You Don’t Know the Real Beatles Until You’ve Heard Sgt. Pepper’s in Mono

In the spring of 1966, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys flew over to London. An acetate of the yet-to-be-released Pet Sounds was tucked securely under his arm. Like a high-ranking diplomat on a crucial mission, he had one and only one urgent assignment: to play the pioneering LP for John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

When they heard it, Lennon and McCartney immediately understood that a new standard had been set for album-length pop music. But just as significantly, they also grasped the conceptual core of the album: The Beach Boys’ master composer and artistic strategist, Brian Wilson, had created a work that lovingly integrated a century of American pop, vaudeville, classical and folk tics into a user-friendly avant-psychedelic landscape.

Even more remarkably, this modernist valentine to the past never seemed pretentious, not even for one moment. Lennon and McCartney also understood that Brian Wilson had the courage to make music that reflected the cultural DNA inside every American musician, even citing the genes that had been discarded as unhip or archaic. Within hours, Lennon and McCartney decided to attempt to do something very similar.

They would make a state-of-the-art pop album that puffed with the acid-breath of the High ’60s while sourcing the Fabs’ unique cultural vernacular: the music halls, pub sing-alongs, ratty rained-on circuses and shabby Pier entertainments of the north of England.

By: Tim Sommer

Source: Observer

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