60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
2/17/66 – Brian Wilson begins recording The Beach Boys’ hit “Good Vibrations”
It will take several months and several different studios before Brian is satisfied with the results … at the time, it was the most expensive recording session ever for a single.
Brian first picked up on the idea of “vibrations” after a childhood conversation with his mother, who told him that dogs pick up vibrations as to whether or not people are afraid of them or not. The idea stuck (and, quite frankly, kinda freaked him out!!!) … and then during one of his many drug-infused sessions, he came up with the idea of a song about sending out “Good Vibrations.”
Mike Love knocked out the lyrics in no time … but Brian felt the song had to be perfect … so he worked on it for MONTHS, recording it in various segments at different studios … and then re-recording most of those segments because they just didn’t sound right when he listened back to them again. This happened time and time again … to the point that nobody even knew where they were with the track anymore.
Those sessions first kicked off on February 17th, 1966 … 60 YEARS AGO TODAY … and didn’t finish up until The Beach Boys laid down their final vocals on September 21st, some seven months later! When all was said and done, Brian had over 90 hours of tape to sort thru to assemble the “perfect mix.”
Love it or hate it, it was considered revolutionary at the time … there had never been anything else quite like it … and the ‘60’s were a very creative and competitive time. Brian felt that each new Beach Boys album had to be better and more innovative than the last. He also looked to The Beatles as his greatest source of inspiration … and his fiercest competitors. When The Beatles released “Rubber Soul,” Brian was inspired to create “Pet Sounds,” still regarded as one of the greatest recordings of all time.
But he held “Good Vibrations” back … it wasn’t finished … it just wasn’t “perfect” yet.
Then The Beatles did “Revolver” and raised the stakes even higher. (Paul McCartney was blown away by “Pet Sounds” … and knew The Beatles had to top it. Thus, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was born.)
And on and on it went … until Brian just completely burned out and withdrew from the scene. A combination of the drugs … and the self-imposed pressure … proved to be too much … so he decided to just lay in bed for a few years instead.
“Good Vibrations” topped all three of the major music trades … but never at the same time. As such, it never reached #1 on our own Super Charts … which hardly seems fair for a certified #1 Hit. But The Super Charts report the cumulative result of all three major trades on a weekly basis … and “Good Vibrations” never had enough points in a single week to come out on top. As Randy Price told me, it would have been unfair to deny the record that did, just to make things right on paper so that “Good Vibrations” could earn a #1 showing here, too. (The record spent one week at #1 in each of the trades. It reached the top first in Cash Box on their chart dated 11/19; it then went to #1 in Record World the following week, 11/26 … but it didn’t hit #1 in Billboard until 12/10, two weeks after that … so it never had the consistent momentum to earn a #1 Super Chart showing, despite topping all three of the major trades.)
