The Beach Boys’ Endless Autumn Part 3
Part 3: Brian’s Back! (1976-1979)
After a handful critical and commercial flops, paired with the monstrous success of 1974’s greatest hits collection Endless Summer, the now totally Brianless Beach Boys decided to move away from recording any new material and fully embrace their “oldies act” status. The band hit the road and kind of, sort of, rebuilt their fan base by comprising (or compromising) their performances of mostly pre-1968 material.
By this point, the Boys had been a ship without a captain. Since the SMiLE fallout, Brian had been 95% out of commission, only lending the odd SMiLE track, or a chord arrangement here or there. When he would contribute a new track it would be a fairly disturbing illustration of his growing mental illness. While the rest of the group were out busting their asses trying to keep the band going, Brian was back in his LA mansion, bingeing on fatty foods and heavy drugs.
Cue Eugene Landy. The controversial psychiatrist, who would prescribe a whole buttload of illegal psychotropic drugs to Brian, eventually giving him a condition called tardive dyskinesia, began pushing his patient to step out of his self-imposed shell and back into the public eye. Landy persuaded Wilson to join with the Beach Boys and the “Brian’s Back” tour and ad campaign was born.
15 Big Ones (1976)
With Brian’s big, fat hairy mug back on the (very ugly, embarrassing) cover of a Beach Boys record, it comes as no surprise that 15 Big Ones sold better than any of its more ambitious predecessors. Unfortunately, the group failed to capitalize on their onetime leader’s big return. For an album sporting the return of one of the 20th century’s finest songwriters, it’s a shame that he only contributes five tracks of varying quality with a pair of them being written well over a decade prior. The remaining ten tracks are either useless oldies covers or more pointless B-sides.
So, to recap: the band’s most celebrated songwriter returns, fans start to pay attention and they release what is essentially a cover album of overly played 50’s songs. What the shit? The Beach Boys had been suffering a slow-career death for about a decade, but this was suicide.
Of Brian’s songs, only “Had To Phone Ya,” (streaming below) really stands out. It’s a minor symphony (less than two minutes) that combines the self-imposed exile observations of Friends’ “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” with the suite-like pop opuses (opi?) of SMiLE’s best tracks. “Phone Ya” employs all five Beach Boy voices, perfectly utilizing each of them, including Brian’s now excessively gruff and gargled singing. The multi-part song changes keys, moods and vocal performances multiple times within it’s brief runtime, as if to give a brief overview of where they had been as a group (SMiLE) and what kind of work they would do in the very near future (Love You). It’s a ray of semi-complex sunshine on an otherwise dynamic-less album.
Of course the real problem with 15 Big Ones is all those damn covers. It’s almost as if the Boys wanted to show that they still had that “classic Beach Boys sound.” Mike Love’s nasal voice makes its annoying presence over the majority of the crappy album and the song selections are almost uniformly boneheaded.
Only “Just Once In My Life,” a late album Phil Spector cover, justifies its existence. For one, the song was lesser known, where covers of “Rock And Roll Music,” “Chapel Of Love” and “In The Still Of The Night” have been overplayed for years. Secondly, Brian’s hoarse, almost pubescent vocal cracks lend the song a certain “good try” charm. It should also be noted that Carl absolutely nails his verses. Man, that guy was good.
15 Big Ones was a window of opportunity being completely squandered. Brian’s big comeback could have been something really special, but instead it became just a tired, shitty, glorified covers album. Hunt down “Had To Phone Ya” and “Just Once In My Life” to hear what the band could have accomplished with the album. Some of the other original compositions may be worth pursuing, but are not necessary. This was the Beach Boys’ biggest miss in their nearly 20-year career, luckily things would be strangely rectified on the next album.
Love You (1977)
Love You is the album that the whole “Brian’s Back!” campaign was meant for. Fourteen songs, all written by Brian (except for a silly bridge by Mike Love on the proto-synth pop rocker “Let Us Go On This Way” and the “Dang” part of “Ding Dang” by the Byrds frontman, Roger McGuinn). Every arrangement, every lyric, all Brian’s. And it’s a work of totally gawky, periodically embarrassing, bug-eyed genius.
Love You is exactly what it sounds like: that same band that released Pet Sounds, only older, fatter, sweatier, beaten down and no longer in touch with current trends, but totally willing to give themselves over to the cracked muse of their disturbed, but downright wholesome and innocent leader.
So what does that all really mean? That means that Love You is packed with as much good vibes and loving feelings as Pet Sounds was (even in the liner notes, the band writes a touching, heartfelt note to Brian), but instead of having Pet Sounds’ immaculate production, Love You contains the sound quality of a garage demo by a two-week old junior high punk band. Instead of relatable emotions and discussions on complex themes, Love You is a grab bag of zany and perplexing topics. Instead of lush strings and seamless, gorgeous harmonies, Love You gives you clanging moog synthesizers and ragged vocals with bum notes. It’s the bizarro Pet Sounds, but what it lacks in, well, pretty much everything, it makes up in sheer frazzled exuberance and incidental charm.
