The Beach Boys Live: The 50th Anniversary Tour
If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two disasters just the same…
Then you’re a Beach Boys fan, since triumph and disaster are so intermingled in this band that it has become impossible to tell them apart.
Take this CD as an example.
Last year’s reunion tour (of a Beach Boys lineup that had never played together before, but we’ll let that pass) eventually managed to become an artistic triumph. After starting out with essentially the same hits show that Mike Love and Bruce Johnston play to county fairs across the USA every year (not that there’s anything wrong with county fairs, or the Beach Boys’ hits…), they steadily added more different, interesting material to the sets, while being backed by what is, bar none, the best band I’ve ever seen. The last of the three shows I saw on the tour, at Wembley, was the second best live musical experience of my life (the best, Brian Wilson’s UK tours of 2002, featured six of the same people).
And that is more-or-less reflected on this double-CD set. While it’s shorter than most of the shows, at forty-one songs, it manages to contain pretty much all of the hits you’d expect, but also songs like Marcella, The Little Girl I Once Knew, Disney Girls, Pet Sounds, Sail On Sailor and All This Is That, all performed exquisitely.
There’s nothing wrong with the performances, the song choice or the album cover at all.
I want to repeat that. The vocal, instrumental and songwriting abilities of the people on that stage shine through here.
No, the problem is the mix.
The problem most people have been noting is the autotune, slathered on by Joe Thomas, the album’s ‘co-producer’. (Brian Wilson is credited as co-producer as well, but this is almost certainly a vanity credit). And that is bad. Mike Love and Brian Wilson both sound utterly robotic at points, like they’ve been replaced by a square wave.
There’s also utterly shameless use of studio-recorded material — the rerecording of Do It Again from last year, the studio versions of That’s Why God Made The Radio and Isn’t It Time, and even Brian Wilson’s 2004 solo recording of Heroes & Villains (autotuned almost out of recognition, but definitely the same recording) all make appearances, lightly dusted with a few dropped-in live bits. But that’s sort of OK — there’s no such thing as an actual live album any more, and at least this doesn’t pretend to be a single show (Bruce says “We must be in Texas!” near the beginning, and sings “in a smaller Texas town” in Disney Girls, Mike says “thank you my people, the car people of Arizona!” after the car medley, and Bruce sings “I wish they all could be Colorado girls” later on. And now those who collect unofficial recordings will know they already have several of the tracks).
The autotune is, frankly, unforgivable — but it wrecks less than a quarter of the album. While it’s present on most of it, there are only a handful of songs where it jumps out as unlistenable. The rest isn’t too badly affected. (The same goes for the reverb that’s all over the thing, and the decisions to double-track some vocals, presumably using performances from multiple shows).
But the other mixing problems are worse. Huge chunks of instrumentation are mixed down or out altogether. Nelson Bragg’s percussion is a particular casualty — when he mentioned the album on Facebook, he said “I don’t know if you’ll hear me on it”, and I didn’t know what he meant, but now I do. Half his parts simply aren’t audible. There are usually no more than two guitars in the mix at any time, and two keyboards (at various points on the tour there were up to six guitars playing, and up to four keyboards). This sounds empty and sterile. Mike Love introduces California Saga by talking about Al playing his banjo, and we hear it being tuned in the background — but then it’s inaudible during the song itself.
And I feel very sorry for John Cowsill, who is bar none the best live drummer I’ve ever seen. But his parts on this tour were worked out to blend with the (now inaudible) percussion parts, and to make matters worse the drum sound on this record is like hearing someone play on biscuit tins.
And then there’s the audience… mixed completely out, for the most part, then mixed up at random intervals for half-second bursts, at maximum volume, like they let a small child control that fader.
Given the horrible production Joe Thomas inflicted on the otherwise very good That’s Why God Made The Radio album last year (not to mention the horrors of Stars & Stripes vol 1, The Wilsons and Imagination in the 90s), why do the Beach Boys keep employing this buffoon?
My final problem with the CD is the credits. The musicians are all given minimal credits, so Probyn Gregory is only credited for guitar/vocals (no mention of his horn, tannerin or bass playing), Mike D’Amico bass/vocals (no mention of his drumming on a couple of songs), Scott Totten guitar/vocals (no mention of ukulele), Darian keyboards/vocals (no mention of the tuned percussion parts) and Jeff Foskett guitar/vocals (no mention of the mandolin).
Worst of all, Nick Walusko, who dropped out of the tour for health reasons half way through but who definitely played on several of the shows used here, isn’t credited at all. Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that they cut him out of the final mix, but if they can credit the accountants and carpenters they can credit him.
But by focusing on the negatives so much, I really am giving a misleading impression of this album. For the most part, it’s a very listenable, pleasant, if over-clean, rendition of some of the finest songs ever written. There are little moments of beauty scattered throughout it, and despite the mix you can hear just how wonderful these musicians are — and they really are. Hearing the five surviving Beach Boys harmonising on Surfer Girl and In My Room, or hearing All This Is That live, is still captivating.
It’s worth buying, or at least listening to on Spotify, if you like the Beach Boys. But just don’t expect anything to show you why those of us who were lucky enough to be there will remember last year’s tour with awe forever.
Tracklist (all leads Mike Love, with falsetto Jeff Foskett, except where noted):
Disc 1
1. Do It Again
2. Little Honda
3. Catch A Wave
4. Hawaii
5. Don’t Back Down
6. Surfin’ Safari
7. Surfer Girl (group/Brian Wilson)
8. The Little Girl I Once Knew (group/Brian Wilson/Mike Love)
9. Wendy (Bruce Johnston)
10. Getcha Back (David Marks)
11. Then I Kissed Her (Al Jardine)
12. Marcella (Brian Wilson)
13. Isn’t It Time (group)
14. Why Do Fools Fall In Love (Scott Totten and Jeff Foskett)
15. When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)
16. Disney Girls (Bruce Johnston)
17. Be True To Your School
18. Little Deuce Coupe
19. 409
20. Shut Down
21. I Get Around
Disc: 2
1. Pet Sounds (instrumental, lead guitar David Marks)
2. Add Some Music To Your Day (group)
3. Heroes And Villains (Brian Wilson)
4. Sail On, Sailor (Brian Wilson)
5. California Saga: California (Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love)
6. In My Room (group)
7. All This Is That (Mike Love & Al Jardine verses, Brian Wilson & Darian Sahanaja choruses, Jeff Foskett tag)
8. That’s Why God Made The Radio (group)
9. Forever (group backing a pre-recorded Dennis Wilson)
10. God Only Knows (group backing a pre-recorded Carl Wilson)
11. Sloop John B (Brian Wilson)
12. Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Al Jardine and Mike Love)
13. Good Vibrations (Brian Wilson and Jeff Foskett, with Mike Love)
14. California Girls
15. Help Me, Rhonda (Al Jardine)
16. Rock And Roll Music
17. Surfin’ U.S.A.
18. Kokomo
19. Barbara Ann (group)
20. Fun, Fun, Fun
The Beach Boys On CD: Bruce Johnston — Going Public
I’m actually going slightly out of order here. There were two Beach Boys solo albums released in 1977. The first of these, Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue, is generally considered a masterpiece. It’s been issued on CD as a double “special edition”, including tons of bonus tracks and an entire second, previously-unreleased, album, Bambu, that was recorded as a follow-up. It’s going to take a huge amount of effort to deal with it in any kind of fair way, effort I can’t put in right now, as it’s an enormous artistic achievement.
Going Public, on the other hand, and with all possible respect to Bruce Johnston, simply isn’t.
Johnston will be re-entering the story proper in 1979, though since leaving the band in 1972 he’d remained on friendly terms with them and added backing vocals to several tracks. But he’d not been sitting around waiting for the call from his old band-mates. Johnston was always the best musician in the band, in the purely technical sense — he’s an excellent pianist, and able to turn his hand to any kind of music. So between 1972 and 1977 he’d done all sorts of work, from working with Curt Boettcher (by now shortening his name to Becher), Gary Usher and Terry Melcher on their odd disco-calypso-surf-pop California Music project, to singing backing vocals with Carl Wilson on Elton John’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, to co-writing a top 30 hit for the Hudson Brothers, to writing a song for The Captain And Tennile.
That song, I Write The Songs, was re-recorded by David Cassidy on an album Johnston produced for him in 1975, and then covered again by Barry Manilow, in a version which became a massive worldwide hit, and won Johnston the Grammy award for Song Of The Year (still the only time a Beach Boys member has won this award).
As a result of this success, Johnston recorded this solo album, produced by Gary Usher (supposedly, though I’ve seen claims that Usher had little involvement) and with Curt Becher co-arranging. The intention was apparently more to showcase other songs of Johnston’s that might have hit potential, rather than to be a satisfying album in itself, and the result is, frankly, awful — a mixture of stripped-down demos that sound like every bad lounge singer in existence, and some of the least danceable disco in existence. Johnston himself, never one to hide his opinion, has repeatedly disowned the album, saying he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to listen to it.
