The Beach Boys had come to an impasse. The failure-to-launch of the SMiLE project had left Brian shaken and unable to leave his home. However, no one else in the band was really capable or willing to try and fill his shoes at such short notice. So an inventive if insidious compromise was put in place: they would build a recording studio in Brian’s home. This meant Brian had to produce the next record. Unless he hid in his bedroom. Which he often did.
The delays in getting SMiLE completed meant that The Beach Boys needed some new product and needed it fast. Which was okay – the band itself was competent enough after years of touring to throw together something simple pretty quickly. The problem was there was no simple material to be found. The only new stuff they had were Brian’s complex, weird-o SMiLE songs. So that’s what they used. Plus some other new songs that were simple ditties with gibberish lyrics that almost felt deep, or at least pretentious, if you squinted. Good Vibrations was still going to be on the record. It had to be. But nothing else was going to sound like it. They took one of the umpteen versions of Heroes & Villains and overdubbed some really cheap organ onto it. In fact, that cheap organ was going to become the signature sound of Smiley Smile, the new replacement album. Many tracks feature almost nothing but that stupid organ.
Overall the album that replaced SMiLE was seen as more of a “bunt than a grand slam” as Carl put it. After nearly a year of intense press coverage and hype, this tiny little album couldn’t help but be underwhelming. Over the years however, it has grown to something of a cult-like status, being one of the first DIY, lo-fi, bedroom recordings and it has belatedly garnered lots of fans in the shoegaze and no-wave set.
Next the Beach Boys wanted to try a R&B/blue-eyed soul album, called Wild Honey. This seemed like something they could do well enough, even with Brian at half-capacity. The only real downside was that this album would not feature many of the vocal harmonies that had become the Beach Boys’ trademark. While the songs are certainly far more straight-forward and energetic, the production remains fairly stripped-down and basic. At least on most of the songs. One song however, Darlin’, had a far more full-bodied arrangement and featured far more of the usual studio musicians that one would find on a Beach Boys record. That’s because this was a song that Brian had produced for the band Redwood. When the rest of the Beach Boys found out that Brian was working hard on someone else’s music while half-assing it with their own, they took the track to Darlin’, replaced the vocals, and released it on Wild Honey.
Redwood was the band that Brian wanted to sign to their newly founded Brother Records. He got vetoed and Redwood changed their name to Three Dog Night before achieving success on their own. Carl’s pick to join the label’s roster was a South African R&B trio called Flame. They didn’t get signed either, but Flame will came back later in the Beach Boys’ story. Dennis idea, was to sign a singer-songwriter by the name of Charles Manson. Luckily that never came to fruition.
Continuing in the lo-fi, homegrown production style was the next record, Friends. Not only was the production minimal, but so was the angst and the drama. In fact the album is so light and wispy and airy that it threatens to float away completely. It’s the kind of album where Brian can just give you directions to his front door over a soft samba beat and no one bats an eye. Luckily as Brian was receding further into the background, some of his bandmates were stepping up. Dennis, to the surprise of everyone, turned out to be a very sensitive and mature songwriter. Bruce finally got pictured on the album cover and celebrated by writing a drippy instrumental for the album. Friends is not a very great album, but it is often cited as Brian’s favorite. Probably because it is so chill and mellow. The whole album is very laid-back, except the last track, which is jarringly obnoxious and abrasive. Especially after following the rest of the album. Which is ironic, because the song is about (and titled) Transcendental Meditation.
To close out the sixties, and their record contract with Capitol, The Beach Boys dug out some old tunes and finished them off and called the whole thing 20/20. Before the decade had even ended, the Beach Boys were playing with nostalgia about the good old days (when they sold more records) with the single Do It Again. Al dusted off another old folk classic, Cottonfields to try and re-capture the magic of Sloop John B. A couple of SMiLE tunes, Our Prayer and Cabinessence were used to help sell the album.
By this point Al, and especially Carl, were starting to really get the hang of producing themselves. Soon the whole band would be able to carry equal weight and the Beach Boys would once again become an equanimous democracy. Whether anyone in the seventies would realize or care that The Beach Boys had metamorphosed into something completely new and different is a whole other matter.