Ok, I’m a little late in recognizing this album; almost forty-two years late, to be exact. But now, finally, I understand why it’s so highly regarded by so many people—for instance, Paul McCartney.

A few words about my reasons for taking so long to get around to it: first, I never much cared for the Beach Boys in their ‘60s heyday. Although I wouldn’t have known to put it this way at the age of sixteen or so, their early stuff struck me as a bleached-out imitation of Chuck Berry and others. In particular I didn’t much like their vocals, which struck me as thin and whiny. Of course I mostly heard them on AM radio through tiny speakers, and that made it worse.

And second, they seemed the acme of commercial pop at a time when I disdained it. There was a brief period when I was a bit of a folk music snob looking down on rock altogether, and even after I got over that it was the more adventurous music that attracted me: the British Invasion, American folk-rock like the Lovin’ Spoonful, and of course Dylan’s new rock-oriented work. The Beach Boys were just top-40 music, loved by the cool kids at school, of whom I was not one, and that didn’t help, either. I didn’t hate the group, but they were just something I heard on the radio and didn’t take seriously. Pet Sounds came out the year I graduated from high school, and I do remember a friend who was a fan saying it was something special. But I wasn’t interested.

Well, it was my loss. This is, just as critics have been saying for decades, a masterpiece, one of the ‘60s landmarks that unquestionably deserves its prominence not for any sociological or cultural reason but because it’s really, really fine music. From first note to last it’s as inventive as anything the Beatles ever did, though without their counter-cultural poses. And it’s all the better for that, because it’s a picture of the heart of a young man presented with no big axes to grind and no big message beyond the struggle to grow up. I had a friend in high school named Carolyn who started crying when “Caroline No” came on the radio one summer day when several of us were riding around. I thought she was being a bit melodramatic at the time, but looking back on her, and hearing the song now, as if for the first time, she was right to weep; it’s an absolutely beautiful and heart-breaking song, capturing the first youthful experience of loss about as well as it ever has been.

Speaking of hearing things for the first time: Pet Sounds was available only in mono or phony stereo for many years. In 1999 Brian Wilson worked with an engineer to produce a real stereo mix which can be found on a CD containing both versions. I strongly recommend it. The stereo version has been a revelation to me. I had always thought of songs like “God Only Knows” as having a muddy, over-crowded, and indistinct sound. In the new mix all is spacious and clear and detailed, as if a very dirty window has been cleaned. I can say truthfully that I had never really heard the Beach Boys before.

I tend to be impatient with talk of lost American innocence, but in certain limited contexts there’s something to it. Wouldn’t it be nice if Brian Wilson had not fallen prey to whatever combination of drugs and mental illness it was that kept him from continuing to develop the gift that brought us Pet Sounds?