That was weird in itself, but stranger still was the fact that Henn and Wilson penned Soulful Old Man Sunshine. Henn Supervised a MOR soul backing track, and then the Beach Boys contributed a magnificent vocal arrangement - a stunning burst of a cappella for the opening tag, and then one of the finest leads of Carl Wilson's entire career.
What's so weird about that? The fact that having invested hours of studio time, the Beach Boys then ignored the finished track. They didn't use it on their next album, Sunflower; it didn't appear as a single.Even when they were reduced by the late 70s to cannibalising old out-takes for their "new" material, they never revisited this track. It even missed out on the two-for-one repackages and CD box set of the early 90s. All of which makes you wonder - What else have they got locked away?
Soulful Old Man Sunshine is just the beginning of a fabulous retrospective filled (almost) entirely with unreleased material. Collectors have been marvelling over the childlike genius of the Al Jardine/Brian Wilson tune Loop De Loop for years, and here it is officially at last - first in demo form,and then in newly revamped form with entirely new vocals added just a few weeks ago by Jardine. Along the way Loop De Loop has lost its original "flying circus" lyrics but any way you hear it it has all the crazy joy of the Beach Boys' most eccentric work. It's like a one-song Sgt Pepper, crammed with sound effects and topped with the kind of irresistible chorus that would have guaranteed a worldwide no. 1 single - if they'd ever bothered to release it.
The album's stuffed with gems like this. There are two gorgeous Dennis Wilson ballads intended for his solo projects (and there's better songs than those still in the vaults). There's Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks showing off their new song Heroes and Villains back in 1966, and unveiling some sections that never made it to the final song.Parks even adds some madcap animal impressions to flesh out the atmosphere. And there's an unaltered live cut from 1972, featuring Carl Wilson singing Long Promised Road, that tops anything on any of the group's official concert releases.
Admittedly some of the tracks on this set are more disposable, like the fresh mixes of Surfer Girl and Kiss Me, Baby. But anyone expecting the familiar Help Me, Rhonda will be taken aback by a ridiculously high Brian Wilson falsetto part that was scrubbed from the final mix; while a bunch of live and live-in-the-studio cuts from 1966/67 prove how well the band could capture the full range of their work without Wilson's production genius to help them.
Several other tracks aren't quite what they seem. Fans have loved the alternate mix of Till I Die since it first surfaced on the Hawthorne Hotshots bootleg EPs at the end of the 70s. But engineer Steve Desper now reveals that this unusualarrangement, which consists of a sparse instrumental track followed by a virtually unaccompanied set of vocals, was created by him as an experiment and was never under seriously consideration for release.
Brian's Back sounds on the surface like a heartfelt tribute to the Beach Boys' mainman. But it dates from precisely that point in the late 70s when it was apparent that Brian was anything but back - which is probably why the song remained marooned on an unissued Mike Love solo album.
That's quibbling, though, alongside the fact that this is yet another superb Beach Boys rarities project. Let's just hope the group let this one stay on catalogue.
Peter Doggett
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