The Pop Corporation

There’s been so many beautiful words written about the Beach Boys since the passing of Brian Wilson, that it feels partially redundant to add more here. However, for all the virtues of these tributes, there’s still a nagging sense of reducing the group to a ‘mere’ surf group, when clearly, they were so much more.

While a lot of these tributes reckoned with the towering, melancholic might of ‘Pet Sounds’, there’s a lot more to the band’s back catalogue than that particular hall-of-fame, all-time masterpiece.

With that, we’re going to look at some cornerstone Beach Boy songs – a list far from complete, but a list made up of songs that add to the mystique, the occasional soap-opera, and the overall legend of America’s finest ever group.

WHEN I GROW UP TO BE A MAN (‘TODAY!’) 1965

In the Beach Boys’ canon, ‘Today!’ is the first album that is no longer the ‘early’, surf period, and yet, not quite the psychedelic era either. On this album, the group’s sound started to gently expand, incorporating interesting studio techniques and allowing for Brian’s melancholy to seep through.

It is also the beginning of the arms race between The Beatles and the Beach Boys. For comparison, this is three month after the release of ‘Beatles For Sale’, which is of course, when The Fabs first got into smoking recreational drugs. Similarly, Brian got into weed around this time too.

‘Help Me, Ronda’ features on this LP, but it’s on ‘When I Grow Up To Be A Man’ that you can resolutely hear the The Wrecking Crew giving more to Brian’s sonic palate. Written with Mike Love, you can hear the anxieties of young men wrestling with their future, and is one of the earlier chart hits to mention the phrase “turn on”. While on the surface, this is a fine teen anthem, it’s during this period that the Beach Boys begin to show their maturity.

THE WHOLE OF ‘LOVE YOU’ 1977

The ’70s were a strange time for the Beach Boys. Brian was unwell, the group lost their primary songwriter, and they had to figure some stuff out, and fast. Amongst the maelstrom of their world, lies an album that has seen its stock steadily increase over the years, as a curio in the catalogue.

It’s the Beach Boys discovering the joy of synthesisers, and it’s as wonderful as it is strange. Brian had all but retreated entirely from the group, occasionally wheeled out, but took this project on by himself, initially planned as a solo record. Not a smash on release, the sound of this album basically predicted the early ’00s psychedelia of bands like Animal Collective, cut with Wilson’s unique musical sensibilities.

The album’s engineer Earle Mankey described the album as “frighteningly accurate” to Wilson’s personality. The sessions for this album were the first time Brian had been given total creative freedom since the ‘Smile’ sessions in 1967.

KEEPIN’ THE SUMMER ALIVE (‘KEEPIN’ THE SUMMER ALIVE’) 1980

The Beach Boys in the ’80s, are not always firing on all cylinders – however, to completely write the group off is folly. At the turn of the decade, they released the super fun ‘Keepin’ The Summer Alive’, with one of the most fun Beach Boy LP covers of all time (dated, sure, but just look at it!)

The album found the group in a more free-wheeling, less-serious mode and when they were in that mode, they are one of the best. For all the introspection and weirdness, at their core, there was always a good-time rock ‘n’ roll group who wanted to sing cool melodies. The title track of the album is all these things and more. The critics were rough on this LP, but again, modern listeners who aren’t coloured by the politics of the time are finding a lot to love.

MARCELLA (‘CARL & THE PASSIONS – SO TOUGH’) 1972

The first album to feature Blondie Chaplin (who would sing ‘Sail On, Sailor’) and Ricky Fataar (The Rutles), this is another album that sold poorly thanks to lukewarm reviews from critics, but has become a cult favourite amongst fans.

With Dennis drinking heavily and letting his ego allow him to keep quitting and rejoin the group, it was clear that Chaplin and Fataar were the fresh blood the band needed to get an album over the line. The boys had been travelling to shows separately, and in some instances, using separate entrances to enter the stage. Brian had holed-up in his bedroom while the group worked in his studio downstairs, however, he managed to contribute three songs, one of which being the rousing, bubbly ‘Marcella’. ‘Here She Comes’, from the Chaplin/Fataar pen is another great song on this LP, which is very different from the group’s usual work, but only cements the idea that, even at their worst, the Beach Boys had so much to offer.