I have to make a confession here — this is one of only two albums I’m writing about which I don’t feel fully familiar with. Both this, and Mike Love’s solo album Looking Back With Love, are so poor that I’ve listened to them precisely twice each before the start of this project — once to see if they were as bad as people say, and once to check that they were really that bad. Those two albums are being included for completeness’ sake, not because I can offer any great insights.
Unless noted, all songs are written by Bruce Johnston, who’s also the lead vocalist.
I Write The Songs
You almost certainly know this song in Barry Manilow’s hit version, but in case you have managed to avoid it, this is a song about music, part of a regrettable 70s subgenre that also included Music by John Miles. In this case Johnston sings that “I write the songs that make the whole world sing/I write the songs of joy and special things”. When Manilow sang this, people thought, naturally enough, that it was a rather egotistical song, with Manilow claiming “I am music and I write the songs”.
Johnston has since clarified that the song is meant to be from the voice of God, from whom all music comes in his opinion. And writing a song that claims to speak for God is apparently less egotistical than merely claiming to have written all music in human history. O hubris, thy name is Johnston.
In truth, the song is nowhere near as bad as its whipping-boy status would suggest, having a decent, if saccharine, melody, and some relatively interesting chord changes, at least until the horrible truck-driver’s key changes start to come in after the middle eight. That’s not to say it’s good, mind, just that it’s not as bad as its reputation. Johnston performs it in a fairly restrained way, with the recording being just him and a piano (plus a ton of reverb) for the most part, although the addition of a choir for the last few notes is a bit much, and of course his voice is as good as ever.
This song was part of the Beach Boys’ live repertoire for a couple of years after Johnston rejoined the band, but has now become part of a ‘comedy’ bit of the show, where Johnston plays a couple of bars and is then made to apologise for having written it.
And while it shouldn’t need saying, for completeness’ sake I’ll say it. This song isn’t about Brian Wilson.
Deirdre
Writers: Bruce Johnston and Brian Wilson
The first truly inexplicable move on the album is this rerecording of the Sunflower song, with slightly-rewritten lyrics. The original had been, if not great, then perfectly inoffensive and with a mild light charm. Here the light swing of the original is replaced with an utterly generic disco-lite sub-Bee Gees backing — thudding four-on-the-floor drums with quavers on the hi-hat, backing vocals appearing and disappearing at random places in the stereo spectrum, an unimaginative horn arrangement and so forth.
The lyrical rewrite is clumsy, the disco arrangement galumphs clumsily when it should be encouraging us to dance, and then just in case anyone was starting to get some accidental pleasure from the song, it breaks down into a slow tempo for a few bars for a lounge sax solo. Utterly joyless.
Thank You Baby
This is a remake of a song Johnston originally recorded in the 1960s, with Terry Melcher, as their duo Bruce & Terry. In that form it was a fairly passable piece of Jan And Dean-esque harmony pop, sounding vaguely influenced by late period Buddy Holly, but with some baroque pop harpsichord. (Bruce and Terry also recorded covers of two Holly songs around the same time).
Here it’s slowed down and performed by Johnston over solo electric piano, and while it’s a pretty melody, the song itself doesn’t stand up to this treatment, with all its jolly internal rhyming — “And the way/every day/when you’d say/I love to see you smile” or “thoughts/can’t be bought/but they ought/to be shared with someone close”. That sort of thing works fine in an uptempo pop song, but just sounds ridiculous in a sensitive singer-songwriter ballad.
The middle section, where Johnston does multi-tracked “Mister Sandman” barbershop vocals works quite well though.
(For those who might think that because I dislike this album I’m dismissing Johnston as a writer or performer, incidentally, I cannot recommend the Sundazed Best Of Bruce & Terry highly enough. Twenty tracks of perfect pop, including the utterly magnificent Girl It’s Alright Now, and the Love/Johnston collaboration Don’t Run Away. One poor album shouldn’t distract from the man’s talent.)
Rendezvous
Writers: Bruce Johnston, Bill Hudson, Brett Hudson, Mark Hudson
This track was written with and for the Hudson brothers, a pop band who were the stars of the children’s TV show The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show. Their version, done in a vaguely imitation-Chinnichap style, made number 26 as a single in 1975, becoming their second-biggest hit.
Johnston’s version sounds closer to Neil Sedaka, with its ridiculous but catchy “Rendezvous/Rendezvous/Ronday-ronday-ronday rendezvous” chorus. It’s silly pop fluff, but enjoyable for what it is.
(It’s still impossible, though, to get over Johnston singing the first line “Your mom and dad/Think I’m bad”. No, they think you’re a multi-millionaire who puts a photo of himself in full morning suit and top hat sat on the bumper of a Rolls-Royce on his album cover.)
Won’t Somebody Dance With Me?
Writer: Lynsey De Paul
One of two cover versions on the album, this is a remake of a sickeningly sweet Lynsey De Paul hit, that actually manages to be even more saccharine than the original. While De Paul’s original was all sung from the perspective of the “wallflower” who wants someone to dance with her, here Johnston switches the lyrics round to be from the point of view of her father, watching her, before saying “and she says”, at which point a female vocalist (I don’t know who, as it’s not noted as a duet in the album’s liner notes, but the credited female backing vocalists are Cindy Bullens and Diana Lee, and Toni Tennille is given ‘special thanks’ in the credits for the album) sings the “won’t somebody dance with me?” chorus, in a ludicrously high voice which can’t quite reach the notes.
The low point — not just of the album, but perhaps of all musical history up to this point — comes in the second chorus, when after each line Johnston gives a spoken response. “Won’t somebody dance with me? (Be patient, sweetheart)/Start up a romance with me/(There’ll be time for that)”
If anyone ever tries to tell you punk was unnecessary, play them this track.
Disney Girls
There’s little to say about this that I didn’t say in the write-up in the Surf’s Up album. It’s an inferior performance to that one, and just on the other side of the line that separates pop perfection from schmaltz, and this performance — solo vocal and piano apart from the “church, bingo chances” line (and an electric piano coming in on the coda), and taken a little slower than the original — shows how much the other Beach Boys added to that track. It’s utterly unnecessary if you’ve heard the original, but it’s still the best thing on the album by a long, long way.
Rock And Roll Survivor
A pleasant enough country-pop song, of a kind that Glenn Campbell might have recorded, about how the singer is through with his rock and roll days and all grown up, and is going to sing music that’s more appropriate for someone who’s in his mid-thirties and extremely rich, like country music.
The bragging about his wealth in the first verse is a little off-putting, but in a way this seems like the most emotionally honest song on the entire album, and it’s admirable in a way — he’s bored of rock and roll music, he wants to grow and play something “pleasing to my ear”. Given the way rock music has self-mythologised almost from its inception, and it’s quite nice to hear someone say “no, actually, there’s more to life, and to music, than this.”
After the nadir of Won’t Somebody Dance With Me we’re actually into a little stretch where the album is managing to achieve mediocrity, which is definitely an improvement.
Don’t Be Scared
This is actually the second song Johnston wrote titled Don’t Be Scared. The earlier one, by Bruce & Terry but released under the name The Rip Chords, is a wonderful piece of hot-rod pop with Chuck Berry guitar licks and pretty much every Beach Boys or Jan & Dean hook ever, all stuffed into two minutes and forty seconds along with a strange Joe Meek style guitar line.
This isn’t. This is Bruce, with two electric pianos and a string section, singing about how he’s a nice guy and while you only think of him as a friend he’s much better than that boyfriend you have now who’s upset you, and you shouldn’t be scared.
And the thing is…it’s not that terrible, and that’s what makes it that terrible. This is perfectly competently done, by someone who understands music very, very well. But we’re onto the penultimate track now, and the closest we’ve got to a human emotion is ‘sensitivity’. I’m not one who thinks that music should ‘rock’ necessarily — I’ve often advocated, only half-jokingly, that the electric guitar and drum kit should be banned for a decade to force people to either do something new and different or not make music at all — but…
But great music, good music, anything that deserves the name “music” at all, of any type, has a life and an energy to it, has some guts. Whether it’s Bach or Benny Goodman or Hank Williams or Ray Charles or Billie Holiday or Peggy Lee or Stravinsky or Charles Ives or Kate Bush or Elvis Presley or Captain Beefheart. Even music that a lot of people would dismiss as muzak, like the Swingle singers. Hell, even the old Rediffusion station ID… you listen to those, and you get some sense of life, of humanity, of someone attempting to communicate something, to bridge a gap between the artist and another human being.
Even advertising jingles. “A finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat” was, after all, trying to communicate something to other people, so there’s some life to it.
This, though…this is absolutely competent, put together according to every rule you could come up with on how to write a mid-70s sensitive ballad, but… nothing. There’s nothing there. It’s an empty shell, as the entire album is.
I can define a category wide enough to include the Cadbury’s Fudge jingle, Edgard Varese, James Last, Tuvan throat singers, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Public Enemy, The Beatles and Tiny Tim, and find elements all those things have in common to justify their inclusion. But I can’t with any honesty put this track, or this album, into that group.
