Surfin' With the Beach Boys

Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson

Surfin Safari

The Beach Boys eventually signed a seven-year contract with Capitol Records on July 16 and by November, their first album was ready Surfin' Safari which reached 32 on the US Billboard charts.  Their song output on this and their following albums through to 1966 continued along the same commercial line, focusing on the California youth lifestyle of surfing, fast cars and girls.  The singles: Surfin' Safari; Surfin USA; Surfer Girl; Fun, Fun Fun; I Get Around; Help Me Rhonda; California Girls and Barbara Ann were international hits and would become Beach Boy classics and hallmarks of the era. By the end of 1964, the stress of road travel, composing, producing and maintaining a high level of creativity became too much to bear for Brian Wilson.  On December 23 that year, while on a flight to Houston, he suffered an anxiety attack and left the tour.  In January, 1965, he announced his withdrawal from touring to concentrate entirely on songwriting and record production.  Glen Campbell served as Wilson's temporary replacement in concert, until his own career success required him to leave the group in April 1965.  Bruce Johnston became a full-time member of the band on May 19, 1965, first replacing Wilson on the road and later contributing his own talents in the studio beginning with the vocal sessions for California Girls recorded on the 4th of June, 1965.

Little Deuce Coupe

Pet Sounds, released May 16, 1966, is presented here in its entirety (identified by a PS prefix in the song list) was when the boys moved off the beach.  Brian's growing mastery of studio recording and his increasingly sophisticated songs and complex arrangements would reach a creative peak.  Influenced by psychedelic drugs, Brian Wilson turned his attention inward and probed his deep-seated self-doubts and emotional longings.  The album's meticulously layered harmonies and inventive instrumentation set a new standard for pop and rock music.  It remains one of the most evocative releases of the decade, with distinctive strains of lushness, melancholy, and nostalgia for youth.  The tracks Wouldn't It Be Nice and God Only Knows showcased Wilson's growing mastery as a composer, arranger, and producer, as did Caroline, No, which was issued as a Brian Wilson solo single.  The album also included two sophisticated instrumental tracks, the quiet and wistful Let's Go Away for Awhile and the brittle brassy surf of the instrumental title track. Although Pet Sounds was met with strong sales abroad, reaching number two in the UK, it charted lower in the US than the majority of the band's preceding albums, peaking at number ten on the Billboard 200.  A heralding album in the emerging psychedelic rock style, Pet Sounds has been championed and emulated for its dramatic and revolutionary baroque pop instrumentation.  It has been ranked at number one in several music magazines' lists of greatest albums of all time, including NME, The Times and Mojo Magazine.  It was ranked number two in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.  It was preserved into the National Recording Registry in 2004 by the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.

Surfer Girl

Seeking to expand on the advances made on Pet Sounds, Brian began the even more ambitious album Smile.  Its first fruit was Good Vibrations, which Brian described as a pocket symphony.  The song became the Beach Boys' biggest hit to date and number one single in 1966; many critics consider it to be one of the best rock singles of all time.  It was one of the most complex pop productions ever undertaken, and was reputed to have been the most expensive American single ever recorded at that time.  Costing a reported $50,000, more than most albums, sessions for the song stretched over several months in at least three major studios.  According to Wilson, the electro-theremin work itself cost $15,000.  The Electro-Theremin, often called the Tannerin, is an electronic musical instrument developed by trombonist Paul Tanner and amateur inventor Bob Whitsell in the late 1950s to oscillate sound wave frequency and amplitude (volume).  As technology evolved from tubes to transistors the theremin was replaced by the keyboard operated moog synthesizer. Smile was to be a continuous suite of songs that were linked both thematically and musically, with the main songs being linked together by small vocal pieces and instrumental segments that elaborated upon the musical themes of the major songs.  Recording began in August 1966 and carried on into 1967 with delays caused by Carl Wilson's draft resistance, and a major dispute with Capitol Records.  Further, Brian's reliance on both prescription drugs and amphetamines exacerbated his underlying mental health problems.  Another story has Brian, upon hearing Strawberry Fields Forever, abandon all hope of competing with the Beatles.  Smile was shelved in May 1967, and would go on to become the most famous unreleased album in the history of popular music.  Comparable to Brian Jones and Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson's use of psychedelic drugs—especially LSD—led to a nervous breakdown in the late-1960s.  As his legend grew, the Smile period came to be seen as the pivotal episode in his decline and he became tagged as one of the most notorious celebrity drug casualties of the rock era.

The Girls on the Beach

Smiley Smile, released on September 18, 1967 in the aftermath of the shelving of Smile.  From the several hours worth of material recorded from May 1966 to May 1967 only portions of the backing track for Heroes and Villains, recorded in October 1966, and the coda for Vegetables, recorded in April 1967, were sourced for  In addition to this, Good Vibrations, which had been recorded sporadically from May 24 to September 1, 1966, was placed on Smiley Smile in its original form, reportedly at Capitol's insistence to help bolster sales as it had been a number 1 charting single.  Beyond these examples, the large majority of Smiley Smile was recorded in a modular approach at Brian Wilson's home studio in Bel Air from June 3 to July 14, 1967.  Smiley Smile is best known for its sparse and lo-fi production.  Upon its unveiling, the album was received with confusion by both critics and fans. The Beach Boys, operating as a democracy, with Brian having given up control of the band while recovering from drug dependency, continued to record and tour.  They closed out the sixties with the hit singles Wild Honey, Darlin' and Do it Again with a modern sound of their early surf music.  Sail on Sailor (1973), Pallisades Park and Rock & Roll Music (1976) showcase the 70's.  Surfin' With the Beach Boys closes out with the John Phillip's compositions California Dreamin' (1986) and Kokomo (1988) that became their first #1 hit since Good Vibrations.

Good Vibrations at the Hollywood Bowl

Since the 1980s, there has been much publicized legal-wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits, and use of the band's name.  Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983, and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998.  After Carl's death, a number of versions of the band, each fronted by surviving members from the original quintet, continued to tour into the 2000s.  For the band's 50th anniversary, they briefly reunited as the Beach Boys for a new studio album, world tour, and career-spanning retrospective box set. The Beach Boys have often been called America's Band, and Allmusic has stated that their unerring ability…made them America's first, best rock band.  The group have had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them United States Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four of those reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide and are listed at number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of all Time.  The core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Wanderin' Spirit
January, 2014
"Surfin' With the Beach Boys"

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