé in 1966 -- that perspective would only come a year or so later.
You’re right about Sinatra - sorry about that, I was thrown by some erroneous entries saying Strangers In The Night was on Capitol. It does beggar belief that Capitol would have thought The Beach Boys passé by 1966 but the evidence is there that Capitol was trying to force them not to change, and was ready to throw the whole works if they tried. It does make it all the more curious why they went along with SMILE even before GV came out. That’s a rabbit hole I plan to go down later.
I'm only halfway through the video and wow, this whole series, but especially this deep dive into Pet Sounds needs archiving because it really is the most acessible but detailed account out there.
I may be wrong, but I think Pet Sounds was partially hurt by Brian's strict-at-the-time "no stereo mix" policy. More sophisticated record buyers who would have appreciated the innovations of the album and could afford stereo equipment may have been turned off by the mono mix (which buries so much genius!) and would likely not have even considered the Duophonic mix.
It's been on record that Mike, before TM, was smoking pot and drinking. And yes, Beach Boys album covers have always been amaturistic. Even the Dean Torrence @Kttyhawk Graphics covers. And didn't the BBs get banned from the San Diego Zoo after this shoot? Poor Al!
very good job on this, you combine common sense conclusions based upon what facts are available. Something I can't recall reading: has anyone ever spoken to any 1966 Capitol execs. regarding their treatment of Pet Sounds and the Beach Boys? If not, what we're dealing with is hearsay and assumption. I do however agree with your conclusions. Great job on this
That's very true; we mostly only have the band's word for things (though it's, as I said, a unanimous perspective among all the members - a rarity). I did come across one insider who said something to the effect of Capitol probably wanting to release Best of to pad the sales that quarter to their expectations. I couldn't source it, I don't recall where I read that quote, so I didn't include it. It's hard though to get past the Best of the Beach Boys being certified gold in '67, but the paperwork from Pet Sounds being lost.
It's true Capitol was not a "rock" label, but there really were no album-oriented "rock" labels in 1966. Rock music was for teens, and teens bought singles, but how many "rock" singles-oriented labels were there? I was watching the Wrecking Crew documentary, and the narrator described the period as "the rock era," but tellingly, none of the Wrecking Crew themselves did. Given the huge output and commerciality of rock music of the period, this seems strange to us, but it cannot be overstated how anyone over the age of 20 at the time (including Brian) thought of rock music as teenage music and therefore frivolous, unserious -- something that older musicians were embarrassed to play (hence the emphasis on "it was a paycheck" ... "I had a family to feed"). Perspectives changed in the 1970s, and it is only in retrospect that the Wrecking Crew et al. now happily accept being contributors to "the rock era."
Yes, that's correct, I just didn't think it was really worth making that point, because the key question is whether Capitol understood its own marketplace or not. They clearly had people on staff whose job it was to know, and the band had issues with Capitol's marketing not just retrospectively, but in the moment. The folk rock boom had happened, the Beatles had happened. Things were changing rapidly. Other more nimble labels were figuring out how to tap the market that was being created. Whether you want to call it "rock" or "teen," it doesn't matter. It's still a question of selling platters to the folks buying them. Interestingly, the Raspberries' experience indicates Capitol hadn't really gotten any better at this once they were solidly in the nominally rock era of the '70s.
Re: "The Best of The Beach Boys." I wonder if this release simply had to do with the BBs promising two or three albums a year (were they contractually obligated to do so?). The timing and track listing is, as you say, strange. But Parlophone released "A Collection of Beatles Oldies" in Dec. 1966 while "Revolver" was only five months old. Columbia released Dylan's "Greatest Hits" (mostly hits by other artists) in March '67. Most likely all these artists had agreements in which they were to deliver "x" number of albums a year, an obligation that they now found impossible.
It was released only 7 weeks after PET SOUNDS, in early July, before “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” came out as a single and whilst PET SOUNDS was still high in the charts. If Capitol’s concern was filling the contract (that seems more like a band problem to me and Brian did NOT want Best Of released), they had four more months to do it.
Seeing as Capitol had a negative reaction to Pet Sounds, one wonders if someone at the label placed a transatlantic call to Brian Epstein or George Martin when Revolver was sent to them and bellowed, "Tomorrow Never Knows, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! YOU GOT US IN ENOUGH TROUBLE WITH THAT BUTCHER COVER!!!" Or, for that matter, lyrics like "I know what it's like to be dead." Or Eleanor Rigby, I can just hear it from the label honchos, "DEPRESSING, AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE ISN'T GOING TO RELATE TO THIS! ASSEMBLE A BEST OF THE BEATLES AND MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THAT BELOVED HIT SINGLE MR. MOONLIGHT!"😉 One also wonders what Capitol's reaction was to Paperback Writer and Rain, the former with its aggressive instrumentation and the latter with its druggy atmosphere and backwards vocals at the end of the song.
