Attempting to Solve the History of The Beach Boys’ SUNFLOWER…

I attempted to play detective, maybe a little historian. For a couple of years, the history of The Beach Boys’ Sunflower album has boggled and bothered me, and I finally decided to attempt to get the story straight, and anyone can help me on this if they wish! If they even find this!

Okay…

No other album in the history of The Beach Boys has as convoluted of a backstory as their excellent 1970 album Sunflower does. Not even the ill-fated magnum opus SMiLE…

January 1969… The Beach Boys had come off of a rough year. Their popularity in the United States had been in decline for more than a year and a half, sales were dropping, even concerts went over disastrously in some venues. The Beach Boys pressed on despite all of this, despite their leader Brian Wilson’s worsening mental health issues. On their recently-finished album 20/20, brothers Dennis and Carl Wilson stepped up to write and finish work. Mike Love and Al Jardine made their usual contributions, Bruce Johnston finally wrote a piece of his own.

Early Sessions: January-August 1969

In the weeks prior to 20/20’s February 1969 release, work was already underway on what would be the band’s next – and possibly final – album for their label, Capitol Records, to whom they were signed onto since mid-1962. A new Dennis composition called ‘Forever’ was sketched out, work in full was done on another Dennis song, ‘San Miguel’. Work continued well into February and March. Two more Dennis songs, ‘Got To Know the Woman’ and ‘Celebrate the News’, Brian and Bruce Johnston’s ‘Deirdre’, ‘What Can the Matter Be?’, Al Jardine’s carnival reworking of Brian Wilson’s ‘Sail Plane Song’ (now ‘Loop de Loop’), and an ethereal update of the year-old recording ‘All I Wanna Do’ were put to tape.

According to Keith Badman’s comprehensive book on The Beach Boys, a Mediterranean-sounding instrumental that later became ‘When Girls Get Together’ was recorded around this time… But the recording logs on historian Andrew G. Doe’s website state ‘When Girls Get Together’ was first recorded in November of 1969. We’ll get to that… Their engineer by this point in time is one Stephen Desper, who will factor into this later as well. All of this recording is balanced out by constant touring…

All of this work is to amount to their final submissions to Capitol: An album and a single. ‘Loop de Loop’ was to be the new single, until it was decided that a new song had to be concocted. Brian, with the help of father Murry Wilson, penned ‘Break Away’ at the end of March and recording commenced shortly thereafter. However, this progress was knocked off course by a revived lawsuit between The Beach Boys and Capitol regarding royalties. After this debacle, The Beach Boys planned to never return to Capitol. ‘Break Away’, released in June 1969 to little success in the US, was perhaps a fitting end to this chapter in the band’s history…

Capitol was still owed an album, though. The band spent most of the summer searching for a new label, they were rejected by several. Recording was a little more sporadic at this point, too. According to interviews in the early-to-mid 1970s, namely a September 1970 interview with Revolution! and a 1974 BBC radio documentary, Capitol had planned on releasing the 20/20 version of ‘Cotton Fields’ as a single, to which Al Jardine had the band pursue – with the help of outside musicians – a new, more radio-friendly pop-sounding version. Al was not satisfied with how ‘Cotton Fields’ came out, as the Leadbelly blues standard is one of his personal favorites. The remake sessions occurred in August, but a single release didn’t come anytime soon. Why in the world would they go this far if they were trying to distance themselves from Capitol, then? Was it because of Al’s love for the song? Perhaps it’s because this new version would be ideal for a contract-fulfilling album. Perhaps Capitol waited for the album so that they could release the single as a preview to it. Not like The Beach Boys hadn’t done this before with ‘Help Me, Rhonda’.

However, an album release still didn’t happen… No new Capitol Beach Boys album or single appeared between July and December of 1969. It is very possible that because of how badly things went down, the band’s commitment to giving Capitol one last studio album was very low.

Searching For a New Label: September-November 1969

By this point, The Beach Boys were well-immersed into new material. A wide variety of songs had been penned and recorded during the autumn: ‘Slip On Through’, ‘Games Two Can Play’, ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’, ‘When Girls Get Together’, ‘Soulful Old Man Sunshine’, ‘This Whole World’, ‘Tears in the Morning’, ‘Where Is She?’, ‘Susie Cincinnati’, a remake of the scrapped 1963 song ‘Back Home’, ‘Lady’, a cover of ‘Raspberries, Strawberries’ (which gets reworked into the original ‘At My Window’), ‘Carnival (Over the Waves)’, and vocals for a mid-1968 leftover called ‘Walkin”.