This isn’t music.
Pipeline
Writers: Brian Carman, Bob Spickard
This is a disco remake of the old surf instrumental, originally by the Chantays, with the melody being alternately played by strings, horns, and sung by Johnston and Becher in wordless vocals.
It’s not so terrible, I suppose, once you get over the cognitive dissonance, but by this point I’ve lost the will to live.
This was released as a single and somehow managed to make the top forty in the UK. I hear people did a lot of cocaine in the 1970s.
Please don’t make me listen to this album again, I’ll be good, I promise.
The Beach Boys On CD: The Beach Boys Love You
The follow-up to 15 Big Ones may well be the most controversial album the band ever did, with fans almost evenly divided between those who love it and those who hate it. In a recent (totally unscientific) poll on one fan forum, Love You made the top ten both of fans’ favourite and least favourite albums.
And there’s a good reason for this. Love You is, quite simply, unlike anything else ever recorded, not just by the Beach Boys but by anyone. It’s almost impossible to get across to people who haven’t heard it just how unlike anything else any major band has ever done this is. Possibly the best way to explain the album’s sound is by a hypothetical:
Imagine playing J.S. Bach a Phil Spector album, then telling him “you have an hour to write as many songs that sound like that as possible”, and locking him in a room with Jonathan Richman as a lyricist. Then take those songs and give them to Tom Waits to record, but with the only instruments allowed being a Moog with its settings stuck on “fart sound” and a single snare drum.
While the result wouldn’t exactly be The Beach Boys Love You, it would probably be close enough on a first approximation. It’s an album where the vast majority of the instrumentation is played by Brian, and is as rudimentary as that implies. Given its release in 1977, it would actually be the only sensible response by a major band to punk, were there any evidence that Brian Wilson had ever heard a punk record at this point — as it is, we have to see it as just convergent evolution. This seems to be the cause of the great split in Beach Boys fandom over this album. Very roughly, anyone who became a Beach Boys fan before punk despises this album, anyone who grew up listening to punk and post-punk music seems to get it instinctively.
This is one of only two Beach Boys albums to be made up entirely of previously-unreleased Brian Wilson songs (the other being Smiley Smile) and is as personal a statement as Pet Sounds, Smile or Smiley Smile. And I am absolutely in the camp for whom this is one of the pillars on which the Beach Boys’ artistic reputation rests. Certainly this is the last album by the group that anyone could possibly argue was great — and there are only two after this that one could reasonably argue are even listenable (though the band’s members would make plenty of good music solo).
It’s not an easy listen, though. It’s bare, minimalist, raspy and human. Apparently Carl Wilson did a lot to sweeten the album before its release (he’s credited as ‘mixdown producer’, with Brian Wilson credited as ‘producer’, but supposedly he did a lot more than that implies), which just makes one wonder what on Earth this could have sounded like before the sweetening.
One thing that must be addressed before we get to the album proper, though, is the claim by some that the people who like this album do so because they’re fetishising mental illness, and that the album itself is ‘a product of mental illness’. This is nonsense.
The album isn’t “a product of mental illness” — it’s a product of an artist who happened to be living with a mental illness. Yes, it wouldn’t be the same if Brian had been mentally better, but likewise none of his music would have been the same if he’d been able to hear in both ears, and we don’t call Pet Sounds “a product of physical disability”.
Just having a mental illness doesn’t make one magically able to make music of the quality of Love You — I worked for several years on a psychiatric ward, and several of the people on that ward fancied themselves musicians, so I can tell you that from personal experience. Conversely, having a mental illness doesn’t suddenly remove all talent, intelligence and humour from someone who has those things when they’re well.
The narrative that mental illness is in some way romantic or confers mystical talent upon those who have it is definitely a pernicious one that needs to be fought. But just as pernicious is the opposite myth — that because someone has bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or whatever, they instantly become unable to do anything or make any rational decision. People with mental illnesses can be capable of creating great art — even great art that stems from their illness. Or should we dismiss Van Gogh and William Blake, too?
No, Love You wouldn’t be the same album if Brian Wilson hadn’t been suffering from a mental illness at the time — but that’s a good thing. Not a good thing that he was ill, but a good thing that while ill he was able to create great art. Personally, I think we need more art from people with mental illnesses — they’re marginalised, and their opinions and thoughts more or less ignored or mocked, in this society.
But this isn’t something that has to be treated as outsider music and listened to as one would listen to Wesley Willis. This is an album that had a rave review on its release from Patti Smith, that Peter Buck considers one of the greatest ever and that, most importantly, Brian Wilson himself often says is his favourite by the band. This is a strange, but beautiful, work by one of the greatest songwriters ever.
To those who have ears, let them hear.
line-up
Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston (uncredited)
Let Us Go On This Way
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson and Mike Love
And the album starts as it means to go on — with a riff almost identical to that of Gimme Some Lovin’ played on a cheap-sounding electric organ and a Moog bass, while a single snare drum thwacks on the off-beat and Carl Wilson grunts.
This is pop-R&B for the post-punk age, the Spencer Davis Group in a world where the drum-kit and the electric guitar had never been invented. Over a simple, grunting riff played on a farting Moog, stabbing chords on an organ, Jay Miglori’s baritone sax and a solitary snare drum, Carl Wilson soul-shouts “To get you babe I went through the wringer/Ain’t gonna let you slip through my fingers”. The verse is simplicity itself, but then for the chorus line we get something totally different — all the instruments drop out, replaced by a piano, and the two-chord riffs we’ve had so far are replaced by seven chords in three bars, as the ecstatic harmonies come in — “God, please let us go on this way”.
To those who’ve been following the band’s career, this can’t help but be a reminder of the last time the Beach Boys invoked the deity in this way — the similarly gospel-infused He Come Down — but while the harmonies here work in the same way, here they’re shattered voices. The Wilson brothers at this point had destroyed their voices with a combination of cocaine, alcohol and smoking, though Carl’s voice remained comparatively unravaged, and so here rather than the ethereal beauty of even a few years ago, we have what sounds like ancient, weary old men, their voices cracked and shattered, even though when this was recorded all the band were under thirty-five.
But the significant word here, as Patti Smith correctly noted in her review for Hit Parader [FOOTNOTE Which can currently be read at http://www.smileysmile.net/uncanny/index.php/the-beach-boys-love-you-october-1977-hit-parader-selection-by-patti-smith], isn’t “God” but “please”, which she called “the catchword of Love You” but which could equally be called the catchword of Brian Wilson’s entire career. This is a pleading album, and I can’t really put it better than Smith did:
they are pleading w/ the same urgency as the boy in the back seat to the girl in 1963. please it won’t hurt. please. come to me/give to me/tell me/listen to me…[orthography as in the original]
Then after another verse we get the middle eight, and Mike Love’s sole songwriting contribution to the album (apparently he wrote only these lyrics, not those for the rest of the track). And suddenly we’re back in the world of Holland, with Love’s obsessions with telepathy and levitation coming to the fore again. “Seems we have extra sensory perception…now we can fly”. It even sounds different from the rest of the track — the single snare drum thwack has been replaced with a single thump on a tom.
The track builds cleverly, from the single Moog bass under Carl’s vocal at the beginning, to a mass of Moog, organ, sax and chanting Beach Men by the end, but throughout it there is a propulsive energy that had been missing from everything the band had recorded, no matter how good, since about 1971.
A staggeringly good opener.
Roller Skating Child
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Mike Love, Al Jardine and Carl Wilson
“And we’ll make sweet lovin’ when the sun goes down/We’ll even do more when her mama’s not around/Well, oh my, oh gosh, oh gee/She really sets chills inside of me”.
This is one of the comparatively weaker tracks on the album, sounding in fact like a rewrite of the previous track (the verse riff is essentially the same but a tone up), but less inspired, with handclaps and some rudimentary blues guitar attempting to liven it up. Even so, lyrics like the chorus lines quoted above, or “we do it holding hands, it’s so cold I go brrr”, are quintessentially Brian Wilson.
This is probably the most “Beach Boys” sounding track on the album, with Mike Love taking the lead in his nasal tenor, but still the greatest moment is the end, when out of nowhere comes a quick G-flat – A-flat – B-flat rise that’s reminiscent of the chorus to Sail On Sailor, and Brian sings, in his ravaged “low and manly” voice but with the innocence and enthusiasm of a five-year-old, “Roller…skating…CHI-ILD!”
It’s the real entry of the voice that will define much of the album.
Mona
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Dennis Wilson
The Beach Boys Love You, like many records where Brian Wilson has had control, is structured in a way that seems strange to modern ears but made sense at the time. When the Beach Boys were first starting out, in the very early 60s, the convention was that albums would have two sides that were different in style. Side one would be “for the kids” and be R&B or rock style tunes, while side two would be “good music” “for the grown-ups” — orchestrated, sweetened ballads. This was the convention to the point where I actually own a Ray Charles album from the early 1960s whose liner notes feel the need to explain that they’d chosen to mix the two styles up rather than do it the conventional way.