The butcher cover was not intended as an insult to Capitol. The Beatles had no control over how their albums were assembled outside of Parlophone, and were not as hyper-obsessive about how their records were marketed internationally as their post-60s fans are. The first time they tried to actually assert some control (the butcher), it was a financial disaster. Of course all this changed with Sgt. Pepper.
Well hence the wording "believed to be." I did spend a decent amount of time researching this, and based on the various sources I looked at I don't think there is a definitive answer to this question. While some sources say it was not directed at Capitol, other sources state that it was. On that basis the statement I put in the video is accurate as worded.
Perhaps you can clarify something ... I thought that in 1964 or even earlier the BBs made a deal with Capitol that they would produce (and pay for) their own recordings. Is that wrong? Why did Capitol have to pay for the album under this agreement?
I'm pretty sure that Capitol funded the sessions of their artists, the costs being then deducted from the product sales. Check any AFM contract of the time: the employer is listed as Capitol, not The Beach Boys, right up to late 1967.
I'm unclear on whether the UK publicity (including Bruce's trip) gave the impression that BB's themselves played all the instruments on Pet Sounds. I suspect that the studio musicians -- if they were mentioned at all -- were de-emphasized and downplayed. The impression given was that these guys were super musicians as well as super vocalists. The '66 tour to the UK must have been a supreme let-down to audiences. They were expecting to hear not only all the songs from Pet Sounds, but the songs played like Pet Sounds. Instead they mostly got the pre-Pet Sounds songs, and songs from PS stripped down to garage band level. So their reputation would have taken a hit there also, but not enough to affect record sales, as in the USA.
My understanding is the ‘66 shows were very well received but the ones in ‘67 encountered a lot of problems. “Barbara Ann” and “I Get Around” were big hits so British audiences may have had no problem with their presentation. Perhaps someone who was there could chime in with their first hand impressions.
What a great analysis. I got Pet Sounds when I had just turned 13 and have loved and listened to it all these years. However I learned many things I did not know with your part 1 and part 2. Really looking forward to part 3. Thanks.
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I have another theory as to why Best of the Beach Boys was released 7 weeks after Pet Sounds and it has nothing to do with Pet Sounds.
Best of the Beach Boys was released on July 5, 1966. Three weeks earlier this happened...
On June 10, Capitol launched "Operation Retrieve", recalling all copies of the LP Yesterday... and Today from distributors to replace the offending image, as well as items such as promotional posters. The total cost to Capitol of replacing the cover and promotional materials was $250,000 (equivalent to $2.35 million in 2023), wiping out the company's initial profit. All copies were ordered shipped back to the record label, leading to its rarity and popularity among collectors. On June 14th, Capitol sent a memo to reviewers asking them to disregard the artwork and quoting Alan Livingston's explanation that "The original cover, created in England, was intended as 'pop art' satire. However, a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation."
2 "failed" releases does not make a record company happy especially if those 2 biggest bands ever are losing money for the company.
I'd say Capitol knew the Beach Boys compilation would make them quick money to offset the initial loss of the Yesterday... And Today release. The Best of could be put together quickly and out in stores for the summer. I'd say it was just a record company figuring out a way to keep profits and cash flow coming through the company.
I'd say the track listing is on purpose so as not to diminish any future potential sales of Pet Sounds material. The Beatles release was also 7 months from Rubber Soul so Capitol was really counting on a huge profitable summer. Instead, the company's balance sheets were in the hole and that is a big sum of money to lose so quickly. Because of the Beach Boys popularity at the time, this release of the Best of would stop the hemorrhaging.
Hey, John, Darian sent me your theory and I'm glad you posted it here. I think it's very credible. Doesn't explain their hesitance to release WIBN, but it could relate to it.
Well done ! You are correct that Bruce deserves a great deal of praise for successfully marketing Pet Sounds in England . He , quite simply, knew to whom he could “sell “ the album…… other musicians .
Even in The Beach Boys leanest of times , other musicians have always appreciated Brian’s genius and the group’s unequaled vocal talents .
Adam, can I just say I could listen to you for hours! You have a brilliant way of bringing information to your audience. Thanks for all you've done. I look forward to more!