November was when Murry Wilson sold the publishing rights to The Beach Boys to A&M for a paltry $700,000, and Capitol would subsequently delete their recent albums, later re-issuing abridged versions of their pre-Pet Sounds studio albums with budget cover artwork. The Beach Boys, after much turmoil and trouble, signed onto Warner Bros.’ Reprise Records at the end of the month, successfully reviving their Brother Records moniker and later eventually getting the rights to their post-Party! albums and singles.

Full Steam Ahead: November 1969-February 1970

The new decade rolled in. The Beach Boys at this point were fully committed to preparing their first album for Reprise and the chief of Warner Bros. Records, Mo Ostin. Ostin was one of the few in the industry who believed in The Beach Boys and knew they were much more than the American public made them out to be. He had lofty expectations…

New songs were recorded in January: ‘I Just Got My Pay’ (a rewrite and remake of a 1963 recording ‘All Dressed Up for School’), ‘Good Time’, ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’, and ‘Our Sweet Love’. Work on what was started the previous autumn continued. By the beginning of February, they had enough material to form an album. They submitted the acetate to Mo Ostin and the WB executives. Sunflower is what it was called, as it always was, but an alternate working title was Add Some Music.

A few days later, Reprise released a trial single at the end of February: “Add Some Music to Your Day” b/w “Susie Cincinnati”.

via Stephen Desper

Ostin rejected the acetate. He felt the band was capable of making a stronger line-up of songs, and he felt that none of the material on hand would make for a great single. The ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’ single did poorly on the Billboard chart, topping out at #64.

That week was a big blow to The Beach Boys… Stephen Desper recalls them being very deflated. This certainly wasn’t Capitol Records, who released anything the band submitted to them, regardless of whatever objection someone might’ve had with the material. This is the label that released Smiley Smile, Ostin was stricter and wanted something of high quality from the band. Reprise, the label that was home to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young, was no laughing matter.

A tour of Australia and New Zealand ensued, Brian Wilson briefly pursued a country album project for band marketing manager Fred Vail. Nothing new was recorded between late February and July of 1970.

Now, that final Capitol album obligation was still hanging on their collective backs by March 1970…

Detour: The Last Capitol Album, ‘Cottonfields’

Logs reveal that The Beach Boys themselves, or Stephen Desper, mixed a live Finsbury Park, Astoria, London show from December 8, 1968 at the Capitol Studios over the course of two days in mid-January of 1970… This of course lead to the rather enigmatic live album release, Live In London.

Live In London is a strange case. The UK and select territories were the first countries to receive the album. According to The Beach Boys’ official accounts, Live In London was first released sometime in May 1970. No concrete release date like all of their other albums. (i.e. 20/20 was released February 10, 1969, Sunflower on August 31, 1970, etc.) The album also has weird edits throughout, and was supposedly released abroad without the band’s permission. A recently released comprehensive package The Beach Boys On Tour: 1968 gives you a good idea of where in the live songs these edits were made.

The UK release was put out by EMI, Capitol Records’ England-based parent company and The Beach Boys’ distributor in Europe. All EMI Beach Boys releases bore the Capitol logo, likely because of The Beach Boys being an American band, thus EMI used their American subsidiaries’ moniker. The UK front cover is just the image that was used for the back cover of 20/20 with some additional text (left, below), and the back of the sleeve incorrectly states that the recordings are from a 12/1/1968 concert at the London Palladium. No additional liner notes, either. No fun stuff, no gatefold goodies. It looks like a cheap release. The CD edition of the album, officially sanctioned by the band and released in 1990 as a two-fer with Beach Boys Concert, uses the cover of the album’s Dutch release. (pictured on the right, below) The Dutch release appears to use a photo from one of the late 1968 shows, instead of re-using something from an older album.

It is apparent that the band gave Capitol – or were going to give Capitol – this album to fulfill their contractual obligations. Capitol Records wouldn’t release Live In London in the United States until fall 1976, under the erroneous title Beach Boys ’69. This release, interestingly, sports a concrete release date: November 15, 1976. Clearly the album satisfied Capitol’s needs, because no Beach Boys studio or live album of fairly recent material would be released by Capitol until Still Cruisin’ in 1989. (And arguably, Still Cruisin’ isn’t a studio album – but rather a collection of then-recent Beach Boys hits and classic songs that appeared in contemporary hit movies.) Why Capitol didn’t release the album stateside in 1970 is the bigger mystery. If they really needed that one last album to fulfill the contract, why not release it? A European release made more sense, for The Beach Boys were at their peak across the Atlantic. Capitol perhaps felt that there was no point in releasing something that was going to be virtually ignored by American record buyers, so EMI went through with releasing it themselves.