And this is how Brian Wilson structured many (though not all) of his albums. It’s most obvious on The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album, but it’s also there on The Beach Boys Today and (to a slightly lesser extent) Summer Days…And Summer Nights! — a side of mostly uptempo rockers, and a side of more sophisticated, more complex, ballads.
So here we get the third uptempo track in a row, and the most fully fleshed-out. This has a full wall-of-sound style production, with massed backing vocals, multiple saxophones, and even drum fills (unusual for this album). Over a four-chord doo-wop progression, a badly double-tracked Dennis Wilson, his voice so damaged he can barely enunciates, shouts lyrics like “Come on, listen to Da Doo Ron Ron now, listen to Be My Baby, I know you’re gonna love Phil Spector” and “Will you, will you will you will you just kiss me/When you leave me won’t you just miss me?” (See what Smith meant about “please”?)
This is a man in his thirties singing a song about the concerns of a boy in his teens, in the voice of a man in his eighties, and if you can listen to it without a huge grin on your face I pity you.
Johnny Carson
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Mike Love and Carl Wilson
Johnny Carson starts off with a verse that sounds almost like the kind of louche Weimar cabaret song that Scott Walker or someone of that ilk might cover, low piano chords and Moog in a minor key, with no other instrumentation, while the singer sings in a low baritone, being almost mocked by the answering chorus.
Except that that singer is Mike Love, and the words he’s singing are “He sits behind his microphone/(Joh-nny Car-son!)/He speaks in such a manly tone/(Joh-nny! Car-son!)”
This is the make-or-break song for this album — at this point either you just decide to go with it and accept that, yes, this is going to be a song about how great Johnny Carson is, and how “every night at eleven-thirty he’s so funny”, where the instrumental break consists of four bars of just a stabbed Cm chord, played on organ and piano, on the on-beat, followed by four more bars alternating between B-flat and E-flat, and where there is a single cymbal crash that is almost the only use of cymbal in the entire album, or you turn the album off and give up on it.
As the song ends with another doo-wop progression, over which the band chants “Who’s the man that we admire?/Johnny Carson is a real live wire”, only those who are willing to listen with an open mind are left, as the album starts to get really good.
Good Time
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Al Jardine
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson
This song is often considered to not fit on the rest of the album — it was originally recorded during the Sunflower sessions in 1970, apart from one “Hey!” at the end that Brian added in 1977, and features a much fuller arrangement than anything else on the album, including strings and horns, as well as having Brian’s very different 1970 voice in the lead.
It’s also the only song that had had any kind of release before this, having been released as a track by American Spring (a vocal group consisting of Brian Wilson’s wife Marilyn and sister-in-law Diane) with the same backing track but slightly revised lyrics (including a vocal part on the instrumental break — “Hey baby, turn up the radio/The DJ just said he’s playing our favourite song/talk to me”). That version is actually in many ways the better mix, having some instrumental parts missing from the Love You mix, and sounding overall much clearer.
Despite all the differences — the orchestration, the simpler structure, Brian’s voice — this does still fit on the album, simply because of the eccentric sense of joy in the track. There’s no other album in the world where a line like “My girlfriend Penny, she’s kinda skinny/And so she keeps her falsies on” would fit.
Honkin’ Down The Highway
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine
The only single from the album was this utterly joyous country-rocker. One of the fuller productions on the album, this harks back to the band’s early days of singing about cars and girls, but with a mixture of sophistication and naivety that is utterly astonishing.
On the one hand, you’ve got Brian and Dennis bellowing “honk honk, honking down the highway”, and the fact that Al is singing about “honking down the gosh-darn highway”, but on the other you’ve got astonishing musical moments like the bridge, where a song that has been in E major throughout the verse diverts into a minor key, but only so the song can build up from Bm7 through Em7 and F#m7 before triumphantly going to G major and then to B major, the fifth of the original key — taking us from a minor version of the chord to a major one through a continuous lift that is just about the most joyous thing ever committed to record, especially when combined with Al singing over the top “I guess I got a way…WITH…GIRLS!” in his magnificent, rich voice.
And this is the thing that makes Brian Wilson so special as a songwriter — the combination of an utterly unmediated emotional expression with a peerless musical intelligence and craft. This is the music that an enthusiastic child would make, making up a song about the first thing that came into her head — if that child was at one and the same time someone with decades of songwriting craft.
No-one else can do this.
Al Jardine re-recorded this song on his 2010 album A Postcard From California, with Brian Wilson adding backing vocals, but this is still the superior version.
Ding Dang
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Roger McGuinn
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
A very silly song indeed, running slightly less than a minute long, all on one chord, with the band singing “Ding, dang, dang, Whoo!, ding and a ding dong” while Mike sings “I love a girl/I love her so madly/I treat her so fine/But she treats me so badly” over and over. This took two people to write.
This is Brian Wilson’s favourite song from the album.
Solar System
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson
Side two opens with a wonderful waltz-time ballad, layers of synths under Brian’s ‘low and manly’ voice as he sings a song about the planets that seems aimed at children.
Harmonically, this is the most interesting thing so far — the verse/chorus seems to start in G or D, but soon moves to A, before going to F for the chorus, but then ending on a D chord. It’s one of the most harmonically mobile things Brian had done in years, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The middle eight, meanwhile, seems to stick mostly to the key of E minor, but with a Cm7 chord that doesn’t neatly fit into any of the other keys.
Lyrically, the song is a look at all the planets in the solar system (except Uranus) and the moon, from a childish point of view — “If Mars had life on it/I might find my wife on it”, along with mentions of various other celestial bodies (“Then there’s the Milky Way/That’s where the angels play”).
It’s absolutely lovely, and for all the criticism Brian’s gruff 1977 voice gets, I have to say that I find the vocals on this track fit perfectly — he was still a great singer, even if he didn’t have a ‘beautiful’ voice. The harmonies on the chorus, with Brian multi-tracked, straining for the high notes he would once have hit easily, are lovely.
The Night Was So Young
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
By common agreement, this is by far the best song on the album, and for once the consensus isn’t wrong. This is the most fully-produced track on the album — and it sounds like a lot of that production is the work of Carl Wilson, as there are probably more guitars on this one track than on the entire rest of the album, with at least three clearly audible parts (a barely-there rhythm part, a vaguely “Hawaiian” sounding two-note repeated phrase mixed high, and a double-tracked lead part played on the bass strings and mixed low). It also has the most conventional drum part, to the point of actually having a little hi-hat work (one of the little-remarked quirks of Brian Wilson’s production is that he rarely uses cymbals of any kind on his recordings, preferring to use hand percussion to play those parts).
Carl Wilson turns in the best vocal performance of the album, a quite extraordinary effort. Listening to “Why she has to hide/She’s passing it by, she won’t even try/To make this love go where it should” you could believe this was Brian’s old trick of passing vocal lines between different vocalists, but they’re all Carl. In fact, it sounds like the only vocals on this track at all are massed Brians in the harmony stack and Carl on lead.
The song itself is a lovely, simple one, with a vaguely Latin or Hawaiian feel thanks to all the major 7ths and 6ths, and with simplistic but effective lyrics that perfectly express the emotion of being awake at night thinking about a love you can’t have. Absolutely beautiful.
This is the only Love You song that Brian Wilson has included in his solo sets when performing live, playing it in 2002.
I’ll Bet He’s Nice
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson
Another absolutely stunning song. The simplest way to describe how good this is is to say there’s a bootleg tape, quite widely available, of Brian demoing several Love You era songs for his bandmates. Their reactions to songs like Mona are…not hugely enthused. But when he plays this one, there are astonished noises and “woo-hoos” in the middle eight, Mike Love starts singing along with the choruses, and Love says at the end “Man, that knocked me out, that was a motherfucker.”
[Note to self -- check that this line was actually in that place before releasing the book version of this, as the tape has been edited quite a bit].
A lovely song built on layers of synths, with the only other instrument audible being a tambourine low in the mix in the left channel, this is an absolutely heartbreaking little song — “I’ll bet he’s twice/As nice as me and it makes me cry/Please don’t tell me if it’s true/Because I’m still in love with you”.
It would be an absolutely perfectly constructed song, in fact, were it not for the middle eight lyrics, which are sung from the point of view of a lover afraid his love will leave, rather than one who has already been left.
This track also features a prominent vocal cameo from former and future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, who sings the multitracked “Well it’s you…” harmonies in the left channel on the fade.
Let’s Put Our Hearts Together
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson and Marilyn Wilson
A simple duet, again built on layer upon layer of synth sounds, this is one of the less complex songs on the second side, rarely venturing far from its home key and staying for much of the song on two chords.
There’s an appealing sweetness to this, and it would take a heart of stone not to be affected at least a little by Brian earnestly singing lines like “maybe I’ll come up with some idea and you’d think that I was clever”, but Marilyn Wilson was never a particularly good singer, and giving her lines where she has to sing a melisma that stretches the single word “good” into six notes over four beats is, frankly, cruel.