The album falls into two categories: the bat shit insane “Brian has lost it” tracks and the heartbreaking, highly idiosyncratic ballads. The two categories occasionally work like a Venn diagram and cross over into one another.
The crazy-ass tracks are abundant and hilarious. “Solar System” is contains the spine-tingling bon mot “If Mars had life on it / I might find my wife on it.” Poetry, I tells you, sheer poetry. Dennis delivers a lovingly gruff vocal on “I Wanna You Up,” a kindhearted ode to parenting, but the closing refrain – “Pat, pat, pat pat pat her on her butt, butt” – is a mood killer. But the “WTF” moment only adds some notoriety to a very lovely song.
Of all these crazy tracks (which also includes “Honkin’ Down The Highway Down The Highway” and the aforementioned “Ding Dang,” which both kind of rock, incidentally), “Johnny Carson” (streaming below) is most certainly the nuttiest. An ode to the late talk show giant, “Johnny Carson” says more about Brian’s struggles with obsession than it does about the titular personality. With a grizzled lisp that foreshadows Isaac Brock, Brian croons in total Rupert Pupkin mode, while the band, who I can only assumes had been seriously drugged before agreeing to perform the song, belt out the “Joh-nny Car-son” with bonkers gusto. “Who’s the man that we admire? / Johnny Carson is a real live wire” goes the closing vamp. Um, ok Brian, gotcha.
The album’s second side reveals some immensely touching songs. “I’ll Bet He’s Nice” is peppered with quirky synth squirts, but Dennis Wilson, once again, gives the oddball sound effects some legitimate gravitas with his broken voice. Add some lovely group vocals and subtle handclaps and you have one of the more legitimately great tracks of the album.
Even better, however, are “The Night Was So Young” and “Let’s Put Our Hearts Together.” Brian proves himself a master arranger on the former track, pairing still-incredible-after-all-these-years group doo-wop harmonies with Carl Wilson’s kick ass white soul vocals. Even while totally off his rocker, Brian could still prove his genius. “Let’s Put Our Hearts Together,” Brian’s duet with his then-wife, Marilyn, is just terribly touching. The song is the sound of that desperate couple from “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” older, sadder, but still in love in spite of years of hardships. This is some really lovely stuff.
Of course there are a few tracks that ain’t so hot and the whole album has a bit of a car crash quality to it, but there’s no doubt that even at the album’s most grating, embarrassing moments, it’s an immensely fascinating listen. Listen to the first half of the record and enjoy the spectacle. Listen to the second half and discover that there’s a real heart at the centre of such a loopy collective.
M.I.U. Album (1978)
Recorded at Maharishi International University in Iowa and produced by typical role-player Al Jardine, M.I.U. is made up of few of the same qualities and many of the same detriments that made up the previous two albums. Of the bad, a pair of oldies covers (“Come Go With Me” and “Peggy Sue”), a brutal Mike Love attempt at recapturing his sand n’ surf heyday (“Kona Coast”) and a laughably bad disco-lite tennis-as-metaphor-for-love embarrassment (“Match Point Of Our Love.” Get it?). Oh, and also a handful of other bad to forgettable cuts that are unnecessary to discuss.
While the album isn’t totally salvaged, there are a handful of intriguing cuts on the album. “She’s Got Rhythm,” for all of its cheeseball boogie woogie, really kicks the album into high gear with a glorious opening note. Carl Wilson gives another sterling performance on “Sweet Sunday” and “Pitter Patter’s” opening 20-seconds are pretty great.
M.I.U. boasts only two really noteworthy songs, however. The first, “Hey, Little Tomboy” is an embarrassing, totally un-PC jingle that puts many of Love You’s most perplexing tracks to shame. With lyrics like “Hey, little tomboy / time to turn into a girl” or “Hey, little tomboy, I’ve had my eyes on you / Thinkin’ what a girl you could be / Mmm, I smell perfume, let’s try some cut-off jeans / Look at all the changes I see,” “Hey, Little Tomboy” feels like a recording from the world’s creepiest uncle. The closing native chant type thing pushes the song into “musical legitimacy” territory, but in the end, the song is just another mind-melting Brian Wilson creep out.
Dennis Wilson’s battered and bruised vocals on Brian’s “My Diane” are the album’s true highlight (jeez, how many different adjectives do I need to describe Dennis’ croak?). The song, in all its gravel-throated glory, contains one of Brian’s sharpest melodies and wouldn’t have been out of place on the stunning second side of Love You. “My Diane” is also notorious, because Diane was the name of Brian’s soon-to-be-ex wife’s sister. Weird, no? The song recalls the depressive nature of past downer-era Brian tracks like Surf’s Up’s “’Til I Die.” In fact, with lyrics like “Everything is wrong and nothing is right,” it definitely shows that Dr. Landy wasn’t the savior that Brian thought he would be. After years of frustration and disappointment, Brian was still in a funk and not on the path towards health.
