The Beach Boys’ Endless Autumn Part 1
There are three different ways to listen to the Beach Boys. The first is the early 60’s surf fluff that many of us grew up on, the Beach Boys that most of the world thinks of when the band is referenced. This is the Beach Boys that drove to the top of the charts with cheesy little pop trifles like “Surfin’ Safari,” “Fun Fun Fun,” “Little Deuce Coup” and later on “Help Me Rhonda” and “California Girls.” It’s mostly shallow, harmless fun, but the emphasis is always on fun, which is entirely forgivable. Brian Wilson’s songwriting during this era is fairly rudimentary, but the harmonies are timeless and the songs pack an incredible amount of wholesome nostalgia. Everyone likes this era at least a bit, but only a few tracks like “Wendy,” “In My Room” and the beautiful “Don’t Worry Baby” (among a few others) hint at what was to come next.
The second way to listen to the Beach Boys is simply the whole of their 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds. The album is widely considered one of the best, if not the best, albums of all time. After having a bit of a nervous breakdown on the road, Brian Wilson decided to stay home at the studio full-time and let Glen Campbell take the reins of traveling bassist. The results proved immensely rewarding to both the band and the listener. Pet Sounds is just about perfect, capturing the naiveté of young love and the frightening, flawed beauty of maturation. If you haven’t heard it yet, go out and buy it now. I’ll wait…
After Pet Sounds shone its bright light upon our ugly world, Brian and the Boys headed back into the studio in an attempt to release an album of even more staggering genius and ambition. What they didn’t realize was that you can’t improve on Pet Sounds, just like you can’t add to infinity. The follow up was to be called SMiLE, and to make a long story short, some bad drugs, bad vibes and a crippling inferiority complex to the Beatles got in the way and the album never saw the light of day (until Brian Wilson finally got his shit together and released his version nearly 40 years later). That’s where our story begins…
…The third way to listen to the Beach Boys is that awkward, often misguided, frequently rewarding era that would define the next decade and a half for the band (until their well-deserved, but no less terrible late-80s cash in, “Kokomo”). As Brian’s work became more and more infrequent, the remaining Beach Boys banded together as songwriters in their own right. Brian would contribute sporadically during the years, but from 1967 to roughly 1979, the Beach Boys learned what it meant to be a band. Bit players became chief songwriters, the crisp harmonies that defined the group gave way to more solo outings and the musical trends of the times latched themselves on to the group like ugly leaches, only to be shaken off by the strength of the Beach Boys’ newfound budding talents. Brian got fatter and crazier, everyone grew some sick beards, some South African multi-instrumentalists joined the fold and everything seemed to go downhill.
But that’s only how it seems. The reality is that the Beach Boys simply changed, some of it was pretty bad, but a whole lot of it was nothing short of amazing.
Here’s an album by album overview of these forgotten years. It will be presented in three parts.
Part One: The Capital Years (1967-1969)
Smiley Smile (1967)
Perhaps the most infamous of all the Beach Boys albums. Smiley Smile is considered by many to be the “good enough” contract fulfiller that Brian Wilson simply farted out when the pressures of making a timeless, psychedelic masterpiece fell through with SMiLE. Even Carl Wilson would famously describe the album as “a bunt instead of a grand slam.”
And it’s true to an extent that Smiley Smile is not quite the album that SMiLE was supposed to be or would become. The most glaring problem with Smiley Smile is that it lacks the pristine lushness and grandeur of Pet Sounds’ production. On Smiley Smile, Brian Wilson decided to drop his “producer” credit, perhaps due to the fact that he considered the album more of a democratic work or possibly he simply gave up and didn’t want his name so directly attached to an album that sounded so comparatively flat.
So Smiley Smile is not what it could/should have been. It doesn’t sound remotely like the Beach Boys albums that preceded it. So what is it then? Other than perhaps the most notorious album of all time, Smiley Smile is an album of pop songs distorted into a new creation. It’s a bad LSD trip in a fairy tale world – psychedelia without precedent.
Of course, of all the post-Pet Sounds albums, Smiley Smile gets a head start by boasting a handful of SMiLE-ready tracks. SMiLE centerpieces “Heroes And Villains” and “Good Vibrations” grace this fine, fascinating album, as do other SMiLE goodies like “Vegetables,” “Wind Chimes” and “Wonderful.”
With the obvious exception of “Good Vibrations,” “Vegetables” (streaming below) is the best of these holdovers. Wrongly considered to be a prime example of Brian Wilson’s mental descent, “Vegetables” is a minor masterpiece. Yes, the song is literally about eating your vegetables (pronounced “vega-tables”), but the lyrics are intentionally goofy, whereas the melody is the real thing. It’s certainly some warped pop music (with Paul McCartney on the carrot!), but it’s a delightfully catchy, exhilarating trip, nonetheless. Those comparing the Smiley Smile version to the official SMiLE version will notice a couple of psychedelic touches to the former version - namely, the backwards speaking (“taba-vigils”) and sparse, pulsing bass that tremors beneath the whole song. There are multiple versions of this song and they are uniformly great. This one is no exception.
