Pocket symphony: the term calls to mind, too, a booming sound-world, the world of Wilson’s lifelong musical idol—Phil Spector, genius, pioneer, psychopath. “Little symphonies for the kids” Spector called his productions: 2- and 3-minute diamonds of teen melodramas, all but buried under the studio rubble of that mammoth legendary “Wall of Sound,” perfectly attuned (sonically, commercially, metaphysically) to the outsized yearnings and consumerist desires of the first generation to be saddled with that savviest and cruelest category ever conceived by modern marketing: “The Teenager.”
Pocket Symphonies - by Sam Jennings - The Hinternet
The story goes that when he first heard The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”—Spector’s monument of monuments—in 1963, Wilson had to pull over the car he was driving, out late with his girlfriend, to take it all in. It was like hearing testament, or discovering the General Theory of Relativity: that keening voice, Veronica “Ronnie” Bennett striking out from the middle of the Spectorite whirlpool (like “a little bee” inside an “enormous sonic picture,” Brian Eno would later put it). For Wilson, it was enough to found a personal religion. He already loved Spector. The Beach Boys had only just done their second album, Surfin’ U.S.A., and the 20-year-old was already receiving producer credits; his songs were fusing doo-wop, Chuck Berry, the Four Freshman, and the whole motoring world of California into a nation-wide phenomenon. But this was the missing element—this swooning, yearning. The collected sentiments of the youth of America, on the heights, trapped forever in amber (or wax). He wore out the grooves on his 45 record, and insisted until the day he died that it was the greatest song ever written. For those 2 minutes 40 seconds that “Be My Baby” lasts, it’s hard to disagree.
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