Jim Fusilli - The Beach Boys Pet Sounds

Pet Sounds

Praise for the series:

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rocknroll faithfulBoldtype

Each volume has a distinct, almost militantly personal take on a beloved long-player the books that have resulted are like the albums themselvesfilled with moments of shimmering beauty, forgivable flaws, and stubborn eccentricityTracks Magazine

At their best, these books make rich, thought-provoking arguments for the song collections at handThe Philadelphia Inquirer

Reading about rock isnt quite the same as listening to it, but this series comes pretty damn closeNeon NYC

The sort of great idea you cant believe hasnt been done beforeBoston Phoenix

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com

Jim Fusilli

2009

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2005
by Jim Fusilli

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fusilli, Jim.
Pet sounds / Jim Fusilli.
p. cm. (33 1/3)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-1266-8
1. Beach Boys. Pet sounds. 2. Beach Boys.
I. Title. II. Series.
ML421.B38F87 2005
782.421660922dc22
2005001103

Prologue
I know perfectly well Im not where I should be

Chapter One
Sometimes I feel very sad

Chapter Two
There are words we both could say

Chapter Three
I wish that every kiss was never-ending

Chapter Four
I had to prove that I could make it alone now

Chapter Five
Lets go away for a while

Chapter Six
I keep looking for a place to fit in

Chapter Seven
But sometimes I fail myself

Chapter Eight
I know theres an answer

Chapter Nine
The world could show nothing to me

Chapter Ten
Its so sad to watch a sweet thing die

Epilogue
Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis, by Warren Zanes

Forever Changes, by Andrew Hultkrans

Harvest, by Sam Inglis

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society,
by Andy Miller

Meat Is Murder, by Joe Pernice

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, by John Cavanagh

Abba Gold, by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Electric Ladyland, by John Perry

Unknown Pleasures, by Chris Ott

Sign O the Times, by Michaelangelo Matos

The Velvet Underground and Nico, by Joe Harvard

Let It Be, by Steve Matteo

Live at the Apollo, by Douglas Wolk

Aqualung, by Allan Moore

OK Computer, by Dai Griffiths

Let It Be, by Colin Meloy

Led Zeppelin IV, by Erik Davis

Armed Forces, by Franklin Bruno

Exile on Main Street, by Bill Janovitz

Grace, by Daphne Brooks

Loveless, by Mike McGonigal

Murmur, by J. Niimi

Ramones, by Nicholas Rombes

Forthcoming in this series:

Born in the USA, by Geoff Himes

Endtroducing, by Eliot Wilder

In the Aeroplane over the Sea, by Kim Cooper

London Calling, by David Ulin

Low, by Hugo Wilcken

Kick out the Jams, by Don McLeese

The Notorious Byrd Brothers, by Ric Menck

I was pretty happy when I was young: fat, contented, the eldest grandson to my Italian-American grandparents and, until my brother was born, the lone beneficiary of the attention of my proud parents. But somewhere along the line, when I was about nine or ten years old, life started to creep me out. It was a confluence of thingsnobody to blame, really. I mean, my parents had some odd ideas, and they bickered a lot, and my extended family on the Irish side, the members of which lived practically on top of us in Hoboken, New Jersey, was thoroughly dysfunctional, specialists in the art of ignoring each other for even the most minor, and often merely perceived, slight. But, before things started to get weird in my life, things were OK. My parents loved me and had dreams for my brother and me. And my Italian-American grandparents thought I was the greatest child ever, which was fantasticthough it took me a long time to realize no one was ever going to love me like that again.

My parents were always trying to improve my mind and my imagination, and one of the ways they achieved this was by exposing me to the efforts of Walt Disney, who was all the way out there in California. They loved how he brought information and entertainment into the home, and they liked his movies too, especially my mother, who would take me to New York City, where wed see one of his films and then get some Chinese food in an alley near Macys. When the Mickey Mouse Club began broadcasting daily in 1956, my father made me a sweatshirt that was exactly like those worn by the Mouseketeers, with my family nickname Jamie in black block letters on a white background. I watched the Mickey Mouse Club as often as I could, and Disneyland, and its successor Walt Disney Presents. And Walt Disneys Wonderful World of Color, which premiered on NBC in 1961, when I was eight.

So engrained was the world of Disney in my imagination that when I went to elementary school at Our Lady of Grace and the nuns taught us about our guardian angel, I was convinced that mine, like Pinocchios, was Jiminy Cricket.

In virtually every program, Disney promoted the glories of California, and often doing so was Walt Disney himself, who hosted many of the shows that bore his name. The promotion was often inferred: His happy, cooperative workers wore shirt sleeves and strolled sundrenched paths on the way to their offices; the foliage was rich and abundant, the land never-ending, the sky flawless. Glittering cars flowed on ribbons of highways; in his idea of modern architecture, order reigned; and you could run into Art Linkletter or Kirk Douglas or that Italian sparkplug Annette Funicello and they would greet you with a warm smile. And everything had its purpose and was pure.

According to Mr. Disney, California offered whole-someness, simplicity, an understandable moral code, fun and more fun. Even learning was fun: Its the encyclopedia, sang a cheery Jiminy Cricket, E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A! In Mr. Disneys California, you could remain a child forever, and you knew what was right and what wasnt. And no ones parents bickered.