In December 2018, I looked into the deep and convoluted history of The Beach Boys’ album Sunflower, which of course will be turning 50 this coming August.
All those words on the historical aspects of the album… Now what about the album itself? What about its follow-up album, Surf’s Up?
Sunflower‘s lengthy and often convoluted history does indeed factor into the final product. Until The Beach Boys had packed up and left Capitol Records, there was something of a lack of discipline running through their studio albums. Brian Wilson was motivated to make something as cohesive and as stunning as Pet Sounds because he was challenged by The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, he was motivated to not make an album with some excellent singles surrounded by a bunch of filler. (Though I’d argue the band’s two 1965 studio albums, The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), already succeeded at being just that.)
Problem is, after the collapse of the SMiLE project in the spring of 1967, Brian Wilson’s role as band leader diminished. The Smiley Smile LP, released in SMiLE‘s place, bore the credit “Produced by The Beach Boys”. Certainly, Brian’s receding leadership gave brothers Dennis and Carl the push to pull some of the weight. Carl particularly shines on Wild Honey (released in December 1967), and Dennis writes some wonderful tracks on Friends (June 1968), but 1969’s fascinatingly uneven 20/20 marks the first time everyone truly pitches in. Not just brothers Dennis and Carl, not just cousin Mike Love, but also Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston. Interestingly, this final run of studio albums for Capitol Records have a sort of sloppiness to them. Or do they?
For starters, this quad of studio albums made in the late 1960s show the band taking a new direction every couple of months. Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends do share some similarities and all have a minimalist feel (often dubbed the “lo-fi trilogy”), but each album is distinct, as is the grab-bag that is 20/20. Wild Honey and Friends, for example, are very short albums. Each runs about under 25 minutes, and contain less than 13 tracks each, in a day and age where double LPs are far more common, along with lengthy songs that pushed the 3 1/2-minute mark… And here were The Beach Boys, making 2 1/2-minute gems on short little platters. I think it was less a lack of keeping with the times (as the music itself on these albums is arguably far ahead of the times), and more a personal choice. Yet when listening to outtakes and alternate versions collected on the recent Beach Boys copyright extension releases (such as the excellent 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow and I Can Hear Music: The 20/20 Sessions sets), one wonders what would’ve happened if The Beach Boys had a team akin to those who helped, say, The Beatles keep it all together. A George Martin-type in a producer role to make up for Brian not being sole producer anymore, and a Brian Epstein-type manager, perhaps.
Perhaps Wild Honey doesn’t need an additional track, maybe it being a brisk 11-song collection is the point, but I do wonder how different the album could’ve been had it included tracks of the era like ‘Time to Get Alone’ (in its original incarnation with Brian on lead vocals), ‘Lonely Days’, ‘Can’t Wait Too Long’, and ‘Cool, Cool Water’. More songs, the merrier? Or cluttering an already wonderful album? What if these outtakes were B-sides of singles? Unlike what The Beatles did, Beach Boys B-sides were often earlier album tracks. The ‘Darlin” single (the track is from Wild Honey), for example, is backed with ‘Here Today’ from Pet Sounds. What if something like one of those above outtakes was the B-side instead? The Beach Boys rarely did that sort of thing. 20/20‘s sessions produced an utter gem with ‘We’re Together Again’, strangely left unreleased until the Friends/20/20 two-fer CD in 1990. Other worthy songs could’ve made it too, like Dennis’ ‘Well I Know You Knew’ and the instrumental ‘Mona Kana’. Alas, it’s another 12-track album that runs under a half hour. Again, these tracks could’ve been B-sides. Friends‘ outtakes are rather skeletal, so it’s hard to gauge with that one.
