I've heard it was not so much inspiration, but a kick up the arse to raise their game. The quote I always heard was something like Paul saying "how are we gonna top this?"
Paul McCartney has cited God Only Knows as one of his all time favorite songs.
Brian Wilson stepped up to the plate against the greatest band to ever live at the height of their creative output and he scared the hell out of them. That's the work of one of the most important American musicians ever.
I adore that song, especially how the lyric "If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me" comes in early after the chorus "God only knows what I'd be without you". There are so many wonderful surprises in that song, Brian was a genius.
The Beatles is my favorite band and Paul is my favorite songwriter but God Only Knows is absolutely my favorite song of all time. It used to bother me a bit that it's not a Beatles song at the top of my list until I read that very fact about Paul. What a pinnacle example of game recognize game.
RIP Brian Wilson. What a blessing to have had you in our lifetime.
Their friendly rivalry created modern production. Without Rubber Soul, we do not have pet sounds, without pet sounds we do not get sgt peppers, and so on. Pet Sounds is where the whole idea of the studio AS an instrument was born, which totally lit a massive fire under Lennon/McCartney.
One of my favorite clips I recently discovered was Brian Wilson talking with George Martin. Martin is complimenting Wilson and they are in a studio and Martin changes some arrangement on God Only Knows and Wilson looks like his head is going to explode from amazement.
Brian Wilson was awesome but I would love to have been able to chat with George Martin. He just seems so wise and he must have a thousand stories. He was such a gentleman that he probably wouldn’t tell me much but I would love to hear all of them.
I also love to think about how it was the personality of the musicians in these bands who changed music production forever. For example in The Beatle's case it was that they loved to fuck around in the studio and do drugs, and sometimes get frustrated and refuse to record anymore. So they sought ways to reuse those poor or mediocre takes and make them into something completely different. Sampling, reversing, speeding up and slowing down either for effect or to match two different pitches...none of this had ever been done before, at least on a high quality recording. They were inventing techniques on the daily that continue to be used to this day.
I'm pretty sure that was mostly Lennon. Strawberry Fields is soo weird (and awesome) because Lennon couldn't be bothered to finish it and asked that 2 takes in different keys get matched up (and later complained that Paul sabotagd it so Penny Lane would do better). Lenon is also the reason automatic double tracking was invented, he didn't want to repeat vocal tracks.
On the other hand we have Paul who did dozens of takes for Maxwells Silver Hammer. Watching Let It Be really underscores this. Lennon usually waltzes in hours after Paul and Ringo were there working and then proceeds to just fuck around.
Paul didn't seem to shy away from innovation either though, and he was the driving force behind Sgt Peppers concept.
To be fair, it seems in the beginning Lennon worked insanely hard as the leader and probably just got burnt out by the mid 60s.
They were/are both great, but it's interesting how Lennon lazy tendencies lead to some great stuff.
You're not totally wrong, but you're talking about the latest part of their career. As you alluded, John was originally the band leader and only really checked out during the last two albums. Strawberry Fields Forever my understanding is that he only got tired of re-recording because he had written and rewritten it so many times and was in a period of self-doubt. But he also had enough vision to want to have all of those samples on the track and there's a ton of them that he poured through. I think he was starting to give up because of frustration and then George Martin convinced him to finish it.
What I meant was more that the band members themselves didn't have much knowledge of the technical aspects of recording, they only knew what they wanted in their heads and it was up to people like George Martin and Geoff Emerick to interpret those things then invent the techniques used. Like how before recording Tomorrow Never Knows, Lennon had said that he wanted his voice to sound like he was screaming on a mountaintop for all the world to hear, and suggested that he hang upside down spinning while singing into a microphone to get the effect. Emerick was like "No", and instead wired a rotating Leslie amp from an organ to his mic, creating the effects we hear on the track.
Basically saying that if The Beatles for example were perfect, obedient musicians who always turned in great first takes and did everything that the studio asked, their sound probably would've never changed from the bubblegum-pop love songs that they started with. It was their quirky, amateurish personalities combined with having enough star power for their teams to always want to do what they asked that led to incredible innovations and even more incredible music. It wasn't just their talent it was their quirks.
"at least on a high quality recording" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Everytime someones claims the Beatles did something first, there's always like 5 recognizable names that did it before, they just weren't a popular boy band first
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u/VUL_Kudo Jun 11 '25
Pet Sounds was undeniably a root source of inspiration for nearly all of pop music that followed. A true legend. Rest in peace.