(Brian Wilson – Terry Sachen – Mike Love)
Working Title 1: Let Go of Your Ego
Working Title 2: Hang On to Your Ego
Music: Brian Wilson
Lyrics: Brian Wilson, Terry Sachen, Mike Love
Instrumental Arrangement: Brian Wilson, assisted by the studio musicians
Vocal Arrangement: Brian Wilson
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
Personnel:
(voices)
Mike Love – verse lead vocals, backing vocals
Al Jardine – verse lead vocals
Brian Wilson – chorus lead vocals
Carl Wilson – backing vocals
(instrumentation)
Al De Lory – tack upright piano [Wegman Cabinet Grand]
Larry Knechtel – electric organ [Hammond C-3]
Glen Campbell – electric 12-string guitar [Mosrite Mark XII] / resonator banjo
Barney Kessel – electric 12-string guitar [Danelectro Bellzouki 7010]
Ray Pohlman – electric 6-string bass [Fender VI]
Lyle Ritz – double bass
Hal Blaine – tambourine
Steve Douglas – tambourine
Julius Wechter – timpani
Robert Klein – flute
Jim Horn – clarinet
Paul Horn – clarinet
Jay Migliori – clarinet
Tommy Morgan – bass harmonica
Carl Wilson – mandolin
Brian Wilson – electronic organ
Recorded to 1/2″ 4-track (4 to 4):
February 9, 1966 (9:00am-1:00pm) / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (track, transfer, ‘Ego’ vocals)
February 14, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (‘Ego’ vocals)
March 3, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (‘Answer’ vocals)
March 22, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (‘Answer’ vocals)
April 17, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (‘Answer’ vocals, organ)
Mixed to 1/4″ mono:
February 9, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (Mix 1)
February 14, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (Mix 2)
March 3, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (Mix 3)
March 22, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (Mix 4)
April 17, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (Mix 5 – Master)
Initial Release:
1966 Mono Mix 5 – Pet Sounds LP (1966, Capitol Records)
1966 Mono Mix 1 – Pet Sounds 1988 CD (1988, Capitol Records)
1996 Stereo Mix – The Pet Sounds Sessions (1997, Capitol Records)
1966 Mono Mix 2 – The Pet Sounds Sessions (1997, Capitol Records)
1966 Mono Mix 3 – Pet Sounds: 50th Anniversary Edition (2016, Capitol Records)
Vocal Guide (Hang On to Your Ego)
– verse 1st line lead: Mike
– verse 2nd line lead: Al
– pre-chorus lead: Brian+Al / backing: Brian>Bruce>Al>Carl>Mike
– chorus lead: Brian / backing: Al>Carl>Bruce>Mike
Vocal Guide (I Know There’s an Answer – early)
– verse 1st line lead: Mike
– verse 2nd line lead: Al
– pre-chorus lead: Al / backing: Carl>Mike
– chorus lead: Brian / backing: Carl>Al>Bruce>Mike
Vocal Guide (I Know There’s an Answer – final)
– verse 1st line lead: Mike
– verse 2nd line lead: Al
– pre-chorus lead: Al / backing: Carl>Mike
– chorus lead: Brian
Tracks – 1st Gen
(take 12)
1 – tack piano, organ, electric 12-string guitars, tambourines, timpani, bass harmonica (b/t)
2 – electric 6-string bass, double bass (b/t)
3 – flutes, clarinets (b/t)
4 – mandolin, banjo (o/d)
Tracks – 2nd Gen
(take 4A)
1 – track (c)
2 – lead vocals 1 (o/d)
3 – lead vocals 2 (o/d)
4 – BG vocals (o/d) / organ (o/d)
Songwriting
“About a year ago,” Brian told journalist Tom Nolan in August 1966, “I had what I consider a very religious experience. I took LSD, a full dose of LSD, and later, another time, I took a smaller dose. And I learned a lot of things, like patience, understanding. I can’t teach you, or tell you, what I learned from taking it. But I consider it a very religious experience.”
Drugs haven’t played much of a role in our coverage of Pet Sounds, if only because they didn’t play much of a role in the creation of the music on any specific level, nor did they come into the studio. But for the at-home part, the writing, Brian often characterized Pet Sounds as the marijuana album. Marijuana, celibacy and Flipper. We’re not here to cast judgment on his creative engine.
Pot got Brian relaxed, in touch with his feelings, spiritual, all of that. It was an important mood-setter to that whole time. Acid was a different kettle of fish – not something he indulged in lightly or made a habit of writing songs on, or writing songs about, at least not explicitly. Except once.
“He’d never take it again,” Nolan paraphrased, “because that would be pointless, wouldn’t it? And the people who take it all the time, acid heads he can’t go along with. Like all those people – Timothy Leary and all – they talk a lot, but they don’t really create, you know?” Those thoughts about the lysergic community at large and ego death were percolating in Brian’s mind when one hazy day in early 1966, he tried out a one-off songwriting collaboration with his pal Terry.
Little is known about Terry Sachen, the Beach Boys’ road manager since early 1965, who never made a public comment on his role in writing a song for the Beach Boys. Friends and family members generally cast Sachen as Brian’s principal drug supplier, probably not the most healthy lifestyle influence, but since he’s not available to offer his perspective we’ll park that there.
The tune they created together, “Let Go of Your Ego,” appears to be one of those situations where Brian composed most of a song on his own and sought lyrical assistance in unknown quantity from a friend.
“This one has like a Bob Dylan kind of lyric to it,” Brian would say of the song, a rare foray from him into hip-speak social commentary with phrases like “how can I come on?” and the worst thing a person could possibly be in the 1960s, “uptight.” The narrator’s plight is a restless search for enlightenment amid the solipsistic and hung-up, urging them and the listener to “let go of your ego,” with an admission to really being hamstrung by the same flaws, so he doesn’t know how to preach it. “They trip through the day and waste all their thoughts at night” might well be the most pointed and opinionated about other citizens of the world that Brian Wilson got in a lyric, and a more on-the-nose reference to chemical culture than he’d put into a song before.
“It’s about people who don’t wanna express themselves to other people,” the composer explained. “They keep to their own self, and they’re afraid to be with people and say, ‘Here’s how I feel, this is what I went through,’ you know? It’s just about that kind of thing. It’s no big deal.”
“When I heard that,” said Marilyn, “I thought, this is Brian and how he is really thinking about how he cannot relate to life and how people think, and there’s gotta be something else. Basically, I thought that most of Pet Sounds was just him saying how frustrated he was in this life. Frustrated that nobody could relate to him musically or intellectually or whatever.”
The result is a bluesy mid-tempo ballad in Bb, written to utilize the fullest extent of Brian’s stretchy chest register. As such, it sports a two-octave-wide melody climbing in great leaps of elevation from section to section, touching down at Bb2 near the beginning of the verse and hitting a Bb4 in the chorus.
The 14-bar verse segment begins with eight measures of I to V, back and forth, a simple start to settle into the groove while spotlighting melody and words. And what a groove! The left hand part here is like a bluesy take on “Be My Baby,” a funky, circular walk that extends many of the regular major chords into dominant sevenths. Big verticality in the melody – the first line (“I know so many people who think they can do it alone”) snakes between Bb3 to Bb2, and the next line to the same chords (“They isolate their heads and stay in their safety zones”) covers F4 to D3.
At bar nine, we jump to Db, the major chord based on the flatted third scale degree – the kind of stark, jarring change that Brian loved to use in 1966. From there, the progression smoothly walks back to the starting key before the chorus hits. Above the moving left hand, this is all done with major triads; Brian may have been challenging himself by limiting his options that way in the songwriting process. The chorus takes us to a thrillingly shouty melodic apex with two phrases over six bars. Based on the original title, one could imagine the first draft of this lyric being:
Let go of your ego
Let go ‘cause I know that you’re gonna lose the fight
The first minor chord of the song, a vi (Gm in this context), underscores the word “ego.” Intentional or not, it lends the word some extra weight, appearing under the first “sad” chord of the song before the melody soars up again.
After two verses and choruses, Brian wrote a simple instrumental bridge to replace what would’ve been the first eight bars of the third verse, and to transition into this bridge, he tacked on three bars of descending chords. These additional sections squeeze in several V-I resolutions, resulting in a constant feeling of upward movement. A repeat of the second half of the second verse, a third chorus, and then a fade complete the song, the fade simply repeating the first four bars of the verse.
Having been written right smack dab in the middle of Brian’s songwriting spree with Tony Asher, without Tony Asher, “Let Go of Your Ego” caught Tony off guard. “Brian startled me one afternoon by saying, ‘Oh, listen – I just wrote a song with Terry.’ I listened to it and said to myself, ‘You mean I’m not writing all the songs for the album?’ I was kind of surprised – I didn’t know that he was writing with anyone else. Then I got a grip on reality and thought, ‘He doesn’t have any obligation to write anything with me, let alone the whole album.’ I didn’t feel betrayed – I was just surprised.”
February 9, 1966
Setup
Brian booked the tracking session for “Ego” to begin at 9:00am on Wednesday, February 9, kicking off an eight-day recording spree that wound up being some of the most prolific and consequential music-making of his life. The location was good old Western 3, the engineer was Chuck Britz (who recorded all five sessions for this tune). 14 musicians crammed into the studio that morning: keyboardists Larry Knechtel and Al De Lory, guitarists Glen Campbell and Barney Kessel, bassists Ray Pohlman and Lyle Ritz, percussionists Hal Blaine and Julius Wechter, harmonica master Tommy Morgan, woodwindists Jay Migliori, Jim Horn, Paul Horn and Robert Klein, and all-around-handyman-slash-session-leader Steve Douglas. Paul Horn (a prolific jazz reedman from New York) and Klein (a mysterious figure from Texas who may have used another professional name) were the newcomers here.
