Pet Sounds is an incredible album. It's a shame that the follow-up broke his brain, because the re-constructions of SMiLE using the original recordings and the tracklist from his 2004 release are outstanding.
The big influence was Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. That was the album that flipped me. The musical invention on that album was, like, ‘Wow!’ That was the big thing for me. I just thought, ‘Oh dear me. This is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?’ So, Sgt Pepper eventually came out, basically, from the idea that I had about this band. It was going to be an album of another band that wasn’t us. We were going to call ourselves something else, and just imagine all the time that it wasn’t us playing this album. So, I had this song written of ‘Sgt Pepper’, who, twenty year’s ago today, taught us to play and we’re his protégés and here we are.
Paul McCartney – From “[The Beatles: Off the Record]
RIP... glad I got to see them once about 15 years ago. Hit after hit was the entire show, I honestly forgot how many incredible songs they had. It was a very relaxed Sunday show and one of the last ones we saw before leaving Bonnaroo that year. It was exactly what we all needed.