Aw thank you David. Well I do tend to go on and on so it's nice that someone wants to hear it!
The cover design didn’t help them sell the records. I was in record stores in 1966 and passed over the album and only got it months later when one of my friends raved about it.
I thoroughly enjoyed both parts of this. You made it very interesting and your personal and personable style really shine through. If you used the dialogue exactly as is in the videos to make a book, I'd buy it yesterday !
Aw bless you! Well, every time I think about doing a book, I think about how algorithms these days make it impossible to reach the audience that want to read it...it's tough to be an independent these days. Thanks so much for watching!
My first girlfriend won a copy of Pet Sounds at a high school dance in October 1966. She was very impressed with it. Her copy was the first time I heard the whole thing in 1967.
I find that story (and the timing of it) really interesting, given that the album supposedly wasn't expected to appeal to the band's teen/female audience.
Our music teacher at school in Liverpool played us Pet Sounds when it was released in 1966 - we all thought it was great!
Steve Douglas was a staff producer. He may have had the ear of a key A&R person but I don't think he had much power to funnel a single through Capitol's system on his own. On the Today album, Brian is singled out on the front cover. The label was in on making Brian the star of the band. It wasn't surprising to me when Caroline, No appeared as a Brian single in early '66.
I was going to wait until you had released all your Pet Sounds videos before commenting on them. But two of the key issues you raised are quite important to me and my appreciation of the band and the album. First, the band's reaction to the album. And how the guy's initial attitudes are reasonable and totally understandable from their perspectives. I feel quite fortunate that my journey with the Beach Boys music started with my mum's copy of that EMI edition of The Best Of.. it continued with other compilations which mostly just expanded on the pre Pet Sounds hits plus the singles from that album and Good Vibrations. But it wasn't until the 1990 CD reissue that I got to hear Pet Sounds. God Only Knows had given me some indication of where this was going (Good Vibrations, strangely, had not) but as I listened to the album, I could understand it was good music, and got that it was a unified sound or balance of many sounds way in advance of anything they had made prior (that I had heard). But I felt I didn't have the same immediacy in getting turned on by each individual track first time like befor. I was sort of blocked by thinking, "Was this a good idea? What made them make it this way, and this good?" Meaning, I hadn't felt like I had been adequately primed or prepared to digest the intentions and appreciate the commitment in making this record. Like I'd missed a homework assignment crucial to negotiating a test. I felt left behind a little. It took a little while to realise that A) I in fact had perhaps missed a few homework assignments 🤭 and B) It wasn't that Brian was doing things differently to the way you should expect him to. It was that he was doing things NOBODY had done or had reasonably expected anyone would or could do in the pop realm at that time. And it wasn't a trick. It was serious. A serious risk taken on all our behalfs. Including Brian's band mates. Anyway I won't go into all the ways I came to appreciate PS as the outright best. But I do have to admit that I sympathise ENTIRELY with the guy's initial reactions to the album as you surmised them.
Second. The contrasting perception of the Beach Boys in the UK/Europe and in the States respectively. I think it's true that the band have always been considered generically American rather than Californian. I think that's because, rightly or wrongly, the British have had a general impression of the states and American lifestyle being basically more carefree. Understandable when post war the UK and Europe were reconstructing and austere. While in the US it was boomtime. So the beach boys singing about idyllic California didn't necessarily make us think geographically or socially. The US is the best and California supposedly offers the best the US can offer . so why wouldn't the most successful and popular US pop group sing about it? It wasn't until I took a vacation on the west coast and spent a few days each in Seattle, SF and LA and inevitably experiencing both the shocks and the cultural similarities in each city. I think only then did I get the significance of California specifically to the beach boys success and realised that to many US fans the band represents to them what the British see them as representative of in the US in general. But there's a reason why they were so successful in doing that, even though the California thing was not appreciated in the same way by us over here. As someone once brilliantly said "With specificity you get universality. (...with universality you get cafeteria food.)" If they hadn't sung and made music for and about what they knew, how they felt, and about what they liked to do where they were at that time, it's doubtful they would ever have been as successful. I think.
What a great post, thanks for all of it. And relieved to hear (not being British) I got the way the band was perceived about right.
Thanks @@karmafrog1 I've always felt the charge of "How did they not recognise and get behind the greatest milestone in rock history?" was unfair.
