Giles Martin, the music producer son of the late Beatles studio wizard George Martin, insists The Beatles “wouldn’t have made” ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ without The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’.
Giles, 53, has just worked his magic on a new mix of the seminal 1966 record – which featured the hit singles ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ – in Dolby Atmos, which is available to stream now.
And he has heaped praise on The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, 80, for producing one of the most iconic and influential albums of all time solo, and insisted John Lennon and co’s 1967 LP wouldn’t sound like it does without taking influence from ‘Pet Sounds’.
Recalling a conversation with his dad, Giles shared with MusicRadar: “I was with my dad on a plane once, and I just suddenly realised how awesome he was. I said to him ‘Dad, what you did with The Beatles was kind of amazing, wasn’t it’ and he looked at me and said: ‘not as amazing as Brian Wilson’. He explained to me that The Beatles always had him, and he had The Beatles. But Brian Wilson didn’t have anyone, and he went and made this record. Without this record, The Beatles wouldn’t have made Sgt Pepper.”
Giles says thanks to Dolby Atmos technology, fans can hear instruments they never heard before on the original mix.
In a statement, he said: “’Pet Sounds’ by The Beach Boys is a game-changing, iconic album that changed the face of popular music.
“It influenced The Beatles to go and make ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ then influenced Pink Floyd to go and make ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. It’s a fascinating record because it’s really the workings of a genius, Brian Wilson, that sort of had boundless enthusiasm for ideas and textures. Moving ‘Pet Sounds’ to Dolby Atmos means those worlds can be fully immersive, you can be surrounded by them, you can hear instruments that you never heard before, that are on the record, but they are now in a space where you can identify them. I kind of like the idea of imagine getting an old vinyl record, like ‘Alice In Wonderland’, and slowly start falling through the hole. That’s what immersive audio should do, you are literally surrounded by the records you love, and ‘Pet Sounds’ is perfect for this. It’s an album of so much colour and texture and imagination and the imagination becomes realised much more in the spatial realm. For me to be asked by The Beach Boys to work on this album was a huge honour, I was surprised and excited to get a chance to work on one of the most iconic albums of all time.”
Giles previously created Dolby Atmos mixes for a series of special Beatles releases, including 2022’s acclaimed ‘Revolver’.