A month earlier, April 1970, Capitol finally released the re-recorded ‘Cotton Fields’ as a single, the August 1969 “country rock” version that the band put together before signing on with Reprise. Presented in a very muddy mono mix, the B-side was the previously-released ‘The Nearest Faraway Place’, which was on 20/20, nothing new. By March/April of 1970, it’s very possible that Capitol was still awaiting a final studio album from the band. The new ‘Cotton Fields’, now spelt as one word – another indicator that Capitol put out this single without much thought, was on a proposed line-up for a final Capitol studio album, which opens a new can of worms. 95% of the material on this “Last Capitol Album” predates the proper Sunflower/Add Some Music sessions. Historian and compiler Brad Elliott, best known for his work on compilations like Rarities and Endless Harmony Soundtrack, once explained in an old Q&A that the band worked out a deal with Capitol in “early 1970” to finally release the contract-fulfilling studio album, so this could explain the sudden appearance of the ‘Cottonfields’ single. The Beach Boys were going to give them those 1969 recordings, while saving their latest ones for Reprise.

The ‘Cottonfields’ single bombed hard in the US, becoming one of their worst-selling singles yet. However, it was a massive hit all around the world. This was the norm for The Beach Boys at this point. By late April 1970, The Beach Boys were on international tour, not knee deep in Sunflower, possibly unaware of Capitol’s release of ‘Cottonfields’ as a single. It was two months since Mo Ostin had rejected the first acetate of their first Reprise album. Upon getting back in business in May, decisions had to be made… The Beach Boys had been signed onto Reprise since November, and their contract stipulated that they had to make around two LPs every eighteen months…

What ensued?

A Second Acetate?: May-June 1970

According to The Beach Boys’ engineer Stephen Desper, the band put together a second Sunflower acetate to give to Warner Bros. in June of 1970.

via Stephen Desper

Here’s where a mountain of contradictions begins…

1. This acetate contains nothing that ended up on the released Sunflower. Half of the first Sunflower acetate’s tracks made it to the final album.
2. The acetate also contains two recordings from the “Last Capitol Album”/Reverberation period: ‘Loop de Loop’ and ‘San Miguel’.
3. Unlike the first acetate, there is no “Sunflower” title on here nor is there a date. Desper claims on his intensive study video series that it was pressed on June 1, 1970 and delivered to WB.
4. According to record logs, a majority of the tracks on here were recorded in August of 1970, which was after Sunflower’s final track listing was determined.
5. If The Beach Boys made this their second Sunflower submission to Warner Bros., why are ‘Slip On Through’ and ‘This Whole World’ absent? WB released the two as a single at the end of June. Seems pretty hasty to randomly prepare a single weeks before its release, let alone for two songs that were on the first acetate but not this supposed second one. On top of that, the single didn’t even chart…
6. Future Beach Boys manager Jack Rieley, who became part of the band by late 1970/early 1971, claims he had listened to this acetate and found a lot of the songs forgettable (despite letting the band put a couple of them on the Surf’s Up album, including Brian Wilson’s ‘’Til I Die’). He particularly singled out ‘Loop de Loop’, ridiculing its title. He also claims that Mo Ostin rejected this collection of songs sometime afterward.
7. The Beach Boys played a little bit of this acetate on the radio in February of 1971.

This very acetate has also caused a lot of confusion. For many years, fans assumed this disc was a work-in-progress line-up of an album called Landlocked. Landlocked was but a short-lived working title for what would eventually become Surf’s Up, released in August 1971. It is reported that this lacquer disc is essentially the “2nd Warner Bros Album”. A disc of considered tracks for what they’d put out next.

