1966

[Emily]

Here, There and Everywhere is to me more boring than all of Pet Sounds and the rest of Revolver.

Wow. I've never heard someone agree with me on this. If that's a tribute to Pet Sounds, it really misses the mark.

It's all opinion, Emily, but I've always believed that HTAE and Sun King were done with Brian Wilson in mind. Listen some time to the ending of Here Comes The Sun. Yes? No?  

Pure memory here, but didn't McCartney acknowledge (maybe in his bio?) that "Here, There and Everywhere" was a tribute to or modeled on Brian's work?  Certainly, "Back In the USSR" was a light-hearted tribute.

-ITS BEEN SAID THAT "HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE" WAS INFLUENCED BY THE BEACH BOYS. IS THAT ACCURATE?

PAUL: "It's actually just the introduction that's influenced...John and I used to be interested in what the old fashioned writers used to call the verse, which we nowadays would call the intro...this whole preamble to a song, and I wanted to have one of those on the front of 'Here, There and Everywhere.' John and I were quite into those from the old-fashioned songs that used to have them, and in putting that [sings "To lead a better life”] on the front of 'Here, There and Everywhere,' we were doing harmonies, and the inspiration for that was the Beach Boys. We had that in our minds during the introduction to 'Here, There and Everywhere.'

--http://albumlinernotes.com/Paul_McCartney_Comments.html

It's really just the harmonies, which isn't so much a Pet Sounds thing particularly, more a Beach Boys thing generally.

eta - though even what Paul McC says above doesn't entirely make sense because the harmonies don't kick in until after the intro on HT&E.
I kind of think, despite what McCartney says here, that it's the falsetto (though it's not the sort that BW ever used) and the ooh-ing that make people think it's a BB tribute, and maybe it was, but it's really not very Pet Sounds-like at all to my ears. It doesn't have any of the interesting instrumentation or adventuresome structure of Pet Sounds. Some of the Beatles' stuff does, but Here, There and Everywhere is Beach Boys-like to me in the same way Back to the USSR is.

[Emily]

Here, There and Everywhere is to me more boring than all of Pet Sounds and the rest of Revolver.

Wow. I've never heard someone agree with me on this. If that's a tribute to Pet Sounds, it really misses the mark.

It's all opinion, Emily, but I've always believed that HTAE and Sun King were done with Brian Wilson in mind. Listen some time to the ending of Here Comes The Sun. Yes? No? 

If Here Comes the Sun and Sun King are BW tributes or BW inspired, I think they are much more successfully so than HT&W. BW's music was just never as tepid as HT&E (to me, of course... yes, this is all opinion and on this topic I have no irksomeness regarding other opinions).

[ZenobiaUnchained]

I prefer 67, not because of the cliche Summer of Love but because of all the amazing bands that appeared that year.

[SMiLE-addict]

I'm aware of that McCartney quote, but the more I've listened to the two songs, the more similar they seem to each other. It's not just the intro, but pretty much all of HTAE is quite similar to YSBIM. I know McCartney has also said he really liked that particular Pet Sounds song, so I can't help but think he was copying it, even if subconsciously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSoM2sJ4N1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FjUzPsG3c8

[TMinthePM]

I can recall a Christmas party, 1966, at which Pet Sounds was played in rotation with the Fugs and Herman's Hermits Greatest Hits. Twas really mind-changing.

Yes, and in June '67 hearing the first cuts from Pepper on AM radio, jumbled up with 1941 Mining Disaster and Up Up and Away, and feeling these were not just different sounds, but different ways of thinking.

No, I've never recovered from those years, never became a Young Republican, always longed to recapture that elusive feeling, that elusive moment.

The music was that powerful, that transformative. Believe it.

And now that the stars have turned in the wheel of heaven we find ourselves in the mirrored image of that time- Revolution.

[Emily]

I'm aware of that McCartney quote, but the more I've listened to the two songs, the more similar they seem to each other. It's not just the intro, but pretty much all of HTAE is quite similar to YSBIM. I know McCartney has also said he really liked that particular Pet Sounds song, so I can't help but think he was copying it, even if subconsciously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSoM2sJ4N1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FjUzPsG3c8

Do you mean in the melody? I can definitely hear a similarity there. YSBIM is still, to me, so very much more interesting and adventurous musically that HT&E. I'm a really big Beatles fan - but HT&E just seems weak (to me). BW music is never blah.

[JK]

Not that 1966 (or '65 or '67) was all about the Boys (and/or the Fabs)----far from it!---- but it does warrant this topic's inclusion in the General On Topic Discussions. :=)

In those years in the UK we were lucky to have the offshore "pirate" radio stations who played everything and anything, including (in 1966) David Bowie's earliest outings with the Lower Third and truly obscure stuff like "Screwy Mooey" by The Peels. In fact it was in 1967 that such stations were declared illegal and the BBC took over----not a positive step, in my opinion. This may have coloured my attitude to 1966, as the last year of UK pop radio freedom. I wonder how much one's choice of year (1965/66/67) depends on which side of the pond one was at the time----or from today's perspective. Anyway... 

This book has been heartily recommended to me (I'm sure I'll buy it one day):