“I was so jealous of the Beatles,” said Brian Wilson. “I couldn’t believe how jealous I was of the Beatles.” With each new single he heard, including the Beatles‘ 1963 classic “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which he remembered hearing for the first time on the radio at his mother-in-law’s house in West Hollywood, there was a part of Wilson that coveted those lyrics. Wilson felt the tinge of competition when he heard “She Loves You,” which he called “fantastic,” along with “From Me to You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and many others, but already knew the Beach Boys were on to something good.
“We [The Beach Boys] got rolling on our own thing,” said Wilson, “so it was pretty cool.” He later added, “We were kind of like rivals, but we turned each other on. We inspired each other to do better.”
Wilson’s catalog would also inspire the Beatles, from the group’s earlier West Coast daze of “California Girls,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” “I Get Around,” and more, and into his 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds, which prompted Paul McCartney to push the Beatles’ sonic abilities and was a major inspiration for their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and earlier Revolver classic “Here, There and Everywhere,” which was inspired by “God Only Knows.”
It was a song McCartney called “the greatest song ever written,” in Charles Granata’s 2003 book Wouldn’t it Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.
“In terms of circularity, though, it’s hard to beat the fact that ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ was influenced most immediately by The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ from ‘Pet Sounds,’” revealed McCartney in his 2021 book, The Lyrics: 1956 to Present.
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“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”
Along with the Beatles’ (and the Beach Boys’) weighty songbooks, Wilson also admired plenty of songs by other artists, everything from the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” to the Rolling Stones’ “My Obsession.”
There was another early ’60s song that Wilson wished he had thought of first, the Phil Spector-produced Righteous Brothers hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”
Co-written by Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” went to No. 1 once released and continued to resurface on the charts with covers by Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick in the 1960s, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway in 1971, and even Hall & Oates, who peaked at No. 12 in 1980 with their rendition.
“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was one song Wilson held in high regard and admitted that he wished he had written himself.
“I wish I had written ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,’” said Wilson in a 2007 interview. “It was such a great record, nobody could believe it. I think what makes that a great song is the background track, the chord pattern, the melody, the lyrics, and the Righteous Brothers’ voices.”
Wilson added, “I liked Bill Medley better than Bobby Hatfield. I did a version of ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ with The Beach Boys, but we never released it.”
Originally recorded during the Beach Boys’ sessions for their 1977 album, Love You, their version of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was later released on the 2013 compilation album Made in California.
Photo: Brian Wilson works on a composition on an upright piano while reading music in 1964 in Los Angeles, California. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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