According to Desper, this is Sunflower Acetate 2, but there’s a lot of things that contradict this. (And Desper, who has admitted that he isn’t a historian, has been wrong a few about things before – like all of us human beings.) June 1970 would seem right, for Sunflower’s final tracks that made the final line-up that was approved of were finished in July. Sunflower, of course, was released in late August… But the above contradictions show that this doesn’t add up. Again, what did The Beach Boys spend all of the spring of 1970 doing, then? Touring. Brian briefly worked on the Fred Vail country album that never came to fruition. Records show that no new songs were recorded for Sunflower between the rejection of the first acetate and early July…

This particular acetate is from September 1970, and it doesn’t factor into the making of Sunflower…

So, spring 1970… The Beach Boys still apparently owed that album to Capitol, while still needing to revise their first album for Reprise. Here’s where things get even more convoluted…

The Last Capitol Album, Continued…

In an interview with New Musical Express sometime in early-to-mid 1970, Bruce Johnston had stated:

“We have now got two new albums ready for release. The Fading Rock Group Revival, which will be our last for Capitol, should be out around the end of July. It will contain 10 tracks, including ‘Loop de Loop’, ‘Deirdre’ which I co-wrote with Michel Colombier, our previous hit ‘Break Away’, possibly an unaccompanied version of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, and a song called ‘Forever’ which we are also considering as our next single. After that album, we shall be bringing out Sunflowers, which will be on our own re-activated Brother label.”

Curiously, Bruce refers to the follow-up album as “Sunflowers”, rather than in singular. Bruce also stated in this interview that Colombier co-wrote ‘Deirdre’, but the released song credits Johnston and Brian. Colombier did some of the song’s string arrangement, along with orchestral work on Bruce’s ‘Tears in the Morning’. Some logs suggest that the working title of this final Capitol studio album was actually Reverberation, and Bruce would later clarify that he was joking around when he mentioned that other title. Obviously a good-humored poke at how the band was perceived in their home country.

The accepted view is that The Beach Boys handed Live In London, a seemingly patched together and choppily-edited live document with few liner notes, to Capitol in order to fulfill all obligations. It has long been written and logged that the Beach Boys put together a “safety copy” of a “Last Capitol Album” on June 19, 1970. Keep in mind, this is a month after the supposed European release of the Live In London LP, and several months after mixing was done on the live tracks themselves.

EMI put out Live In London in the UK and most of Europe. Perhaps it was EMI’s idea to release the live stuff internationally in May 1970, while Capitol just sat on it. This could also explain why the live album doesn’t feel like a complete release. Perhaps EMI hastily finished it and released it themselves? After all, there was no new Beach Boys album between the release of 20/20 (March 1969 in the UK) and Sunflower (November 1970 in the UK), and EMI could only put out so many greatest hits compilations. With no studio album in sight, and a hot single out, EMI probably made their move. But the edits… Who made the edits in the live tracks? Certainly not The Beach Boys or Desper when mixing it in January 1970. (Reportedly, Carl Wilson was mostly in charge of this process.) Perhaps EMI staffers made those edits themselves?

‘California Girls’, for example, is missing a chunk of its iconic opening on the Live In London album. You can even hear where the edit was made… A separate show from Finsbury Park that same day – which is preserved in its entirety on the aforementioned Beach Boys On Tour: 1968 set – reveals that Mike Love was making some banter during the intro, and perhaps an EMI executive cut it out along with other little bits like that.

Love makes a lot of “jokes” and banter in-between songs and even during songs in these performances, and perhaps the EMI editors wanted to cut a lot of that stuff so that the songs wouldn’t have chit-chat in them? With this large live set out, it becomes clear that The Beach Boys had nothing to do with Live In London‘s completion and release… Just the track mixing, again, in January 1970. It is evident that they were planning on doing *something* with this material, after all, they hadn’t had a live album release since 1964’s Beach Boys Concert. That was their only live album, and their only #1 album release in the US, period, until 1974.

Once more, you also have the existence of the April 1970 ‘Cottonfields’ single. So if the songs on that supposed 2nd acetate were actually recorded after Sunflower was finalized (which recording logs say, contrary to what Stephen Desper claims), then this supports the idea that The Beach Boys spent some time considering their Capitol obligations before returning to Sunflower and giving it the punch that it needed in order to satisfy Mo Ostin. Getting one monkey off of their backs before the second.

But again, why would The Beach Boys need to put a tape together for Capitol in June 1970 when EMI already has Live In London out in Europe? Is it because Capitol refused to give it an American release? Did they not consider a live album to be a contractual fulfillment? Were they specifically asking for a studio album? Did that “deal” they worked out in early 1970 stipulate that a studio album was the deliverable? The details remain blurry…

Better yet… Was the band even aware at the time that EMI put out the live album in Europe? Did Capitol themselves even know that EMI released Live In London?

The German release of Live In London, titled Beach Boys Live.

If The Beach Boys were unaware of the album’s existence at that point in time (June 1970), then it makes sense that they would put together the track line-up for a short studio album (that contained a then 7-year-old track, no less). This supports the idea that the “release” of Live In London wasn’t authorized by the band, not so much the album contents.