So why do I bring up album sequencing? Well, it was a major reason why Sunflower, their first album for Warner Bros.’ Reprise Records, took a while to come out. The Beach Boys recorded a plethora of tracks from the autumn of 1969 and into January of 1970. The first acetate of Sunflower, which had an alternate working title in Add Some Music, was submitted in mid-February. On a crushing day for the boys, this line-up was rejected by Warner Bros. Records chief Mo Ostin. Capitol executives had never rejected a Beach Boys album, they even accepted something as weird and erratic as Smiley Smile. Ostin was more serious, and he was one of the few in the industry who had the guts to pursue business with a band that had such a poor reputation. He knew the band was capable of better, and he let them know that. This was the label of Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, etc. It wasn’t going to be fun and games anymore.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the original Sunflower acetate that Ostin rejected, it’s a mix of some truly beautiful and game-changing work (‘Slip On Through’, ‘This Whole World’, ‘Lady’) and some rather silly fluff (‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’, ‘When Girls Get Together’). The band made the right call in pulling tracks from a studio album made up of mainly early 1969 recordings (including the single ‘Break Away’ and its B-side, ‘Celebrate the News’) that they were going to give to Capitol to fulfill their contract, and using those songs in place of the ones that weren’t the best. Ostin wanted a knockout album, and he eventually got it with the finished Sunflower. As an album, Sunflower comes together a lot better than the previous four LPs, but that is from a sequencing standpoint. The music on it is no better or worse than the best stuff on Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20. However, Sunflower shows that perhaps stronger albums could’ve been sequenced from such great material (many of which you could hear for yourself elsewhere) in the past. Even then, Sunflower could’ve used at least two more tracks, as there was space for a little bit more. The minimally lush and intimate ‘Lady’ would’ve worked wonderfully on side two, the groovy and fast-paced ‘Susie Cincinnati’ (which would remain a B-side until it randomly appeared on the 1976 album 15 Big Ones) more than fit with the material, the exuberant ‘Good Time’ could’ve even had a slot. I would’ve loved for the Spector-esque ‘San Miguel’, pulled from the “Last Capitol Album”, to be on there as well. At least with today’s tech, you could make a theoretical album via playlists. I’ve got tons…
On its own, however, Sunflower suitably sounds like a new direction being taken. The brothers and cousins and friends sound like they have matured as musicians, without being Brian’s backing, crushing any notion that it was all Brian’s show and the band was/is nothing without him. (A strangely prevalent myth, along with the utter nonsense about Brian leaving the band completely post-SMiLE.) Dennis rules the day with his slick and sexy ‘Slip On Through’, his rather charged rocker ‘It’s About Time’, and two tracks pulled from the “Last Capitol Album”; the tongue-in-cheek gospel-infused ‘Got To Know the Woman’, and what is perhaps one of the greatest love songs ever penned… ‘Forever’. ‘Slip On Through’, which is the opening track, already has so much going on from a vocal and instrumental standpoint… Does this song have more layers than a tall, rich cake? It more than beautifully sets up what’s in store, for sure. The lyrics are fairly straightforward, but it’s the execution that elevates all of it. This is also very much the case with ‘Forever’.
Even Bruce Johnston is writing songs here, after contributing the instrumental ‘The Nearest Faraway Place’ to 20/20. His songs are regularly called the weakest links of the album, but I think ‘Deirdre’ (co-written with Brian) is a good piece of sunny, roll-down-a-grassy-hill pop with lovely harmonies. Plus, it also served as the basis to the utterly creepy Cave Of The Past music in the seminal 1994 video game Mother 2: Giygas Strikes Back, or Earthbound as we yanks know it. His other contribution, ‘Tears in the Morning’, is a bit syrupy in vocal execution, but nonetheless so nicely produced that I can’t knock it. The piano coda at the end adds a near-devastating finale to the downer song. An earlier mix of the song has more Vegas-like approach, with loud brass and a better vocal from Bruce, this was on the acetate, I think it should’ve been kept for the album.
Brian’s brilliance is there, too, what with all-time classics like ‘This Whole World’ and the ethereal ‘All I Wanna Do’, which sounds like it was recorded some 30-40 years *after* its release. ‘This Whole World’, in less than two minutes, creates a doo-wop whirlpool that thinks about the better elements of the world around us. A world and worldview we wished we had, arguably. ‘Cool, Cool Water’, from the Wild Honey sessions, was resurrected at the behest of Warner executive Lenny Waronker. What was once a scant, minute-long piece of watery music evolved into a sonic masterpiece that now ran 5 minutes, incorporating some of the water chant from the fabled SMiLE into the proceedings. The album is gorgeous like any post-1965 Beach Boys LP, it’s also experimental like their past few albums, but it feels new for them in many ways. A state of the art system was put together to make the album sound so dynamic and so multi-layered.
