The band Elton John thought represented American rock | CPT PPP Coverage

There are even a handful of tunes that seem to be ripped out of classical compositions. No matter what kind of bluesy riff that other British acts were woodshedding around the same time, no one was thinking about the little eccentricities of the melody that went into making something like ‘Good Vibrations’ or ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’.

For John, this was also an eye-opener for what rock and roll could be. There had been countless piano players that either followed in the boogie-woogie footsteps of Fats Domino or the rapid-fire intensity of Little Richard, but hearing Wilson weave notes together like a musical symphony put a common thread between John’s love of the pop charts and what he was learning in school.

Studying music while in school, John was used to learning songs by Bach or Beethoven to expand his palette. Now that there was someone daring enough to put it into a pop song, he knew he could make his own melodies work that way as well. But listening to a track like ‘God Only Knows’, it was still about that sense of innocence, always looking to have the best counterbalance to whatever the lyric was.

As opposed to the surf songs and tunes about driving a car, that kind of musical range was the best of what America had to offer in John’s mind, saying at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “In England, we had all our own bands and the American R&B music, but The Beach Boys were the first band that summed up America. As a musician, you graduated from listening to pop songs to bands that produce new sounds and records. This band were geniuses. They made me love America so much more because they existed.”

But it wasn’t just the spectacle of music theory that got under John’s skin. Listening back to the way that many of the harmonies are arranged on his records, it does feel like the perfect combination of The Beatles’ signature three-part harmony and what happened between the Wilson Brothers when they put their voices together.

Then again, The Beach Boys weren’t looking to broaden everyone’s musical palette when they got things started. As their aborted album would imply, Brian Wilson wanted to make his audience smile, and along the way, he put together the best music that anyone had ever thought of.

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