Here’s where things get weirder. The 11-track “Last Capitol Album” master consists of six hitherto un-issued tracks that were recorded in the first half of 1969: ‘Loop de Loop, ‘San Miguel’, ‘Forever’, ‘Got To Know the Woman’, ‘Deirdre’, ‘All I Wanna Do’. Four songs were already available: ‘Break Away’ and ‘Celebrate the News’ was a single in mid-1969, ‘Cottonfields’ in early 1970. There was also ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, a 1963 acappella B-side that hadn’t appeared anywhere else, in a newly-made duophonic mix. Lastly, it contained an instrumental backing track of ‘When Girls Get Together’. This is the strangest and most confounding thing about this collection. The song ‘When Girls Get Together’ was recorded in November 1969, so say Doe’s comprehensive sessions logs. Badman’s book says the basic track of the song was laid down much earlier that year, in around March, but I’ve seen no other record of this. (Doe’s logs also dispute Badman’s book in a few side notes.) Anyways, the completed ‘When Girls Get Together’ is on the February 1970 acetate of Sunflower that Mo Ostin rejected. Why in the world would the backing track of a completed song that was on the acetate of the band’s first album for a whole other label… Be on this master? Maybe as some kind of joke? A sort-of final insult to the label that had given them such a hard time during the last three years? A mistake? That’s another story…

According to The Words and Music of Brian Wilson by Christian Matijas-Mecca, the band *did* submit this 11-song collection to Capitol Records… And Capitol *rejected* it. Matijas-Mecca doesn’t give a date on when Capitol said no to the “Last Capitol Album”, however. What doesn’t add up here is that it seems unlikely that Capitol would reject a submission, as they – unlike Reprise – put out any album the band gave to them. Even a record as weird and as all over the place as Smiley Smile. Doe’s logs say there was no determined track order on this master, anyways… And if there was no title for such a long time, did a Last Capitol Album exist other than as an idea? If Capitol rejected such a collection, it would probably be on the grounds that Live In London existed by that point. Maybe by then, their executives – or the band, or both – belatedly realized that the contract has been fulfilled by a live album.

No way The Beach Boys could’ve handed them Live In London if they assembled this collection in June of 1970, a month after Live In London was released. That strengthens the idea that Live In London was an unauthorized release, along with the lack of a concrete release date, inaccurate liner notes, and overall cheap presentation. (Again, referring to the original UK release that uses 20/20‘s back cover as its front cover.)

With all of this in mind, my theory is that The Beach Boys initially were unaware that EMI “finished” and released Live In London in Europe. Capitol might not have known, either. It unusually didn’t even chart in the UK, where The Beach Boys’ albums regularly did exceptional business. Then sometime afterwards, say late June-early July 1970, they or Capitol found out and then The Beach Boys realized that they were free to use the tracks from the “Last Capitol Album” reel on their future Warners projects. Or maybe Capitol did something that upset them further and prompted the band to take back the early 1969 sessions tapes? That September 1970 interview does mention that Capitol flat-out informed the band that they weren’t interested in paying for promoting their product.

It seems like, more than anything, in early 1970, the band were ready to release their final studio album for Capitol and their first studio album on Brother/Reprise. The president of Warner Bros. Records rejected their first acetate, which probably threw a lot of things off for them. Any “deal” to get the last Capitol album out seemed to not matter by that point, and maybe The Beach Boys held onto those early-to-mid 1969 tracks, thinking they could use them to improve Sunflower and meet Ostin’s approval the second time. They look to have stalled on just handing something to Capitol and being done with it, as late as April, when Capitol issued ‘Cottonfields’ as a preview single to this possible album… and in the process EMI over in the UK just decided to do it themselves with some pre-mixed, professionally-recorded live material from a late 1968 London concert. There were plenty of concerts to choose from, but the mixed London material from December 1968 was convenient for them, not just because it was mixed in the first place, but also because it was live in London. The Beach Boys were super-popular in the UK during this time, so it all lined up nicely. EMI was still The Beach Boys’ distributor in the UK, which meant that they would also release their first two Reprise albums over there under the “Stateside” label. With the 1st Reprise album being delayed, and the band’s hesitance to give Capitol anything (whether it was the early 1969 tracks or even a live album, they could’ve been saving the London stuff for a future Reprise release), EMI executives probably got impatient. It had been over a year since 20/20 came out in the UK.