I Wanna Pick You Up
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson
A rather sweet, charming song sung to one of Brian’s children, who were at this point old enough to be going to school — “I love to pick you up, ’cause you’re still a baby to me”, this is an innocent little song about loving and caring for one’s children. There’s a subsection of Beach Boys fandom which likes to infer a sexual double-meaning to this song (mostly because of the line “pat her on her butt/she’s going to sleep, be quiet”), but while some of the other songs Brian was writing around this time have some disturbing aspects to it, this is as innocent a song as it gets.
The song is not one of the best on the album (Darian Sahanaja, later musical director of Brian Wilson’s backing band, released a solo version of the song with Pet Sounds style orchestration in the mid-90s, and it doesn’t really hold up under the weight), but like the whole album it manages to communicate an honest emotion, in a direct way, and it’s an emotion that is very rarely dealt with in rock or pop music. And the harmonies at the end are exquisite, with Love’s held bass note about as deep as he’s ever sung, while Dennis sings “little baby go to sleep”.
A minor piece, but a nice one.
Airplane
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Brian Wilson
One of the very best things on the album, here lyric and music work perfectly together, as the tiny drifts in chord in the verses, from Gmaj7 to G7 to Cmaj7 to Am7 to D7, always keeping several notes in place from one chord to the next, perfectly capture the feeling of floating along above the clouds, thinking about arriving home.
It’s a hard song to analyse, because it’s just so direct and affecting. Love turns in a remarkably good vocal for him in this range (it’s right at the top of his tenor range, where he’s normally most nasal). But it’s a great one. After the two verses, we get a new section — “Airplane, airplane”, bringing in a hint of Gm to go with the G major key established in the rest of the song, but only so that on the “carry me back to her side” line we can have the rising Sail On Sailor Eflat-F-G sequence. This repeats and then we get Brian singing, almost a descending scale, “down down, on the ground, can’t wait to see her face”, again evoking perfectly in sound the feeling of a slow descent.
And then there’s the tag, where over a two-chord R&B vamp, Brian and Carl engage in a joyous call and response — “I can’t wait (can’t wait) to see (her face)”. This makes up nearly a quarter of the song, and frankly I’d have been just as happy if it had gone on for another five minutes, just hearing the two brothers playing off each other vocally, Carl growling and Brian singing “I can’t wa-hay-hait”. There’s nothing musically clever going on here, just two people singing with such infectious joy that the listener can’t help but smile.
Love Is A Woman
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine
And then finally we get to the song that most people use to dismiss the album. This is, frankly, a bit of a failure — a doo-wop song with lines like “Love is a woman/so tell her she smells good tonight” and “One two three/She’s fallen in love with me/Four five six/She fell for all my tricks”, this has the same childish eccentricity as most of the rest of the album, but doesn’t have the imagination to go along with it, and to make matters worse there’s just enough sweetening added to the mix (multiple saxophones and what sounds like a flute) to make it sound cluttered, while still sounding amateurish.
You can’t expect every song to be a classic, and this is the only one on the album that is less than wonderful, but it seems strange that it was sequenced as the last song on the album. The band — or at least Brian — seemed to like it though, and it was kept in their live set for a while, while Brian chose to perform it on a rare solo TV appearance around this time.
I am entirely prepared to accept that I’m missing something with this song, and that in two or three years something will click, and I’ll realise it’s a great work of genius, because the rest of this album is so unbelievably good that I’m willing to see any failure in it as a failure in me. But for now, I have to say that this is an imperfect ending to an otherwise perfect album.
The Beach Boys On CD: 15 Big Ones
The years between 1972, when Holland was released, and 1976, when this album came out, were the most important in the Beach Boys’ career. It’s no lie to say that the band on this album is utterly unrecognisable as the one which, a handful of years earlier, had been recording extended suites with flutes and spoken poetry segments.
The reasons for this change are far too complex to be covered in full in a book like this, which is devoted to the music more than the personalities, but a huge number of factors converged to change the band permanently, and not for the better. Firstly, both Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar quit the group, and Jack Rieley stopped managing them, and thus also stopped collaborating with the Wilson brothers as a lyricist.
On top of this, Murry Wilson, the Wilson brothers’ father and the band’s early manager, died of a heart attack. The loss of their father caused the already-vulnerable Brian Wilson to descend into his worst ever period of depression (this period is the source of the urban legends about Wilson spending years at a time in bed), while Dennis Wilson’s substance abuse and alcohol problems became even worse.
But at the same time, the band had suddenly become, for the first time in a decade, the most popular band in America. The OPEC crisis in 1973 had precipitated a wave of nostalgia for the late 1950s and early 1960s in American culture, and with this came a reappraisal of the band’s early surf and car material. All Summer Long was used on the soundtrack of the hit film American Graffiti, and a rather shoddily-packaged double hits collection, Endless Summer, went to number one in 1974, spent three years on the charts and sold three million copies. A follow-up, Spirit Of America, went top ten and gold despite having few hits on it. The Beach Boys went from playing mid-sized college venues to headlining stadium gigs.
All this meant that there was a huge appetite for new Beach Boys material — but only if it came from Brian Wilson, and was in the same mould as the early hits. After intensive therapy with the controversial therapist Eugene Landy (who will show up much more in volume three), Wilson was ‘well enough’ to return to the studio and produce a new album, and to rejoin the touring band.
15 Big Ones was released with a massive publicity campaign, based around the phrase “Brian’s Back”, and became the band’s first top ten album in a decade, as well as spawning two hit singles. But many were shocked by what they heard. The album was a mix of new material and 50s covers, and Carl and Dennis Wilson as good as disowned it before it even came out, saying that they had believed the plan was to record the oldies as a warm-up before doing a full album of new material.
The arrangements were idiosyncratic, with much use of Moog, but the vocals were what shocked listeners the most. Brian and Dennis’ voices had been almost destroyed by alcohol and drug abuse, with Brian having lost his falsetto (though there is some doubt as to whether this was a deliberate decision on his part, as he wanted to sound more manly), while Dennis’ vocals were a husky rasp, sounding like nothing so much as Tom Waits. The harmonies on the album are sloppy, ragged, and often off-key.
There’s still much to like about 15 Big Ones, but as with many Beach Boys records to come, there’s a lot of music that sounds truly terrible, too. And the question then becomes how one interprets this music, as a listener. Is it a genius doing something too clever for the listener to get? A genius trying and failing to do something clever? A mentally ill man incapable of coherent work? An act of rebellion from someone being forced to work with a band he no longer cared about? A subtle musical joke?
At different times, the conclusion I come to comes out different ways, and I suspect that the true answer has elements of all the above in it. But the fact remains that in 1976, all the Beach Boys had to do to cement their artistic reputation, and re-establish themselves commercially, was to release something even vaguely competent. They didn’t manage to do it, and it would be thirty-six years before they released another top ten album.
line-up
Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Ricky Fataar (uncredited), Bruce Johnston (uncredited)
Rock And Roll Music
Songwriter: Chuck Berry
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
The album’s opening track, and lead-off single, sums up the whole project in a nutshell. It’s a cover of the Chuck Berry classic, with an inventive backing track largely played by Brian Wilson, but given a curiously flat mix, and with an unimaginative “rock, roll, rockin’ and roll” backing vocal chant that has none of Wilson’s normal flair for vocal arrangements. And over this, Mike Love sounds like almost a parody of himself. Recording a song by Chuck Berry (and one which had a famous cover version by the Beatles, to boot) invites comparison with some of the greatest vocalists of the rock era. Love’s vocal is neither as witty as Berry’s nor as exuberant as John Lennon’s, just a flat statement, and we’re left wondering why anyone would want to dance with him.
The superior (though still not very good) single mix of this track went to number 5 in the US charts, more because of the immense affection the band were held in at this time than because of any redeeming qualities in the record itself, making it the band’s biggest hit since Good Vibrations a decade before.
It’s OK
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Mike Love and Dennis Wilson
The second single on the album, and the first original, actually dates from 1974, and was recorded with Ricky Fataar on drums (most songs on this album actually feature Dennis Wilson on drums, the first where that was the case for some years), along with members of Roy Wood’s band Wizzard on saxophone [FOOTNOTE Wood has talked about being invited to the session because Brian Wilson admired Wood's Beach Boys-esque doo-wop pastiche Forever, a hit for him in the previous year. He's spoken in interviews about having sung on at least one track with the band, singing at the same mic as Brian and Carl. Whether his vocals are somewhere in the mix here is, however, hard to ascertain, and it may be that they were wiped or that he sang on a different, as yet unreleased, track.] .
