The producer Brian Wilson crowned as 'one of the true greats'

The producer Brian Wilson crowned as 'one of the true greats' Brian Wilson didn't really want to be known as a genius whenever he made one of his records. He was happy enough having written some tunes that people liked, and the only thing that he could hope for was that people remembered his songs the same way that he remembered some of his favourite classical tunes that he heard when he was a kid. But even amongst his peers, Wilson knew when there were some people who were a cut above everyone else in the pop music sphere. Because Wilson would have willingly admitted that there wouldn't be someone like him if not for Phil Spector. Some of the greatest rock and roll songs in American history came from his Wall of Sound, and while Wilson didn't necessarily need to copy that style by any means, he was definitely interested in trying to get people to feel as excited as he did whenever he heard a tune like 'Be My Baby'. That was the standard that he always set for himself, but it's not like he was the first person to start making new inroads into rock history. Plenty of other artists had started to break down the conventions of popular music, and everything seemed to stop for him when he heard what The Beatles were doing every single time they released one of their records. America may have had Elvis Presley, but the Fab Four were much more sophisticated than Wilson ever imagined. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were always willing to throw in a few chords that didn't exactly fit into the typical pop song structure, and while that was endlessly exciting for Wilson, he also knew when he had been outmatched as well. He felt the sense of competition between him and The Beatles, but once he heard records like 'Strawberry Fields Forever', he knew he would never reach a song that got to that level in his life. But a lot of what The Beatles were doing wasn't just down to a couple of songwriters hashing things out. Make no mistake, the Fab Four were all greater than the sum of their parts every single time they played together, but if there were to have been a Fab Five, George Martin definitely deserved a mention for how much he contributed to their work behind the mixing board at Abbey Road. And when Martin did his own arrangement for 'God Only Knows', Wilson couldn't help but see what the production giant was like up close, saying, 'I told him he scored a better mix than I did on the original. It was a lesson from a brilliant man and producer. I loved what he did with The Beatles. And I loved him as a person. We got along great. When he passed away in 2016, I was really broken up. He was one of the true greats.' Given how much he added to The Beatles' repertoire, though, it's not that far off the mark to call Martin one of the main figures in the band. He was the one translating their ideas into what we heard on their records, and while Rubber Soul was always one of Wilson's favourite albums of all time, a lot of the subtle pieces are down to the way that Martin was working, whether that was miking the sitar properly for 'Norwegian Wood' or that beautiful piano line that runs throughout the break in 'A Day in the Life'. So while Wilson always took the 'living genius' praise with a grain of salt, that's only because he saw what another genius at work could do. He understood that he had a gift for production and melody whenever he made a record, but Martin was the one reminding everyone what made music so exciting before you even heard one word of the song.