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🔴 FROM THE BEATLES TO THE ROLLING STONES: BRIAN WILSON LISTS HIS 10 FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF ALL TIMEBrian Wilson, the singer...
06/23/2026

🔴 FROM THE BEATLES TO THE ROLLING STONES: BRIAN WILSON LISTS HIS 10 FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

Brian Wilson, the singer-songwriter and co-founding member of surf pop-rock pioneers The Beach Boys, is undoubtedly one of the most influential composers of the last century. Given his supreme standing within the music industry, the recent discovery of his ten favourite albums of all time offered a wonderful insight into the mind of a genius. Formed in California back in 1961, The Beach Boys combined their dreamy harmonies with the formation of surf rock and pop themes, tapping into the southern California youth culture of the era. Through Wilson’s thought-provoking songwriting, the group soon ascended from their humble beginnings to certify their mammoth influence on rock and roll. Wilson, who wrote or co-wrote well over two dozen top 40 hits for the group, is widely considered to be among the most innovative and significant musicians of the late 20th century. While his lyrics are rightly revered as some of the greatest of time, it was Wilson’s multi-tasking musicianship that paved the way for the band’s success. While it was seemingly an unusual success, it was one that came fast and furious. Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys drummer, co-founder and brother of Brian, was once famously quoted as saying: “Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We’re his fu***ng messengers. He is all of it. Period. We’re nothing. He’s everything.” It’s hard to disagree; his magnum opus Pet Sounds is regarded as one of the finest albums of all time. Often referred to as a genius of his field, Wilson successfully experimented with various if different types of production during the height of his fame, cultivating his skills from an early age and ended up repeatedly playing around with concepts of jazz, rock and roll, doo-wop, R&B and more.
What ensued was a major commercial and critical triumph, bouncing off the success of The Beatles as two of rock music’s most influential bands that not only recorded at the same time, but directly influenced each other in the process. Between the 1960s and 2010s, the Beach Boys had over 80 songs chart worldwide and sold over 100 million records worldwide, becoming a staple of America’s internal songbook. It’s a testament to their classic songs. Numerous splits and tours later, Wilson has battled mental health issues but continues to tour Beach Boys material the world over. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, Wilson sat down with Esquire to list what he considers to be his top ten favourite records of all time, offering a peek behind the curtain of a musical mastermind. “With a Little Help from My Friends,” he says after predictably adding The Beatles’ iconic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to his list, the first of two to be included. When discussing Rubber Soul, the sixth studio album released by the Liverpool group, Wilson added: “The John and Paul combination in certain songs just blew me away.” It was this album that inspired Wilson to write Pet Sounds. In fact, the story goes that once Wilson heard the record, he instantly began writing ‘God Only Knows’ in what would coincidentally become Paul McCartney’s favourite song. Perhaps not shy to celebrate his own success, Wilson includes three different Beach Boys records as part of his selected list of albums. “Friends says it all… And we were,” Wilson said somewhat nostalgically about the Beach Boys’ 14th studio album. “‘Salt Lake City’ is an absolute rocker, which stands the test of time,” he added in reference to a number on Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), another selection on the list.
In total, the list sees an incredible musician lay down some of the most brilliant and poetic moments of his contemporaries and a fair heap of his own. View the entire collection below and a complete playlist further down.

Brian Wilson’s 10 favourite albums:

✔️ Sail Away – Randy Newman
✔️ Rubber Soul – The Beatles
✔️ Seven Separate Fools – Three Dog Night
✔️ Four Freshmen and Five Trombones – The Four Freshmen
✔️ Friends – The Beach Boys
✔️ A Christmas Gift for You – Phil Spector
✔️ Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) – The Beach Boys
✔️ Wild Honey – The Beach Boys
✔️ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles
✔️ Between the Buttons – The Rolling Stones

To sign things off in the words of Brian Wilson himself: “The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Phil Spector. Those were my idols.”

