I was always a big fan of the science fiction films of the 1950s — It Came From Outer Space, Them!, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the many lesser knockoffs. Whenever the story called for alien, otherworldly sounds, the filmmakers brought out the theremin.
An odd electronic device that is controlled by holding your hands near a couple of antennae, the theremin creates a bizarre whiny noise that swoops up and down the musical scale like no instrument humans had ever created.
For the longest time people thought of the theremin as a movie sound effects device. Everything changed in the fall of 1966.
“Ah! I love the colorful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.”
“Oh,” we said as the first verse poured out of the radio, “a new Beach Boys song.”
And then the chorus — a cello, of all things, laying down a persistent rhythm as a theremin soared over the young men who sounded a counterpoint of their own: the bass singing, “I’m picking up good vibrations, she’s giving me excitations” while the rest of the Boys harmonize, “Good, bop bop, good vibrations bop bop, excitations,” layering “good, good, good, good vibrations” over it all and rising to the first crescendo of several to come.
I guess you had to be there. This was indeed the new Beach Boys song, but this was something beyond anything we had heard before. I remember staring at the little radio speaker in awe that so much could be packed into three minutes and 35 seconds of pop music.
I am still in awe nearly 60 years later. Much has been written over those years about how Brian Wilson experimented with various sounds in the studio and recorded “Good Vibrations” in bits and pieces, but the way he wove those bits and pieces together is one of the most enormous feats in modern music.
We have lost Brian Wilson, but we have not lost “Good Vibrations” or any of the other scores of songs that he composed and recorded.
The ability to preserve and reproduce performances is one of the greatest inventions of human history. As a result, Brian Wilson is as immortal as a human being can be.