The most recent session of Brian’s had been January 31’s complete package recording date for “Caroline, No,” which saw him dishing up that production all the way to the overdubs and final mix on his own, without any other Beach Boys present. By early February, the Boys were trickling home from post-tour vacations (or in Carl’s case, a post-tour marriage) and hadn’t yet been in the studio together since “Sloop,” before their leader started whirring out this new batch of original songs. So the “Caroline” plan repeated itself here – Brian would track “Ego,” record any instrumental overdubs, sing the whole thing himself, then mix the song to mono essentially as a solo track (with Carl Wilson present as an observer). If he was earmarking this at all for one side of a Brian Wilson solo single, either to back “Caroline, No” or for a follow-up, “BEACH BOYS” is still scrawled on the AFM contract, which was otherwise typed – but given the circumstances, it’s certainly possible that Brian had thoughts about issuing this tune under his own name.
Initially, the two keyboardists of the session were placed at each of Western 3’s acoustic pianos: Larry Knechtel at the Steinway C grand, and Al De Lory at the rickety old Wegman Cabinet Grand upright, prepared with tacks. Brian loved a good tack piano; he encountered the sound early in life, and in his teens once convinced neighborhood pal Louis Marotta to let him put thumbtacks in his parents’ piano. One hopes they dug the Old West. The percussive nature of the tack sound can make a piano cut through the high end of an ensemble like cymbals, but tuned to a swirly harmony, and in Brian’s hands often occupying spaces that parts of a drum set might have filled on another producer’s record. Here De Lory’s part intentionally harks back to the “saloon” sound the instrument is commonly entangled with, offering a rather bluesy lick that relies on tight additive minor seconds and dissonance throughout the track. Larry Knechtel’s part at the non-prepared piano started out a standard eighth note rhythm offsetting the licks played by Al.
In the bass department, Ray Pohlman on six-string electric and Lyle Ritz on upright lock together in tight unison, or at times play at the octave: Lyle tuned down his lowest string to Eb to plumb the depths as verse flows into chorus, while Ray plays the same line up such that a re-tune isn’t necessary. Lyle alone plays a short melody solo over the three-bar breaks that follow the later choruses. A platonic ideal of combined bass tones is captured here – Lyle’s double bass is the prominent tone to the ear when it’s smushed under a band, but Ray’s clackity deadened short scale instrument seasons in the perfect amount of definition and edge to the attack.
Percussion underwent big changes once the takes got going, but to begin with, Hal Blaine set up on drums at his usual spot in front of the booth window with Steve Douglas handling an additional drum nearby (probably a tom-tom of some variety), so often lured away from his sax for other odd jobs these days. As the kick drum is quite prominent in early takes, it was likely mic’d on its own, with one or two overheads capturing the augmented double drums played by hand. A thunderous, heavy beat was doled out for both to play together, which even for a short time featured in a two-bar drum intro. This would evolve into something markedly different as the session continued.
At the back of the room, Julius Wechter stood by three timpani, tuned to F, G, and Bb, ascending. Looking for maximum impact in their appearances, Brian asked Julius to only to play during the chorus, the fill into the empty breaks, and to emphasize a quarter note triplet fill in the final verse that would be hit together by everyone.
Woodwinds were all tracked around one mic, on this occasion consisting of three Bb clarinets and one C flute. It may be that Brian only realized he wanted clarinets after the musicians had arrived and tried out other options, leaving one fellow who didn’t have one on hand, so the odd man out just made do with his flute. Otherwise, the decision doesn’t follow practical logic, as the flute itself doesn’t necessarily stand out flute-ily in the stack or have a unique role to play – there are only up to three harmony parts here, split among the four players huddled in varying amounts of unison. The flute scrunches in where it can. Brian’s contractors (in this case, Steve) sometimes hired more horn players than he had parts (which he did actually notate by hand this time), resulting in some creative doubling to fit everybody in. Brian devised countermelody lines for the quartet in the verses and choruses, and they’d take on those seedy descending chords in the breaks. The flute certainly adds a cool, breathy texture to the part.
Each of the different horn lines in the breaks:
All together, with the bass:
The horn arrangement eventually played in the fadeout, mixed in stereo:
Recreations by Joshilyn
Based on dialogue between the players about their charts, we are tentatively assigning the flute credit to Robert Klein, the least familiar man on the scene who probably wouldn’t have known to bring an armada of woodwind instruments to Brian’s sessions. But, really, the odd man out could be any of them. Except for Jim Horn, who breaks into classic Jim Horn clarinet showboating between takes. And yes, two of the four horn players at this session were named “Horn” – and not related! And this was their first time meeting, per a conversation between them that’s captured on the session tape.
This is Brian Wilson’s Bob Dylan song. If… you squint at it really weirdly. So, of course, he had to have a harmonica in there, and in L.A. in the 1960s, there was only one man for the job.
Tommy Morgan had an incredible career as a niche virtuoso. While many of us could fess to trying a cheap C diatonic harmonica around a campfire or… in prison… harmonicas are somewhat like recorders in that they are seen as simple instruments suitable for children. But in the hands of Tommy Morgan, the harmonica can go toe-to-toe with any tool in terms of virtuosity, line, gradations of dynamics and timbre, and stylish taste. Tommy could play anything.
Now, before this session, the previous high watermark of mouth organ playing on a Beach Boys track was the somewhat bizarre scenario of professional trumpeter Cappy Lewis indiscriminately blowing and sucking into a harmonica on “When I Grow Up.” There is a twinge of doubt as to whether he really did this or if his inclusion on the union contract was some kind of make-up payment, because that part did not need a professional. Literally, a great ape could’ve handled it.
Later, bluesman Billy Lee Riley blew the “Fanny Mae” riff on “Help Me, Ronda” (the first version), and the harmonica at one time held an important role in the palette of the Beach Boys’ fictional Party! get-together, but it wasn’t kept in most of the final arrangements. On the record, everybody’s favorite extended family member Billy Hinsche rips a solo in “Mountain of Love.” Actually, that’s much better than what Cappy did.
However, if we venture outside of the Beach Boys to Brian’s hobbyist stuff, deep into side project obscurity, there’s a harmonica lending wistful dustbowl tones to Gary Usher’s “Sacramento” and “That’s Just the Way I Feel.” Tommy Morgan’s first confirmed session work for Brian was an August 1964 session for Bob Norberg’s “Twelve-O-Four,” and a cover of “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” on which he brought out his specialist equipment for a deep honk – the bass harmonica.
The Hohner bass harmonica is very cumbersome. Requiring large reeds, the mechanism is not only commensurately big, but sound production on the instrument is limited to blowing – no draw tones are available, which means that each reed hole produces only one note. Diatonic and chromatic harmonicae (yes, that’s the Latin plural) produce one note when blown, and another when drawn. To get around this limitation in their bass voice cousin, Hohner devised a set of two separate, matched harmonicas that are clasped together, and between the two, a full chromatic scale can be found.
Below, watch an introduction to the bass harmonica from Joshilyn.
As Brian related his introduction to the instrument back in ‘64, “[Tommy] went ‘WUHHH’ and I went, ‘What the heck is THAT?’ He goes, ‘It’s a bass harmonica!’ And I said, ‘Let’s use it on this cut,’ you know?” Simple as that.
“Of course, there are certain limitations to a bass harmonica,” explained Tommy. “If [Brian] asked me to play something that couldn’t be played on a bass harmonica, he would vary the exactness of what he wanted into what was playable or possible. Small little grace notes here and there… he would adjust to that. And once I showed him what I could and couldn’t do, I didn’t have to do it again. I didn’t have to teach him each time.”
The role of the bass harmonica in “Baby What You Want Me to Do” is specific, restrained, accenting parts of the bass guitar line. More from Tommy Morgan: “He was very focused. When he gave you a pattern, it pretty much stayed the same throughout the different verses or choruses. You didn’t say, ‘Brian, do you want me to build this?’ On other dates, you might do three figures the same time in a piece. The second time you would add things. Not with Brian. You didn’t play variations. He established every pattern and note he wanted you to play. We were playing rhythm, and he put his variations in the background vocals.” For a blues solo on chromatic harmonica, Brian gave Tommy free rein to improvise.
A year and a half after its appearance on “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” Tommy brought the bass harmonica to the “Ego” session and again flipped out Brian with the grandeur of its honk. He naturally got his own microphone, likely an RCA 77. Brian always tended to coach the main rhythm instrumentalists on their parts first, so the big harp was among the last in the room to be assigned a part. While Brian would on occasion write on paper for instruments like the basses and horns, when it came to the miscellany, Tommy recalled that, “Basically, there were no charts. He had everything in his head, knew what he wanted, so you would wait until he got to you, wait until Brian came around. I was generally added later, after drums, bass, guitars and piano, so sometimes, a couple of hours would pass if you were the last guy in line.”
Instruction for the harmonica followed precedent set in 1964, a simple complement to the basses with its own variation on the rhythm. His part would expand during the session, but at the beginning, Tommy remembered being given that strict set of notes to play alongside Lyle and Ray. “All of the rhythm parts, doubling the bassline and that, were dictated by Brian. And so those were very specific, which Brian controlled, and I played exactly what he wanted.”
Finally, tucked away in the booth were Glen and Barney with their guitars recorded via direct injection. Throughout the making of Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and Pet Sounds, we hear a wonderful ongoing collaboration between Brian and his 12-string electric guitarists to come up with interesting melodic interplay, and in these verses, together they arrive at something truly special. The signature high electric 12 duets of the era reach their possible apotheosis in “Ego,” with rollicking harmonized arpeggios ebbing and flowing against the underlying chords, sometimes dissonantly, sometimes consonantly. One sits slack jawed wondering how in the world they’d come up with this stuff, and we only have ambiguous answers to a worthwhile question. The benefit to Brian in building these elaborate guitar duets was that he was working with the best players in the business – it’s not important because what they end up playing is “hard,” but it’s important that they are good enough to audition his ideas quickly and easily and accurately. And you bet your sweet bippy that Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell did just that for Brian, whipping up these parts in a flash so he could hear it and either love it or hate it.
