WHAT IS THE BEACH BOYS’ BEST ALBUM? For most people, that’s an easy answer: Pet Sounds. But for aficionados of the group, it’s a tricky question that requires clarification. Fans would want to know does the question refer to the best album attributed to the Beach Boys or to the best album actually created by the Beach Boys as a group.
If the former, the answer remains Pet Sounds for most of us. But Pet Sounds is more accurately a Brian Wilson solo album, his first real work as an auteur of the recording studio. For this article, I am looking at the twelve tracks that Brian intended for the album. I am not considering “Sloop John B,” which Capitol tacked onto the record so the it could boast a hit single.
Okay—those twelve tracks: Brian Wilson wrote the all of the music for most of them and most of the music for some of them. He worked with two lyricists, first Terry Sachen (“Hang on to Your Ego”) and then Tony Asher (eight of the twelve songs). Asher says that he also contributed to some of the music.
Brian began working on his new songs at Western Recorders studio in Hollywood, California, in November 1965. The first official session of what would become Pet Sounds took place at Western on January 18, 1966, and the final session was on April 13, 1966.
Despite the front cover carrying Capitol’s “Full Dimensional Stereo” blurb and emblem at the top, Pet Sounds was not issued in real stereo. Capitol used their patented Duophonic Stereo process to release the album in horrendous fake stereo.
For all practical purposes
Instead of working with the Beach Boys, Brian hired the cream of Los Angeles studio musicians to play most of the instruments on most of the sessions. He actually instructed some of these musicians in how he wanted them to play their parts, as what he was asking of them was so different from what they normally played.
Of course, the other Beach Boys were involved in the singing. Like the musicians, he was asking them to sing parts so different from what they normally sang that he had to direct them on some of their vocal parts.
In the US, Sunflower was a commercial disaster and effectively ignored by the record-buying public. In the UK, Sunflower was hailed as a masterpiece!
Brian arranged all of the instrumental parts for the musicians and all of the vocal parts for his fellow Beach Boys. Of course, he produced all of the sessions.
For all practical purposes, the other Beach Boys served the same role in the making of the album as the hired studio musicians. For a time, some critics made fun of the group, referring to them as Brian’s puppets. A similar arrangement was used during the sessions for the aborted Smile album.
The Beach Boys did not record the instrumental parts on a Beach Boys album until Smiley Smile, released during Summer of 1967. Even then, they were recording Brian’s songs. This was the first album where the group played the bulk of the instruments since All Summer Long in 1964.
Sunflower sported a cover as warm and lovely as the music within. Despite the promotional efforts of Warner/Reprise, in the US the album was a commercial disaster, effectively ignored by the record-buying public. Four singles were pulled from the album, each a flop on the pop charts. In the UK, Sunflower was hailed as a masterpiece and sold enough to reach the Top 30 on at least one survey.
Add some music to your day
The first album that was a group effort—where the other members (Al, Bruce, Carl, Dennis, Mike) had a hand in writing and arranging the songs and producing the sessions—was not until Sunflower, released during the final weeks of Summer in 1970.
Each of the Beach Boys contributed to the songs. Here are the six Beach Boys and the number of songs on the album carrying their credit as a songwriter:
Al Jardine: 3
Bruce Johnston:2
Mike Love: 3
Brian Wilson: 7
Carl Wilson: 1
Dennis Wilson: 4
While Carl contributed the least to the songs, the album was largely produced by him. Sunflower remains my favorite album of all for how it sounds and feels: clear, full, lush, warm. It is a sonic masterpiece, with a lot of credit due engineer Stephen Desper.
While anyone who listens to this album today will immediately recognize the Beach Boys, such was not the case in 1970. The group had been out of the public’s graces for several years, which was an eternity in the heady, competitive pop music world at the time.
When friends would visit me at my apartment, I’d get them high and put Sunflower on the turntable. They would sit, mesmerized by the opening track, Dennis Wilson’s joyous “Slip on Through.”
My guests would ask, “Who is this? Like, wow, I love it!”
“The Beach Boys,” I would respond.
And they’d gasp, “No way, man!”
Words rarely do music justice, so go and find yourself a copy of Sunflower and listen for your self. Hear one of the best albums to be found in this whole world. Of course, I suggest listening to an LP rather than a CD, but either way, you will add some marvelous music to your day.
Words rarely do music justice, so go and find yourself a copy of the Beach Boys’ SUNFLOWER album and listen for your self. Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was cropped from the SUNFLOWER album and displays the Beach Boys—the first them all six appeared on the cover of an album together—and their offspring. Of course, the harmony on display in this photo masked the incessant squabbling between the guys.
Smiley Smile was a monumental retreat from the creative competition that Brian Wilson felt he was engaged in with the Beatles. Carl Wilson famously called it “a bunt instead of a grand slam.” Reviled by fans and critics for decades, its reputation as an album filled with lovely yet edgy music with a taint of marijuana goofiness has grown demonstrably in recent decades.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
i have such vivid memories of towing my 57 chevy home from the drag strip in 63 and 64 listening to the beach boys original hot rod and surf recordings on the am radio so to me it would be their first few 45s on capitol. those were the best days of drag racing and the best time for hot rod and surf records, a time that will never be repeated. how lucky i was to have been a part of this.
J
When you were towing your ’57 Chevy (my candidate for the most beautifully designed car ever – although whenever I see a ’63 Buck Riviera I drool), I was 12 years old and trying to figure out why it was more interesting to look at girls than to think about dinosaurs. Od the early Beach Boys’ albums, I think SURFER GIRL is amazing. Its brother/sister album LITTLE DEUCE COUPE is almost as good but the inclusion of a few older, previously released tracks dragged it down a bit.
Surf and hot rod music remain the butt of jokes by people who think it’s dumb but I don’t know how anyone can listen to those records and not wanna go out and play in the sunshine and drive up and down the strip looking for a good milkshake.
Keep on keepin’ on!
N
Neal, I love them all, although I have a special warmth for Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, Surf’s Up, So Tough, Holland, and Love You lps. Four ’60s and four ’70s. Yes, these are special to me.
G
Thanks for the comment!
I should write an article about what it was like getting Beach Boys-haters to listen to SUNFLOWER in the early ’70s. I had to get them really high . . .
N
Neal — That would surely allow them to focus!
G
The sativa that was readily available from Mexico back then was nothing like the high-voltage indica that smokers seem to have preferred the past few decades. A few hits off a joint and doing just about everything was “better”: listening to music, eating food, making love, etc. About the only thing I remember being more difficult was prolonged reading.
So a cuppla hits and add some music to your day by putting SUNFLOWER on the turntable and let the music slip on through . . .
N
Neal — I know exactly what you mean. Yes sir!
Same mileage here!
Sunflower is THE litmus test for Beach Boys fans: If it’s not up there in your top faves of all their albums, go re-listen ’til it is! Its emergence showed how out of touch “radio” was in 1970. And the US rock press (i.e., Rolling Stone) didn’t get it, either.
Watch this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upJJbGsq6dA
Saying the Beach Boys weren’t hip in 1970 is a gross understatement. If I invited any of my free-love practicing, anti-war protesting, dope-smoking, acid-dropping, beads-bell-and-long-hair wearting friends to my apartment with “Hey, man—you gotta hear the Beach Boys’ new album!” no one would have shown up.
Instead, I told them, “Like, wow—I scored some real good weed and a new album you should hear!” They’d come over, I’d get them high, and then I’d slip on Sunflower without saying who the artist was. I had them at “Slip on Through” and they’d happily, groovily, and stondededly sit through the rest of the album.
Hell’s Belles, a few went out and bought their own copy!