Even the tracks that date back to early 1969 are so dense and layered, these sound nothing like what was wowing general listeners that same year. How in the world was ‘All I Wanna Do’, a distinctly otherworldly and airy love song which might’ve accidentally invented dream pop and shoegaze and God only knows what else, recorded back then? Heck, the blueprints for this perfect song were down in mid-1968, as you can now hear that iteration on the I Can Hear Music: The 20/20 Sessions archival set. Even if Brian was not at the forefront, he’s still here, and his mates have clearly taken cues from his landmark achievements on Pet Sounds and SMiLE. Speaking of Pet Sounds, Carl Wilson’s sole writing contribution, a Brian and Jardine collaboration called ‘Our Sweet Love’, is basically a wintry ‘God Only Knows’. Anything Pet Sounds-esque on the record is already a plus.
The album also has something of a utopian feel to it. Much like the low-key, mellow island paradise of Friends and the back-to-basics energy and charm of Wild Honey, Sunflower mostly feels like it’s inhabiting a world far removed from the turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Almost a fantasy, maybe even fairy tale-esque setting with a tinge of the modern rock world. Dare I say kind of a Disney-esque one, too? I’ve already waxed about Disney and Beach Boys connections, in fact there’s an essay by historian Peter Reum about how SMiLE is the musical equivalent of Walt Disney’s Fantasia… You know, I may just do that again one day. Anyways… ‘It’s About Time’ perhaps is the one break back to reality, what with its hippie universal peace and love lyrics (never ham-fisted or written without genuine sincerity), but even those lyrics are a simple call for what is more important in life. Idiosyncratic lyrics like the ones in ‘This Whole World’, and very naive and innocent tracks like ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’ and ‘At My Window’ add to this fantastical and sun-drenched atmosphere.
‘Add Some Music to Your Day’, much like ‘This Whole World’, embodies a very innocent worldview of love and joy and music. I mean, it’s in the title! Who would ever say a phrase like that? “Oh, add some music to your day!” The lyrics are easy to laugh at, but being autistic, I tend to resonate with this kind of songwriting… I mean, Brian’s clearly writing from the heart here, as are Mike and a friend of Brian (Joe Knott) who is credited. It’s how they earnestly felt, no matter how clunky it is in execution. Or is it clunky? Do ALL lyrics have to be a particular kind of abstract and cryptic? Neurotypicals often deal in these kinds of double-meanings and crypticness as if that’s always the normal form of communication, and while Brian was never said to be autistic, a lot of his music tends to feel autistic in a way to these ears – whether it’s esoteric (because contrary to popular belief, neurodivergents can indeed excel at the abstract, poetic, or esoteric) or straightforward and blunt. I’ll definitely expand on that one day, folks. It’s curious that Reprise chose this song, of all the tracks in the can, to release as the preview single to the album. There were more conventional, and “cool” songs on deck, like ‘Slip On Through’ (later released as a single in June 1970) and ‘Lady’. Since it’s a soft song, it wasn’t going to win the rock and psychedelic crowds that firmly rejected The Beach Boys as squares, and it wasn’t going to win over the AM/pop radio crowd whom sent innocuous bubblegum songs into the Top 5 season after season; because while ‘Add Some Music’ might’ve been soft, its lyrical content wasn’t normal. According to the band’s then-marketing manager Fred Vail, radio stations simply outright refused to play the single, keeping it from getting the exposure it needed. This debut single on their new label, which had the more rocking ‘Susie Cincinnati’ on the B-side, tanked, only reaching #64 on the charts. After that, Mo said no to the first iteration of the album… You can see why, unfortunately. So enough about perceived hipness or whatever, ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’ is earnest, and that’s one thing you can’t knock it for. You can wax all day about the supposed childishness of the lyrics, but the intent is so pure. “The world could come together as one, if everybody under the sun… Add some music to your day.” How was this any different from your garden variety “peace and love” hippie mantra circa 1970?