EMI released Live In London, without the band’s knowing, in May 1970. Capitol brass likely found out about this later on (i.e late June 1970) and didn’t need a final album submission. And they didn’t care about the live album, thus they didn’t release it domestically. They were done with the band, and the band was done with them… That left The Beach Boys with a finished contract, and around an album’s worth of songs that they could use on Sunflower, and possibly on future albums and projects.

Completion

However it all went down, Sunflower was completed and mastered on July 21st. The final sessions took place in early July, supplying two new songs: ‘It’s About Time’ and ‘Cool, Cool Water’, the latter is an expansion of a recording dating back to 1967.

The band then pulled four tracks from the “Last Capitol Album” tape – ‘Got To Know the Woman’, ‘Deirdre’, ‘All I Wanna Do’, and ‘Forever’ – to put on Sunflower, further strengthening the line-up of songs. Capitol not being given that collection was ultimately a win-win scenario there. After Sunflower‘s completion, the Beach Boys took two other tracks from the “Last Capitol Album” reel – ‘San Miguel’ and ‘Loop de Loop’ – and put them on the September 1970 “Second Warner Bros. Album” acetate. This suggests that they planned to use those in the future.

So… Four slightly older tracks, two new tracks, six tracks from the early Sunflower sessions. Mo Ostin and crew finally approved of the album, and it was released on August 31st. Sunflower was a critical darling, but sadly a crushing commercial bomb in the states. None of its singles did well, at all. The Beach Boys had an image problem, which wasn’t an issue in Europe. Sunflower and various singles culled from the album performed much better in other countries.

The European release of Sunflower, which occurred a few months after its US debut, has a little oddity. Again, EMI had the distribution rights to the first two Reprise albums in Europe, which they released via their Stateside label. Sunflower’s European release adds ‘Cottonfields’ to the beginning of the album, and reorders two tracks on side one. EMI/Stateside handled Surf’s Up’s European release as well. After that, the European versions were on Brother/Reprise like their American counterparts.

In the weeks prior to Sunflower’s release, The Beach Boys recorded ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’, ‘Big Sur’, ‘’Til I Die’, and ‘H.E.L.P. is on the Way’. ‘Seasons in the Sun’ was recorded during this time, too, but that was a brief side-project with Terry Jacks. Jacks later recorded the song himself and it became a huge hit for him in 1974.

The day after Sunflower’s release, The Beach Boys put together the acetate for a 2nd Warner Bros. album. The one Stephen Desper says is actually “Sunflower Acetate 2”. Included are the four new August 1970 recordings, along with the tracks from the original Sunflower/Add Some Music acetate from February 1970 that didn’t make it to the final line-up (‘Susie Cincinnati’, ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’, ‘I Just Got My Pay’, ‘Lady’, ‘Good Time’, and ‘When Girls Get Together’), and two songs from the early 1969/“Last Capitol Album” sessions (‘San Miguel’, ‘Loop de Loop’).

‘Lady’, and a new Dennis recording from October-November called ‘Sound of Free’, were released as a single in Europe only by EMI/Stateside in December 1970. The single was unusually credited to just Dennis Wilson and Rumbo (a pseudonym for collaborator Daryl Dragon, later Captain of Captain and Tennille.) It didn’t fare well and the recordings remained obscure for years. ‘Sound of Free’ is now available in its original form on Made in California 1962-2012, the Beach Boys enterprise has yet to release the original 1970 mix of ‘Lady’ (which showed up on a Super Furry Animals compilation of songs that influenced them), instead we’ve had a mix that must’ve been put together in the mid-aughts. This appears on the 2009 compilation Summer Love Songs. (Update – September 4, 2021: The original ‘Lady’ mix is on the excellent Feel Flows box set.)

Ultimately, the “2nd Warner Bros. Album” line-up was rejected and recording proper for the next album began in April of 1971 under the direction of newly-minted manager Jack Rieley. Landlocked was suggested as a working title very early on, but the album becomes Surf’s Up. The Landlocked title took on a life of its own, for years it was mythologized… People have long thought that it was a scrapped album.

Surf’s Up contains modified versions of ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’ and ‘’Til I Die’ from the August 1970 sessions (though ‘’Til I Die’ was in some form of existence in 1969), ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet’ is from the Sunflower sessions and is also modified, and ‘Student Demonstration Time’ dates back to November 1970. Everything else except the title track was recorded from April-July of 1971. Surf’s Up was released in late August 1971. Unlike Sunflower, it did well commercially in the United States and was also very well-received by critics. By the time Surf’s Up came out, The Beach Boys were reversing their “unhip” image in America. It paid off nicely…

Various Sunflower outtakes have popped up on studio albums over time, and many tracks have also been put on archival releases. Surf’s Up outtakes were released on archival sets as well.