Excellent Adam. I'm absorbed 🤔
Never understood why they fired Derek Taylor. If anything, by the latter half on '67, then in '68, '69, and '70, they really needed him. Between the non-release of Smile, the pullout from Monterrey Pop Festival, and the "bunt instead of a grand slam" of Smiley Smile, they really needed intense image massaging here in the US.
Pet Sounds was certified gold in February 2000 and platinum in April the same year.
oops yeah, you’re right. Thanks for the correct.
As per the closing title cards in the BB Disney+ doc, Pet Sounds was “certified Gold in 2000. Two weeks later, it was certified Platinum.”
Was that a slip up that the producers either didn’t catch or didn’t bother to vet?
@@walruswasrob I don't know the answer but I would assume the numbers were there before 2000 for platinum, and it was just the time it took between the two to do the second certification. Very dramatic but slightly misleading /confusing wording on Disney's part.
@@walruswasrob no idea, but I sure as hell know where they **didn't** get that info from! 😆
I love this deep dive! by far the best video on understanding Pet Sounds and can't wait for the SMiLE videos
Thank you!
Sinatra had not been on Capitol since 1960, when he started Reprise, but undoubtedly his old Capitol LPs were still selling well. The death of Nat King Cole in February 1965 was a big blow to Capitol. The Beatles and BBs were definitely now the biggest sellers on the label, so their non-plussed reaction to Pet Sounds is inexplicable. They could not have thought the BBs were passé in 1966 -- that perspective would only come a year or so later.
You’re right about Sinatra - sorry about that, I was thrown by some erroneous entries saying Strangers In The Night was on Capitol.
It does beggar belief that Capitol would have thought The Beach Boys passé by 1966 but the evidence is there that Capitol was trying to force them not to change, and was ready to throw the whole works if they tried.
It does make it all the more curious why they went along with SMILE even before GV came out. That’s a rabbit hole I plan to go down later.
I'm only halfway through the video and wow, this whole series, but especially this deep dive into Pet Sounds needs archiving because it really is the most acessible but detailed account out there.
Thank you so, so much, though I hope you don't know something I don't! Am I about to be canceled?
@karmafrog1 No no. I'm just pessimistically imagining the future demise of UA-cam.
@@thegigglertreatment2 ah yeah. Sigh.
I was a big fan of the BBs in the 60s but I never heard of Caroline No in 1966 until later in the year I bought the album.
I may be wrong, but I think Pet Sounds was partially hurt by Brian's strict-at-the-time "no stereo mix" policy. More sophisticated record buyers who would have appreciated the innovations of the album and could afford stereo equipment may have been turned off by the mono mix (which buries so much genius!) and would likely not have even considered the Duophonic mix.
Really interesting point. I wonder how big of a record buying pool that would have been in '66.
It's been on record that Mike, before TM, was smoking pot and drinking. And yes, Beach Boys album covers have always been amaturistic. Even the Dean Torrence @Kttyhawk Graphics covers. And didn't the BBs get banned from the San Diego Zoo after this shoot? Poor Al!
By '66, Sinatra was already on his own label, Reprise.
Yeah, I know, I got messed up by a bad internet entry.
very good job on this, you combine common sense conclusions based upon what facts are available. Something I can't recall reading: has anyone ever spoken to any 1966 Capitol execs. regarding their treatment of Pet Sounds and the Beach Boys? If not, what we're dealing with is hearsay and assumption. I do however agree with your conclusions. Great job on this
That's very true; we mostly only have the band's word for things (though it's, as I said, a unanimous perspective among all the members - a rarity). I did come across one insider who said something to the effect of Capitol probably wanting to release Best of to pad the sales that quarter to their expectations. I couldn't source it, I don't recall where I read that quote, so I didn't include it.
It's hard though to get past the Best of the Beach Boys being certified gold in '67, but the paperwork from Pet Sounds being lost.
It's true Capitol was not a "rock" label, but there really were no album-oriented "rock" labels in 1966. Rock music was for teens, and teens bought singles, but how many "rock" singles-oriented labels were there? I was watching the Wrecking Crew documentary, and the narrator described the period as "the rock era," but tellingly, none of the Wrecking Crew themselves did. Given the huge output and commerciality of rock music of the period, this seems strange to us, but it cannot be overstated how anyone over the age of 20 at the time (including Brian) thought of rock music as teenage music and therefore frivolous, unserious -- something that older musicians were embarrassed to play (hence the emphasis on "it was a paycheck" ... "I had a family to feed"). Perspectives changed in the 1970s, and it is only in retrospect that the Wrecking Crew et al. now happily accept being contributors to "the rock era."
