The Beatles vs The Beach Boys

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea · 03-06-2013, 11:20 PM

Hello everyone, new to the board. I stumbled across this thread while posting on the Smiley Smile board (the biggest Beach Boys board) and decided to chime in on the discussion.

If you had asked me a year ago which was the better band, the Beatles or the Beach Boys, I would have responded, "Duh! The Beatles!" I had been a Beatles fan since I was a teen in the late 70's-early 80's, and had been a HUGE Beatles fan since I really got into them somewhere in the mid-late 80's. Since then, Rubber Soul has been my favorite album and "Girl" my all time favorite song.

About 10 years ago I read online that the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds had been written in response to Rubber Soul, and that McCartney had high praise for it. To be honest, before that I don't think I had ever heard of the album - growing up almost NO ONE I knew listened to the Beach Boys (my older sister had Endless Summer for a while I recall, but it's not like a major thing she listened to). All I knew about the BB's was their hit fun-and-sun songs and maybe a few others. So, curious, I went out and bought Pet Sounds.

Over the next several years I would listen to it occasionally. It was nice - I liked Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop John B and God Only Knows (which did make me cry on occasion, like it did to Macca). A few other songs sounded decent but didn't really jump out at me.

About 4-5 years ago I bought a 'Best of the Beach Boys' album, mostly when I was in a "summer-y" mood driving my car. After a while I did start to get into Good Vibrations, and a few other songs. Sometime last spring - I think it was March or April - I happened to read online that GV was originally supposed to be on an abandoned project called Smile, which had become "the world's most famous unreleased album" in the intervening years. And, several months beforehand, they had *finally* released something that was kinda-sorta what the album might have been like, using the session tapes. The fact it had been dubbed "the world's most famous unreleased album" intrigued me enough to go out and buy it.

That changed everything.

OK, so when you first listen to the thing it seems like this jumble of mashed-together parts that often don't seem to fit well together ... but some of those individual parts were simply fantastic. In fact they were good-enough to inspire me to keep listening to the album. And the more I listened to it, the better it got. Parts of songs that didn't seem to fit together at first, gradually made sense next to each other. What were, at first, jarring interruptions gradually became more like the ying and yang of a song - unrelated but necessary parts of a whole. And so on. Even now, almost a year after buying the album and being on probably my 30th listen, I have only recently "got" some parts of some songs. Patience has proven fruitful.

Anyway, to make what is already a long story as short as possible, soon after I started "getting" Smile I began re-listening to Pet Sounds, and started noticing and appreciating things I didn't before. After having considered Pet Sounds good, but not great, for several years, I now see why it's considered by many to be one of the greatest pop albums ever. I also started buying more and more Beach Boys CD's, exploring their music. Let's just say there are masterpieces I had never heard before, and even a lot of those fun-and-sun songs, and the teeny-bopper songs, suddenly were a lot better written and more sophisticated than I had ever noticed before.

So now, almost a year later, if you ask me, which is the better band, the Beatles or the Beach Boys ... I'm not sure I could answer the question. Clearly Brian Wilson was a better songwriter than any of the Beatles. The only question is, is a band with one songwriter rated 10 on a 1-10 scale better than a band with two songwriters rated 9 on that same scale? That's a tough question to answer.

What I would like to do, for all the folks here who, like me a year ago, don't really understand how the Beach Boys (gasp!) could possibly be better than the Beatles, is do my 2 cents to demonstrate how this can be possible. I will later be doing a bunch of comparisons of what I call "reasonably comparable songs" which, I hope, will show that the Beach Boys were really, truly keeping artistic pace with the Beatles. I hope the Beach Boys skeptics will be patient and listen to these comparisons. While some of you may not like the Beach Boys musical style, or some other aspect of them, I hope you can see the art in their songs, which was every bit as good as the Beatles.

Cheers.

03-06-2013, 11:20 PM	#11 (permalink)
DriveYourCarDownToTheSea AllTheWhileYouChargeAFee Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Kansas City Posts: 1,186	Drive your car down to the sea ... Hello everyone, new to the board. I stumbled across this thread while posting on the Smiley Smile board (the biggest Beach Boys board) and decided to chime in on the discussion. If you had asked me a year ago which was the better band, the Beatles or the Beach Boys, I would have responded, "Duh! The Beatles!" I had been a Beatles fan since I was a teen in the late 70's-early 80's, and had been a HUGE Beatles fan since I really got into them somewhere in the mid-late 80's. Since then, Rubber Soul has been my favorite album and "Girl" my all time favorite song. About 10 years ago I read online that the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds had been written in response to Rubber Soul, and that McCartney had high praise for it. To be honest, before that I don't think I had ever heard of the album - growing up almost NO ONE I knew listened to the Beach Boys (my older sister had Endless Summer for a while I recall, but it's not like a major thing she listened to). All I knew about the BB's was their hit fun-and-sun songs and maybe a few others. So, curious, I went out and bought Pet Sounds. Over the next several years I would listen to it occasionally. It was nice - I liked Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop John B and God Only Knows (which did make me cry on occasion, like it did to Macca). A few other songs sounded decent but didn't really jump out at me. About 4-5 years ago I bought a 'Best of the Beach Boys' album, mostly when I was in a "summer-y" mood driving my car. After a while I did start to get into Good Vibrations, and a few other songs. Sometime last spring - I think it was March or April - I happened to read online that GV was originally supposed to be on an abandoned project called Smile, which had become "the world's most famous unreleased album" in the intervening years. And, several months beforehand, they had finally released something that was kinda-sorta what the album might have been like, using the session tapes. The fact it had been dubbed "the world's most famous unreleased album" intrigued me enough to go out and buy it. That changed everything. OK, so when you first listen to the thing it seems like this jumble of mashed-together parts that often don't seem to fit well together ... but some of those individual parts were simply fantastic. In fact they were good-enough to inspire me to keep listening to the album. And the more I listened to it, the better it got. Parts of songs that didn't seem to fit together at first, gradually made sense next to each other. What were, at first, jarring interruptions gradually became more like the ying and yang of a song - unrelated but necessary parts of a whole. And so on. Even now, almost a year after buying the album and being on probably my 30th listen, I have only recently "got" some parts of some songs. Patience has proven fruitful. Anyway, to make what is already a long story as short as possible, soon after I started "getting" Smile I began re-listening to Pet Sounds, and started noticing and appreciating things I didn't before. After having considered Pet Sounds good, but not great, for several years, I now see why it's considered by many to be one of the greatest pop albums ever. I also started buying more and more Beach Boys CD's, exploring their music. Let's just say there are masterpieces I had never heard before, and even a lot of those fun-and-sun songs, and the teeny-bopper songs, suddenly were a lot better written and more sophisticated than I had ever noticed before. So now, almost a year later, if you ask me, which is the better band, the Beatles or the Beach Boys ... I'm not sure I could answer the question. Clearly Brian Wilson was a better songwriter than any of the Beatles. The only question is, is a band with one songwriter rated 10 on a 1-10 scale better than a band with two songwriters rated 9 on that same scale? That's a tough question to answer. What I would like to do, for all the folks here who, like me a year ago, don't really understand how the Beach Boys (gasp!) could possibly be better than the Beatles, is do my 2 cents to demonstrate how this can be possible. I will later be doing a bunch of comparisons of what I call "reasonably comparable songs" which, I hope, will show that the Beach Boys were really, truly keeping artistic pace with the Beatles. I hope the Beach Boys skeptics will be patient and listen to these comparisons. While some of you may not like the Beach Boys musical style, or some other aspect of them, I hope you can see the art in their songs, which was every bit as good as the Beatles. Cheers.