Welcome to the 18th episode of the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — a.k.a. the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Brit) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond.
We had originally planned to discuss a different American artist on this episode, but when the great Brian Wilson passed away on June 11 at the age of 82, it felt only right to feature The Beach Boys in his honor.
The Beach Boys fit in quite nicely with our whole CROSSED CHANNELS concept, as they were a quintessentially American band that was both profoundly impacted by the British Invasion and hugely influential on a number of British artists. And when their immense US popularity began to decline as Brian moved the band’s music away from surfing and hot rod songs, The Beach Boys experienced a new wave of popularity in the UK — a wave set in motion in May 1966, when The Who’s Keith Moon personally insisted that Beach Boy Bruce Johnston (then visiting London to promote the newly-released Pet Sounds) join him for an interview segment on ITV’s Ready Steady Go!
As Tony detailed in his best-selling biography Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon published in the US as Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend) The Who’s drummer was an obsessive fan of The Beach Boys’ pre-Pet Sounds work. Pete Townshend also acknowledged the influence of their early singles, noting in a 1967 interview that “Power pop is what we play — what the Small Faces used to play, and the kind of pop The Beach Boys played in the days of ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ which I preferred.”
Of course, The Beatles also show up in this CROSSED CHANNELS episode. The competition between Britain’s biggest import and America’s biggest homegrown band produced incredible music from both camps, at least before the May 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band caused Brian Wilson to scrap The Beach Boys’ ambitious Smile project. But even with Brian on the ropes, his band’s post-Pet Sounds output continued to sell remarkably well in the UK, where the influence of Pet Sounds itself also manifested in Billy Nicholls’ remarkable 1968 album Would You Believe, which Dan recently wrote about at his Substack:
Indeed, there’s so much to be said about the musical cross-pollination between The Beach Boys and their British counterparts that we had difficulty wedging it all into one episode. Nonetheless, we think you’ll find much to enjoy in this very spirited conversation, whether you’re a hardcore Beach Boys fan or someone who just knows their greatest hits from oldies radio.
As always, this full CROSSED CHANNELS episode is only available to paid subscribers of Jagged Time Lapse and/or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith, though a short preview of the episode is available above for all to listen to. To hear this episode in full, along with all of our previous CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for both of them! CROSSED CHANNELS can be heard both here on our Substack pages or via your preferred podcast app: just follow the links and instructions on the right. In addition to the podcast, Jagged Time Lapse and Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith regularly serve up previously unpublished interviews and other exclusive content to our paid subscribers.
To those of you who have already shelled out for paid subscriptions to either or both Substacks, we’d like to express our deepest thanks for continuing to support our work. We’re always happy to hear from you in the comments section, so please don’t be shy about chiming in with your thoughts.
We’ll see you again this time next month, when we take on a band that shows up on this page, in this episode, a band that has been a massive presence in both of our lives and will be on their final US tour at the time that we publish: The Who!
