He said he felt Wilson’s influence as he laid down the guitar track for the song.
“In the same week, Sly Stone, who I really admired, (also died),” Wood told the BBC Radio 2 show Tracks Of My Years.
“I didn’t plan it, but there was a point where the guitar was almost playing itself and it was coming out, blowing me away, and I’m going ‘oh, that was nice’. Like, where did it come from?
“It was all from the heartfelt… I never met Brian Wilson, but my heart was always with him because I loved his melodies.
“I knew the other boys in the band but not Wilson. He always eluded me, but anyway, his spirit just caught me that day, and I was just so sad that he’d gone.”
The Beach Boys pioneered the California surf sound of the 1960s, with hit singles such as Surfin’ USA and I Get Around, before Wilson pushed the band in a more avant-garde direction to record their 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds.
The rivalry between The Beach Boys and The Beatles attracted headlines in the 1960s and inspired the Liverpool band to attempt to top Pet Sounds with their own sonic magnum opus, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in 1967.
In awe of Wilson
But the Stones, who at the time were seen as the bad boys of the British bands with their raw, blues-inspired sound, were privately in awe of Wilson and his songwriting.
In 2024, Keith Richards admitted the fact that the Stones and the Beach Boys were not direct rivals allowed him to admire Wilson’s intricate songwriting, especially the B-sides.
“There was no particular correlation with what we were doing, so I could just listen to it on another level. I thought these are well-constructed songs,” he said.
“I was more interested in the B-sides, the ones he slipped in.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
