Brian Wilson is 80

June 20, 2022

Happy birthday to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys!

He wrote so many great songs, often seeming simple but with subtle sophistication. “Good Vibrations” stretched the envelope of pop/rock music beyond the usual verse/chorus/repeat formula. Wikipedia says it influenced the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I’d also suggest it could have inspired Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” — think of how both songs get slower and quieter with an interlude in the middle: “Gotta keep those lovin’ good vibrations happening …”

More from Wikipedia:

The making of “Good Vibrations” was unprecedented for any kind of recording. Building on his approach for Pet Sounds, Wilson recorded a surplus of short, interchangeable musical fragments with his bandmates and a host of session musicians at four different Hollywood studios from February to September 1966, a process reflected in the song’s several dramatic shifts in key, texture, instrumentation and mood. Over 90 hours of tape was consumed in the sessions. … Band publicist Derek Taylor dubbed the unusual work a “pocket symphony.” It helped develop the use of the studio as an instrument and heralded a wave of pop experimentation and the onset of psychedelic and progressive rock.

“Don’t Talk, Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” from Pet Sounds, is a beautiful song for when words feel beside the point.

In our time of anxiety, maybe we need this: “Don’t Worry Baby.”

Paul McCartney turns 80

June 18, 2022

Happy birthday to Paul McCartney!

All four of the Beatles are/were so great, but as time goes on it’s become clearer and clearer to me that Paul is my favorite Beatle. Why? Partly because of his songwriting, his singing, and his playing of multiple instruments; he’s one of the all-time great innovators on bass.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon both can’t be pigeonholed. They worked together and took on each others’ qualities. Yes Paul wrote soft, lovely pieces like “Yesterday” and “Blackbird” …

… but he also pioneered heavy rock with “Helter Skelter” on the White Album in 1968 (before Led Zeppelin put out their first album).

And sometimes we get both sides in one song: “The End.”

He was the clear extravert of the Beatles … yet “For No One” is beautifully introspective, and even a song as extraverted as “Hey Jude” has a contemplative side.

John rightly gets much of the credit for “A Day in the Life,” which is often said to be the artistic high point of the Beatles’ oeuvre — but it wouldn’t have achieved those heights if it had been all John. Music is all about context, and the dissonant orchestral frenzy wouldn’t have been as interesting if it had gone from John back to John again. It needs to give way to Paul waking up and reeling off the details of his ordinary life, before drifting off into a dream.

When paying tribute to a singer/songwriter, the natural tendency is to focus on that person’s songs, but Paul also helped make other people’s songs great. John Lennon’s “Dear Prudence” is grounded by Paul’s bass line, before reaching ecstasy through Paul’s drum fills. George Harrison’s “Something” sounds so wonderful thanks in part to Paul’s melodic bass playing and tenor harmony vocals.

Beyond his stunning talents, there’s something more intangible about Paul: a sense of humility and decency. He puts aside rock ’n’ roll bombast and arrogance to sing about ordinary people like Eleanor Rigby and the residents of Penny Lane — the nurse who “feels as if she’s in a play …”

I like knowing that whenever I buy Beatles products, such as my Abbey Road guitar strap, I can be assured they’re not made from animal products. That’s because of Paul’s commitment to fighting cruelty to animals. While some stars glorify themselves, Paul puts a spotlight on the other inhabitants of our world.

Paul has been writing songs for over 6 decades, since he was a teenager. It’s hard to believe he was only 27 when the Beatles broke up — by that point they had evolved so much. Sir Paul was still evolving in his late 70s when he wrote “Deep Deep Feeling,” an epic musical and emotional journey. Amazing that in 2020, he sang and played everything on this song:



The parts where he sings “So intense the joy of giving/How does it feel?” give me chills.