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| Ten Thousand Motels |
The Day That Changed Rock ’n’ Roll
American Heritage magazine.
Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds, both released May 16, 1966.
Forty years ago today, on May 16, 1966, American rock music grew up. Two of the most ambitious albums to date were released on that day. They were Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Forget all the soda-pop dreams chirped over basic chords that preceded that day. These two albums heralded a new era of sophisticated songwriting.
By the mid-1960s America had all but surrendered to the British invasion. Rubber Soul had established the Beatles as rock ’n’ roll’s premiere innovators, and British bands dominated the charts. With the exception of Motown, most of American pop was bland and predictable, and the Beach Boys were masters of pleasant innocence. Their first nationally released single was 1962’s “Surfin’ Safari.” “Early in the morning we’ll be startin’ out/ Some honeys will be comin’ along,” they crooned over an ingenuous melody in Southern California surf style. The catchy tune helped the song chart, and after that they were a hit factory, singing about surfing, cars, and young romance.
While his high-pitched voice proclaimed his carefree love of fun and sun, Brian Wilson, the group’s composer, was cracking under the pressure of fame. After a nervous breakdown in 1964 he stopped touring and devoted himself to developing his songwriting talents. He worked feverishly, inspired by the Beatles’ Rubber Soul to push the boundaries of his previous music. “I wanted to write an album like that,” he later said. “Where it all seemed like a collection of folk songs.” The resulting record, a 13-song cycle that proceeds from the euphoria of new love to the disillusionment at the end of a relationship, owes as much to Aaron Copland as to the Beatles. Wilson took the backbone of a pop song—conventional guitars, a driving rhythm section, and a winning melody—and obscured it with an impasto of disquieting and sophisticated harmonies, sound effects, and a collection of weird instruments including harpsichord, theremin, and dog whistle. This was all topped off by poignant, introspective lyrics co-written with Tony Asher.
Wilson also experimented with new production methods, borrowing from the record producer Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” technique, layering tracks to create startling reverb and dissonance. Despite this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to instrumentation, the songs ended up with a stunning musical clarity. “Here Today” has the triumphal orchestral sweep of a Rodgers and Hammerstein overture; “You Still Believe in Me” is a spare, even eerie piece, with a creeping harpsichord line.
Despite its lack of commercial success, the album has had long-lasting and far-reaching influence. Paul McCartney declared, “It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. . . . No one is educated musically until they’ve heard that album.” After the Beatles heard it they began to consider new musical possibilities. It was a major influence on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and it continues to be considered required listening, especially for indie groups that emphasize harmony, like Staint Etienne and the Pernice Brothers. In 1995 a poll of musicians, songwriters, and producers conducted by the British music magazine Mojo voted Pet Sounds the greatest album ever made.
Bob Dylan said of Brian Wilson, “That ear—I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.” Dylan, possessing a brilliant musical ear himself, first headlined in Greenwich Village in 1961, singing folk songs. Claiming to have jumped a boxcar to New York, he was inhabiting a persona based on Woody Guthrie and was thought to be poised to be the next folk hero. Then he did the unthinkable. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival he stunned the audience by appearing onstage with an electric guitar and playing a blisteringly loud set backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
In quick succession he released Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, two albums of his electric rock-blues-folk hybrid, and he continued to play electric sets, to the consternation of many of his fans. He was booed in concert and dogged by criticism for plugging in and selling out. Blonde on Blonde, released a year after Newport, was his declaration of independence. It proved that he would not be intimidated. He would go forward, not back, setting the bar for musical innovation for decades. And the album proved that this leap could be commercially viable. It reached number nine on the American charts.
Blonde on Blonde, rock ’n’ roll’s first big double LP, consists of 14 sprawling tracks that defied musical convention in terms of genre, lyrics, and even time (“Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” lasts more than 11 minutes). It’s part carnival, part big-tent revival, and part troubadour. It contains sweet, whimsical love songs, rough blues, surreal folk ballads, forays into country, and fistfuls of rock ’n’ roll.
The lyrics are pure Beat poetry. Dylan’s strange nasal voice caterwauling about Shakespeare chatting up “some French girl” and half-whining about jellyfish women sneezing is backed by the work of the organist Al Kooper, the expert session drummer Kenneth Buttry, and the guitarist Robbie Robertson. “A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan’s stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley,” wrote the critic Tim Riley. Dylan himself called album “the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my head . . . that thin, that wild mercury sound . . . metallic and bright gold sound.”
Since Blonde on Blonde Dylan has released nearly 30 more albums of original material, from the traditional country of Nashville Skyline to the strange, bitter tunes of Time Out of Mind, which owe as much to John Keats as to Buddy Holly. He has continued to explore new creative modes. The Beach Boys stalled out after Pet Sounds, coasting on surf music nostalgia without Wilson. Smile, his ambitious follow-up to Pet Sounds, languished unreleased as he disappeared from public view to battle his personal demons, until it was reworked in 2004 as a solo album. It has received much critical acclaim, but it’s uneven, with magisterial pieces like “Heroes and Villains” up against slight ditties like “Vega-tables.”
Pet Sounds remains the pinnacle of Wilson’s career. With Blonde on Blonde, it represents a giant leap forward for American rock ’n’ roll songwriting. Both albums broke conventions, set new standards, and urged musicians to be more ambitious. Since 1966, every songwriter has had to come to terms with those influential records. American music hasn’t been the same since.
—Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.
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| glencar |
Blonde On Blonde - YES!
Pet Sounds - nah. |
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| Spru |
Why wasn't there an article a few days back about Exile? now THAT was truly a day and an album which changed rock and the world of music forever. |
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| ebmp |
quote:
Spru wrote:
Why wasn't there an article a few days back about Exile? now THAT was truly a day and an album which changed rock and the world of music forever.
Because sadly Exile is like a hidden gem. People don't seem to know it as much as Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde.
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| parmeda |
Good read, 10K...but for some reason, I thought your thread would have something to do with Buddy Holly's death.
Nevermind.
...carry on. |
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| Gazza |
quote:
Spru wrote:
Why wasn't there an article a few days back about Exile? now THAT was truly a day and an album which changed rock and the world of music forever.
I dont think it did. IMO its the best of the 3 of them, but the other two were more ground breaking and innovative for their time. |
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| pdog |
quote:
parmeda wrote:
Good read, 10K...but for some reason, I thought your thread would have something to do with Buddy Holly's death.
Nevermind.
...carry on.
Upcoming Birthday:
Joey Ramone 19 May 1951 RIP
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| Soldatti |
quote:
ebmp wrote:
Because sadly Exile is like a hidden gem. People don't seem to know it as much as Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde.
You nailed it, Exile is a fan favorite and not a mass classic. |
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| FrankiePeppers |
quote:
parmeda wrote:
Good read, 10K...but for some reason, I thought your thread would have something to do with Buddy Holly's death.
Nevermind.
...carry on.
That was my first guess, but what about Elvis on Ed Sullivan? |
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| BILL PERKS |
quote:
FrankiePeppers wrote:
That was my first guess, but what about Elvis on Ed Sullivan?
WHAT ABOUT THE STONES ON GRAMMY'S 1986?WORLD PREMIERE OF THE HARLEM SHUFFLE VIDEO |
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| glencar |
Some referred to that video as a "coon show" and did not like it at all. They were wrong, like usual. |
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| Poplar |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Blonde On Blonde - YES!
Pet Sounds - nah.
Blonde On Blonde - YES!
Pet Sounds - YES!
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| corgi37 |
Both albums and both artists leave me cold and shivering. |
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