Guitar parts isolated (played on a real Bellzouki!):
Recreation by Joshilyn
All in all, Chuck had 11 inputs coming into the 12-input console to mix:
1 – grand piano (later organ – sent to chamber)
2 – tack piano (sent to chamber)
3 – Barney’s guitar (sent to chamber)
4 – Glen’s guitar (sent to chamber)
5 – bass harmonica (sent to chamber)
6 – Ray’s bass
7 – Lyle’s bass
8 – kick drum
9 – drums overhead
10 – Julius’ percussion
11 – woodwinds (sent to limiter)
As stated earlier, it’s possible (but not probable) that a second drum overhead mic was used to capture what Steve Douglas was doing, but he could’ve just leant into Hal’s. Brian and Chuck mixed all these signals down to three tracks, leaving open the possibility of overdubbing additional instrumentation to the fourth. The keyboards, guitars and harmonica all swim in reverb together, and the resulting return is sent to track 1 with relatively little dry signal mixed in – a classic Phil Spector trick! Drums and percussion bleed heavily onto this track, lending some reverb to their sonic character as well. Basses, drums and percussion were mixed dry and comped together on track 2. The singular woodwind microphone, treated with a limiter, was sent to track 3, duplicated at first on track 4 by mistake.
Recording
Curiously, the first bit of dialogue heard on tape is between the woodwind section collectively puzzling over the music Brian’s written out for them. “Are you gonna transp… this is written in concert,” Robert Klein can be heard commenting.
“All the ‘B’s are B-flat concert,” Jay Migliori says. Indeed, Brian never paid much attention to which instruments were transposing instruments, and if he wrote parts, he wrote them all in C, trusting musicians to transpose them either by sight or by correcting the charts themselves, much to their frustration. Jay’s been around the block and knows the deal.
Hal clicks his sticks together in tempo to get things going, but the woodwinds are still talking. “Sounds like everybody’s not serious about this,” Brian accuses from the booth over the talkback mic.
“We’re serious Brian, my god!” shouts out a musician.
Hal tries to get Brian’s attention by repeating his name four times before leaning into the mic to prove how (un)serious he is: “You know what kind of bees give milk? Boo-bees.” Brian doesn’t react. Hal counts in.
Two bars of a marching drum line start things out, with Hal and Steve booming along together in unison. Bar three brings in both pianos, the two basses, and the bass harmonica. At bar five, as the first verse properly starts, the woodwinds join in on a two-part riff, with flute and clarinet playing the top line and the other two clarinets below. Chuck is still working on recording levels; the bass harmonica distorts the tape at its first entrance with a way-too-hot gain. The direct 12-string guitars only come in following the first chorus.
The chorus introduces Julius’ timpani (taking over from Steve’s secondary drum part), as well as a gorgeous woodwind countermelody played unison by all the fellas. It’s a strong riff, the kind most peers would probably hand to a guitar. Because the part dips just below a standard C flute’s range, our flautist has to compromise by playing that last note an octave higher than the others.
Verse two accidentally kicks off without its percussionists, so Brian jumps in: “What’s the matter, drums? Did you forget?” Steve begins to blame the other guy, Hal explains that he forgot about the repeat that must’ve been marked in his part somehow. Tape stops here for a short break.
After that first take, something mad happened. Blaine and Douglas put away their respective drums and switched to two handheld tambourines – which, besides the timpani, would stand as the rhythmic backbone to the whole track. That’s quite a dramatic change of pace from the double-drummer bombast we had a minute ago, a key sonic feature turned on its head. Nothing on tape tells us about how this tambourine idea arose, or from whom it came, though comparable situations at other sessions do suggest it’s the sort of move Hal might’ve thrown Brian’s way for a speedy approval or disapproval. The tambourinists play to the same rhythm as the original drum parts most of the time, otherwise shaking eighth notes and landing a few key hits.
This escalating tendency of Brian’s to ditch the conventional drum set was long in the brewing, and here in early 1966 we really witness him taking flight with the creative substitutions, as if he’s finally worked up the courage to gnaw apart the rule book like a Weimaraner. In “You Still Believe in Me,” “Caroline, No,” and “Ego,” there’s a chronological trio of tracks in which “normal” drums are eschewed, and bits and bobs carry the day – finger cymbals, timpani, boobams, tambourines, cymbals used in novel orchestrations – and those are just the tip of the iceberg. As Pet Sounds shifts into Smile, and into Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, we get to witness Brian develop his relationship with drums and percussion just about as far as it can take him off the beaten track, cultivating a distinctly Wilsonesque mentality about hitting objects in relation to other sounds. This Feb 9, 1966 session is an important milestone in figuring out just how much the tools typically used in auxiliary fashion can stand on their own to serve his music.
When Chuck resumes, Brian helpfully informs everybody in the room that, “This time we’re going to record with a tape recorder.”
It causes some riffing from Jay and the woodwind players. “You have a tape recorder in there? Holy Christ!”
“Hey, does the union know you’re recording this?”
Meanwhile, Tommy asks Brian an important question: “Do you want me to lay out again after that instrumental break? And then come back into the fours toward the end, like before ‘C’?”
“I’m gonna have you wail on that baby for the instrumental break,” Brian answers. “Think you can do it? Try to wail, do an ins– a thing, you know.”
“Okay, I’ll play a little,” is Tommy’s response. For those who don’t speak Brianese, this is Brian’s rushed, quite casual request for Tommy Morgan to improvise a bass harmonica solo of his own creation during the instrumental break, an eight-bar feature on the record. A big moment! Tommy was used to ripping harmonica solos all across town as a normal fixture of his day job, but a solo on bass harmonica? Nobody did that. Nobody at home would identify the culprit of that sound, like a donkey accidentally braying into the microphone. Brian likely just made a straightforward, lateral connection here: harmonica is often used as a solo instrument, so why not this big freaky version? It’ll be funky. It’ll scare people. “When it came to the solo,” Tommy remembered, “then I was given a little bit of freedom, which was an interesting thing, because it was the first time I ever had a solo on one of Brian’s albums, and to my mind the first time that the bass harmonica had been used as a solo instrument in a rock record. And so I improvised that part.”
Back to the recording. Aside: someone calls for Ray Pohlman on the studio phone during all this. “HERE WE GO!” Brian announces. “This’ll be what?”
“Take two!” Chuck tells him.
“Just relax, me and this other cat are gonna straighten you guys out, then we’ll get, you know, WORLD PEACE. Did ya ever hear that album called ‘How to Speak Hip?’” Silence falls over the room, chasmically, as Brian realizes the reference to a niche comedy record in his personal collection may be a little too niche for the session men. He tries to recover. “Has anybody ever heard it?”
“Nope,” someone says.
“What is it?” asks Hal.
“Oh, it’s funny. It’s ‘How to Speak Hip.’ By Del Close and John Brent, it was cut in ‘59. It’s a very funny album.”
“Well, we’re not laughing,” Hal retorts.
“I’ll bring it up and I’ll run off some monos and give it to you next time we have a date if you want it.” Nobody’s snatching up Brian’s offer. Luckily, he’s quite good at making music.
Take 2 of “Let Go of Your Ego” is slated and Hal counts it in. Besides the drums being swapped for tambourines, the arrangement here is consistent with take 1, but this time they score a complete attempt. It should be noted that Hal is still sitting at his kit at this juncture while shaking away, playing the kick drum where appropriate, especially in the heavier sections. One of our clarinet players accidentally starts by playing a concert C – technically the note Brian wrote out for them but expected to be transcribed by sight. The mistake is quickly remedied and Brian doesn’t notice. In the second verse, the same clarinet jumps up an octave, creating a brief third harmony. Tommy Morgan doesn’t “wail” in the instrumental break, playing his usual rhythm part instead, but that’s okay – Brian could’ve elected to overdub his part later. Semi-satisfied with the take, Chuck Britz wrote “H” for “Hold” on the track sheet, and Brian addressed the band: “Hold it please for a minute, I’ll be out…”
Following another recording break, Brian made some notable amendments to his arrangement. First and foremost, Larry Knechtel moved from piano to the resident Hammond organ, where he was given a new and more nimble part, making use of the two keyboard manuals to get some sixteenth-note chord action. “On Pet Sounds,” Larry recalled, “I did a two-handed rhythm thing on the B-3, alternating hands between the manuals.”
Tack piano alone:
Organ alone:
Tack piano and organ together dry in stereo:
Tack piano and organ together blended:
Recreations by Joshilyn
The instrumental break was also rejigged to be more dynamic, and likely rehearsed off-tape here; instead of everyone playing their regular rhythm parts, it would be a stop-time section instead, with keyboards and percussion hitting beat one of each bar together, basses continuing their line like normal, and Tommy soloing on top.
With those changes made, Brian and Chuck roll again and slate take 3. “Could we give it a real, uh… play it real good and strong this time, we may get it real soon, huh?”
This is where a fun conversation is caught by the woodwind mic between the horn players named Horn. “Did you ever meet anybody with your own name? Last name?” someone asks, obviously of Paul Horn or Jim Horn.
“Uh, not in music,” Paul mumbles.
“There’s one in New York.”
Hal counts in take 3, a quick false start shut down by his own tambourine biff. At the start of take 4, Chuck is still finding a level for the organ, having not quite locked in the mix before recording the slightly revised ensemble. Brian soon stops the band and can be heard quietly conferring with Chuck about the mix as he holds down the talkback button. He addresses the room: “Start again please, let me hear the organ and piano!” They demonstrate together. “Just the organ, let’s get a stop. Let me hear that stop.”
The getting of the stop (auditioning several combination of drawbars until Brian was happy) occurred during the brief recording break that followed. It’s here that the production found its signature sonic imprint in that magical combination of Hammond organ and tack piano. Both awash in life-affirming Western reverb, the organ pulses around the bluesy piano figure using the en vogue double manual registration trick, and the two bind through the chamber and board into a wholly new instrumental timbre that’s neither one nor the other. Brian has occasionally cited the organ and tack piano hybrid in this song as a model example of his Spector-influenced sound combinations. So infatuated with the resulting combo was Brian that he elected to open the song with it, swapping the tambourine intro for four bars of keyboards vamping on their own.
