When it comes to The Beatles and The Beach Boys, it feels like a chicken-and-egg situation. Which came first? It’s an endless loop. In music, it’s one of the few ways to try to explain the strange and often unclear nature of inspiration, especially when it comes to bands influencing each other.
In some cases, influence is simple. If a band that formed in 2026 references Brian Wilson’s harmonies, the line is easy to draw. But in the 1960s and ‘70s, when music was evolving rapidly and new bands were emerging and rising almost overnight, it was much harder to pin down who was influencing whom. The clearest example is the ongoing debate between The Beatles and The Beach Boys, two acts who moved in parallel, each inspiring the other and each often claiming the other came first.
“It’s a mutual admiration thing,” Beach Boys’ Mike Love once said, adding, “We loved their music, and they loved ours. We were competitive”.
Brian Wilson often credited Rubber Soul for influencing him to make Pet Sounds, although he was already midway through recording it when The Beatles’ record was released. Off the back of that, the Fab Four credited Wilson’s work for inspiring Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It loops around and around like that as both bands were wandering the same woozy path of experimentation, but there was a crack, and that crack was Wilson’s depression. By now, the mental health battles the artist struggled with are well-documented. Years of his life were darkened, or even robbed, by his being overcome by depression and schizophrenia, leading to moments where he retired from his own band.
One of those moments takes place in that cycle of influence as The Beatles dropped ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ in 1967, right as Wilson was working on something else. This time, though, he wasn’t inspired. He was devastated. Hearing the song on the radio while driving his car, Wilson’s friend Michael Vosse recalled the moment, “He just shook his head and said, ‘They did it already, what I wanted to do with Smile. Maybe it’s too late’”.
He tried to shake it off as the friend said, “I started laughing my head off, and he started laughing his head off”. However, there was more to it, “But the moment he said it, he sounded very serious”.
By July, only a few months after The Beatles’ track, Wilson couldn’t cope anymore. “I was about ready to die. I was trying so hard. So, all of a sudden, I decided not to try any more,” he said as he stepped away from the band and completely abandoned Smile, leaving the rest of the band to work something else out.
No one would blame the Fab Four, but as the cycle of their unending influence on one another went on, it seemed that in that moment, Wilson was too tender for it.