I guess it was greeted with “No, not like that.” That, and just the general Beach Boys phobia every American seemed to have in 1970. The single wasn’t released abroad, but the band’s output was consistently cracking the Top 10 in the UK during this period, and their singles were smash hits in several countries around the world. If released in the UK, ‘Add Some Music’ would’ve easily hit the Top 10. Now, ‘At My Window’ seems to be sung completely from the perspective of a child. The song is literally coated in sugary syrup, and for many, that’s a major no-no. Engage with the song’s sense of wonder, and it works. In looking at Sunflower as a fantastical utopia, this one’s probably the most fairy tale-like, right down to the singer seemingly becoming the bird that came to his window. It all adds to this bright and sunny dream-like world. Sure, there can be a little trouble in paradise with break-up songs like ‘Tears in the Morning’, but it’s all part of the picture the album paints. Amidst war and assassinations and protests and horrible truths of the American way being brought into the light, who in 1970 wouldn’t want to live in such a world?
By comparison, that original acetate from February 1970 sounds more like a step up from 20/20, not so much a complete piece like this. You have ‘Slip On Through’, you have ‘This Whole World’, ‘Add Some Music to Your Day’, plus ‘At My Window’… and you also have ‘Our Sweet Love’ and ‘Tears in the Morning’. Six songs from that original acetate made it to the final album. A look at the other songs – sans ‘Lady’ – does indeed reveal why Mo wasn’t impressed. ‘Good Time’ is a favorite of mine, but it too is very reflective of Brian’s state of mind at the time it was written, and maybe a little too poppy to be serious? After all, in 1970, music had to make “statements”, it had to be “serious”. What was coming out of Reprise mostly fit that bill, for sure. ‘When Girls Get Together’ may have a lush, almost Sicilian atmosphere to it (underscored by a delicate marxophone!), Brian and Mike’s lyrics are improbably out of step with the world. This was perhaps the worldview of ‘This Whole World’ and ‘Add Some Music’, but at its most unchecked. It also might ring as a little misogynist, but I think the lyrics are too naive and out of it to be classified as such. More accidentally sexist than deliberately. ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet, Pete’ was Al Jardine’s apparent send-up of the musical Hair, an unabashedly jokey track (complete with a hidden interlude, a hypnotic carousel-spinning cover of ‘Over the Waves’, suitably dubbed ‘Carnival’), but perhaps not funny enough for the Warner executives or just not good enough to be album material. I wonder if they had the same reaction towards the jumping ‘I Just Got My Pay’. Lastly, there’s B-side ‘Susie Cincinnati’, which I think should’ve been on the finished album. It’s a fine collection of unrelated songs, but Ostin and WB top dogs wanted something better than that. Not another Beach Boys platter.
The 10-track “Last Capitol Album” is more or less a collection of songs, as well. Like the Sunflower acetate, this would’ve been fine on its own. You had the strong ‘Break Away’/’Celebrate the News’ single for starters, plus you had the four songs that went onto Sunflower (‘Got to Know the Woman’, ‘Deirdre’, ‘All I Wanna Do’, and ‘Forever’), you had Al’s delightful ode to carnival barnstorming (‘Loop de Loop’, a rewrite of Brian’s ‘Sail Plane Song’), and the the aforementioned Mexican-inspired blast that is ‘San Miguel’. The rest of the “Last Capitol Album” was formed up of the re-recorded ‘Cottonfields’ single, and some other odds and ends.
Because of this rejection, The Beach Boys went and truly put together something cohesive here, maybe by accident, maybe not. As much as I love the music of The Beach Boys, I often find myself at odds with how they fared with albums. Now, not every album in the world has to be some Pet Sounds/Sgt. Pepper/Freak Out!/Village Green Preservation Society concept album with a definite theme running through it. A mere collection of just really great songs is more than enough to make an album a classic for me. Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20 are indeed great albums in my book, Wild Honey is my personal favorite Beach Boys record and one of my favorites, period. 11 short songs or not, it’s pure bliss. Maybe it didn’t need those additional songs I talked about earlier, maybe it didn’t need ‘Can’t Wait Too Long’ or ‘Time To Get Alone’. Great as is.
