Beatles vs Stones may be the most well-known rivalry in the history of pop music, but it's a rivalry that always seemed a little superficial, more based on image and stylistic preferences than anything else. It's easy to see why those two extremely popular British bands were pitted against each other, but when it came to innovations in the songwriting, arrangements, and production of pop music in the 1960s, The Beatles' greatest rivals were The Beach Boys.
Like The Beatles and the Stones, The Beatles and The Beach Boys weren't actually enemies; they were friends and they were both fans of -- and influenced by -- each other's music. Their creative rivalry wasn't invented by the press like Beatles vs Stones partially was; it was a very real competition that existed at every turn of each band's career. The Beatles' Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson to write Pet Sounds, which in turn was a massive influence on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and its pre-release, non-album single "Strawberry Fields Forever," the very song that caused Brian to abandon his storied Smile album, claiming The Beatles had already achieved what Smile had set out to do. Pop music was advancing so quickly in the 1960s, and it was largely because its two leading bands were constantly trying to outshine each other.
1966 - Pet Sounds, Revolver, "Good Vibrations," and the Arrival of Psychedelic Pop
The Beatles were listening closely to The Beach Boys when they wrote Rubber Soul, and Brian Wilson was listening right back. "Rubber Soul is probably the greatest record ever," Brian wrote in his memoir I Am Brian Wilson. "[It] came out in December of 1965 and sent me right to the piano bench," he said. "It wasn’t just the lyrics and the melodies but the production and their harmonies... [it was] almost art music." The song that came out when Brian went to his piano and tried to top Rubber Soul? "God Only Knows," which Paul McCartney later called his favorite song of all time.
"God Only Knows" is indeed one of the greatest songs of all time, but Brian wasn't content to stop there. He wanted to make a grand, album-length statement just like The Beatles did, and that statement was Pet Sounds. Brian was fully in the director's chair, handling songwriting, production, arrangements, and the bulk of the lead vocals (with lyrical co-writing by Tony Asher), and the result was a deeply personal, psychedelic, baroque pop album that pushed the boundaries of pop music further than he or anyone else had yet. There's not an ounce of filler, and -- with the help of over 40 session musicians -- it was some of the most intricately arranged pop music that anyone in 1966 would have heard.
Among those listening? The Beatles of course. The influence of Pet Sounds would fully reveal itself on 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but it already crept into The Beatles music on 1966's Revolver; "Here, There and Everywhere," which was one of the last songs Paul wrote for Revolver, was said to be directly inspired by Pet Sounds. Like Brian Wilson, The Beatles and producer George Martin were growing increasingly interested in string and horn arrangements on Revolver, which showed on the definitive baroque pop of "Eleanor Rigby," the french horn solo on "For No One," and the horn section on "Got To Get You Into My Life." The band and engineer Geoff Emerick were also learning to use the studio as an instrument, coming out with the backwards guitars of the psych-folk gem "I'm Only Sleeping" and the deeply psychedelic "Tomorrow Never Knows." George Harrison was even more into Indian music during the Revolver sessions than he was when making Rubber Soul, as heard on "Love You To," which didn't just use sitar but dove head-first into Indian classical music. The influence of LSD was prevalent all throughout Revolver (and non-album singles "Paperback Writer" and "Rain"). It was the most overtly trippy music that either The Beach Boys or The Beatles had released yet.
1967 - "Strawberry Fields Forever," Sgt. Pepper's, and the Abandonment of Smile
As Brian was setting out to top Pet Sounds, so were The Beatles. "Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper's wouldn't have been made," George Martin once said. "I played [Pet Sounds] to John so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence," Paul said of its influence on Sgt. Pepper's. "If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper. And my influence was basically the Pet Sounds album."
It's easy to hear how Pet Sounds' baroque pop and The Beach Boys' harmonies directly impacted Sgt. Pepper's (and Paul has said Pet Sounds also influenced his melodic basslines on the album), but as they always did, The Beatles took it further. They continued to explore Indian music, folk music, harder-edged acid rock, circus music, vaudeville, and much more, and the way they fused it all together was seamless. The first single to be released from the sessions was a non-album, double A-side single "Penny Lane" / "Strawberry Fields Forever," and it was hearing "Strawberry Fields Forever" -- along with mental health issues and pressure from Capitol Records, Brian's father Murry, and Mike Love -- that caused Brian to abandon his much-hyped Smile album. As legend has it, Brian was driving with his friend Michael Vosse as "Strawberry Fields Forever" came on the radio. He pulled over, listened, and said to his friend, "They did it already - what I wanted to do with Smile. Maybe it's too late."
As we all now know, it wouldn't have been too late, but Brian was not to wrong to interpret "Strawberry Fields Forever" as yet another leap forward in this pop music race. It packaged together everything that was great about mid-to-late '60s Beatles in one song, from the baroque pop string and horn arrangements to the droning Indian influence to the vivid psychedelic imagery to the soaring, sunshine-y vocals. It's one of the most innovative and most gorgeous pop songs ever written.
It's one of pop music's greatest tragedies that Brian abandoned Smile. If he hadn't, there may have been another tie for album of the year in 1967... or maybe Smile would've won. We know now that Smile was as ambitious of an album as "Good Vibrations" was a single, and that it arguably did surpass Sgt. Pepper's in terms of pop music innovation, because the songs trickled out over the years, various versions of Smile were bootlegged and traded between Beach Boys fans, and then Brian released his own re-recording of the album in 2004 followed by the long-awaited release of the original Smile sessions in 2011. But in 1967, the only thing The Beach Boys had to show for it was Smiley Smile, a scrappy home-recorded album that included raw, stripped-down versions of songs from the Smile sessions, a few newer ones, and the single version of "Good Vibrations." (It also allegedly featured a recording of Paul McCartney chewing celery on "Vegetables.") The album was a commercial failure, and many who did hear it considered it an artistic failure too. But this eccentric album had its supporters (like The Who's Pete Townshend), and it went on to become hugely influential on the lo-fi psychedelic pop scene of the '90s and 2000s. Smiley Smile was followed in late 1967 by Wild Honey, which was cut from a very similar cloth but added in a soul/R&B edge (and a Stevie Wonder cover), and is also a lo-fi pop gem. Pop music history as we know it might've been a lot different if Smile came out, but everything happens for a reason, and Smiley Smile and Wild Honey have become a crucial albums of their own, even if most people in the 1960s didn't think they would.
Because Smile does now exist in just about complete form, it's impossible not to wonder what might've happened if it was released in 1967 as originally planned. It's truly the pop masterpiece that Brian always promised it'd be. It helped pioneer the use of song cycles within pop music (and was written with help from Van Dyke Parks, who named his own likeminded 1967 album Song Cycle), with multiple songs that flow directly into each other, songs within songs, and recurring musical and lyrical motifs throughout. It's full of breathtaking highlights like "Surf's Up," "Heroes and Villains," "Cabin Essence," "Wonderful," "Wind Chimes," and more, but it's really an album that you have to hear start to finish. Made up of countless recordings pieced together with extreme attention to detail, as well as some of the most complex arrangements pop music in the 1960s had seen, Smile was far more ambitious than Pet Sounds, and I'd say it was more ambitious than Sgt. Pepper's too. But with Brian's ear for melody and the trademark Beach Boys harmonies intact, it was just as accessible as both of those albums.