Amusingly, when the album was toured in Europe, the live band included Captain and Tennille on the stage.

‘I WENT TO SLEEP’ (20/20) 1969

While ‘Do It Again’ was the hit from 20/20, the curios contained within is what makes this album so interesting.

By this time, Brian had checked himself into psychiatric care and doesn’t feature on the album sleeve, leaving the band to use songs he’d worked on previously to flesh out the album.

For a true slice-of-life cut, the waltz of ‘I Fell Asleep’ is one of the most Brian Wilson things ever recorded. The album features a song based on a Charles Manson song, and that was about to turn the group into tabloid fodder.

‘I’D LOVE JUST ONCE TO SEE YOU’ (WILD HONEY) 1967

Paul McCartney is often credited with inventing LoFi with ‘McCartney 1’ and ‘Ram’, but overlooked is the Beach Boys ‘Wild Honey’ album, which is a charming, downbeat, homespun gem that is a world away from the gang who sang about “bushy, bushy blonde hairdos”.

The fallout from the ‘Smile’ sessions, which just about broke poor ol’ Brian, we saw the almost outsider music of ‘Smiley Smile’, and two months later, ‘Wild Honey’, turning away the studio musicians, and recorded at home. The title track brings back the ‘Pet Sounds’ theremin, and ‘Country Air’ and ‘Here Comes The Night’ have since become classics.

The whole thing is intriguing and peculiar, and where it lacks the spit and polish of the big hitters, here instead, is an almost rural charm, which you can hear in the magic ode to pottering around the house, ‘I’d Love Just Once To See You’, which has one of the finest turn-around punchlines at the end of the song that you’ll ever hear.

‘FOREVER’ (SUNFLOWER) 1970

If there’s a George Harrison in the Beach Boys, it might just be Dennis Wilson. Quietly, he gave enough songs to the group – and hugely significant ones too – to be considered one of their finest songwriters. While tracks like ‘Deirdre’ and ‘All I Wanna Do’ are the headliners, it is in ‘Forever’ that really showcases the Wilson’s unique tenderness and melancholy, so often shown by Brian.

A song that, for fans, is up there with ‘Caroline, No’ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’, ‘Forever’ showed that Dennis was right to try and cut a solo album by himself, notably the best Beach Boy solo LP, ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’.

Brian Wilson said of the song: “‘Forever’ has to be the most harmonically beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a rock and roll prayer.” Brian is dead right.

‘LEAVING THIS TOWN’ (HOLLAND) 1973

Recorded during a time when the group were considering decamping from the West Coast to Britain, the Beach Boys found themselves in the Netherlands and recorded ‘Holland’ there.

The band’s sound is dense and rich here, with Moogs and flutes complimenting rather ornate songs. This was the album that Blondie really shone, singing ‘Sail On, Sailor’, but also, the gorgeous and plaintive ‘Leaving This Town’, making a journal of a band at ill ease, looking to create a new scene for themselves.

”TIL I DIE’ (SURF’S UP) 1972

While the title track on the gloomy ‘Surf’s Up’ is a gothic, rock hymnal masterpiece, and ‘Feel Flows’ is one of the centrepiece tracks on rock flick ‘Almost Famous’, we have to squarely look at ”Til I Die’, because frankly, it’s the finest song Brian Wilson wrote outside of the ‘Pet Sounds’ sessions.

The Beatles by this point had dissolved and gone in their separate directions, and hard rock was sweeping America, it was on ”Til I Die’ that showed there was nobody in Brian Wilson’s lane. It’s a song that highly evolved and sounds like something that could have been co-written by Gershwin.

The opening is one of the most evocative Brian Wilson lyrics, showing that the surf and sea weren’t just straight tales of kids on the beach – here, the ocean is the embodiment of Wilson’s state of mind. The waves are life coming at him, the endless of the water is dread, the expanse of it all is frightening and alienating, the swell of emotion, a man completely shipwrecked:

“I’m a cork on the ocean floating over the raging sea. How deep is the ocean? How deep is the ocean? I lost my way…“

A sentiment that is simultaneously so small and fragile, yet at the same time, gigantic and monolithic. It’s a masterpiece that is a world away from ‘Fun Fun Fun’, yet, quintessentially The Beach Boys.

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