Of the non-SMiLE tracks, “She’s Going Bald” (streaming below) is the most delightfully insane. While some gentle bongos play in the background, Mike Love sings about a woman literally losing her hair. Some quasi-classic Beach Boys harmonies fill the background until the band starts into a helium voiced “Sha Na Na” from “Help Me Rhonda.” What follows is a slightly terrifying/hilarious story interlude and a bluesy fade out with Love singing “You’re too late, Mama / There’s nothing upside your head.” This Brian Wilson/Mike Love/Van Dyke Parks collaboration is possibly the most experimental and “druggy” the band ever got and it’s a total kick to hear.
Elsewhere, the instrumental “Fall Breaks And Back To Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)” spooks and the contact high of “Little Pad” both perplexes with its druggy giggles and amazes with its simple ukulele folk (paging early T. Rex). “With Me Tonight” references the harmonies of Beach Boys’ past and “Getting Hungry,” with its bouncy organ, points to some of the delicious peaks the Beach Boys would reach in the future.
When not held up against the monster achievement that SMiLE was supposed to be (and eventually was), Smiley Smile comes off like a slight, but intermittently stunning exploration of the quirky psychedlic world of the late-60’s Beach Boys. More than a bunt, less than a grand slam. Endlessly listenable.
Wild Honey (1967)
After the “bunt” that was Smiley Smile, the Beach Boys decided to just change their sport all together. Smiley Smile was the sound of a band desperately struggling to piece together an album of song fragments that could coalesce into a logical (or at least marketable) whole. The album dropped, critics and fans jeered and the Beach Boys decided to simplify. Smiley Smile is the awkward, uncomfortable, unwanted end of an era. Wild Honey is the solid, assured, unspectacular beginning of a new one.
First off, Wild Honey saw the Beach Boys whittle down their instrumentation to just the bare essentials. Wild Honey sounds thinner and less warm than previous albums. Even when the slick Theremin kicks in on the opening title track (streaming below), it sounds like a work of minor ambition by a roots rock band. There is very rarely an instance where the production and performance sounds anything more than sparse. This is certainly a far cry from where the band had been only a year prior when they took forever and a day just to finish “Good Vibrations.”
Instead of the luscious doo wop harmonies that defined their earlier work, or even the luscious doo wop parodies that defined Smiley Smile, Wild Honey is blanketed by a fairly square white soul sheen. It must have been a strange and jarring new direction even for the fans that had stuck with the Beach Boys up into that point, although I’m sure others happily embraced the return to simplicity. It’s a low stakes affair, with very little of the album advancing beyond “pretty good,” but then again, nothing dips below that either.
There are a handful of highlights here, however, including the aforementioned title track (with Carl Wilson effectively playing the role of Caucasian Soul Brutha), a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made To Love Her” and “Darlin’,” a previously written track that managed a brief amount of time on the charts in spite of the group’s severely waning popularity. “Aren’t You Glad” is a bouncy, breezy number with some lovely vocals by Brian and Mike.
The group vocals on “Country Air” highlight one of the defining characteristics of this era of the Beach Boys: the almost total lack of group vocals. As Brian started to withdraw into his own head and bedroom, the rest of the Beach Boys (including Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and the remaining Wilson brothers, Carl and Dennis) had to pick up the slack and what resulted were more solo efforts and pet projects. For better or worse, this is largely the way the Beach Boys would conduct themselves for their remaining years with few exceptions. “Country Air” is one exception.
Perhaps the most interesting song on Wild Honey is Brian’s “I’d Love Just Once To See You” (streaming below) a short, casual acoustic track that illustrates the state of Brian’s mind at the time and an indicator of things to come. There are some lovely passages in the song, and an elegantly simple arrangement (not to mention a fairly humorous punchline), but the obsession over the unimportant minutiae of daily life would become a major theme to Wilson’s most notorious songs (“Busy Doin’ Nothin’,” “Johnny Carson”).
“Mama Says,” a track originally intended – and eventually used – as a major theme of “Vega-Tables” closes the album on a strong note. The “Sleep a lot, eat a lot, brush ‘em like crazy” refrain is simply lovely. “Lovely” is a rare adjective for Wild Honey, an album that barely does anything outside of playing it safe. For their Smiley Smile follow-up, the Beach Boys set the bar way lower than they ever had, and while they admirably met and often exceeded their own standards, things would get far more interesting from here on out. If Smiley Smile was the product of too many colors and ideas, Wild Honey is a blank canvas, allowing the band members to redefine and rejuvenate themselves. Too bad no one was noticing at the time.
