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Speaking to Uncut in 2006, Brian Wilson explained the recording process for “Good Vibrations”. The song, he told us, “took six weeks to record, in five different studios. I wrote out each musician’s part on music paper then they all played it together. I found I could work out each part without it being too difficult. It did get tedious, though. The musicians understood it all more or less straight away. Hal Blaine was always right on my wavelength.”
Although a relatively understated view of events, all the same it signalled towards Wilson’s meticulous, if exhaustive, creative processes. For further evidence, there’s black and white film on YouTube showing Wilson bringing his pocket symphony to life in the studio. When he’s not issuing orders like a benign general to Blaine – “Play hard and strong all the way” – you see Wilson in the vocal booth with the rest of The Beach Boys, singing high harmony with his eyes closed, caught up in some deeply private inner rhapsody. “He was very unfiltered, very brilliant and very humble at the same time,” Al Jardine tells us elsewhere in this issue. “He was a miracle, a walking miracle. There’ll never be another one like him. Everybody loved Brian.” You can read more about Wilson in our definitive tribute from Stephen Troussé which begins on page 52.
If Wilson – for whatever reasons – never quite eclipsed his ’60s songwriting genius, then our cover star never seems to wane, as Paul Weller’s ongoing purple patch attests. Print readers can get a flavour for it – if you need such a thing – thanks to a rather special, exclusive free CD that rounds up a hefty selection of deep cuts, B-sides and rarities, encompassing bucolic psychedelia, cosmic shuffles and even a 10-minute krautrock epic. All of this complements an excellent new interview with Pete Paphides which finds Weller in surprisingly emotional form, reflecting on his father and former manager John Weller, fallen Jam comrade Rick Buckler and a very funny encounter with Ronnie’s pet lion.
There’s plenty more, of course – enough, we hope, to last a month…
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To let us know what you think of this month’s issue, email us at letters@uncut.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you.