Essentially a return to the feel of Do It Again, this was the first ‘fun in the sun’ Beach Boys song to be released since that song eight years earlier, and it’s enjoyable enough, but there’s a sense of diminishing returns here, with its “in the sum-sum-summertime” chant and banal lyrics. The track mostly works because of the saxophone line and Dennis Wilson’s gloriously goofy bass vocals, but it’s a creative dead end. As a single, this went to number 29 in the US charts. The song remained in the band’s live setlist for the next two years, and has been a regular in the set of Mike Love’s touring Beach Boys in recent years.
Had To Phone Ya
Songwriter: Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Diane Rovell
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love
The first really strong track on the album is this one, originally written for and recorded by (American) Spring, a vocal group consisting of Brian Wilson’s wife Marilyn (who sings backing vocals here) and her sister Diane (credited as a co-writer of the song).
The song is a miniature, only two minutes eleven seconds long, but has a typically Wilsonesque chord sequence, full of major ninths and sixths, and a wonderful section (starting with the line “it lifts my spirits…”) where the melody climbs as the bassline steadily descends underneath.
The arrangement, too, is outstanding, with interjections from clarinets having much the same function that the Moogs in Wilson’s other arrangements of the time do, and with every band member getting a couple of lines of lead vocal in turn, ending with Brian’s new ‘low and manly’ voice, singing “come on, come on and answer the phone” (and a very buried Marilyn saying “Hi Brian” right as the song fades out).
While Brian’s beautiful voice had been more-or-less destroyed, and would never really return, his gruff vocals here still show a musicality, and an emotional honesty, that makes them equally as good in their way as his earlier performances — the artistry is still there.
This is only a minor track, but is a lovely one.
Chapel Of Love
Songwriter: Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson
And here we get to one of the tracks that it’s almost impossible to judge, except possibly as outsider music. This is a cover of a track Wilson admired enormously, but with a wildly eccentric arrangement — cymbals playing triplets, when Wilson normally avoided them, a bank of saxophones droning, stabs from an ARP string synthesiser, and Moog bass. Then over this Brian Wilson sings what sounds like a serious attempt at the lead in his low, gruff voice, with Love doing a competent job on the bass vocals — but Wilson then screeches answering vocal parts, sounding like a small child doing a joke voice. Is this an experiment that didn’t quite work out? Is it a joke? Is it just Wilson being enormously lazy? There’s no possible way to tell. It’s not actually unlistenable, in its own strange way, but its qualities are…orthogonal to those one normally looks for in music.
An alternative mix of this exists which is slightly less eccentric, with some additional backing vocals, but that mix makes it no clearer what the intent of the track was.
Everyone’s In Love With You
Songwriter: Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
This track is a much more conventional one than anything on the album up to this point, and the explanation lies in the credits — while Brian Wilson is still credited as producer, Love is credited as arranger, and Darryl Dragon [FOOTNOTE the Beach Boys' former touring keyboardist, then having success with his wife, Toni Tennile, as The Captain And Tennile. Tennile sings the high vocals on this track.] as vocal arranger.
This is Love in mellow mode, much like on Big Sur, as he sings to someone who is loved by everyone, but who “can’t give your love to only one” — the person in question being the Maharishi, though this is not made explicit in the lyric. The backing is very, very loosely inspired by Bach, probably via Procol Harum, as the track has more than a little of the feel of Whiter Shade Of Pale about it, and jazz musician Charles Lloyd (a fellow follower of the Maharishi, and a member of the Beach Boys’ touring band at this point) provides some nice flute.
This song is clearly important to Love, as he rerecorded it in 1978 (for his unreleased solo country album Country Love) and again in 2004 (for his unreleased album which at various times went under the name Unleash The Love and Mike Love Not War) and regularly includes it in sets by the touring Beach Boys. However, it was less popular with the public — when released as the third single from the album, it failed to reach the charts.
Talk To Me
Songwriter: Joe Seneca/Bob Crewe, Frank C. Slay Jr. and Frederick A. Picariello
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
Another track where it’s literally impossible to understand what Brian Wilson could have been thinking. The bulk of the song is a rather plodding cover of Talk To Me, a fairly nondescript 12/8 R&B ballad, originally recorded by Little Willie John, and it’s passable enough, though Carl Wilson sounds quite bored. But then, for no discernible reason, at the end of the middle eight, the song is interrupted by ten bars of the uptempo rocker Tallahassee Lassie, a minor hit for Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, which is in a different key, tempo, and time signature, and whose lyrics have no connection with those of the earlier song. After these ten bars, the original song is resumed. It sounds for all the world like a mistake, and many people listening in this download age will assume they have a corrupted file, but it’s totally deliberate.
That Same Song
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson
And suddenly we get an absolutely joyous gospel-flavoured track, with an enthusiastically gruff Brian turning in one of his best vocal performances of the album, as he tracks the evolution of music from Gregorian chant to rock and roll. It’s utterly simple — for much of the track it’s just Brian on piano and organ and Dennis tapping a cymbal, while Brian and the band sing, although there are occasional passages with more instruments (most notably saxophone, provided here as on much of the album by old Wrecking Crew stalwarts Steve Douglas and Jay Migliori) — but the vocal performance is filled with such irrepressible joy that one can’t help but be swept up by it.
T.M. Song
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine
Easily the most “Brian” song on the album, this ode to transcendental meditation has more inventiveness in seventy-four seconds than most of the rest of the album has in total. Starting with twenty seconds of scripted arguing, reminiscent of some of the attempts at comedy on the band’s very earliest recordings, ending with Al saying “phew, it’s time for me to meditate”, we then have two fairly straightforward verses, describing the effects of meditation, before going into a middle section that almost defies description, with a melody line wandering all over the place while the track speeds up and slows down under the line “sometimes it goes real fast and other times it goes real slow”. There’s then yet another eight-bar section, an uptempo tag which tells you “transcendental meditation really works for me good/more much more than I thought it would”.
The track manages to remind one simultaneously of the jokey material on the earliest albums and of both Smiley Smile and Friends, and so probably should have been the kind of thing people who wanted Brian to be “back” were expecting. But it wasn’t.
Palisades Park
Songwriter: Chuck Barris
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
Side two opens with the second Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon cover of the album, this time of a song written by Chuck Barris [FOOTNOTE A TV gameshow producer, who created The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game (for UK readers, these are the shows that were remade as Mr. And Mrs. and Blind Date), and who later became the presenter of The Gong Show. His autobiography, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, also claims that he was a CIA assassin who killed thirty-three people, though the CIA have denied this.].
The original version of this had been a huge influence on the band, to the extent that Brian Wilson had more-or-less blatantly ripped it off twice, for County Fair and Amusement Parks USA, and this seems a far more respectful take on the song than many of the other covers. It’s also the only track on the album where all the instrumentation is played by old Wrecking Crew members — almost every other track has instrumentation provided by the Wilson brothers, touring guitarists Ed Carter and Billy Hinsche, and then session players only augmenting the band for instruments like saxophone, but here the old gang are all back together.
The track is a fairly straight take on the song, with the only new addition being the “run run running, now the rides are running” backing vocals, replacing an organ part from the original, and Carl Wilson gives the vocal his all. The song itself is not especially inspired, but the track is fun.
Susie Cincinnati
Songwriter: Al Jardine
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine
This track of Jardine’s actually dates back to January 1970, and so features Bruce Johnston on backing vocals. It had actually been released twice before, as the B-side to both Add Some Music and to the 1974 single Child Of Winter, in two different mono mixes, and the stereo version on the album is apparently those two mono mixes synced together.
One of the most enjoyable, catchiest things Jardine has ever written, this is a simple four-chord rocker (with a key change for the last verse), with incredibly silly lyrics about a taxi driver in Cincinnati (whose “looks aren’t exactly a plus/but it doesn’t matter to us”). It’s an absolutely ridiculous song, but it knows it’s ridiculous, and Jardine sings it with such enthusiasm it’s impossible not to grin, especially when Brian Wilson’s harmonica impersonates a car horn. The song became a B-side yet again when it was released on the flip of Everyone’s In Love With You.
A Casual Look
Songwriter: Ed Wells
Lead vocalist: Mike Love and Al Jardine
A straight cover of a minor doo-wop record, originally by The Six Teens, with the gender swapped in the verse lyrics. The track’s not bad, except for some utterly horrific nasal vocals by Love on the first verse. Jardine almost rescues it with a wonderful performance on the second verse, but by then the damage has been done.
Blueberry Hill
Songwriter: Vincent Rose and Al Lewis
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
This cover of the old standard works really well for the first verse, with just string bass, clip-clop percussion, and Love’s vocal, and it sounds like we might be in for something very special. But then a whole wall of sound comes in (this is another track that features mostly Wrecking Crew members, though Brian and Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston contribute instrumentally) and overwhelms Love’s voice, to no real purpose.
Back Home
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Brian Wilson
Given that the theme of the album is looking back at the past (the fifteen “big ones” of the album title refers both to the number of songs on the album and to the length of time since the band’s first recordings), it makes sense for them to dig up a song that dated back to the earliest days of the band’s career.
