Capitol Records Studio A — Pet Sounds Sessions, Hollywood

Pet Sounds — widely considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded — was made primarily at Capitol Studios at 1750 North Vine Street in Hollywood between January and April 1966. Brian Wilson, increasingly agoraphobic and working without the rest of the Beach Boys present for most of the sessions, assembled the Wrecking Crew — Los Angeles's elite session musicians — and built the album's layered orchestrations track by track. The musicians were baffled by Wilson's methods: he would hum parts to them, layer unusual instruments (bicycle bells, barking dogs, Coke cans filled with pebbles), and build arrangements of extraordinary complexity from seemingly disparate elements.

The album's influence is almost impossible to overstate. Paul McCartney has said 'God Only Knows' is his favourite song ever written; the Beatles responded to Pet Sounds with Sergeant Pepper; Elton John, Elvis Costello, and dozens of others have cited it as the record that changed what they thought pop music could be. Brian Wilson made it in a state of escalating psychological crisis, using the studio as both refuge and laboratory, and the tension between the album's surface beauty and the darkness beneath it is part of what makes it inexhaustible.

Capitol Studios — in the basement of the iconic circular Capitol Records Tower — still operates as a world-class recording facility. Tours of the building are occasionally available. The Capitol Tower on Vine Street in Hollywood is one of the most recognisable buildings in the music world and worth visiting from the outside even without a tour.