Tape rolls again during the first verse of a take 5 (obviously unusable, as it wasn’t captured from the start). Tommy’s first on-tape pass at the bass harmonica solo here reveals that he knew the general shape of what he wanted to do, but it would take a few tries to get all the articulations just right; there are some sloppy rhythms in this try.
Curiously, the woodwind countermelody has been cut from the final chorus, but not from the first two. Aside from odd mistakes by Hal and/or Steve and Al De Lory, the attempt is a good one and only really falls apart in the fade, where no one quite knows what to do besides play in Bb. Brian slams down the talkback to bark orders but starts coughing and spluttering out of sheer velocity. “I died,” he explains. “No, uh, right at the last, it’ll go…” He’s cut off by Chuck stopping the tape. It rolls again just to capture Brian outlining, “Let’s try that one part. Let’s go to the very last, starting with the three bars…”
Off tape, what Brian asked of the ensemble was four bars of keyboards and tambourines to begin the fade, then for basses, bass harmonica, and guitars to follow. The introduction was lengthened to eight bars: four for keyboards and another four to introduce the tambourines and bass harmonica. The woodwinds were mercilessly hacked down in prevalence, with their juicy parts in the verse and chorus axed to create space that Brian would figure out how to fill later; all that remained for the moment were the descending chords in the breaks. Also in that interim, Chuck stopped printing the woodwinds to both tracks 3 and 4, leaving track 4 open.
When tape rolls again, Brian’s caught speaking to Barney and Glen in the booth. “Hey guys? Come in at the second verse. Forget the D-flat thing.” Translation: they won’t be playing during the second section of the first verse. In a flash, we’ve lost several of the most melodically exciting (and busy) components of the arrangement, or they’ve been held back to limited appearances later. This is one of those consummate self-control exhibitions Brian grew so adept at where he’d lay it all out, sculpt the sounds, finds the hooks, and then subtract to allow his songs a dynamic build.
Tommy Morgan asks for some clarification on where to come in at the top, and Brian sings his part to him: “Wahhhp-uh, wahhh!”
“Wop-uh wha?” asks Hal. “Just because a wop walked in, you don’t have to start wop-uh wah. Joe Louis was a hell of a fighter, wasn’t he?” He gets a couple chuckles, and counts in what Chuck calls take 7 – a performance that gets almost everything technically right, except for the guitarists making an early entrance at the fadeout. Tommy’s harmonica solo is one step closer to what it needs to be, but not quite perfect.
The four-track rolls on while Hal messes around with Julius’ timpani relative to microphone positioning. “You like the way it sounds?”
“Let’s go, let’s go, it’s gettin’ late!” someone else complains. Take 8 is another complete version that feels good, but as it comes to a close, Brian realizes he’s left the fade a bit too empty. “Okay, now here’s what we’ll do!” he tells everyone excitedly. “The horns…”
In the ensuing break, Brian restored the woodwind countermelody parts written for the verse section, but instead transported them to the fadeout, a spot the clarinets and flute had previously been absent from. A simple, inspired placement change got use out of the existing charts without cluttering the verses, and enlivened the song’s ending with new musical information. Rather than countermelody, they’d serve as the main feature at the fade.
“That’s the only time they’ll play,” Brian says as the recording resumes. “Except for the other two [instrumental breaks]. Take nine, please! It’s really sounding great!” Horns ask for clarification on where their entrance is; more back and forth between Brian and the players is captured in fragments. As the talkback button is held down, a mandolin can be heard noodling in the control room, likely handled by Carl (whose presence is confirmed later). “Let’s really cook this time. I think we could hear a little bit more harmonica in that instrumental break, I don’t know.” The musicians request a quick rehearsal of the revised ending, which is done off-tape.
“Take nine please. This is ‘Let Go of Your Libido,’ take nine,” jokes Brian. Now, an insignificant moment amid hours of recording. Or… is it? Here, we have to (with “have to” admittedly doing a lot of work) take a digression into Brian Wilson’s personal life, into the real chemical fabric informing his Pet Sounds creative experience. What prompted that comment? What drifted through the mind on a typical morning at 23 years old as he set about creating his most influential music? Long after release, in 1977, Brian offered national radio listeners a (very) candid account of what it meant to “Let Go of Your Libido.”
In 1966, I decided to go through what I’m going through now, which I wanna bring up now, which is an interesting subject – it’s called sexual deprivation, which is a yoga discipline. It’s a form of yoga. I would say disciplines of that nature you can consider yoga, for lack of a better word or better… you know, whatever. This is a system of not having a sexual climax. In other words, depriving yourself of a sexual climax for a long enough period in order to notice the effects of what happens to a person if he deprives such a powerful force as sex. What are the benefits? What happens to you? Well, like anything else, when you deprive sex, when you deprive yourself of the very enactment of sex, sperm backs up your spine – goes up your spine, slowly, up a little canal, a very subtle form of it – reaches your pineal gland, and you become cosmically conscious. This is just the ultimate goal of sexual deprivation, which I want to attain to. When I was making Pet Sounds I was going through a form of celibacy, which I’m going through now. I’m celibate, I’m proud of it, and I’m very happy that way.
Did Brian’s neo-tantric sexual discipline allow him the self-control to scrap the earwormy clarinet countermelody from his song’s chorus? To what extent were occult readings and inorgasmic experiments influencing his writing, and maturing demonstrations of restraint in the recording studio? And what do you mean it goes up your SPINE? Questions we should not presume to answer, and will not. Good lord. But, honestly, when else would we have a chance to bring this up? So it’s done now – it’s on the page to psychoanalyze as you wish. Our attention must return to the session tape.
Even after a rehearsal, the woodwind players are still audibly confused at where to come in for the new fade arrangement. Brian’s instruction was likely vague and rushed. “He’ll direct us from in there,” one of them hopes out loud. With three parts on paper and four reeds in play, the musicians divided the chart amongst themselves. The descending chord breaks would be stacked flute > clarinet > two clarinets. Back when the winds were featured in the verse, they took on a two-part figure played by a clarinet and a flute together on the higher line, and two clarinets below; upon repeat, one of the lower clarinets went up an octave, creating a three-part harmony. The three-part version of the figure is what we hear all through the fade, with a clarinet to each harmony and the flute doubling the middle line.
Take 9 is a false start, and take 10 is stopped by Brian in the first verse. “I think there’s a little bit too much organ and piano when we start out, what do you think?” he asks Chuck, prompting an adjustment to the keyboard mix. “One more, please! This is take eleven. Here we go. Sounds great.”
Take 11 is false-started by Hal playing his tambourine in the first bar by mistake. “No, just the organ and piano starts out.” The following take 12 is the one – no mistakes, a perfect feeling, an excellent bass harmonica solo, and miraculously (as it’s never rehearsed this well on tape), a well-played fadeout section, with Hal even going to double time on tambourine as it begins to wear on. By this point in the session, Hal (and maybe Steve) had moved away from the drum kit that Hal was once sitting at, removing kick drum from the arrangement completely. His repositioning also seems to have put the tambourine closer to other microphones; as a result, both tambourines are heard strongly on tracks 1 and 3 as well as 2, and therefore dominate the mix. “Thanks, that’s it,” Brian states simply after enough of the tag is played out.
Overdub
Most of the musicians left at 12:30pm after a half hour of overtime, but session leader Steve and our good friend Glen Campbell the ex-vice Beach Boy stayed until 1:00pm for overdub work. The tape confirms Carl Wilson’s presence in the immediate aftermath of overdubbing, and several factors (E.G. the physicality of the parts, earlier noodling, and basic elimination from known hands in the room) indicate that he got involved in playing, albeit sneakily missed off the union contract.
Here Brian continued to break personal arranging molds with the addition of two acoustic folk instruments, the banjo and mandolin – sounds that weren’t uncommon in ‘60s pop/rock, but had never before graced a Wilson production. In typical fashion, Brian adopted them more for texture than their unique stylistic capabilities, and had both strumming chords in lieu of guitar type parts: bright mandolin stabs from (most likely) Carl in the chorus, and choppy banjo rhythm from Glen to fill out the instrumental sections.
Once and future country star Glen Campbell could play both stringed instruments comfortably and carted around a custom banjo for session work: a five-string resonator (unknown make and model as of writing) with the high drone string removed and an extra tuning peg installed on the headstock, giving him an adjusted five strings tuned linearly, low to high, which allowed him to play wider, guitar-like chord shapes. Bb isn’t the most banjo-friendly key, so Glen tuned his strings Eb F Bb D F for easy open voicings. Rather than going for clawhammer or Scruggs style, as would’ve been fashionable, Brian had him strumming jaunty flatpick chords during the harmonica solo and fade, more like a Dixieland part for tenor banjo; it may even be that this was originally intended for an acoustic guitar, and Glen himself suggested trying the banjo… but we don’t know.
We also don’t know if the mandolin belonged to Glen or Carl, but it isn’t an uncommon thing for any guitar enthusiast to have a mando lying around the house. Al Jardine spoke fondly of the days in the early ‘60s when he’d serenade Dennis Wilson with folk songs on mandolin, so the Boys had been around them. That Brian anticipated adding this particular overdub is evidenced by an earlier moment during the session, where the mandolinist can be heard twiddling with a specific tuning that’d prep him to play the part: F D Bb F, or in other words, the open Bb/F chord at the start of the chorus. Carl only needed to hold down two fingers to strum the subsequent Gm, and that’s the whole role of the mandolin in the arrangement. If a pro were playing the part (such as Barney Kessel, who didn’t stay), it probably wouldn’t need that kind of accommodation.
Two microphones were set up in the live room and Brian hastily set about recording them together onto track 4, eager to wrap this up within 30 minutes and move along to vocals.