This simple four-chord country song, with much the same feel as some of Brian Wilson’s work with Gary Usher (notably Sacramento and That’s Just The Way I Feel) was first attempted by the band in 1963, and then again in 1970 in a version with totally different lyrics. This version mostly reverts to the 1963 version, though it replaces its middle eight with a simple chant of “Back home, I’ll spend my summer, back home”, and the track mostly gets by on the enthusiasm of Brian Wilson’s croaky lead vocals. It’s not a great song, but it’s an enjoyable performance, and remained in the band’s setlist for a couple of years. Brian Wilson also included this in his sets on his first ever solo tour, in 1999.
In The Still Of The Night
Songwriter: Fred Parris
Lead vocalist: Dennis Wilson
An almost note-for-note identical cover version of the 1950s doo-wop song, originally a hit for The Five Satins. The only notable difference is the lead vocal, where the silky, beautiful vocal of the original is replaced by Dennis Wilson’s wounded bellow. While not sounding as ravaged here as he did in later years, his voice is clearly raspy, and he’s already started slurring his words slightly. Brian Wilson plays everything except the drums (played by Dennis) and contributes what may be his last really good falsetto on the tag, where he sounds huskier than previously, but still capable of hitting the notes and with a fragile tone that is in some ways an improvement on the perfection of his 60s work.
Just Once In My Life
Songwriter: Gerry Goffin, Carole King and Phil Spector
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson and Brian Wilson
And the album ends with a real reunion, with both Ricky Fataar (on percussion) and Bruce Johnston (on backing vocals) rejoining their old band for this cover of the Righteous Brothers’ classic.
The original on which this was based was an attempt at following up You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling with something written to the same formula, and was an absolute masterpiece. Wisely, here the band stick almost exactly to the template of the original, capturing most of the crucial elements of Jack Nitzsche’s magnificent arrangement, but they make a few subtle changes, notably swapping lines between verses to give the lyric a better through-line (in the original “I’ve given up on schemes…” was in the second verse, while “there’s just one little dream…” was in the first).
Carl Wilson takes the verses and the middle section here, turning in by far his best performance on the album, going from a gentle, placid start with “There’s a lot of things I want…” to a hopeless but still kind “that old pot of gold ain’t so easy to find…” to almost screaming on “I can’t give you the world, but I’ll work hard for you girl”, to begging on “do this for me, baby”. The range he displays here is just extraordinary.
Brian, meanwhile, takes the choruses, and here his broken, wounded voice works perfectly, as he sings “just once in my life, let me hold onto a good thing I’ve found”. It’s an extraordinarily moving performance.
It doesn’t quite beat the original, which is one of the greatest singles ever recorded, but it comes close enough that it’s not a ridiculous comparison, and at the end of an album which even the most charitable listener would have to concede was patchy, it provides, at last, some proof that this once-great band still had the potential for greatness inside them.
The Beach Boys On CD: The Beach Boys In Concert
Ask ten different Beach Boys fans their favourite period for the band as a live act, and you’ll get ten different answers. Over the years, the band’s stage show changed radically, and each period showcased a different aspect of the band. So some may prefer the band’s shows from the late 60s and early 70s, centred around the gentle material from Wild Honey, Friends and Sunflower. Others prefer the “Brian’s back” era of the late 70s, when the now-husky genius returned to the stage to add the quirky Love You material to otherwise nostalgia-driven shows. Yet others will argue for the 1993 box set tour, with its unplugged sets, positioning the band squarely in the ‘classic rock’ field, or the 2008 UK tour, or the 2012 reunion tour, both of which managed the difficult feat of balancing the artistic and nostalgia aspects of the band.
But more than any other period, people mention the 1972-74 period as a highlight for the Beach Boys’ live shows. In some ways, this is entirely for good reasons — this was the period when they had the most adventurous live sets, and had some of the best backing musicians they would ever have.
In other respects, though, it betrays a certain insecurity among Beach Boys fans. The 1972-74 live band were wonderful, but this was also the period where the band was the most acceptable to the kind of people who talk about ‘real music’. Yes, the band had none of the tacky accoutrements that damaged their later shows — no cheerleaders, Hawaiian shirts, cheap synthesisers or attempts at rapping — but on the downside there was a certain obviousness to the arrangements, with delicacy being ignored in favour of a riffy, heavy, guitar-based sound.
This is not to say that these performances were bad, by any means — they do deserve their reputation — but they were good in a very particular way, and represent a vision of the band, as long-haired, bearded, guitar-toting rockers, that practically oozes testosterone. If that’s not the version of the band you’re interested in — if you have less interest in rock music than in pop — then adjust your expectations accordingly.
While this album is compiled from many shows, over two separate tours (an early single-album version, with only material from the winter 1972 tour, was rejected by the record label, so they recorded summer 1973 tours and turned the result into a double album), it is an authentic record of what the band sounded like live at this time, as those who have heard the many audience recordings from this period can attest.
I will have less to talk about with this album on a track-by-track basis than for other albums, as I have already spoken about most of these songs in the context of their original albums. There are some general notes which are applicable to all the songs, though.
Firstly, as stated above, this is a rock album, not a pop one. In general, the songs are sped up and more dominated by guitar than the studio versions. There are also two drummers on most tracks, and at least one of the drummers uses far more cymbal than was ever used on a record produced by Brian Wilson.
Secondly, the harmonies are very different from what one might expect. With Brian Wilson absent from the touring band and Bruce Johnston having quit, the low and middle ends of the harmony stack are far more prominent than the high end. In later years, of course, the band would hire outside falsetto singers to take those parts, as they became more concerned with reproducing the sound of the hit records than with playing their new music, but at this point their set was dominated by songs which had little or no falsetto anyway. On the other hand, Dennis Wilson’s voice is far more audible in the harmony stack than it was most of the time — at this point, he was still unable to play the drums because of his hand injury, and so he was singing a lot more (he very rarely sang while drumming).
What’s perhaps most noticeable is the repertoire. This was the Beach Boys’ third live album in ten years, and yet of its twenty songs, only six had appeared on either of the previous two (and none had appeared on both). This was a band that was still growing, still changing up its setlist regularly, and mixing hits, obscurities and new songs with more concern for putting on a good show than for fitting someone’s preconceived idea of what a Beach Boys show ‘should’ be.
With those points in mind, on to the songs themselves.
line-up
Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar
with backing band members Billy Hinsche, Ed Carter, Robert Kenyatta, Mike Kowalski, Carli Muñoz
Sail On Sailor
Songwriter: Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Ray Kennedy, Tandyn Almer and Jack Rieley
Lead vocalist: Blondie Chaplin
Unsurprisingly, the opening track, from the band’s then-new album, sounds very similar to the studio version. The main differences are a more prominent bassline, a slight increase in tempo, and the loss of the ‘morse code’ guitar part, but otherwise this is much like the record.
Sloop John B
Songwriter: trad arr Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson and Mike Love
The second in a miniature set of songs about sailing that starts the album, this is, like much of the album, a stripped-down, simplified, but relatively faithful arrangement of the hit. The orchestration is obviously not there (though the flute intro remains), but there are some nice instrumental touches, like the twelve-string guitar being doubled by an analogue synth.
The most notable differences from the record are Carl, rather than Brian, Wilson taking the lead vocal on the verses, the lack of the a capella break (in general the harmonies suffer more than the instrumental parts on this album), and the frenetic pace at which it’s taken (I actually felt my heart racing when listening to this with headphones, it goes at such a pace).
It’s not the best live version of the song (that would be the version on the Live In London album), but it’s a perfectly decent performance.
The Trader
Songwriter: Carl Wilson and Jack Rieley
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson and Mike Love
Much as with Sail On Sailor, this was recorded close enough to the release of the studio version that it’s, if not indistinguishable, then still very, very similar. The most notable difference is a prominent bongo track in the left channel, and the inescapable fact that when performed live the transition between the two sections of the song is less abrupt.
You Still Believe In Me
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine with Carl Wilson
A very creditable attempt at what is possibly the most difficult song from Pet Sounds to perform live. Obviously, there was no possibility at this point of them reproducing the complexities of the record on stage, but the solutions here (replacing the plucked piano strings and falsetto on the intro with guitar and Moog, for example) work very well at giving the same feel.
This is also the best example of the band’s vocal work on the album. While Jardine can’t reproduce the delicacy of Brian Wilson’s original falsetto vocal part, his stronger, richer tone gives the vocal a pleading note which works just as well, and the transition between his vocal and Carl Wilson on the line “I wanna cry” (which goes out of Jardine’s range) is handled extraordinarily well. The harmonies on this show that while the band were hampered at this point by having their vocal ranges concentrated in the mid range, they could still pull off some beautiful vocals when required.
California Girls
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
Pretty much exactly what you’d expect a live version of California Girls to sound like. The harmonies on this are a bit ragged, and we hear Dennis at the beginning exhorting the crowd to sing along, but you already know what this sounds like. Love’s joking “ooh, we mean it so much!” at the end seems to confirm that at this point, the band still saw their biggest hits as something of a joke and a distraction from their more artistic work, though that attitude would soon change.