~

Sessions: January-April 1969

• ‘All I Wanna Do’
• ‘Break Away’
• ‘Celebrate the News’
• ‘Deirdre’
• ‘Forever’
• ‘Got to Know the Woman’
• ‘Loop de Loop’
• ‘San Miguel’
• ‘What Can the Matter Be?’

Sessions: July-September 1969

• ‘Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)’ (remake sessions for Capitol)
• ‘I’m Going Your Way/California Slide’
• ‘Slip On Through’
• ‘Soulful Old Man Sunshine’

Sunflower/Add Some Music Sessions: October 1969-February 1970

• ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’
• ‘At My Window’ (first recorded as ‘Raspberries, Strawberries’)
• ‘Back Home’
• ‘Carnival’
• ‘Games Two Can Play’
• ‘Good Time’
• ‘I Just Got My Pay’
• ‘Lady’
• ‘Our Sweet Love’
• ‘Slip On Through’ (continued)
• ‘Soulful Old Man Sunshine’ (continued)
• ‘Susie Cincinnati’
• ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’
• ‘Tears in the Morning’
• ‘This Whole World’
• ‘Walkin” (vocals for 1968 track)
• ‘When Girls Get Together’
• ‘Where Is She?’
• ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’

Sunflower/Add Some Music track listing – February 18, 1970

1. ‘Susie Cincinnati’
2. ‘Good Time’
3. ‘Our Sweet Love’
4. ‘Tears in the Morning’
5. ‘When Girls Get Together’
6. ‘Slip On Through’
7. ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’
8. ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’ / ‘Carnival’
9. ‘This Whole World’
10. ‘I Just Got My Pay’
11. ‘At My Window’
12. ‘Lady’

Last Capitol Album track listing – June 19, 1970

• ‘All I Wanna Do’
• ‘Break Away’
• ‘Celebrate the News’
• ‘Cottonfields’
• ‘Deirdre’
• ‘Forever’
• ‘Got to Know the Woman’
• ‘Loop de Loop’
• ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (duophonic mix)
• ‘San Miguel’
• ‘When Girls Get Together’ (backing track)

Final Sunflower sessions – Early July 1970

• ‘Cool, Cool Water’
• ‘It’s About Time’

Final Sunflower track listing – Mastered July 21, 1970. Released August 31, 1970

1. ‘Slip On Through’
2. ‘This Whole World’
3. ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’
4. ‘Got to Know the Woman’
5. ‘Deirdre’
6. ‘It’s About Time’
7. ‘Tears in the Morning’
8. ‘All I Wanna Do’
9. ‘Forever’
10. ‘Our Sweet Love’
11. ‘At My Window’
12. ‘Cool, Cool Water’

Sessions: July 31-August 1970

• ‘Big Sur’
• ‘H.E.L.P. is on the Way’
• ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’
• ‘Seasons in the Sun’
• ”Til I Die’

2nd Warner Bros. Album acetate track listing – September 1970

1. ‘Loop de Loop’
2. ‘Susie Cincinnati’
3. ‘San Miguel’
4. ‘H.E.L.P. is on the Way’
5. ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’ / ‘Carnival’
6. ‘I Just Got My Pay’
7. ‘Good Time’
8. ‘Big Sur’
9. ‘Lady’
10. ‘When Girls Get Together’
11. ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’
12. ”Til I Die’

Sessions: October-November 1970

• ‘My Solution’
• ‘Sound of Free’
• ‘Student Demonstration Time’

Surf’s Up Sessions: April-July 1971

• ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’
• ‘Barbara’
• ‘Disney Girls (1957)’
• ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’
• ‘Feel Flows’
• ‘Long Promised Road’
• ‘Surf’s Up’ (modifications to the 1966/1967 SMiLE recordings)
• ‘Won’t You Tell Me’
• ‘(Wouldn’t It Be Nice To) Live Again?’
• ‘4th of July’

Final Surf’s Up track listing – released August 30, 1971

1. ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’
2. ‘Long Promised Road’
3. ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet’
4. ‘Disney Girls (1957)’
5. ‘Student Demonstration Time’
6. ‘Feel Flows’
7. ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)’
8. ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’
9. ”Til I Die’
10. ‘Surf’s Up’

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Where did the other 1969/Sunflower/Surf’s Up outtakes go?