Chuck started rolling around the take 11 false start, as Glen was still tuning his banjo. “You gotta be cool now, because it’s comin’, you can’t make any noise,” Brian says to Glen, and “Can you shut that door?” to someone else.
Glen keeps tuning and begins to rehearse his part while the first verse rolls on. Likely reacting to some stink eye from Brian, he yells out, “I’m practicin’!” The tuning continues even through the first chorus, where Carl strums his four bars of mandolin chop chords undeterred by distractions. Despite not really being a proper take, bizarrely, Brian didn’t have them redo this part of the overdub, and just moved on. The next sections were done as punch-ins.
In the second chorus, Carl’s mandolin is not accompanied by random banjo noises, but it disappears at the last bar thanks to Chuck carelessly hitting record on the subsequent section a little early. Consequently, there’s no clean appearance of the mandolin in either spot, and it just doesn’t show up at all in the third chorus (which never featured the clarinet riff either, so Brian probably always wanted it to feel sparser).
Glen’s proper banjo part came next, all done in one continuous pass. In the bridge, preceding the funky Dixieland vamping, he accidentally strums a strong beat one a bar before his intended entrance – for a mistake, it works quite well. The solo strumming goes by without a hitch. The banjo reappears four bars into the tag (along with the basses, bass harmonica and woodwinds), strumming an eighth note surf rhythm before ramping up with Hal’s tambourine at the point of fading out.
With that overdub completed in an audible rush, and the four tracks completely filled, Brian sent Steve and Glen off to their next jobs and prepared to overdub his vocal performance.
Solo Vocals
The first new order of business would be to cue up another 1/2” reel on the other Ampex tape machine, then bounce the four instrumental channels to one mono channel on the new tape. Take 1A of this bounce is ruined immediately, as the track with Glen’s banjo tuning is left up during the keyboard intro. As Chuck slates take 2A, Brian can be heard saying something about overdubbing his voice, although his exact words aren’t decipherable. Take 2A only makes it a few bars in, and as Chuck slates 3A, Carl can be heard commenting on the “really good bass.” Indeed, in this dubdown, the basses from track 2 are quite strong. For all the mandolin’s appearances are marred by different interruptions, Brian clearly did want to feature it in the arrangement without re-recording anything, so he and Chuck have to very skillfully only bring up track 4 at the exact moment it’s needed, and leave it quiet, so as to not insert any audible noodling into the mix. However, Glen’s stray banjo hit just before the bass harmonica solo is kept in, either by error or because Brian liked it. The banjo gets a prominent feature throughout the bridge and it’s sunk down into the overall blend during the fade. Take 3A is stopped in the instrumental break, and take 4A is deemed satisfactory.
Brian then got set up with a pair of headphones in front of a vocal mic, probably the venerable U47. But what happened next on the spot is a note seldom discussed in the history of this song; it underwent its first lyrical rewrite, with Brian changing the chorus and title from “Let Go of Your Ego” to the (perhaps less overtly drug-friendly) “Hang On to Your Ego,” suddenly flipping the tenor if not the message itself. Whereas “let go” felt like an encouraging invitation, “hang on, but I know you’re gonna lose the fight” reads like a taunt, jibing its audience against the inevitability of ego loss on Brian’s foreseen path to enlightenment. A little more confrontational, a little more hip. The impetus behind the change may just be that the vowel sounds felt better (because try singing it – they do).
On track 2, Brian delivered a powerful, nasty (compliment) vocal, really leaning in on his interpretation of Henry Diltz’s “This Could Be the Night” singing style. He imbues each phrase with all the nasal strain and grime he can muster, just struggling a little to get out the lowest notes with enough volume, but soaring at the chorus with a forceful yell to the heavens. Each instance of the word “ego” is sung with a longer melisma, keeping the solo vocal performance varied and dynamic, along with “so,” “yeah,” and “a-do-be-do-be-do” interjections, the perfect melding of Brian’s doo-wop and pop sensibilities with the beatnik stylings that inspired this particular number.
As Brian sang a double on track 3, Chuck readied the mono balance and simultaneously printed it to 1/4″ tape, saving him an additional step in mixing. This means that each of Brian’s double-tracking attempts are preserved. The first only gets a few words in before Brian calls for one more; as Chuck rewinds the four-track, Brian practices the low “alone” that’s been giving him trouble. Take 2 of the double/mix goes well until in the second verse, Brian accidentally sings “Now how can I come on,” ironically a lyric that will later become correct. “Oh, SHIT!” he yells. “Back it up. We can sel-sync right back in there. Back up just a little bit. I’ll show you where to punch.”
“That was it!” he says when Chuck cues it up correctly. The resulting pickup take, from the middle of take 2, is complete, with Brian adding some extra “do-be-do-be-do” action in the fade.
The performance was all there, but the simultaneous mono print proved to be too muddy, so onto the same tape, Brian and Chuck then remixed the song together in the booth, focusing purely on the balance: two attempts were needed to get it right, this time with the track fading before Brian’s extra vocal ad libs in the fadeout. Brian likely took home a copy of the mix (and the four-track reel itself) to review at home.
[NOTE: This mix has been released as a bonus track on many CD editions of Pet Sounds, beginning with its first CD release on Greenline in 1988. It is not featured on either of the 30th or 50th anniversary box sets.]
February 14, 1966
After living with this solo version of “Hang On to Your Ego” for a few days, Brian decided that the bare, unaccompanied lead vocal wasn’t working for him. Maybe he felt insecure about delivering such a pointed message without the group behind him, or maybe he thought that other members of his band would be more suited to cover certain parts of the melodic range. Or maybe the production just sounded too sparse. Or all of the above. Either way, Brian booked a vocal session for “Ego” at Western during the morning or early afternoon of February 14, before a tracking session for a different song (“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”) would be held later that night at Gold Star. Evidence suggests that this was the second time the Beach Boys united in the studio post-Japan, the first being a vocal session for “You Still Believe in Me” a day or two prior. This music was mostly still new to them, untested.
Brian’s plan was to split the melody between three vocalists: Mike would sing the opening line of each verse, Al would feature throughout the rest of the verses, and Brian would sing the chorus. Mike would naturally get the low “do-be-do-be-do,” and select background parts would be sung by the full group, sans Dennis.
A year earlier, the modus operandi would’ve been for everybody to get around a microphone or two, sing from start to finish, and then double it. But by 1966, the way that Brian strategized to tackle this rotating lead vocal was to literally punch in one phrase at a time, one man at a time, ensuring that every moment of the performance was tuned to his taste. Mike reported for duty first. From the booth, Brian recorded him singing on track 2, and had him double each line on track 3, erasing his own earlier attempt.
It has become entrenched in the lore of this song that here things became… uncomfortable. As Al recalled, “The first vocal session I remember was ‘Hang On to Your Ego.’ We had this discussion about the lyrics. Brian was very concerned. He wanted to know what we thought about it. To be honest, I don’t think we even knew what an ego was. It wasn’t as if we were prepared for what was to come. But that was the first discussion.”
The story self-reported by the group in later years is that some among them – chiefly, the non-Wilson faction – were unsettled by the ego loss theme, not wanting to associate themselves (or the Beach Boys’ image) with the burgeoning drug culture. “When you drop LSD, or acid, or whatever they call it,” Bruce attempted to explain, “you’re supposed to ‘hang on to your ego.’ And I don’t think Mike wanted that connection to the band.”
Mike, too, usually made himself out to be the chief objector. “Some of the words were so totally offensive to me that I wouldn’t even sing ’em because I though it was too nauseating,” he said in the early 1990s, untruthfully, at a fraught time when he wanted everybody to know that he was never cool and did not bring a good vibe to the function. “That was too much of a doper song to me. I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it, therefore I didn’t go down that road of acid and the things that destroyed Brian’s brain.”
But… he did sing those words!
The tapes tell a milder story, one of concern from Brian and generally cordial self-consciousness from the Boys about performing a message that they didn’t quite understand using their own voices, mostly (in a bit of a twist) from the direction of Alan Charles Jardine. If Mike vocalized disagreements, he didn’t press the issue at length, or confrontationally, and a candid behind the scenes recording from a later session even reveals him to be an enthusiastic participant in the “Ego” draft! But we cannot know the play-by-play of everything discussed on February 14, the first day Brian showed the song to his bandmates. Surrounding materials give an impression of, certainly, some friction bubbling under the surface… just not that much of a big deal. Time and diverging lifestyles seem to have warped memories to a degree.
So Mike let go of his ego, didn’t refuse to sing the lyrics, and double-tracked the intro to each verse, without a hitch. Al came next – however, a later interaction hints that he perhaps bolted at singing his parts alone. Instead of going up to the mic solo and doubling himself, Al sang the rest of the verses in unison with Brian, recorded onto track 2 of the tape. Besides making Al feel more comfortable about his performance, this also served to free up two tracks for doubling backing vocals later in the session. The shifting balance between Brian and Al in their unison lead suggests that these verses were recorded line by line, with the two singers not keeping a consistent relative distance from the microphone across each phrase (basically, Al stood further back as they went on).
Next, it was Brian’s turn to sing the chorus. Since he desired a doubled lead and doubled backing vocals throughout (but only had three non-instrumental tracks to work with), Brian had the descending quartet of Al, Carl, Bruce, and Mike sing four-part harmonies live with him, a “hang on” that breaks into classic doo-woppy “di-dit-dits.” Mike’s bass part here is particularly interesting, while the other three establish a triad above. These parts were punched in on tracks 3 and 4. After the last chorus, Mike also sang the low “do-be-do-be-do” scat part before the fade; Brian left his old scat vocal parts during the tag alone, knowing that he’d mute them in the mix.
Finally, backing vocals were added at the Db chord change in the verses, a five-part moving “ahhh” belted out by the group, stacked Brian, Bruce, Al, Carl, Mike. They performed these parts on track 3 and doubled them on track 4. Bizarrely, one last touch was added as Brian mixed the tune down to mono: Mike was put on a microphone to make a sexy(?) purring/growling sound just after his first line. Two days later, this mix was added to a compilation reel of completed mono masters for the album.
