Featured Essay: Here and gone so fast: ‘Pet Sounds’ and my friend Tom

by Paul Bonanos

Brian Wilson is dead. As many of us know, he leaves behind plenty of very well-known songs, a bunch of peculiar ones, and at least one essential, beloved LP: Pet Sounds.

Tom Morgan was my friend and bandmate in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His favorite album was Pet Sounds, and his love for it imbued the music he made. He listened to Pet Sounds, he read about Pet Sounds, he talked about Pet Sounds. He pronounced the title a bit differently than most people do: He put more stress on “sounds” instead of emphasizing “pet,” as if to remind you that the things you heard were Brian Wilson’s favorite discoveries, like pet projects.

When Tom died in 2005, a record buyer came for his enviable collection. I knew his 80s pressing of Pet Sounds wouldn’t raise the eyebrow of a professional buyer in 2005, but it was extremely special to Tom. I saved it from the bins; I’m sure someone would have loved to have it for $2.99 – those were the days, record shoppers – but it came home with me instead. I still have it.

Let me tell you about Tom. He grew up in Maryland, and he made strides in rock and roll while attending the University of Michigan. He was about ten years older than me when we connected in Baltimore in the mid-90s, already into his 30s when I was a college student. I’d talk about the Who as a band from the past; he had seen the Keith Moon version during his teens. He had a band called Jag, with a cool seven-inch in the stores. He lived in an artists’ co-op in a rough part of the city, and had a 13th Floor Elevators mural on one of his walls. He liked 60s psych-rock, Guided by Voices, Stereolab, the Flaming Lips and a million other things, but if he had to pick one album for the desert island, it would be Pet Sounds.

Tom moved to the Bay Area in 1996. On a return visit to Baltimore one night, he brought a VHS tape that showed a strange event in the Nevada desert, with a few thousand people gathering to make art and get weird. It was my first exposure to Burning Man, where he’d built a reputation for doing rock DJ sets in colorful outfits with feathers. He was resistant to the burgeoning tech scene in San Francisco, and people called him Analog Tom.

I moved to California in 1999. Tom wanted me to play in his band, then called the Sexpot Five. I was reluctant to commit – I had many goals for a cross-country move, and joining a band wasn’t quite one of them – but I came to most of the rehearsals and most of the gigs.

The others in the group wanted to bang out a demo to get some shows, but Tom wanted to make a record. There was a tense meeting; I walked away, and eventually the project became Tom’s alone. He holed up in a home studio in Oakland, building tracks over the basics we had recorded. It took him years, but he finished and released a CD.

Tom’s record came out under the name Transcender; the title is Self-Titled Debut Album. To my knowledge, it got a few write-ups and some spins on oddball radio stations, but a commercial juggernaut it was not. It has its fans. People came to his shows in the Bay Area. But the rent got higher and higher, and Tom moved out of the complex he’d found in Oakland. By 2005 he was living a couple of counties north, near Clear Lake, California.

Then, a tragedy. Somehow or other, his house’s heater started returning exhaust into the dwelling. One night he and his girlfriend felt sick; by morning, both of them were dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.

A week or two later, his brother came out to settle some affairs, and a few friends and I drove up to meet him. That’s when the record buyer came; before he arrived, we were invited to take a few items in exchange for a small donation to a family education fund. I have Tom’s mono Sgt. Pepper and his Pet Sounds.

I need not bore you here with a retelling of the reasons Pet Sounds is great. I can tell you about Tom’s mixtapes, with snippets of Brian Wilson’s studio chatter in between the songs, clipped from either The Pet Sounds Sessions box set or one of Tom’s many bootlegs. Pet Sounds cast a long shadow across much of the other music he loved, whether in its melodies, its arrangements or its enormous heart. You can listen to Self-Titled Debut Album and spot the Beach Boys’ influence on Tom’s sound.

When I stream Pet Sounds, it’s the same Pet Sounds everyone can hear. But when I put Pet Sounds on my turntable, it’s Tom’s Pet Sounds, and I hear it through his ears as well as mine. It’s the sound of Tom being inspired. It’s us in Baltimore in the 90s, or rolling tape in Oakland, talking about what we could do. What if we put a horn harmony over a piano melody? Is that note too dissonant, or does it add a little mystery? Does this put you in a certain frame of mind? Are we transcending yet?

Tonight, as the world mourns Brian Wilson, I’m thinking of my friend. So long, Tom. It’s here and gone so fast.

Paul Bonanos is a writer, editor and musician. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, with his family.