Friends (1968)
The simplicity of Wild Honey was maintained and refined on Friends, another minor masterwork that was thoroughly ignored by a 1968 audience that was too preoccupied with the sounds of the hippie movement. It should be noted that those dismissive fans should not be blamed; by 68, the Beach Boys were considerably square and out of touch, and every subsequent attempt to revitalize themselves (whether through protest songs, disco or shoe-horned nostalgia) made them even lamer to the public at large. Hindsight has given these albums the majority of their charms.
The simple pleasures of Friends feel richer and fuller than the stilted R&B of Wild Honey. The small, tender 39-second jaw-dropper “Meant For You” opens the album. Even at such a brief run time, “Meant For You” packs a very sweet, emotional punch that hadn’t been attempted since Pet Sounds. It includes a stunning performance by Mike Love and is really one of the high points of late era Beach Boys.
Friends was, up to that point, the Beach Boys’ most “group” effort, with Brian writing solo on only two tracks (more on that later) and with an outside group on a third. The whole group pitches in on the title track, “Be Here In The Morning” and especially “When A Man Needs A Women,” which all provide a bunch of simple, subtle pleasures and show a developing confidence in writing for the Beach Boys not named Brian or Mike (Bruce Johnston does not contribute to this album in a writing capacity, but his contributions would come). The big surprise on Friends is the emergence of Dennis Wilson as a songwriter. He would contribute stronger tracks in the future than the ones that appear here, but both “Little Bird” and the broken, soft-voiced “Be Still” show that Brian Wilson’s songwriting emergence in the early part of the decade may have been to the detriment of his younger brother who was displaying chops of his own.
Despite a couple lovely co-writes with Mike Love and Al Jardine and the instrumental “Passing By” and “Diamond Head,” Brian Wilson’s contributions were limited. Only “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” (streaming below) really counts as a pure solo work and it’s possibly the oddest, most sweetly disturbing thing he ever wrote. By 1968, Wilson had withdrawn from the real world so much that he began to stay in bed for days at a time, only getting up to putter around the house and, evidently, write a song about puttering around the house.
For those not in the know, “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” is an ultra-literal song about…well, Brian’s life and all the minor, uninteresting things that go on with a man so far in his own head and so deeply entrenched in writer’s block that he simply puts a laundry list of his daily activities to a bossa nova beat. Among the shocking topics is an anecdote about Brian trying to find a friend’s phone number (use mnemonic devices!) as well as turn-by-turn directions to his house that, as it is believed, if you knew the starting point, you would find your way to the troubled songwriter’s front door.
Here’s the miracle, though – it’s totally listenable and great! Yes, it’s absolute elevator music, but it’s elevator music of the most insane kind. Things for Brian wouldn’t get much better for a few more years as his songwriting output got less and less. Luckily for the rest of the band, they were really developing their songwriting chops at a good pace. Friends is a testament to that.
20/20 (1969)
20/20 is merely an odds and sods contractual obligation to Capitol Records, but, as the critical cliché goes, it works as a cohesive whole. The album combines a handful of white soul exercises (the Bacharachian “Be With Me,” and the dirty boogie of “All I Want To Do”), with some retro-Beach Boys sounds (“Do It Again” and a fairly excellent cover of Phil Spector’s “I Can Hear Music” - streaming below)) and a pair of unbelievably terrific SMiLE holdovers (“Our Prayer” and “Cabinessence”).
Also of interest is a silly cover of Leadbelly’s “Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song),” which has to be about the most charmingly white version of a song about cotton fields. “Time To Get Alone” contains what is possibly the loveliest melody Brian Wilson penned in the wake of the SMiLE fallout. The song’s lighthearted lilt, combined with the strongest vocal performance the group would put to tape for the next decade. “Time To Get Alone” is a tiny triumph and a strong argument for the Beach Boys’ viability in their later years.
“Never Learn Not To Love” has the dubious distinction of being penned by a young, struggling songwriter named Charles Manson…or at least that’s the rumor. The song is credited to Dennis Wilson. It’s a vaguely psychedelic track that doesn’t particularly stand out from the album’s stronger tracks, but there are some pretty interesting moments. That Manson guy could have really had a future. He coulda been famous I tells ya.
The SMiLE tracks are the undoubted highlights. “Our Prayer” is the breathtaking vocal performance that would eventually open the album’s official release. The Wilson/Parks collaboration of “Cabinessence” (streaming below) is the real find here, however. The three-and-a-half minute suite indicates the kind of genius Wilson and co. were dealing with before the meltdown. The gorgeous marriage between orchestration and banjo combined with Wilson’s lovely vocal performance and Parks brilliant lyrics make for one of the finest Beach Boys tracks of all time. Listening to “Cabinessence” gives an indication that the Beach Boys may have been the sonic fathers of artists like Sufjan Stevens.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Jesus, you are a verbose motherfucker.