In his '60s heyday, Brian Wilson was not a man to bestow his genius on any band who came calling. It's one of the less celebrated oddities of Wilson's career that he became one of rock's most legendary producers solely through his work with a single group, The Beach Boys. His other production jobs have, for the most part, disappeared to the margins of musical history, as if they were the afterthoughts of brilliance.
'Pet Projects', though, is a heroic salvage job that proves Wilson was at full power whenever he worked the studio desk. For the most part, his favours fell upon family and friends. Half of the 20 tracks here are by The Honeys and American Spring, the two bands fronted by Marilyn Rovell, Wilson's first wife, and his much lusted-after sister-in-law Diane.
Working with female singers rather than the unearthly harmonics of his own band, Wilson's early '60s productions for The Honeys betray his enormous debt to Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound, with 'The One You Can't Have' and 'He's A Doll', superb correlatives to Spector's productions for his own wife Ronnie Bennett and The Ronettes. There's evidence of his dorky whitebread humour here, too, so that in his hands 'Swanee River' becomes 'Surfin' Down The Swanee River'.
More poignantly, a couple of American Spring tracks from 1973 stem from what was arguably Wilson's last great production date: brother Dennis' 'Lady', reshaped as 'Fallin' In Love', is a piece of LA baroque from a time when Brian Wilson's life had totally disintegrated. In the context of so much music from the relatively carefree early '60s, it sounds almost unbearably intimate.
The prevailing tone of 'Pet Projects', however, is one of unbridled innocence. Surfing, cars and adolescent crushes are the subject matter for most of these songs, gifted to the likes of Wilson's songwriting partner Gary Usher, and Mike Love's sometime girlfriend Sharon Marie. Surf icon Dean Torrence, from Jan & Dean, crops up fronting the self-consciously psychedelic Laughing Gravy alongside Brian and The Honeys, with an ornate and strangely threatening version of 'Vegetables' that is the only track here from the critical 'Pet Sounds'/'Smile' period.
Nevertheless, intimations of the melancholy at the heart of Wilson's greatest work are everywhere. Sharon Marie's 'Story Of My Life' is a drama queen classic, a magisterial sob from '64 that Wilson exploits with relish. Best of all, Glen Campbell lucks out with one of Wilson's greatest ever songs, 'Guess I'm Dumb', a precursor to the passionate explorations of insecurity that would fill 'Pet Sounds'. Given to Campbell as a thank-you for touring duties with The Beach Boys, it's the neglected classic in his canon as well as in Wilson's.
With this lovely compilation, perhaps Brian's extra-curricular activities will be finally recognised as harbouring the same riches we take for granted from The Beach Boys.