🔴 WHEN LEMMY NAMED "THE BEST BASS PLAYER ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH"As the bassist and frontman of Motörhead, the late Lem...
06/23/2026

🔴 WHEN LEMMY NAMED "THE BEST BASS PLAYER ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH"

As the bassist and frontman of Motörhead, the late Lemmy Kilmister became a sort of human altar of hard rock iconography. In the process, he pushed bass right to the forefront of rock and proudly defied the notion that the bass is only there to add some rhythm to the background. Throughout his career, he took to the stage like a marauding aural empire, making his four strings rumble like pounding hooves. However, if it was power that typified Lemmy’s playing, then it was dexterity that he looked for in others. That much is clear from his praise of The Who’s John Entwistle. “The best bass player on the face of the earth,” he said of his hero. ”He was the best for me, no contest. He was so in command of his instrument. You never saw him flicker. Never a bum note that I ever heard. And he was so fast, both hands going like hell. The bass solo in ‘My Generation’, you still tie yourself in knots trying to do it now. You can work it out, but it was another thing thinking it up. And that was back in 1964!” According to Lemmy, Entwistle had it all: the power, the bravura, and the sheer ability. It is this trinity that separates him from the rather more flowery bassist that Lemmy puts just behind Entwistle. As the Motörhead man told Revolver in 2002: “I love John Entwistle of the Who. Best bass player I ever saw, Entwistle! McCartney’s the second, though. He keeps giving in to the wimp in him, but he’s a great bass player.” And for Lemmy, he opines that all the best bassists were born with an inherent sense of rhythm. “I was born to play the bass, basically. Basically … very good [laughs]. I was a mediocre guitar player—I couldn’t play lead to save my life. But I was a great rhythm guitarist. I have a feel for rhythm, so that’s probably where it comes from,“ he told Guitar World in his final interview. This sense of rhythm is something that Entwistle had in spades—he can solo with the best of them but it’s what he gives the tracks in his quieter moments that really sets him apart. His classic “full treble, full volume” sound enamoured him with a legion of fans beyond Lemmy too. As Pete Townshend said himself: “There was nothing that I could ever play that he couldn’t immediately replicate. I always found that dismaying.” This brilliance in itself holds a meta hint of irony because when Entwistle was asked about how he’d like to be remembered, he said as “being the only bass guitarist who hasn’t been copyable.”

🔴 THE BEATLES SONG PAUL McCARTNEY TRADED FOR A PICTURE OF HIS FATHERIn The Beatles documentary Get Back, viewers are giv...
06/23/2026

🔴 THE BEATLES SONG PAUL McCARTNEY TRADED FOR A PICTURE OF HIS FATHER

In The Beatles documentary Get Back, viewers are given a glimpse into Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s approach to writing. It’s a thankless task at times, as the group sits around, occasionally feeling inspiration strike at the hit of a chord, running with it but getting nowhere. There are some moments of ingenuity, like with the creation of the song ‘Get Back’, which is more found than written, but the be-all and end-all is that to produce as many hits as The Beatles did, you need not only a strong musical ability but a whole lot of patience.
Thanks to the amount of effort involved in songwriting, it’s no surprise that McCartney was often looking for a muse everywhere he turned. That could mean finding inspiration within specific moments in time, complete fiction, or, more often than not, other people.
It’s not unusual for songwriters to create pieces with specific people in mind; in fact, some of the best songs ever made have been created with a person at the centre of it. Leonard Cohen wrote ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’ about Janis Joplin, ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by The Waterboys is about Prince, and Paul Simon’s ‘Kathy’s Song’ is about Kathleen Chitty, whom he met when on the English pub circuit. Muses are common, but they do not very often take the form of a thief.
It’s tough picking a stand-out song on Abbey Road, an album which is filled to the brim with fantastic tracks, but it would be difficult for anyone to listen to the two-minute bop ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ without nodding along. Though other Beatles songs are shrouded in metaphor, this one is very much on the nose.
“A woman did actually sneak into my house through the bathroom window that was a bit ajar,” said Paul McCartney, talking about the song. “A fan, apparently – one of a group called the ‘Apple Scruffs.’ She found a ladder lying outside my house in London.”
It must be an exciting opportunity for die-hard fans to find themselves in the home of one of The Beatles. The intruders’ eyes would have nearly popped out of their heads as they looked around for memorabilia. It seems they were left in a panic, though, as what was taken will have likely been sentimental to McCartney but not so much to them.
“As far as I recall, she stole a picture of my cotton salesman dad. Or robbed me of it. But I got the song in return,” he said.
Taking from this experience, McCartney managed to put the Abbey Road song together, and a line that very much stays in his head pertains to the unknown picture grabbing pickpocket. “I’m still amused by the distinction of the woman who ‘could steal but she could not rob.’ A nice distinction if ever there was one.”
Being Paul McCartney must be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you’re so famous that people want to break into your house and steal pictures of your father. On the other, you’re a good enough songwriter that you can turn the experience into a great song on one of the best albums ever made. It’s not a great trade, but it’s not a bad one either.