However, sometimes the band’s inability to really take the album format more seriously can result in something that definitely feels like it needs more tracks on it… Enter Surf’s Up.
Upon Sunflower‘s completion in July 1970, The Beach Boys went and recorded a few new songs, and briefly pursued a side-project with a singer named Terry Jacks. The endeavor that ensued was a song called ‘Seasons of the Sun’, a sentimental rewrite of a French song about a man planning his own funeral… Okay, what a shift in direction! The band and Jacks didn’t see eye to eye on the project, and parted ways. Jacks later recorded it in 1973 and it became an international hit for him. The other sessions produced a beautiful, folksy portrait of Big Sur, aptly titled ‘Big Sur’, the first song Mike Love wrote on his own. Another song that came from this round of recordings was Brian’s inviting, dopey-earnest (in his grand tradition at this point in time) ‘H.E.L.P. is on the Way’, literally “health foods – the song”. Where else will you find a pop song with lyrics about enemas and being “stark naked” in front of a mirror? But from these sessions, Brian’s harrowing cry for help ”Til I Die’ was also fully realized. Talk about a real 180! Al Jardine got serious during these sessions too, almost uncharacteristically. He went from barnstorming fun like ‘Loop de Loop’ and the pretty ‘At My Window’ to… ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’, a downer folk song about being out of a job.
After Sunflower‘s release at the end of August, engineer Stephen Desper and the band put together a reference acetate containing these new recordings sans ‘Seasons in the Sun’, along with the tracks that were on the first Sunflower acetate that didn’t make it to the finished album, including ‘Susie Cincinnati’. Rounding out this collection were two leftovers from the “Last Capitol Album” line-up, ‘Loop de Loop’ and ‘San Miguel’. This wasn’t an album per se, but the skeleton of what could’ve been the next Warner Bros. album. It also was the basis of several urban legends, including the ever-lasting Landlocked mythos. Of course, as the seasoned Beach Boys fan knows, “Landlocked” was a suggested working title for the 2nd Reprise release.
Around this time, The Beach Boys were now with something of a new leader… A disc jockey named Jack Rieley, who snaked his way into the band with falsified credentials. He had been watching them for a very long time, and wanted to undo their “unhip” image in North America. One of his first moves was pushing them to really get out there and play with the “heavies”, and to ditch the usual hits that they played live… so they appeared at the Big Sur Folk Festival in October of 1970, and brought down the house. Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner, who infamously declared in 1967 that The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson were overrated hacks, was one of the attendees who was impressed. Rieley used this success of this appearance as a marketing punch for Sunflower, which was not even two months into release selling very poorly. (It topped out at a pitiful #151 on the Billboard chart.) He spearheaded a full-page ad for Sunflower that not only referenced the Big Sur appearance, but also quoted the major publications who approved of the album (such as Rolling Stone and Rock Magazine), and also took jabs at Capitol Records for continuously painting the band as a bunch of surfers post-1964, adding anecdotal stories about people covertly buying Beach Boys records by “sandwiching” them between albums by then-cooler bands like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young… So others couldn’t see what they were buying. That’s just how square the public thought The Beach Boys were in 1970… It really was that bad, wasn’t it?
Rieley, according to a Q&A he hosted in 1996, was also shown the “2nd Warner Brothers Album” acetate that was compiled in September. He wasn’t impressed with the collection, and curiously, in his Q&A he singled out ‘Loop de Loop’ for its title alone. He deemed some of the material forgettable, and that Mo Ostin was similarly taken aback. Rieley’s next plan was to have The Beach Boys ditch silly songs about flip flop flyin’ in aeroplanes, and start writing songs with “socially conscious” lyrics. In early 1971, things were changing. Rieley pushed for the unthinkable… The band played alongside The Grateful Dead in February, to much appraisal. Were The Beach Boys finally “relevant” now? Were they finally “hip”? Were they in-line with the new rock world?