L.A. (Light Album)
L.A. doesn’t exactly rectify the mistakes of M.I.U. Instead, it kind of compounds on its predecessor’s errors, giving Al and Mike (who I don’t hate, by the way, it’s just that their instincts weren’t so great. Ok, maybe I do hate Mike) more room to explore their “craft.” Jardine’s tribute to his wife “Lady Lynda,” and Love’s Japanese-themed “Sumahama” are two album-crippling disasters best left for the never-even-considered-for-release Jardine & Love: Bad Songs About Terrible Topics. “Good Timin’” is slightly better thanks to another great vocal by Carl. The song is a melodic cousin to “Surfer Girl,” an early Beach Boys cut that paired musical simplicity with some genuine sweetness. Unfortunately, these throwbacks are an unwelcome addition to a band that should have been well past this phase.
While Surf’s Up and Holland were both albums held up by Carl’s contributions, L.A. is listenable thanks to three excellent tracks from Dennis’ unreleased second solo album, Bamboo. “Angel Come Home,” a certified piece of 70’s AOR, could be a lost Elvis Costello song in the vain of “Alison,” but with a punchy, soulful chorus that may sound very much of its time but is also quite terrific (it’s like enjoying a Boz Scaggs song). “Love Surrounds Me” lays down a laid back groove with some smooth electric piano and a few funky guitar bends and futuristic synth blasts. It’s actually really great, especially when Dennis lets his Tom Waitsian growls swing a bit.
“Baby Blue” is probably my favorite of his three tracks, capturing a bit of his biggest brothers knack for writing mini pop suites. Carl and Dennis trade off vocal duties on the track – Carl with the higher-register, slightly ethereal bookends; Dennis with the Randy Newmanesque middle third. The song amounts to little more than wordless voices, but it’s such a compelling number, it’s a shock that it didn’t arrive in the Beach Boys catalogue until this late in the game.
Of all the tracks, the most memorable, but not quite the best, is the Boys’ 10-minute disco redux of Wild Honey’s “Here Comes The Night.” Easily the oddest career move the Beach Boys ever made, “Here Comes The Night” almost kinda, sorta works in terms of heavily vocodored late-70’s disco club jams. Of course, in terms of fad-hopping, this may be the Beach Boys worst as disco was rapidly on the decline at the dawn of the 80’s. Still, as one of the Beach Boys’ many stylistic curiosities, this one is perhaps the most curious.
Like even the worst Beach Boys albums (which many consider this album to be), if you dig a little bit deeper, there are some bright spots that can be found, especially Dennis’ little trilogy of greatness.
Epilogue
L.A. is almost devoid of any Brian tracks. After a brief foray out into the public eye, Brian re-hit rock bottom, ate himself past the 300lb mark and became a ghost of his former self.
Elsewhere, Carl and Dennis, the most consistent band members, would temporarily leave the band in 1980. Three years later, Dennis drowned in a boating accident, cutting short a very promising solo career (his Pacific Ocean Blue is being reissued later this year. I’m stoked).
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Boys. Mike Love (with the help of a young Greek drummer named John Stamos) got the group back on the charts with the late-80’s sub-Buffett turd, “Kokomo.” Whether the song sucked or not, it was a well-deserved cash grab for a band that had been strapped for recognition for nearly 20 years at that point..
Even better, of course, was Brian’s 2004 completion of SMiLE. Even for those who had been compiling home albums of their own since the aborted project, the official version is terrific and a wonderful coda to Brian’s fascinating, frustrating career. To hear all of those wonderful songs as the were meant to be heard (“Good Vibrations” has its original lyric, instead of Mike Love’s more popular revised lyrics) and in the order they were meant to be heard is truly a treat and was actually worth the wait (although I can’t speak for those who had been around since the original project).
In recent years, these later Beach Boys albums have received a bit of a re-evaluation. Even those brought up on Pet Sounds and the other early albums have begun to recognize the idiosyncratic awesomeness that went into Brian’s nutty Smiley Smile and Love You and the democratic delights of Surf’s Up and Holland. There’s a whole other world of the Beach Boys, and while the results vary, there is something wonderful for all ears.
Ten Songs You Need To Hear, From 1967-79 (Non-SMiLE Cuts)
- “Hold On, Dear Brother” (from Carl & The Passions – So Tough)
- “Don’t Go Near The Water” (from Surf’s Up)
- “Only With You” (from Holland)
- “Meant For You” (from Friends)
- “Long Promised Road” (from Surf’s Up)
- “The Night Was So Young” (from Love You)
- “Slip On Through” (from Sunflower)
- “Feel Flows” (from Surf’s Up)
- “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” (from Friends)
- “Johnny Carson” (from Love You)