[Where to hear: Good Vibrations – Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993, Capitol Records) CD 2 track 13, The Pet Sounds Sessions (1997, Capitol Records) CD 3 track 19, Pet Sounds: 50th Anniversary Edition (2016, Capitol Records) CD 1 track 29. This is also the version of “Hang On to Your Ego” featured on the 40th anniversary CD, but all other standalone CD issues of Pet Sounds feature the February 9 mix.]
March 3, 1966
For anyone who’s been reading these essays, this next statement will give you déjà vu: Brian soon realized that he wasn’t satisfied with these vocals and sought to replace them all. Again. He wasn’t happy with anyone’s lead vocal performance, including his own in the choruses, and found the verses’ background arrangement to be a little too busy, harmonically. On March 3, a session was held in earnest at Studio 3 to rethink the vocals for “Hang On.”
Since the Beach Boys recorded all of the Pet Sounds vocals as overdubs on four-track (and sometimes eight-track) tape, each subsequent take of a section erased the previous attempt. The only instances where we can hear and document earlier attempts at vocals are when Brian considered them to be “final” enough to dub them down to mono (e.g. the content a few paragraphs above), or when certain sections were left behind on tape as a fluke, which mostly occurred on eight-track. But this particular session is the most well-documented of all the Pet Sounds vocal dates, with every attempt at most of the individual punch-ins of each overdub preserved on tape. Allow us to explain.
For unclear reasons, Brian and Chuck recorded the console feed to a separate 1/4″ tape machine, in addition to the four-track that was capturing the actual song, and, for a moment, another 1/4″ that would be used for a slapback effect on one part. Brian was not regularly in the habit of recording entire vocal sessions to mono; he last did so almost exactly a year prior on March 4, 1965, the day that Murry Wilson crashed a “Help Me, Rhonda” vocal session. Brian explicitly stated on that tape during a tense confrontation that he wanted to get some of Murry’s words on record. Perhaps he sensed a similar controversy surrounding “Ego,” and knowing that it was likely to boil over on this date, recorded everyone to keep them on their best behavior, or else capture any bickering. Whatever the case, it’s a rich document that peels back the curtains on the group’s actual working dynamics in a way that almost nothing else from the time does.
The first order of business was for Mike to replace his solo parts, those being the first line of each verse, double-tracked. The first verse was re-recorded and re-doubled before the 7.5ips mono reel was put on the second machine – Mike took a break between verses while Brian got that set up. As the mono reel starts rolling, Mike sings his first line of the song and more, actually making a decent pass at the Al and Brian parts. “Hey, I can sing that whole son of a bitch by myself!” he muses.
“It’s so shitty!” Al comments from his chair behind Mike, referring to the background vocals in the verse that he just heard come over the monitors. “Chorus sounded so bad, Brian. It sounds like shit.” One wonders why Brian often felt compelled to continuously reattempt all of the various Pet Sounds vocals with such supportive bandmates. “Do the whole fucking thing,” Al then says, turning to Mike. “Really, I swear. I swear you could do it.”
“I’d like to, I really would” Mike offers. Mike then tries the verse and a chorus, but gives up when he realizes it extends higher than he’s used to. “Hang on to your EEEEEEEEE… Hang on to your nose!”
Brian’s keen to move this along. “Alright, second verse, let’s give it a try.” Mike hits a bum note and gets silly with it, prompting Brian’s suave Hollywood producer purr. “One more and you got it.”
“Why don’t I do a Jimmy Durante?” Mike suggests, and the next couple of takes derail into celebrity impressions. Brian calls out a request for an Arthur Godfrey, but afterwards they’ve got to get serious. “We’ll do it on a tape for our own, okay?” he half-jokes. “We’ll do a take like that as soon as we’re done, okay? Ya hip?”
“Okaaay, I’m sorry,” Mike laughs. “Okay. Check.”
“Let’s make this one now, though.”
Brian and Mike are both in good spirits here, and certainly on good terms. The only bits of constructive feedback from Brian (“a little bit weak on the notes,” and “on ‘inside’ you weren’t quite on the note”) are communicated with grace, humor, and even a little bit of apologizing for criticizing the performance at all (Mike responds to “too close” by stepping several feet back from the mic and cracking Brian up). Only a few takes each are needed for Mike to sing the line then double it, most of those being stopped for technical problems rather than performance problems. “We gots it!” Brian enthuses. “Okay, Al, let’s do your thing, and then we’ll do the chorus.”
“Okay, man,” responds Al. Brian and Mike switch places as Mike goes into the booth with Chuck, and Brian comes out to coach Al through his part. All the while, Mike continues his comedy routine of impressions on the way to the talkback mic, and Brian has trouble holding in his laughter. “What a clown,” Al says.
Mike: “Here’s an example of a Motown A&R man. Alright, babies! Now if everybody gets it on the first take, everybody gets some cock!”
Immediately, confronted with the idea of singing the part without Brian, Al gets cold feet: “Hey, I need your help, Brian. I cannot hack this without your help. I mean it. I’m really just… I’m mentally destroyed.”
“No, you sound better alone, Al,” Mike reassures him from the booth.
“I know I do, but I’m handicapped,” is Al’s explanation. The part he’ll be singing first here is just the second line of the opening verse, They isolate their heads and stay in their safety zones. “I just don’t feel that shit,” he tells Brian after trying it to himself. “Please do it with me. Or maybe you ought to just sing it. We could do it together, Brian.”
For a while, a little argument between the three ensues: Brian says he’ll sing the whole song (outside of Mike’s two lines) himself unless Al REALLY wants to do it. Al says he does, but is worried it’ll take too long for him to sing it right. Mike offers to do the whole verse again, which Al also suggests as an out, but Brian explains that the song needs more vocal contrast than that. So Brian rehearses Al through the line a few times until they both feel Al is ready (“it’s gonna be very straight, alright,” Al decides, “and powerful”), and Brian retreats to the booth while Mike comes back into the live room to watch. But on the first take of the line, Al’s “stay” is considerably sharp and his rhythm is all over the shop.
“We’re gonna have some trouble,” Brian surmises.
“I know we are. We’re gonna fuck up,” says Al. Mike tries to offer singing it again, despite Brian having shut him down a few times now.
“I’m gonna try to sabotage you, Al,” Mike whispers.
The next take goes decently, according to Brian, although “stay” is still sharp. “That’s really gonna be good. Now do it like that, but a little better!” The third take goes about as well, but Brian isn’t happy with “isolate.” Then the problem is “zone.” Same for take 5. Takes 6 and 7 both sound good, but Brian’s after perfection.
Mike cracks up here at Al giving him the finger. “I’ve never watched Al cut before, it’s hilarious!”
“You look like you’re riding a horse,” Bruce comments, speaking up for the first time (he’s apparently just walked in).
“Okay, fuckers,” says Al. Brian gets frustrated. “Look, if I can cut it, man, that’s what’s important!” Al reasons.
“It looks like you’re cutting it two ways…” Bruce retorts.
Brian gets impatient with the giggling. “We gotta cut this fucking thing, come on.”
Al cracks up on take 8. “I’m sorry, Chuck. I’ll get it this time.” And then to Mike and Bruce: “Get out of here for about ten minutes.” Take 9 is good, but Brian asks for one more. The tenth take is the one, and Brian tells Al to overdub it. “Hey, Brian?” he asks. “It’s not too folky-shitty, is it? You know what I mean?”
“It’ll be good,” Brian says, as he and Chuck prepare to record Al’s double onto track 3. Al nails it in a few attempts.
Next, they’ll be recording the following two lines: Now what can you tell them? And what can you say that won’t make them defensive? As Al’s preparing to sing the part, Carl walks in. “Good morning, Carl.” Someone named Roy walks in behind, and Brian and Al both greet him, too. Al gives the part two takes, but Brian isn’t happy with Al’s phrasing.
“Let me come out there,” he offers, walking down to Al. “Alright, let’s do it like this. Let’s do it on the piano.” Brian goes to play piano while singing Al’s part to him but is bewildered by some out of tune keys. “Geez, what in the fuck happened to the piano?” He sings through it a couple times to demonstrate exactly how Al should be singing it to the rhythm of the track before going back to the booth to produce.
After three more takes, Brian tells Al that he’s not singing it strong enough. After take 6, “No, you’re loosening up on ‘them!’” In take 7, Al sings the wrong word (he and Brian had resolved to start the last line with “and what can you say…” rather than “now what can you say…”). The same thing happens in take 8. After take 9, Brian tells Al that “-sive” in “defensive” needs to be louder. As the least experienced lead singer in the group, Al had the least of Brian’s trust, and every syllable counted. “Just give me more power and volume. Belt it out.” Take 10 is still too weak for Brian: “Every word is a strong thing!” Brian sings the line to Al for the twentieth time, no doubt making Al nervous about getting it right, but he’s so close.
After take 11, Brian demands it to be “stronger.” Take 12 is better, but Brian tells Al he’s flat on some notes. Take 13 is even closer, but “make them” is still flat according to Brian. “It’s one big blockbuster line,” he tells Al. He interrupts take 14 early: “‘What can’ is still off, man!! You’re never making those!” In take 15, “tell them” is rushed. Finally, Brian tells Al he’s got it after take 16.
“Are you sure?” asks Al. “You’re not just accepting that, are you?”
“That’s about it,” Brian says, now asking Al to double his part. “Now do the same thing with the same amount of drive, we’ll get more echo, and it’ll be perfect.”
“Okay, I don’t wanna do it if it’s shitty, though, Brian, I mean if you think you can do it better, you know?” Just a few takes of the double go by before Al nails it. “I lose my balls there,” Al says in regard to the word defensive, which comes at the end of his breath.
“We’ll go to the next verse,” Brian tells Al after he gets it. “Hold on, I’ll play it back for you.”