The plan was now cemented. A new album would be centered around a composition called ‘Surf’s Up’, a cornerstone of the mythical SMiLE… And not at all a song about surfing. Brian Wilson specifically titled the song that in an ironic manner, as The Beach Boys had given up writing surfing songs in 1964. Up until this point, pieces of SMiLE had been appearing on the band’s albums. Smiley Smile was a complete re-invention of that ill-fated project, and used a couple of major songs from the original, albeit in highly reimagined form. It also contained the ‘Good Vibrations’ single and the single version of ‘Heroes and Villains’. Wild Honey‘s final track, ‘Mama Says’, is an a-cappella chant meant for the original version of ‘Vega-Tables’. ‘Little Bird’ on Friends lifts the chorus from ‘Child is the Father of the Man’ for its final section. 20/20 contained ‘Our Prayer’ and a modified version of ‘Cabin Essence’ (spelt as one word, for whatever reason), and as mentioned earlier, Sunflower integrated the water chant into ‘Cool, Cool Water’. The project may have died, but its individual pieces slowly got out to the world, whether anyone cared to notice or not.
In fact, when The Beach Boys signed with Warner/Reprise in November 1969, part of the deal was finally finishing SMiLE and releasing it. But if that was required, why did Rieley, the Wilsons, and everyone else agree on finishing ‘Surf’s Up’ as a song for the next Warner Bros. album? ‘Surf’s Up’ is one of the greatest pieces of music ever conceived, but it was always meant for SMiLE, not for an album of unrelated songs about the environment and nostalgia and foot care and welfare.
Surf’s Up is more or less Sunflower‘s moodier brother, but with an actual SMiLE recording at the end of it. There are themes here, with the topical lyrics and such. However, Surf’s Up rarely finds itself in the fantasy world that Sunflower aurally created, and gravitates more towards the real world. Certainly, the likes of ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’, ‘Student Demonstration Time’, and ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’ are about as real-world as you can get from this band, and perhaps that contributes to the downfall of something like ‘Student Demonstration Time’. That rewrite of rock n’ roll classic ‘Riot in Cell Block #9’ is one of the most contested songs in the history of the band’s output. It’s redundant to pile on the criticisms. While the crunchy rock riffs and production are top-notch, Mike Love’s misguided lyrics about the May 1970 Kent State shootings just don’t work. Some subject matter can simply be out of a songwriter’s grasp, and it makes me wonder if Brian or Al or Bruce could’ve even handled it. Dennis and Carl likely would’ve done better, or not done it at all. Writing a song about such a tragedy takes a certain kind of tact, and I wonder if the band – not just Mike Love – had it in them to do so in the first place. I mean, could you imagine Brian writing about a shooting?
The lyricists fare better on ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’, which is quite the choice for an opening track. We came off of the beauty and joy of water and mother nature in Sunflower‘s ‘Cool, Cool Water’, a tour-de-force that us wrapped in liquid heaven… Surf’s Up flips that in its first three minutes, and now we’re seeing a paradise threatened, water turning to some kind of horrible sludge. Listening to both back to back is strangely very effective, when you get past lyrical stumbles like “to be cool with the water, the message of this song”. It’s not a poetic environmental song by any means, Mike and Al are upfront about water pollution rather than being esoteric about it… And because of that, it’s still earnest. Water, oceans, etc…. All in the Beach Boys’ Southern California DNA, of course they’d be devastated to see it be tainted, and it comes through in this song. The murky and ominous production, the sorrow in the lead vocals, and the stark piano coda… It sets the tone for the album nicely, if the album cover of a dim End of the Trail painting already didn’t.
Before getting to the final trio of songs, these socially conscious themes find their way on other tracks. ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’ already fit the mood of the album, so it was kept. Bruce Johnston’s ‘Disney Girls (1957)’ is a soft and sweet paean to his teen years, a song that could’ve been trapped in mushy syrup, but ascends to a heavenly plain for about 30 seconds towards its conclusion. It too is very earnest, and saves the song from being potentially cornball. It also makes sense within the context of the album, Bruce is reminiscing about happier times, which is something we humans sometimes do in tough times. In 1971, the Vietnam War was still going on, and there were still plenty of social issues to go around. The hippie years definitely brought concerns to light, like environmental problems and such. ‘Disney Girls’ is Bruce softly retreating to a happy place for a little bit, and within that context, can you blame him? It’s not like people my age constantly fawning over the ’90s in these harsh times, Bruce just wanted a little moment of “remember”, and that’s why it works. It’s his best song in my estimation, and the section where he sings “she’s pretty swell ’cause she likes church, bingo chances, and old-time dances” never fails to floor me.