🔴 QUOTE : LIAM GALLAGHER"I am a tender, beautiful and loving guy that happens to slap a photographer now and then becaus...
06/22/2026

🔴 QUOTE : LIAM GALLAGHER
"I am a tender, beautiful and loving guy that happens to slap a photographer now and then because they get in my way."

🔴 QUOTE : JOSH HOMME"I'm not politically correct; I never said I was."
06/22/2026

🔴 QUOTE : JOSH HOMME
"I'm not politically correct; I never said I was."

🔴 JUNE 22 2023📷 Peter Gabriel at The OVO Hydro, Glasgow, ScotlandPeter Gabriel Setlistat The OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Scotlan...
06/22/2026

🔴 JUNE 22 2023
📷 Peter Gabriel at The OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland

Peter Gabriel Setlist
at The OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland

Set 1:
Washing of the Water (acoustic)
Growing Up (acoustic)
Panopticom
Four Kinds of Horses
i/o
Digging in the Dirt
Playing for Time
Olive Tree
This Is Home
Sledgehammer

Set 2:
Darkness
Love Can Heal
Road to Joy
Don't Give Up
The Court
Red Rain
And Still
Big Time
Live and Let Live
Solsbury Hill

Encore:
In Your Eyes

Encore 2:
Biko

🔴 JUNE 22 2022The world-famous Glastonbury Festival took place in Pilton, Somerset, England. The event was cancelled in ...
06/22/2026

🔴 JUNE 22 2022
The world-famous Glastonbury Festival took place in Pilton, Somerset, England. The event was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic but returned this year. This year's festival featured its youngest-ever solo headline in Billie Eilish and Sir Paul McCartney as the oldest. McCartney was joined by Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen when he headlined the Pyramid Stage. Other acts appearing included: Diana Ross, Sam Fender, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Lorde, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Haim, Elbow and St. Vincent.

🔴 JUNE 22 2022📷 Eagles at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, ScotlandEagles Setlistat Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotl...
06/22/2026

🔴 JUNE 22 2022
📷 Eagles at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland

Eagles Setlist
at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland

Seven Bridges Road
One of These Nights
New Kid in Town
Witchy Woman
Take It to the Limit
Lyin' Eyes
In the City
I Can't Tell You Why
Tequila Sunrise
Best of My Love
Peaceful Easy Feeling
Take It Easy
Those Shoes
The Boys of Summer
Life's Been Good
Victim of Love
Funk #49
Heartache Tonight
Life in the Fast Lane

Encore:
Hotel California
Rocky Mountain Way
Desperado
Already Gone

🔴 JUNE 22 2019📷 KISS at Hellfest 2019, Val de Moine, Clisson, FranceKISS Setlistat Val de Moine, Clisson, FranceDetroit ...
06/22/2026

🔴 JUNE 22 2019
📷 KISS at Hellfest 2019, Val de Moine, Clisson, France

KISS Setlist
at Val de Moine, Clisson, France

Detroit Rock City
Shout It Out Loud
Deuce
Say Yeah
I Love It Loud
Heaven's on Fire
War Machine
Lick It Up
Calling Dr. Love
100,000 Years
Drum Solo
Cold Gin
Guitar Solo
Bass Solo
God of Thunder
Psycho Circus
Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll
Love Gun
I Was Made for Lovin' You
Black Diamond

Encore:
Beth
Crazy Crazy Nights
Rock and Roll All Nite

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