I grew up listening to rock 'n' roll, which was half doo-wop, and half Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis. As the 1960s began to emerge, the Four Seasons in 1962 and the Beach Boys in 1963 carried on with a modernized, popified doo-wop sound. The Beatles were closer than just around the next corner. And that was the milieu in which I formed my first group, The Transits, slightly more old-fashioned than the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but covering their best songs.
The Transits sang at the YMHA on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, a stone's throw from Yankee Stadium in early 1964. "Dawn" and "Rag Doll" by the Four Seasons and "Surfer Girl" by the Beach Boys were at the top of the list of the songs we covered. As I walked a girl home whom I'd met at the concert, I told her I was tired of being in a group that sang those kinds of songs -- I wanted to be in a group that sounded more like The Beatles.
The Four Seasons would never progress very far beyond their pop doo-wop origins. But the Beach Boys under Brian Wilson's leadership sure did. As is well known, The Beatles' Rubber Soul in 1965 inspired the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in 1966 which in turn inspired The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. While The Beatles were recording and releasing Sgt. Pepper, the Beach Boys were doing the same with their Smiley Smile album featuring "Heroes and Villains" (also released as a single). So the two groups were not only inspiring one another, they in effect were co-creating across the continents, a musical incarnation of Marshall McLuhan's global village, which he prophetically wrote about in The Gutenberg Galaxy back in 1962.
For a variety of reasons, however, "Heroes and Villains" didn't get the immediate acclaim it so eminently deserved. It has been one of my all-time favorite recordings since the moment I first heard it, though I can't quite recall where that was. The harmony in that recording -- like the harmony in the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" adaptation on Pet Sounds -- is in the stratosphere, the ultimate evolution, at least as of now, of multi-dimensional doo-wop.
Brian Wilson did not get the adulation at first hearing that "Heroes and Villains" amply merited. But I touted it everywhere I could. My wife Tina and I were thrilled to hear Brian sing it in the Beach Boys reunion tour, at their performance in 2012 in White Plains, NY. It was a sad night, not only because of course Dennis and Carl Wilson weren't there, but because WFUV disc jockey Pete Fornatale, who had been one of the champions of everything Beach Boys and Beatles on his Mixed Bag shows, had recently unexpectedly passed away. (Come to think of it, I may have first heard "Heroes and Villains" on Pete's original "Mixed Bag" show on WFUV back in the 1960s. Pete, by the way, is the hero of my 2024 novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles.) But it was wonderful indeed to see and hear Brian in person.
I still think The Beatles are the best rock group to ever have written and recorded myriad forms of rock music. Over the years, I've switched back and forth between the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones as to which is the second greatest rock group in history. But I think I'm content now to leave it with both of them tied for second place, and every other great group vast caverns below them.
Thank you Brian Wilson, rest in peace. Your "Heroes and Villains" will always be playing somewhere, and you are its hero.
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