Brian hit the “Stop” button on the mono recorder for the time being. Al’s various attempts at the second verse weren’t captured to this tape, which Brian left off for a while. But something important happened before those next lines were recorded – to ease the discomfort the song was causing, Mike offered to slightly revise the lyrics in the second verse, from:
Now how can I say it?
And how can I come on when I know I’m guilty?
To:
Now how can I come on?
And tell them the way that they live could be better?
A more positive line that allowed Al Jardine to keep it clean, removing the personal connection between singer and subject matter. After the quick powwow, he continued through the second verse. As each line was punched in and out on the tape, some fragments of earlier vocals were accidentally left behind, namely various pieces of the backing vocals previously on track 3. Such are the limitations of recording a lead vocal line-by-line on analogue four-track.
Before the group gave the choruses another try, they all agreed that that lyric needed changing, as well. Between unease from Mike and Al about the perceived message the song was giving, and Brian personally feeling that he might have written something inappropriate, their thoughts arrived at a similar destination. According to Al, “Finally Brian decided, ‘Forget it. I’m changing the lyrics. There’s too much controversy.’”
Consistent with the other new line, Mike suggested a new, more hopeful chorus, and therefore a new title for the song:
I know there’s an answer
I know now, ’cause I had to find it by myself
Which is all tangled up against the anti-individualistic stance of the rest of the song, but whatever, it sang goodly. Contrary to popular characterization of this session’s events, Brian liked the revised lyric – a position which he can be heard expressing on tape later that day, and which he maintained throughout his life. “I just thought that to say ‘hang on to your ego’ was an ego statement in and of itself, which I wasn’t going for, so I changed it,” he once explained. “I gave it a lot of thought.” The arrangement would stay much the same, with some slight harmony shuffling: Brian on the lead, and Carl>Al>Bruce>Mike singing the same backgrounds, although their line would now start with “I know” rather than “hang on.”
Brian got set up to sing lead on one microphone while the other four gathered around a second, and Chuck hit “Play” again on the 7.5ips mono reel. Brian can be heard warming up his voice by singing a verse from old standard “The Old Master Painter” – “he’s about sixty, I think,” he decides. The boys practice their part once. “Let’s do another one. Let’s make it this time, and I’ll show you where to punch,” Brian says to Chuck. Carl and Mike discuss how to push the rhythm while still staying on beat. “Move in and belt it out,” Brian tells them.
After the first proper take, Chuck expresses concern about his punch-out cutting off the harmonized singing: “I’m opening while they’re still singing, is that..?” Brian tells Chuck he can even wait a little longer to preserve the end of the phrase and the slight reverb tail that’s on their voices, but Mike worries that this might erase the lead he’d just recorded on the same track. Brian offers the solution of signalling to Chuck with his hand to cue the punch-out.
A couple takes later, while Chuck is still getting the hang of his own precise recording performance, Brian calls for another take as he sang “I know” too flat, and Bruce complains about the lack of low end in his own voice. “Hey, what’s the deal about the lack of oxygen in here?” Brian asks, referring to the air conditioning (or lack thereof). “Did someone turn it off?” He sees that the thermostat has been changed from 60 to 70.
“Who put it at seventy?” Carl asks.
“I don’t know,” Brian says.
“I was freezing in here, Brian, I couldn’t help it,” Al admits, to which Brian responds by calling him a son of a bitch.
Next they go through the other two choruses on track 2, and Bruce makes sure that Brian remembers where Mike has to sing a bass part following the final chorus. Interestingly, while they wait through the verse for the next chorus, Al asks, “What are we gonna do here?” They all joke around with various improvised “di-dits,” but there does seem to be a general consensus that they’ll be singing a more broken up rhythm there, as opposed to the “ahhh” they’d done in the previous iteration.
After a few more tries, the first layer of vocals on the second and third choruses are complete. “Go to the other channel!” Brian tells Chuck.
“I said ‘hang on’ one time, but I think it’ll cover up,” confesses Bruce.
Brian starts discussing the revisions to the song with Al while Chuck winds the reel back and arms track 3. “It’s really great. I’m so happy we did this, ‘cause it’s – now I’m happy.”
“Now I am, too, ‘cause I hated the sound,” Al agrees.
“Oh fuck, and I hated the whole thing, it sounded so bad, and… now it’s good! It’s one of the best cuts on the album. It’s classical.” He then tells Al and Carl that he’ll be recording a track for “God Only Knows” on Sunday.
While they all double the choruses on track 3, Brian goes back and forth with Chuck to make sure the balance between lead and background vocals is perfect, and Bruce, Mike, and Carl talk about a friend named Eddie who just put $45,000 down on a $90,000 house. “Dennis got the greatest buy of the century, are you kidding?” Carl says. Meanwhile, Chuck notices the short fragment of “Ego” backing vocals, and tells the group he wants to be sure he erases them. Ironically, that fragment is still on the tape today.
After Chuck lets the tape roll between the second and third chorus, Brian panics under the belief that he just erased Al’s new third verse. But they all soon realize that Al hasn’t yet redone the third verse, as they got straight into doing all the choruses after the second verse. “Oh, we forgot to put that part on you! Ah, okay, we’ll put it on after we do this,” Brian says, as Marilyn walks in. “Oh, hi!” he greets her. “Why don’t you shut that door for a second?”
Bruce and Carl discuss the price of Carl’s new pants, while Brian seeks some collaboration from his bandmates: “What are we gonna do on that, in that one part?” meaning the verse backgrounds. No one responds yet. After two more takes of the final chorus’ double, Brian calls for Chuck to play the tape back to the group. While they discuss the final background parts to record, Brian tries to figure out who he needs out on the floor to sing. “Mike… shit, well I don’t know. I don’t know what it sounds like. I better forget that basketball tune, trip all over the chords.”
Before digging into those backing vocals, Brian got Al to sing and double-track the last verse, which they had forgotten to record earlier. Finally, Brian worked out what he wanted behind Al’s leads: two simple harmony parts, sung by Carl and Mike, and swathed in sizzling short-delay tape echo. But another idea was evidently discussed, this being a percussion overdub that never transpired. The mono vocal tape resumes with some sort of attempt at a clapping sound, and a conversation about the logistics of getting a real percussionist, including some frustration about Dennis’ no-show to the session.
Carl: “Chuck, just let it roll, we’ll, you know…”
Mike: “Yeah, hey, he got paid for the session, that’s it.”
Brian: “Well, he owed me a favor.”
Carl: “Let’s do the snare.”
Brian: “Alright, we’ll get it. We need him right away, though.”
Mike: “Get Roy.”
Brian: “Or Hal will do it.”
Mike: “Do you have Roy’s phone?”
Who is Roy??
Whatever idea they’re talking about seems to get dropped as soon as it’s brought up, as they turn their focus to the backing vocals. Carl and Mike give it a pass during the first verse, and Brian sings unison with Mike to teach him the part. “More Carl,” Bruce comments from the booth.
“Hey, when’s Al gonna do his part?” Mike asks.
“He did it!” Brian responds. Brian then goes into the booth to get the third tape machine up and running for the tape echo effect. Carl tries to suggest a new background part himself, based on the old “Ego” harmonies, but he seems to not be aware that they’re replacing exactly that. Interestingly, Mike equates those harmonies to the Olympics’ “Hully Gully.”
Without Brian in the room, Mike screws up the next few takes after forgetting his part. “Hey Brian, just run the notes down, okay?” Brian comes down and sings the part to Mike, and stands between him and Carl to make sure it all goes okay.
“Keep that sound on ‘em!” he yells to Chuck. “I want that real reverby sound!” All the while, Carl is trying to sing an idea to Brian, but Brian ignores it.
On the next take, Brian tries out a brief third harmony above Carl’s. “More top voice,” Bruce calls out, not realizing that what Brian just sang was only a rough idea.
“Two voices,” Brian argues back.
“I think a third voice would be better, Brian, maybe, I don’t know,” says Carl.
“Uh-uh,” Brian insists. “Two voices.”
After the next take, Al tells them, “It could’ve been better.” Brian stays between Carl and Mike, constantly coaching them when they stray from their assigned melodies. “Brian, can’t you sing the top?” asks Al. “It would sound GREAT!”
“I like two parts, damn it!” Brian defends himself. “What do you wanna do, get complex? I’ve never been a man to be complex.” Carl and Mike nail their parts this time, and sing in all three verses over one long take of the full song. “Is that alright?”
“Is it done yet, or what?” asks Mike.
“Are we gonna dual it? Aren’t we?” Carl enquires. “Are we gonna dual it?”
“No, I’m gonna run it over to the FM stations right now,” says Brian. They both crack up. But the recording is now done again, with all four tracks occupied by all-new vocals. Brian moved back into the booth with Chuck to mix the song, but kept Mike on the microphone where he’d again be adding his all-important growl in the first verse, simultaneous with the mono reduction. The first three mix attempts were done without the growl, to practice the balance. Next, Brian asked to hear Mike’s part into the microphone on its own. “Oh, that’s beautiful man!” The mix that followed, with the growl, was leadered as a master take at the end of the session.
[Where to hear: Pet Sounds: 50th Anniversary Edition (2016, Capitol Records) CD 3 track 14.]
March 22, 1966
But maybe “I Know There’s an Answer” didn’t need a weird purring noise in its opening verse. And maybe while we’re at it, Mike’s opening line could be stronger anyways. And maybe, despite all that it took… Al Jardine’s entire vocal could be better. Through Brian’s incessant drilling, Al had turned in a good performance on March 3, but not a great one, and there were pitch problems that could probably be fixed up after letting him take some R&R. On March 22, Brian held a long session at Western Studio 3, much of which was dedicated to revising these lead vocals.