The weirdest inclusion on the album is the silly Sunflower outtake, ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet’. Because it’s about taking care of one’s feet, it somehow got on here under the guise of being “topical”? Health, maybe? Avocado cream is mentioned, watching what you eat, “better take care of your life ’cause nobody else will.” You can see why this was left off of Sunflower, not only is it more of a jokey song, but it also wouldn’t have fit that album’s feel and aura. Does it fit here? For many years, it was derided by some as a mood-killer, but an all-angsty and downer Beach Boys album just doesn’t sound enjoyable to me. ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet’ is here to remind us of the humor that has always made The Beach Boys’ work relatable and human.
Carl Wilson rebounds from having only written one song on the previous album, and absolutely dominates… His ethereal and mysterious ‘Feel Flows’ is like his answer to ‘All I Wanna Do’, a flat-out masterpiece and one of the best things this band has ever recorded. ‘Long Promised Road’ feels like one hell of a journey, too. He’s emerging as a Brian 2.0, if Dennis wasn’t.
By the way, where is Dennis? Well, he’s present on the songs, but not a single song written by him or sung by him is on the album… This to me is what has always kind of hurt Surf’s Up. According to Jack Rieley, Dennis kept his contributions off of Surf’s Up for fear that the album was becoming too much of a Wilson brothers’ affair, as they wanted for everyone to pitch in. This of course contradicts what Rieley had said in the same breath, same year, about Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston in his lengthy Q&A. He painted them as the other camp in the band, the side that wasn’t artistic and at odds with the brothers’ Wilson… Yet Dennis had to take his two songs off of the album, two songs that absolutely would’ve strengthened the record, to make room? Other rumors stated that Dennis and Carl got in a fight over sequencing, so Dennis kept his tracks, later thinking they’d work for a possible solo album. After all, the Sunflower outtake ‘Lady’ and a new recording of his called ‘Sound of Free’, were released as a single in December 1970 credited to just him and Daryl Dragon, under the pseudonym “Rumbo”. It seemed like Dennis was veering towards a solo career more than anything, and was perhaps saving the best for his own interests?
Either way, Surf’s Up could’ve greatly benefitted from Dennis’ songs. Recorded for the album were ‘4th of July’ and ‘(Wouldn’t It Be Nice To) Live Again’, both recordings absolutely fit the mood of the album, but alas. ‘Lady’ could’ve been included too, as it was a great leftover from Sunflower. Why was that released as a solo single in the UK only? Who was in charge of such decisions? In a more professionally-run situation, Dennis’ songs would’ve made it to the album, not get saved for UK-exclusive solo singles that virtually no one bought. This was the kind of thing that The Beatles ran into in their final years. John Lennon had toyed with releasing the Beatles recording ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’ as a Plastic Ono Band single. Instead, Plastic Ono Band releases were projects that John spearheaded that may have involved one Beatle. (Such as ‘Cold Turkey’) The Beach Boys had kind of done this before, too. ‘Caroline, No’ from Pet Sounds was released as a single credited to just Brian Wilson, while ‘Gettin’ Hungry’ from Smiley Smile was billed as a Brian & Mike joint… But they’re both Beach Boys songs, so that was just a name game more than anything.
Brian, circa 1971.
