Title and Cover Art
Both the origin and meaning of the album title Pet Sounds are uncertain. Brian Wilson has claimed at one point that the title was "a tribute" to Phil Spector by naming the album using his initials. Carl Wilson later spoke about the album title: "The idea he had was that everybody has these sounds that they love, and this was a collection of his 'pet sounds.' It was hard to think of a name for the album, because you sure couldn't call it Shut Down Vol. 3."
Mike Love also has laid claim to coming up with the title. "We were standing in the hallway in one of the recording studios, either Western or Columbia, and we didn't have a title," he recounted. "We had taken pictures at the zoo and ... there were animal sounds on the record, and we were thinking, well, it's our favorite music of that time, so I said, 'Why don't we call it Pet Sounds?'"
On February 15, the group traveled to the San Diego Zoo to shoot the photographs for the cover of the new album, which had already been titled Pet Sounds. George Jerman has been credited for taking the cover photo. According to the Pet Sounds' liner notes, "The photos of The Beach Boys feeding an assortment of goats was a play on the album's chosen title, Pet Sounds."
Read more about this topic: Pet Sounds
Famous quotes containing the words title, cover and/or art:
“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Though the whole wind
slash at your bark,
you are lifted up,
aye though it hiss
to cover you with froth.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell’s major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)