Yes, that's correct, I just didn't think it was really worth making that point, because the key question is whether Capitol understood its own marketplace or not. They clearly had people on staff whose job it was to know, and the band had issues with Capitol's marketing not just retrospectively, but in the moment. The folk rock boom had happened, the Beatles had happened. Things were changing rapidly. Other more nimble labels were figuring out how to tap the market that was being created. Whether you want to call it "rock" or "teen," it doesn't matter. It's still a question of selling platters to the folks buying them. Interestingly, the Raspberries' experience indicates Capitol hadn't really gotten any better at this once they were solidly in the nominally rock era of the '70s.
Keith Moon loved surf music because he loved Hal Blaine's drumming on Jan & Dean's records.
Yes very true, and relevant to what was said in the video, envied Dennis’ drum chair and would have left The Who for it. Source: Pete Townshend.
Re: "The Best of The Beach Boys." I wonder if this release simply had to do with the BBs promising two or three albums a year (were they contractually obligated to do so?). The timing and track listing is, as you say, strange. But Parlophone released "A Collection of Beatles Oldies" in Dec. 1966 while "Revolver" was only five months old. Columbia released Dylan's "Greatest Hits" (mostly hits by other artists) in March '67. Most likely all these artists had agreements in which they were to deliver "x" number of albums a year, an obligation that they now found impossible.
It was released only 7 weeks after PET SOUNDS, in early July, before “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” came out as a single and whilst PET SOUNDS was still high in the charts. If Capitol’s concern was filling the contract (that seems more like a band problem to me and Brian did NOT want Best Of released), they had four more months to do it.
Seeing as Capitol had a negative reaction to Pet Sounds, one wonders if someone at the label placed a transatlantic call to Brian Epstein or George Martin when Revolver was sent to them and bellowed, "Tomorrow Never Knows, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! YOU GOT US IN ENOUGH TROUBLE WITH THAT BUTCHER COVER!!!" Or, for that matter, lyrics like "I know what it's like to be dead." Or Eleanor Rigby, I can just hear it from the label honchos, "DEPRESSING, AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE ISN'T GOING TO RELATE TO THIS! ASSEMBLE A BEST OF THE BEATLES AND MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THAT BELOVED HIT SINGLE MR. MOONLIGHT!"😉 One also wonders what Capitol's reaction was to Paperback Writer and Rain, the former with its aggressive instrumentation and the latter with its druggy atmosphere and backwards vocals at the end of the song.
The butcher cover was not intended as an insult to Capitol. The Beatles had no control over how their albums were assembled outside of Parlophone, and were not as hyper-obsessive about how their records were marketed internationally as their post-60s fans are. The first time they tried to actually assert some control (the butcher), it was a financial disaster. Of course all this changed with Sgt. Pepper.
Well hence the wording "believed to be." I did spend a decent amount of time researching this, and based on the various sources I looked at I don't think there is a definitive answer to this question. While some sources say it was not directed at Capitol, other sources state that it was. On that basis the statement I put in the video is accurate as worded.
Perhaps you can clarify something ... I thought that in 1964 or even earlier the BBs made a deal with Capitol that they would produce (and pay for) their own recordings. Is that wrong? Why did Capitol have to pay for the album under this agreement?
I actually don’t know and it’s a very good question. I will find out.
I'm pretty sure that Capitol funded the sessions of their artists, the costs being then deducted from the product sales. Check any AFM contract of the time: the employer is listed as Capitol, not The Beach Boys, right up to late 1967.
I'm unclear on whether the UK publicity (including Bruce's trip) gave the impression that BB's themselves played all the instruments on Pet Sounds. I suspect that the studio musicians -- if they were mentioned at all -- were de-emphasized and downplayed. The impression given was that these guys were super musicians as well as super vocalists. The '66 tour to the UK must have been a supreme let-down to audiences. They were expecting to hear not only all the songs from Pet Sounds, but the songs played like Pet Sounds. Instead they mostly got the pre-Pet Sounds songs, and songs from PS stripped down to garage band level. So their reputation would have taken a hit there also, but not enough to affect record sales, as in the USA.
My understanding is the ‘66 shows were very well received but the ones in ‘67 encountered a lot of problems. “Barbara Ann” and “I Get Around” were big hits so British audiences may have had no problem with their presentation. Perhaps someone who was there could chime in with their first hand impressions.
What a great analysis. I got Pet Sounds when I had just turned 13 and have loved and listened to it all these years. However I learned many things I did not know with your part 1 and part 2. Really looking forward to part 3. Thanks.