Sixty years since The Beach Boys released what is regarded by many as the greatest album of all time, Al Jardine is still mad about the cover art.
Pet Sounds famously (or infamously, depending on who you’re talking to) depicts the California band – Carl, Brian and Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Jardine (Bruce Johnston wasn’t able to appear on the cover for contractual reasons) – feeding apples to goats at San Diego Zoo.
“It’s a mess,” Jardine complained to The Independent, ahead of celebrations to mark six decades since the record’s release on 16 May 1966. “Crappy album cover. Just stupid.”
Paul McCartney agreed, the musician said, recalling a remark the band received from the Beatles star to “watch your artwork”.
“It’s just silly, you know,” Jardine continued, “but sometimes the art department doesn’t talk to the music department. I think that’s probably what happened. It could have been a whole lot better.”
To add injury to insult, Jardine recalled that one of the goats (“the big white one”) bit him while they were taking pictures.
However, Jardine, 83, still has plenty of fond memories of recording Pet Sounds. “It feels just like yesterday,” he said. “It’s hard to believe all that time has passed.”
He recalled how the band were in Japan when they received a call from Brian Wilson, who by then had stopped touring after suffering a devastating panic attack during a flight to Houston.
“He wanted us to come home immediately – he was so excited about this new project, and of course we were anxious to hear what it was,” Jardine said.
Often, the rest of The Beach Boys would arrive at the studio without being told what they’d be recording: “Brian would say, ‘I want you to sing the lead on this...’ He was a producer, and he knew what he wanted.”
Jardine noted that the songwriting on Pet Sounds was “a little darker” than what fans were used to, certainly a departure from the carefree sound of early songs such as “Fun, Fun, Fun”, “Surfin’ USA” or “I Get Around”.
“It was really a Brian Wilson album, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “It was his feelings, primarily, his creation, and he was experimenting. It was his album, and really, we were just background singers. We were there to help him out.”
He added: “We always respected Brian’s creative approach, anything he brought to the table – and he respected us.”
There were many occasions when Wilson’s bandmates made contributions beyond those gorgeous harmonies heard on songs such as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” or “God Only Knows”.
Jardine, for instance, conceived the idea of covering the folk song “Sloop John B”, although he had to convince Wilson, who died last year, first: “We both got sidetracked immediately by Dennis with all that surfing stuff,” he joked, having first suggested a version of the song years before.
“Finally, I got a chance to do it, and I said, ‘Brian, we’ll turn it into a Beach Boys song, because it has great harmony potential.’ But it eventually gravitated onto the album, because he didn’t want to put ‘Good Vibrations’ on the record – which I thought was a mistake,” Jardine said of the iconic single.
“That’s the only time we really ever had a disagreement. But I felt strongly about ‘Good Vibrations’.”
Limited all-analogue vinyl editions of Pet Sounds, including a One Step mono pressing and a Sessions Highlights release of alternative takes and a cappellas, are out on 15 May. Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band are touring from June.
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