Without the added pressure of singing about egos (whatever those are), Al turned in one of his most powerful vocal performances to date, coated in an engorged dollop of beautiful reverb. Once again, he sang each line on track 2, doubling everything on track 3 as he went. Mike also redid his opening line and its double, scooping quite satisfyingly into the word “alone” (but he didn’t re-record the second verse). Brian and Chuck dubbed the song down to mono for a fourth time, and marked the previous March 3 mix “NO GOOD.” The rest of the session was spent taking photographs of Brian’s dogs on top of a piano and wallowing in desperation to get them to bark on tape.
This March 22 mix (which has not yet been released as of writing) was considered a final master for several weeks, and when Brian took Pet Sounds to Capitol for the first time in early April, that’s the version he mastered to lacquer as track 2 on side 2.
April 17, 1966
Following a rejected original assembly and mastering, the last sessions for Pet Sounds concentrated on overdubbing and remixing all of the eight-track productions that had been worked on at Columbia Studios, while the Western Recorders tunes were considered fine and done. That is, until the literal last day of the whole project: Sunday, April 17, when Brian would be mastering Pet Sounds for the second and final time at Capitol.
With no time to spare, Brian alone booked a quick session at Western with Chuck Britz to make further changes to “I Know There’s an Answer.” It was the chorus he’d been mulling over, deciding that old school “dit dit” harmony arrangement just got in the way more than it added.
On tracks 2 and 3, Brian sang a new, more rhythmically precise chorus lead, unaccompanied by the group, this time really biting into the word “answer” in a brighter tone of voice, with another tiny lyric change of his own: “’cause I had…” altered to “but I had…”
But a big exaltation like that needed another element to make it glow. On track 4, punching in between the verse backgrounds, Brian overdubbed an organ part in each chorus: sustained chords in the right hand, and a walking line in the left. He appears to have used a transistor organ of some kind rather than the traditional Hammond, potentially a Vox or Farfisa. Maybe due to the hasty nature of the session, the lower frequences of the organ are overwhelmed in the blend, swallowing up the moving line, perhaps a mic placement issue exacerbated by the organ’s stop itself. A high ringing at about 16khz is also attached to the organ overdub, either caused by a problem with electronics in the recording chain or by the speaker itself. This instrumental overdub was the last piece of audio to be recorded for Pet Sounds.
Click below to hear the part (with its hidden left hand) in isolation.
Recreation by Joshilyn
Brian and Chuck then mixed the song to mono for the fifth time, requiring four takes to get the reduction right. “Is this recording if I talk into it?” Brian can be heard asking into the talkback mic on the outtake reel. “Alright, this is the master for ‘I Know the Answer.’” Brian made another mistake by writing the date “4-17-65” on the box. Clearly, it was a mad dash to the finish line, with no time check the current year!
Upon publication and release, this composition was credited to just Brian Wilson and Terry Sachen, but Mike Love received a late songwriting credit for his contributions following a lawsuit in the 1990s.
RECORDING BREAKDOWN
Key
- Blue – instrument on tape
- Green – voice on tape
- Red – instrument or voice erased from tape
- [d/t] – double-tracked
- [t/t] – triple-tracked
- [q/t] – quadruple-tracked
- [x] – unused in final master
- [c] – track copied or combined from previous tape generation (relevant in multitrack breakdowns)
I Know There’s an Answer
working title: Hang On to Your Ego
music by Brian Wilson
words by Brian Wilson and Terry Sachen, revised and retitled by Mike Love
instrumentation arranged by Brian Wilson, assisted by the studio musicians
vocals arranged by Brian Wilson
produced by Brian Wilson
1966-02-09
½” 4-TRACK (1ST GEN)
BASIC (master: take 12)
takes 1-12
- tack upright piano: Al De Lory
- Wegman Cabinet Grand
- electric organ: Larry Knechtel
- Hammond C-3
- electric 12-string guitar: Barney Kessel
- Danelectro Bellzouki 7010
- electric 12-string guitar: Glen Campbell
- Mosrite Mark XII
- electric 6-string bass: Ray Pohlman
- Fender VI
- double bass: Lyle Ritz
- tambourine: Hal Blaine
- tambourine: Steve Douglas
- timpani: Julius Wechter
- flute: Robert Klein
- clarinet: Jim Horn
- clarinet: Paul Horn
- clarinet: Jay Migliori
- bass harmonica: Tommy Morgan
OD
- resonator banjo: Glen Campbell (rhythm in solo & tag)
- mandolin: Carl Wilson (stabs in chorus)
½” 4-TRACK (2ND GEN)
TRANSFER to 1/2” 4-track – 4 to 1 reduction (master: take 4A)
takes 1A-4A
first set of ODs (as “Hang On to Your Ego”)
OD A1 / A2
- lead vocal: Brian Wilson [d/t] [x] (later mostly wiped, tag scat vocals retained on tape)
MIXDOWN to ¼” mono – 4 to 1 – mono mix 1
1966-02-14
second set of ODs starting from scratch (as “Hang On to Your Ego”)
OD B1 / B2
- verse A lead vocal: Mike Love [d/t] [x]
OD B3
- verse B lead vocals: Brian Wilson, Al Jardine (unison) [x]
OD B4 / B5
- chorus lead vocal: Brian Wilson [d/t] [x]
- chorus backing vocals: Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love [d/t] [x]
- tag bass vocal: Mike Love [d/t] [x] (one track later wiped, one track retained)
MIXDOWN to ¼” mono with OD – 4+1 to 1 – mono mix 2
- growl: Mike Love
1966-03-03
third set of ODs starting from scratch (as “I Know There’s an Answer”)
OD C1 / C2
- verse A lead vocal: Mike Love [d/t] (1st verse later replaced, 2nd verse retained)
OD C3 / C4
- verse B lead vocal: Al Jardine [d/t] [x] (1st & second verses)
OD C5 / C6
- chorus lead vocal: Brian Wilson [d/t] [x]
- chorus backing vocals: Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love [d/t] [x]
- tag bass vocal: Mike Love [d/t]
OD C7 / C8
- verse B lead vocal: Al Jardine [d/t] [x] (final verse)
OD C9
- verse backing vocals: Carl Wilson, Mike Love (w/tape echo)
MIXDOWN to ¼” mono with OD – 4 + 1 to 1 – mono mix 3 (master: take 4)
mix takes 1-4
- growl: Mike Love
1966-03-22
OD D1 / D2
- verse A lead vocal: Mike Love [d/t] (1st verse redo)
OD D3 / D4
- verse B lead vocal: Al Jardine [d/t] (redo)
MIXDOWN to ¼” mono – 4 to 1 – mono mix 4
1966-04-17
OD D5 / D6
- chorus lead vocal: Brian Wilson [d/t] (redo)
OD D7
- electronic organ: Brian Wilson
MIXDOWN to ¼” mono – 4 to 1 – mono mix 5
Tracks – 1st Generation
1 – tack piano, electric organ, electric 12-string guitars, tambourines, bass harmonica
2 – electric 6-string bass, double bass
3 – timpani, flutes, clarinets
4 – mandolin, banjo
Tracks – 2nd Generation
1 – track
2 – lead vocals 1
3 – lead vocals 2
4 – backing vocals / organ
Sessions
Wednesday, February 9, 1966 – 9:00am to 1:00pm
Location: Western Recorders – Studio 3
Address: 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
AFM personnel: Steve Douglas (leader), Chuck Britz, Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Lyle Ritz, Ray Pohlman, Al De Lory, Tommy Morgan, Julius Wechter, Barney Kessel, Jim Horn, Paul Horn, Robert Klein, Jay Migliori, Larry Knechtel
Summary: 4trk-1 basic, 4trk-1 to 4trk-2 reduction, 4trk-2 overdubs (vocals), 4-trk-2 to 1trk mixdown – mix 1
Monday, February 14, 1966
Location: Western Recorders – Studio 3
Address: 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
Personnel: Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston
Summary: 4trk-2 overdubs (vocals), 4trk-2 to 1trk mixdown – mix 2
Thursday, March 3, 1966
Location: Western Recorders – Studio 3
Address: 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
Personnel: Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston
Summary: 4trk-2 overdubs (vocals), 4trk-2 to 1trk mixdown – mix 3
Tuesday, March 22, 1966
Location: Western Recorders – Studio 3
Address: 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
Personnel: Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston
Summary: 4trk-2 overdubs (vocals), 4trk-2 to 1trk mixdown – mix 4
Monday, April 4, 1966
Location: Capitol Records
Address: 1750 North Vine Street, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: unknown
Summary: mix 4 spliced to Pet Sounds LP master reel
Monday, April 17, 1966
Location: Western Recorders – Studio 3
Address: 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: Chuck Britz
Personnel: Brian Wilson
Summary: 4trk-2 overdubs (vocals, organ), 4trk-2 to 1trk mixdown – mix 5
Sunday, April 17, 1966
Location: Capitol Records
Address: 1750 North Vine Street, Hollywood, California
Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineer: unknown
Summary: mix 5 spliced to Pet Sounds LP master reel
Sources
Based on original research by John Brode, Will Crerar, Joshilyn Hoisington and Craig Slowinski.
Tapes and documentation from Capitol Records and Brother Records.
AFM Local 47 Contract 105850.
Brian Wilson interviewed by Tom Nolan, “The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music,” Los Angeles Times West Magazine, November 1966.
Mike Love interviewed by Ken Sharp, “Love Among the Ruins: The Controversial Beach Boy Speaks His Mind,” Goldmine, September 1992.
Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Tony Asher, Tommy Morgan, Marilyn Wilson – interviews conducted by David Leaf, appear in “The Making of Pet Sounds,” The Pet Sounds Sessions, Capitol Records, 1997.
Brian Wilson interviewed by Jonathan Valanta, “Bittersweet Symphony,” Magnet Magazine, August/September 1999.
Brian Wilson, Tommy Morgan – interviews appearing in “Pet Stories,” directed by John Anderson, Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds Live in London, DVD, Sanctuary Visual Entertainment, 2003.
Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston – interviews appearing in “The Beach Boys: Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” directed by Matt O’Casey, British Broadcasting Corporation, 2005.