Pocket symphony: a phrase popularized by an ad-man (Derek Taylor)—a press-man, anyway; journalist, publisher, and producer—popularized, that is, by a man who had been press officer for the Fab Four themselves (“The Beatles Are Coming”), and would be again; who through his own public relations company had introduced the Byrds to America and the Beach Boys to England. It was for the Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (1966) that Taylor revivified the phrase, realizing he needed some way to get across what was nestled inside all the whizbang new studio creations coming from the band’s brilliant-but-fragile composer, Brian Wilson—the rest of the group having become more or less a touring appendage of Wilson’s one-man production laboratory. It was the same advertorial insight that yielded another famous tagline, which several generations since have considered de rigueur, but which didn’t seem quite so publicly obvious in 1966 (unless you were Derek Taylor, or the Fab Four themselves): “Brian Wilson is a genius.”
As influential copy goes, “Pocket Symphony” isn’t at all unfair. Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a “pocket symphony.” Many movie scores have been reducible to just the kind of short movements worthy of the name. Gershwin—a composer Wilson adored, admired, and in some ways succeeded—wrote suites fusing jazz with classical, in a way neither field was prepared to accept as its own: what better word, or pair of words, for that? A miniature of orchestral dimension; a Lilliputian Opus. Either way, une symphonie de poche. What Wilson had done with “Good Vibrations” was nothing short of introducing American Pop—the New Pop, that is, which was really rock, which was really rock n’ roll—to its maturity. Youth Music was now Art Music.
“Good Vibrations” was a true pop mutation, one surprise after another. The opening verse (organ, bass counterpoint) intruded on by cello-and-theremin chorus, which changes keys every four bars—Gb to Ab to Bb—the final key the dominant, bringing us right back into the Eb minor verse again. Then it repeats. Only the second chorus, once done, lingers on the Bb, as the song goes into a half-time. This escalates into the bridge, then it ebbs into another bridge (“Gotta keep those lovegood vibrations a-happenin’ with her. . .”) as Hammond and harmonica digress from California beachfront into brief rustic valley; then the chorus, reprised; then the interruption of that chorus (“na-na-na” and “bah bah bah” and “do do do”); then the fade-out, cello and theremin again. All in 3 ½ minutes. “Pocket Symphony” indeed: after 90 hours of tape and tens of thousands of dollars, “Good Vibrations” (the costliest record ever made, at the time) was released on October 10, 1966, going to #1 on the Billboard charts. But then Wilson had a breakdown (another one), delayed, flailed, and all his former plans for an epoch-making “teenage symphony to God” ended up nowhere. The track stood like a lone mountain on the salvage pile of the next year’s Smiley Smile record. But until all pieces of the infamous Smile Sessions were finally brought to the public, decades later, in fragments (the detritus of Wilson’s ambitions), the narrative was sealed.
