By 1970, all of the members of the Beach Boys were writing and producing and contributing equally. This made the Beach Boys very happy. You know who wasn’t happy? Their new record label, Reprise. They rejected the first pass at the album and insisted the band go back and repurpose the SMiLE-era fragment, I Love To Say Da-Da into Cool, Cool Water so they would have something to sell this album with. The resultant record, Sunflower, frequently shows up in people’s list of best post-Pet Sounds albums by the Beach Boys. Frankly I don’t get it. Sure you get to really see what each other the band members is interested in and made of, but at least a couple of the members of the band (Mike and Bruce and maybe Al) just aren’t that talented or interesting. That leaves a rather uneven and uninspiring listen.
But despite the modicum of critical praise that Sunflower received, no one in 1970 was interested in buying it. In an attempt to turn their commercial fortunes around, the band hired manager Jack Riley. Jack had some ideas about the band. He though they needed to present themselves as far more mature. Start writing songs about social issues of the day — especially environmentalism. He wanted the band to be taken seriously. He even considered changing the name from The Beach Boys to just Beach. Jack had a real voice in the band, and not only that he also sang lead on the song A Day In The Life Of A Tree. Yeah, that’s how eager Jack was to have the band be seen as sincere.
Their first album with Jack Riley was Surf’s Up, the title track of which was another SMiLE remnant that the band finished off as best as they could. Part of being taken seriously was having Brian go around being a genius again. But Brian wasn’t really interested. He contributed very little to the album, and was disinterested completely in reviving any of that failed album that haunted him. Still, what little Brian did do was majestic, witness the glorious ‘Til I Die. The rest of the album was an odd mish-mash of complaints about student demonstrations and podiatry advice.
Another important step in getting people to re-engage with The Beach Boys was getting rid of that schmaltz-merchant, Bruce Johnston. His songs like Disney Girls and Diedre were so saccharine they could rot your teeth. So Jack fired him. Bruce did alright for himself in this time however. He wrote the song that Barry Mannilow sang in which he claimed “he wrote the songs that made the whole world cry”. Jack was probably right to fire him.
Unfortunately this left a gap in the band that was compounded by the fact that Denny had just broken his arm. The Beach Boys need a new drummer and bassist – so they cannibalized 2/3 of the South African R&B trio, Flame. But unlike many other touring or backing musicians who would float through the Beach Boys’ wider orbit over the years (including The Captain from Captain & Tenille and Uncle Jesse from Full House) Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin were given full-fledged membership status and credentials in The Beach Boys. Of course, Jack probably figured it would help reverse their clean-cut, lily-white image if the Beach Boys were now racially diverse.
Ricky and Blondie’s contributions to the Beach Boys didn’t really sound like anything the band had done in the past – or even what they were working on currently, but it was a nice change of pace on the next few albums.
The first album they recorded with this new line-up was the clunkily titled Carl & The Passions – “So Tough”. On of the stipulations of the Beach Boys’ contract with Reprise was that they were supposed to finish the SMiLE album for them. And the plan was for it to come packaged with this Carl & The Passions. Unfortunately Brian was even more uninterested in reviving the project than ever, and Carl, despite his best efforts, was unable to finish it himself. Just completing the one song Surf’s Up seems to have broken him. So the new album actually came bundled with Pet Sounds instead. As if anyone deep enough into the Beach Boys in 1972 to buy their new album didn’t already have a copy of that. Needless to say, lawsuits revolving around breach-of-contract soon followed.
For the next record, Jack though the best idea was to ship the Beach Boys’ entire studio to a small town in Holland (and great expense) and hope that everybody – especially Brian – would get inspired by it. Brian, who rarely even left his bed around this period was less than thrilled. When he finally did make it to the Netherlands, instead of helping with the album, he spent his time writing and recording a weird, poorly written fairy tale called Mt. Vernon & Fairway, narrated by Jack Riley himself. The extended piece was so completely at odds with the album the rest of the band was making it was banished to a separate EP that was included with the Holland album.
The rest of the album is another collection of disparate tracks from the remaining Beach Boys who not only didn’t have much in common, but also seemed less and less to like each other. Decamping in Europe didn’t do much except make the band homesick, inspiring a three-song California Suite. Needless to say this latest attempt to seem current and fashionable failed, much like all of Jack Riley’s other plans. But there was someone out there at this time 1974 who would unwittingly began a whole new phase in the Beach Boys career. And it was the same man who also gave the world Jar-Jar Binks.