Brian Wilson always had a special connection with Paul McCartney—particularly during the mid-1960s, when both The Beach Boys and The Beatles were at their most experimental, soaking in pivotal new influences.
The two songwriters shared a lot of musical hallmarks: unusual chord structures, ornamental melodies, a knack for orchestrations and studio trickery. And their albums of this era engaged in a sort of cultural dialogue, each one inching popular music forward.
In his 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys mastermind wrote about first meeting McCartney in the ’60s. During that in-studio encounter, Wilson learned that the band’s 1966 classic “God Only Knows” was one of the Beatle’s favorite songs. “It’s the kind of thing people write in liner notes and say on talk shows,” he reflected. “When people read it, they kind of look at that sentence and keep going. But think about how much it mattered to me when I first heard it there on Sunset Boulevard. I was the person who wrote ‘God Only Knows,’ and here was another person—the person who wrote ‘Yesterday’ and ‘And I Love Her’ and so many other songs—saying it was his favorite. It really blew my mind.”
Wilson said they kept in touch—McCartney even came over to his house and played him the new Beatles ballad “She’s Leaving Home.” That intimate moment had a profound impact: “[He]…told me about the new music he was working on,” Wilson recalled. “‘There’s one song I want you to hear,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a nice melody.’ He put the tape on and it was ‘She’s Leaving Home.’ My wife, Marilyn, was there, too, and she just started crying. Listening to Paul play a new song let me see my own songs more clearly. It was hard for me to think about the effect that my music had on other people, but it was easy to see when it was another songwriter.”
Wilson and McCartney developed a sort of mutual admiration society—one, perhaps, built on healthy competition. The commonly accepted narrative is that The Beatles’ folky 1965 LP, Rubber Soul, had a big influence on The Beach Boys’ cinematic 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds, which then lit a fire under McCartney for The Beatles’ psychedelic 1967 classic, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“We ended up [with] kind of like a rivalry,” McCartney told Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood in 2013. “We’d put a song out, and Brian would hear it and do one,” he said. “You’d kind of try to top each other all the time. He eventually came out with his ‘God Only Knows’ on Pet Sounds. I just think it’s a great song…It’s my favorite Beach Boys song…I got to sing it with Brian once. We did a benefit together. And I was OK on the actual performance—I held it together—but at the soundcheck I lost it. Because it’s very emotional, that song, I find. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my god, I’m singing it with Brian.”
Wilson, sadly, died on June 11, 2025 at age 82. As tributes poured in across the music world, McCartney shared a special remembrance of his inspirational friend: “Brian had that mysterious sense of musical genius that made his songs so achingly special,” he wrote in a statement. “The notes he heard in his head and passed to us were simple and brilliant at the same time. I loved him, and was privileged to be around his bright shining light for a little while. How we will continue without Brian Wilson, ‘God Only Knows.’ Thank you, Brian.”
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
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