• The January-April 1969 album sessions…
  • ‘Loop de Loop’ – A new mix was made in 1998 by Al Jardine and released on Endless Harmony Soundtrack. The original 1969 mix is on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘San Miguel’ – First released in 1981 on the compilation Ten Years of Harmony. It was later released on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, and a new mix appears on Feel Flows.
• The Sunflower/Add Some Music sessions proper…
  • ‘Back Home’ – Was re-recorded in 1976 for the album 15 Big Ones, the 1970 version first appeared on the 2013 box set Made in California: 1962-2012, and then Feel Flows.
  • ‘Carnival (Over the Waves)’ – First released on the 2019 copyright extension EP 1969: I’m Going Your Way, and then on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘Games Two Can Play’ – First released on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, and then a new mix was made for Feel Flows under the title ‘Two Can Play’.
  • ‘Good Time’ – A new mix made in 1976 was released on Love You in 1977. A version by American Spring uses the 1970 backing/mix, with Marilyn Wilson and Diane Rovell on lead vocals. That was released on Spring in 1972. Feel Flows features a newly-made mix that combines elements of the 1970 mix and the 1977 mix, and also contains the short instrumental cover of ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ that was recorded during the sessions.
  • ‘I Just Got My Pay’ – First released on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, and then a new mix was made for Feel Flows.
  • ‘I’m Going Your Way (California Slide)’ – First released on the 2019 copyright extension EP 1969: I’m Going Your Way, and then on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘Lady’ was released as the B-side of a single credited to Dennis Wilson & Rumbo in Europe only in December 1970, the A-side being the November 1970 recording ‘Sound of Free’. The original mix of ‘Lady’, prior to showing up on the 2021 Feel Flows box set, appeared on a 2005 various artists compilation put together by Super Furry Animals titled Under the Influence, part of a UK series of compilation albums by various artists. An alternate mix of ‘Lady’, titled ‘Fallin’ in Love’, appears on the 2009 compilation Summer Love Songs.
  • ‘Soulful Old Man Sunshine’ – First showed up, in two forms, on Endless Harmony Soundtrack in 1998. A version later showed up on the 2013 box set Made in California: 1962-2012, and another on Feel Flows.
  • ‘Susie Cincinnati’ – Released as the B-side of ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’ in February 1970. It later shows up as the B-side of ‘Child of Winter (Christmas Song)’ in some countries in 1974, and then is released on the 1976 album 15 Big Ones.
  • ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet’ – Appeared on Surf’s Up in 1971, in slightly modified form.
  • ‘Walkin” – The mid-1968 track with the fall 1969 vocals first appeared on the archival set 1968: I Can Hear Music – The 20/20 Sessions, and then on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘When Girls Get Together’ – A new mix made in 1976 was released on Keepin’ the Summer Alive in 1980. A new mix closely resembling the 1970 mix is on Feel Flows, along with a backing track, presumably the one that was on the “Last Capitol Album” tape.
  • ‘Where Is She?’ – Appeared on Made in California: 1962-2012, and then Feel Flows.
• The July-November 1970 sessions…
  • ‘Big Sur’ – Re-recorded as ‘California Saga: Big Sur’ for Holland, released in 1973. The original 1970 version was finally released on Feel Flows.
  • ‘H.E.L.P. is on the Way’ – First showed up on Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, in a mix that abridged the ending seconds and session chatter. The Feel Flows box set’s mix is closer to what it sounded like on the September 1970 acetate and has the longer session chatter at the end.
  • ‘My Solution’ – Finally released on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘Seasons in the Sun’ – Finally released on the Feel Flows box set.
  • ‘Sound of Free’ – Released as a single in Europe only, credited to Dennis Wilson & Rumbo. Then it appeared on Made in California: 1962-2012, and Feel Flows.
  • ‘Sweet and Bitter’ – Finally released on the Feel Flows box set.
• The Surf’s Up sessions…
  • ‘4th of July’ – First released on Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, and then on Feel Flows in a new mix.
  • ‘Barbara’ – First released on Endless Harmony Soundtrack in 1998, and then on Feel Flows.
  • ‘Won’t You Tell Me’ – First released on Feel Flows.
  • ‘(Wouldn’t It Be Nice To) Live Again – First released on Made in California: 1962-2012, an extended mix appears on Feel Flows.
• Unreleased songs…
  • ‘Raspberries, Strawberries’
  • ‘What Can The Matter Be?’

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