Darlin’
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
This kind of material is where the band at this time excelled — songs that depend on a driving rhythm and a lead vocal performance. While the horns from the original are sadly missed, the addition of Hammond organ, along with the best drum and percussion track on the album (some great cowbell work and bongos) makes this the first song on the album that it’s safe to say is a definite improvement over the original.
Marcella
Songwriter: Brian Wilson, Jack Rieley and Tandyn Almer
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
This track mostly differs from the studio version in that the guitar parts have been beefed up substantially — unsurprisingly given that the original’s glossy sonic sheen is pretty much unreproducible in a live setting. The vocals here again shine — this version of the band was not wonderful at the close harmonies that normally defined the band, but were as good as any vocal group ever at singing interweaving, independent solo lines in counterpoint with each other, and this track gives a great opportunity to show that off. The one flaw in this track is the percussion part in the left channel, which goes slightly out of time on occasion.
This arrangement of the song, as opposed to the studio version, is the basis for the version played live by Brian Wilson’s touring band in recent years, and is also the arrangement used on the Beach Boys’ fiftieth anniversary reunion tour.
Caroline, No
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
This, again, has a simplified arrangement (no percussive intro, just straight into the first verse), but this was never a song that needed much in the way of orchestration, and the simple electric piano part (presumably Dennis Wilson) and flute embellishments work perfectly (though the solo gets a little too close to lounge jazz for my own tastes). If you have a singer as good as Carl Wilson and a song as good as this, it’s impossible for it not to sound great.
Leaving This Town
Songwriter: Carl Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Blondie Chaplin
The upside: the organ solo on this (played by Billy Hinsche) has some real feeling and invention to it.
The downside: this is thirty seconds longer than the already-ridiculously-overlong version on Holland.
Probably sounds really good if you’re stoned.
Heroes & Villains
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine and Carl Wilson
The early-70s band’s version of this track is spectacular. Al Jardine, on the verses, sounds much more comfortable than Brian Wilson does on the single. Carl Wilson sings the Bicycle Rider lyrics on the choruses (and Mike Love adds in the “heroes, a-heroes, a-heroes and a villains” chant), and again the band are given the chance to shine vocally, including on the only a capella sections on the entire album (for the scat section and the last “I’ve been in this town” section), again singing wonderful cascading, overlapping vocal lines like no other band could do. Easily the highlight of the album.
Funky Pretty
Songwriter: Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Jack Rieley
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar and Mike Love
The consensus among Beach Boys fans is that this is a massive improvement on the studio version, and that this is ‘how the song should always have sounded.’
Like most Beach Boys fan consensus, this is bunkum. On Holland, Funky Pretty is a mediocre song brought up to near-greatness by a spartan, Moog-dominated production that makes it sound almost like a piece of experimental electronica. Adding guitar riffs, honky tonk piano and a ‘proper’ rock drum track, and cutting out most of the Moog parts, turns it into something that sounds like a Rolling Stones album track. (It’s no surprise that the band regularly covered Jumpin’ Jack Flash in shows at this point, or that Blondie Chaplin spent most of the 1990s and 2000s as a sideman in the Stones’ touring band).
Let The Wind Blow
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson
Of all the more radical reworkings on this album, this is the one that works the best. While the original track, on Wild Honey, has a gorgeous delicacy to it, this turns it into a gospel ballad that wouldn’t be out of place on a Ray Charles or Al Green record, with the original’s shared lead vocal turned into a solo for Carl Wilson. The wordless backing vocal lines from the original are dropped until the last verse, and other than the answering lines and some occasional touches from Jardine, the only vocals we pay attention to here are from Carl Wilson — the whole track is built around his vocal performance. Luckily, it’s an absolutely stellar performance, so while when hearing this one still misses the ethereal beauty of the studio version, this has its own strengths.
Help Me, Rhonda
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine
The oddest rearrangement on the album is this, with all the arrangement details blurred out into a nondescript guitar boogie with little charm and less grace, an excuse for jamming on mediocre solos. Bizarrely, the band stuck with this arrangement as late as the mid-90s (and Brian Wilson still uses it for his solo tours), though Mike Love’s touring “Beach Boys” (and the reunion tour of 2012) thankfully reverted to the original arrangement. Al Jardine does his usual spectacular job, and the audience sound enthused, but it just seems rather cruel to do this to a song that never did anything to harm the band.
Surfer Girl
Songwriter: Brian Wilson
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine and Mike Love
Mike Love’s introduction to this, emphasising how old the song is, is another pointer to how mildly embarassed the band were at this time to be doing this material.
Despite this, though, they do a lovely job on this. The harmonies are huskier and more fragile than on the record — these are definitely Beach Men, not Boys — but they still sound good.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Songwriter: Brian Wilson, Tony Asher and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine and Mike Love
It shows the way the band had improved as musicians over a relatively short time that while on Live In London they cut out a huge chunk of this song (the part where the tempo changes in “you know it seems…”), here they not only perform that section but it gets what sounds like the biggest cheer of the disc.
Jardine once again does a splendid job on the lead vocals, although some of the backing vocals are rather perfunctory.
We Got Love
Songwriter: Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Ricky Fataar
The one new song of the album was this, a song which had been originally intended for Holland before it was dropped at the last minute. It’s another very pleasant, but unspectacular, track from Chaplin and Fataar, this one possibly influenced by Allen Toussaint’s song Riverboat, which had been recorded by Van Dyke Parks on his Discover America album around the same time, and which has the line “We got love” emphasised several times, and a generally similar feel. (Toussaint’s song would actually have fit well on Holland, and may have also inspired Steamboat).
The lyrics, which sound like Love’s work primarily, are a generic call to treat other people nicely along with some new age stuff equating evolution and karma.
This is the last Chaplin/Fataar collaboration to feature on a Beach Boys album — Chaplin departed from the band, acrimoniously, before the end of 1973 after disagreements with Rieley. Fataar would remain with them until the end of 1974, and leave on mildly better terms, but by the time the next Beach Boys album came out, both would be long gone.
Don’t Worry Baby
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Roger Christian
Lead vocalist: Al Jardine and Carl Wilson
Given that they have a bigger band to play with here than they did when recording the single, the band decide to stop pretending and just play this as Be My Baby, right down to the drum intro, and until the lead vocal comes in this bears far more resemblance to the Spector classic than to the Beach Boys’ track (prompting two waves of recognition-applause from the audience — one at the beginning when the track starts, and another when the lead vocal starts and they realise what song it actually is).
Jardine and Carl Wilson split Brian Wilson’s lead part between them the same way they did on Heroes & Villains, with Wilson taking the higher part in the choruses and Jardine taking the slightly lower verses, and both do a very good job, though neither quite has the fragility of Brian Wilson’s original. Jardine messes up some of the lyrics, but in a recoverable way (and oddly is mixed far to one side), but the harmonies are spot on, and this is as good a version of this song as one could hope for given the absence of a 22-year-old Brian Wilson.
Surfin’ USA
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Chuck Berry
Lead vocalist: Mike Love with Al Jardine
This is about what you’d expect — a little faster than the original, the guitars a little more distorted, and with Al Jardine attempting Brian Wilson’s falsetto part. A rockier, more muscular live version of the song, but basically what you’d expect to hear from a 1970s Beach Boys show.
Good Vibrations
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Carl Wilson and Mike Love
This is about as accurate a rendition of an impossible-to-perform song as one could imagine (understandably, as the song is too big a hit, and too much of a masterpiece, to dare mess with). The big change made to the arrangement, and one the band kept through to the late 90s, was to extend the ‘gotta keep those lovin’ good’ section to several times its original length (and change the lyrics on that line to ‘happenin’ with you’ instead of ‘with her’), to allow for an audience sing-along section and a scatted show of vocal dexterity. Other than that, the only notable differences from the record are those made to make the song performable at all live (the ‘theremin’ part being played on a ribbon synthesiser, rather lower in the mix than on the record, no odd instruments like the jew’s harp, the triplets in the chorus being played on guitar rather than ‘cello).
Fun Fun Fun
Songwriter: Brian Wilson and Mike Love
Lead vocalist: Mike Love
And the album ends with a rather chugging, graceless, performance of this song, which trades the original’s pop energy for a 70s heaviness. Hearing this version, it becomes much clearer why this song was a natural choice for a duet between the Beach Boys and Status Quo in 1996.
Overall, this is probably the best Beach Boys live album one could hope for, and at times it matches or even surpasses the studio recordings. If it lacks the subtlety and gentleness of the best of the band’s studio work, that’s more a reflection of just how special that studio work is, rather than a negative about the band themselves. With current technology, and on current budgets, it’s possible to reproduce the textures of Brian Wilson’s production on stage, but in the early 70s this was as good as it would be reasonable to expect it to get. It will never be my favourite Beach Boys album, but it’s a good one, and one that can be useful for dispelling some of the myths about the group. But there’s a definite sense from this that you had to be there.
leave a comment