UNDELETED SCENES INSIDE THE GOLDMINE

“Take this, brother, may it serve you well.”

The re-release in May of The Beach Boys’ official masterpiece album Pet Sounds has prompted a lot of people – I say “a lot”, I mean “several old” – to go online and assert that Pet Sounds would be much better if they removed Sloop John B and replaced it with, I don’t know, Sad Tuba Solo (Isolated Bongos) or some other offcut. This is ostensibly because Sloop John B was added at the insistence of the evil record company who liked hits or something but really because some fans don’t like Sloop John B (I always say to these people, “You think Sloop John B’s bad? Wait til you hear Sloop John D!”[1])

Biff Comics, 1982

I like Sloop John B but that’s neither here nor there: the fact is, and always has been, Sloop John B is on Pet Sounds (“and,” as Chevy Chase used to say, “you’re not.”) Sloop John B has been on Pet Sounds for 60 years. It sounds good on Pet Sounds. It may not be God Only Knows but it’s pretty great. Although none of those facts are relevant: Sloop John B is on Pet Sounds and that’s all, the end.

In a world where songs can be playlisted in any order you like, a world where streaming services don’t just rob artists, but also help you ruin albums with your personal running order, a world where “mixtapes” are “curated” and all human life is on shuffle, the original intentions of a recording artist are often ignored. Thus we get Perfectly Good Albums remixed by Steven Wilson or Giles Brandreth, records given the big fat sound that surely the Stones or Devo would have wanted if only they’d had access to that thing Peter Jackson used to make Let It Be happy again. And we get people who feel that their favourite album would be even better if the songs they don’t like were removed. Never mind the hours spent by the original artists sequencing and choosing the songs on their greatest album, Alan who corrects articles in Uncut doesn’t like Sloop John B.

“Play Kokomo!”

The same applies to the finest band of all time (the Beatles). The fact that they completely changed musical history with their brilliant song-writing and total new approach to the recording studio doesn’t matter: Rubber Soul would be better without Run For Your Life, Revolver could lose Yellow Submarine and – and the White Album would be better without Revolution No. 9. This latter opinion I find both annoying and inane, like a clown who writes to Mojo every month. Apart from the obvious point that Revolution No. 9 is on the White Album because the Beatles put it there – big clue - there’s the other fact that Revolution No. 9 is a masterpiece, almost ten minutes of music, sound, monologue, and strangeness. It’s the logical successor to Tomorrow Never Knows as well as the best avant garde track of all time – because it was made by people who could tell a story, who knew about hooks, and who could make a tape collage sound catchy. I love Revolution No. 9 and regularly quote snatches of it, as does any Beatle fan who wouldn’t rather be listening to The Diary Of Horace Wimp.

The greatest album of all time.

And yes, I have songs that I feel interrupt the flow of my favourite albums and are also rubbish: It Ain’t Easy on Ziggy Stardust is a stinker (so is Fill Your Heart on Hunky Dory) but they’re part of the record. Because it’s like this: an album is not a playlist or a mixtape. Removing a song from an LP is like removing a chapter from a book or a scene from a film. Also you’re not the Beach Boys or the Beatles, they are.

David Quantick 2026

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[1] No I don’t.