The Beach Boys

Throughout the 60s a battle raged across the Atlantic between The Beatles and The Beach Boys as they pushed each other to ever greater heights of experimentation. The Beach Boys offering in 1966 was Pet Sounds.

Starting out as a family band knocking out simple surfing hits, the band's leader, Brian Wilson, soon began to experiment with drugs and with music. He became aware that his contemporaries were pushing back the boundaries of what could be achieved in the recording studio.

Free from the constraints of his father, himself a frustrated song-writer, Brian listened to 1965's Rubber Soul by The Beatles and knew that he had to match, if not better, Lennon and McCartney's latest effort.

With the rest of the band away touring, the increasingly reclusive Wilson ignored band-mate Mike Love's instruction to not muck about with the formula and began writing and recording his masterpiece, Pet Sounds.

When released in 1966 it contained classics like Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop John B and God Only Knows (the first time the word God had been used in a pop song). Pet Sounds wasn't the sales success the band had hoped for, but its legacy was important. Just as Rubber Soul had raised the bar for Brian Wilson, so Pet Sounds pushed Lennon and McCartney onto greater heights on their next release - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Listen to Brian Jones talk about Pet Sounds.