Surf’s Up is of course most notable for its closing trio. An emotional whiplash that was already coming off of the shadowy uncertainty of ‘Lookin’ at Tomorrow’, it all starts with Brian’s ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’, which was co-written by Jack Rieley. (He had also co-written ‘Feel Flows’ and ‘Long Promised Road’.) Keeping with the environmental themes, it’s sung from the perspective of a tree that’s dying from air pollution, set to a very minimal backing that adds such an ominous tone to the dreary lyrics. Rieley sang the lyrics, definitely an odd choice, but he apparently took it on because none of the band mates wanted to sing such a depressing song. Its origins apparently in the 20/20 sessions, ”Til I Die’ was tracked as a demo in late 1969, in the midst of the Sunflower sessions, and it’s very easy to see why no major work on it was done until August 1970… Almost a year later. This was Brian at his most hopeless and dour, and yet the song beautifully matches how he felt that lonely night. You feel his struggle, whether he’s a “cork in the ocean” or a “leaf in a valley.” Being the middle song of this trio, it’s like that second act of a movie where things get very dark, almost irreversible… Until the final third comes in triumphantly…
‘Surf’s Up’… If you didn’t have any bootlegs of the SMiLE recordings of this song, or if you hadn’t seen Brian Wilson perform it on the Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution TV special in April 1967, this was your first time hearing this song. It is very much based on the backing track and piano demos of the song from 1966, with new overdubs mainly spearheaded by Carl. The end of the song integrates ‘Child is the Father of the Man’. Without any SMiLE context, ‘Surf’s Up’ closes this trio of Wilson songs in a very unique way, and that alone is very interesting because on SMiLE, ‘Surf’s Up’ had one purpose, on this album it has a whole other purpose. What even is Brian and Van Dyke Parks’ song about, anyways? I always sort of interpreted it as Brian, or the singer, at a concert having a powerful epiphany… And within a dream-like state, is wowed by God and finds the joys in innocence (hence, ‘Child is the Father to the Man’)… Whatever it may be about, to whomever listens to it, it’s just one of those pieces of music that is beyond comprehension, like the majority of SMiLE was going to be… And how that piece can fit perfectly on a whole other album that it wasn’t built for… This must’ve been mindblowing for many a listener in 1971… What other album that year was going to end like THAT?
And that makes one wonder, what if this were just the “2nd Warner Brothers Album”, not at all guided by a track intended for something else? Would this theoretical 2nd WB Album/Landlocked stand on its own more? Or would it be missing something without the piece of the Wilson/Parks opus? Even with SMiLE fragments attached to them, albums like Sunflower and Wild Honey really are standalone endeavors. Surf’s Up kind of isn’t, and yet ‘Surf’s Up’ being on that album and closing it, really makes for one heck of an experience. It’s no different from 20/20, which closes with both ‘Our Prayer’ and ‘Cabin Essence’ (in that order), but perhaps there is more of a thematic cohesiveness on Surf’s Up. 20/20 was assembled from leftovers and odds-n-ends, though you can make an argument that the patched together was like a showcase of The Beach Boys’ sound over the years… But ‘Our Prayer’ and ‘Cabin Essence”s inclusion on 20/20 are more like a taste of what was going on in late 1966/early 1967, they don’t seem to be working off of a theme or storyline. 20/20 is like a Beach Boys buffet: It has a surf song, it has a rock song, it has a Wild Honey leftover, it has a Friends-sounding waltz, it has a Spector-esque production… Tracks that seem to reference the many different ideas The Beach Boys went for from the beginning of their career to the end of the ’60s. A SMiLE recording or two being present makes sense. Surf’s Up was using ‘Surf’s Up’, hence it being titled after the track, to form the album. Or at least, the last three songs.
If you kept that concept, brought in the Dennis songs, and maybe worked in ‘Big Sur’, and at least one more leftover from the Sunflower sessions (‘Lady’ was *right* there), the album could’ve been even stronger and an even bigger statement. Rewrite ‘Student Demonstration Time’, or have it just be a straight cover of ‘Riot in Cell Block #9’, it’s even better…
Surf’s Up was what Sunflower wasn’t, a commercial success. It got the same praise that Sunflower was rewarded back in late 1970, but with a new fanbase and more respect from the “in” crowd, The Beach Boys were riding a different wave. Surf’s up, mmmm-mmmm-mmmm aboard a tidal wave indeed… These two albums go together so wonderfully, despite some disconnect. Later albums that The Beach Boys did for Reprise go in all sorts of different directions, so that these two form a dyad of sorts. Surf’s Up was followed by Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” in May 1972, an album that was a radical shift in tone, to the point where some fans don’t even think it sounds like a Beach Boys album. You get the idea. Reinvention happened, and happened again and again. Nothing The Beach Boys did throughout the remainder of the 1970s channeled the essence of Sunflower and Surf’s Up. These two releases were left as a dynamic duo…