The Beach Boys started the eighties much like they ended the seventies. With Bruce Johnston back in the fold, they recorded Keepin’ The Summer Alive, and album that sounds pretty much like L.A. (Light Album) only without the lows (10-minute disco songs) or the highs (tracks imported from Dennis’s unfinished second album Bambu). So a pretty uninteresting record overall. They’re still trying to recapture their old sound while maintaining enough of a modern gloss to try and get back on the radio.

Sadly, Dennis would never finish Bambu, as he ended up drowning in 1983 making Keepin’ The Summer Alive the last Beach Boys album with Dennis on it – even though he didn’t contribute much. Given that tragedy, it would be five years before the Beach Boys would record another album. During this time it was looking more and more like Brian was going to follow his brother Dennis into an early grave, so The Beach Boys re-hired Dr. Landy. Dr. Landy turned out to be as much of a psychopath as a psychiatrist. He began cutting Brian off from all of his friends and family, insinuating himself in all of Brian’s financial affairs, over-medicating the man to keep him docile and in control. But Brian needed some really aggressive and unconventional treatment. It’s hard to know how to feel about Dr. Landy. On one hand, he probably saved Brian’s life. On the other he also ruined Brian’s life.

Thanks to Dr. Landy’s intervention, Brian was able to participate in the 1985 eponymous album The Beach Boys. The record was produced by Steve Levine, probably best known for producing Culture Club. So the album sounds pretty much like you would expect it to. Dr. Landy also pushed Brian to start a solo career (possibly so he could have further control over Brian’s finances). His first solo album was also eponymous, 1988’s Brian Wilson. Brian had written a song called Love & Mercy that he was extremely proud of and still performs as his encore to this day. However, while trying to push Love & Mercy as a single, the rest of the Beach Boys managed to have a fluke of a hit without him.

Originally from the Cocktail soundtrack, Kokomo stunned everyone by becoming a huge smash. Despite an extensive history of unfinished and/or unreleased albums in their wake, the success of Kokomo spurred the Beach Boys to complete Still Cruisin’ despite the fact they didn’t have enough songs to fill up an album and the last three tracks are just old songs tacked on to the end. The concept was supposed to be all songs from recent movie soundtracks, which is how they justified the inclusion of I Get Around, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, and California Girls. But no one gave Al or Brian the memo, so they just contributed some new tunes to the album. Still Cruisin’ is a cold-hearted cash grab of an album that hasn’t been released on Spotify so I wasn’t really able to include any tracks from it.

Having proven to himself that he didn’t need Brian to have a hit, Mike continued without him on the 1992 album Summer In Paradise. That album is truly ghastly, although the rap rendition of Surfin’ and the version of Forever sung by John Stamos do have a bit of rubbernecking-curiosity to them. It does have the distinction of being one of the first albums recorded in ProTools. But this album isn’t on Spotify either.

Luckily by this point Dr. Landy was out of the picture. In the mid-nineties, Don Was tried to get the group together to record a new album. Though a couple of tracks like Some Sweet Day, Soul Searchin’, and You’re Still A Mystery have come out much later, Carl wasn’t feeling it and so the band abandoned this album.

In 1996, trying to ride the coattails of Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus, the band got Brian Wilson to produce an album of re-recorded Beach Boys classic with various country stars singing lead title Stars & Stripes, vol. 1. The only one of these tracks that is even remotely listenable is Willie Nelson’s version of The Warmth Of Sun. However, I couldn’t include it because (are you noticing a pattern here?) it is also unavailable on Spotify. There would not be a Stars & Stripes, vol. 2.

Carl ended up succumbing to cancer shortly after the album was scuttled. Being the last anchor who could try and get everyone to work together, the Beach Boys split into three separate camps starting in the new millennium. Mike and Bruce had the rights to the Beach Boys name, touring and selling merch willy-nilly while not even bother to record new material since they knew that wasn’t where there bread-and-butter lay. Brian surprisingly, became something of a touring regular, while continuing to put out new solo material. Some of which are good and some of which are pretty bad. There’s a Disney album and a Gershwin album and a Christmas album. He also finished SMiLE in 2004. He had gained enough stature as the “genius” behind the Beach Boys that he could easily tour under his own name with a 20-piece band made of members of the Wondermints and various other groups. This just left poor Al Jardine to try and tour as “The Beach Boys Friends & Family” sometimes with Brian’s kids Carnie and Wendy from Wilson Phillips. Eventually Al has sued and forced to rename his touring ensemble. This was hardly the last lawsuit between bandmembers.

Given the in-fighting and bad blood between everyone, it was somewhat surprising to hear that in 2012 all of the remaining Beach Boys would be reuniting for a tour. Even the erstwhile David Marks! Even more shocking, Brian was going to produce an album for them. While the resultant record, That’s Why God Made The Radio, was merely okay, people were just happy that it existed at all, much less that it wasn’t terrible. It pretty much sounded like a Brian Wilson solo recording of the time (check out No Pier Pressure) but with Mike Love’s auto-tuned voice in the mix. Needless to say this truce didn’t last long, and after the one tour the band disassembled again. Several members from both Brian’s and Mike’s backing bands swapped side. Al started touring as a member of Brian’s band, as did Blondie Chaplin, which meant that he may have had more actual Beach Boys on-stage than the band that bore the Beach Boys’ name. They still put aside their squabbles every now and then to do something stupid like release an album of Beach Boys songs with the London Philharmonic overdubbed on top, but it is unlikely that there will be a new Beach album again.

Then again, we’ve said that before…