By the mid-seventies, The Beach Boys were trying really hard to seem trendy and cool and hip. At the same time George Lucas was making American Graffiti, whose soundtrack was going to cement the Beach Boys reputation as retro and nostalgic… but in a good way. They could hardly give away copies of 1972’s Carl & The Passions or 1973’s Holland, even with bonus discs attached to both, but the 2-LP compilation Endless Summer sold like gangbusters in 1974 prompting a pair of “greatest hits” follow-ups: 1975’s Spirit Of America and 1982’s Sunshine Dream.
This was fine by Mike Love. He had no problem peddling in the nostalgia circuit. So Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin were let go because they didn’t fit the new old image of The Beach Boys. Now there was need to try and plug their latest album in a show where everyone just wanted to head Barbara Ann. No need to even record new music. But at this time, it was still record sales and not touring that brought in the big bucks for musicians. And if The Beach Boys were going to capitalize on their new, family-friendly, squeaky-clean image as purveyors of fun, fun fun from before everything got weird and dark and scary they were going to have to put out an album with Brian Wilson’s name, and Brian’s alone, as producer.
Brian wasn’t in any condition to produce a whole new album at this point though. So the rest of the band hired a really intense psychiatrist to give Brian what essentially amounted to 24-hour-a-day. Surprisingly it was starting to work. Until the band received Dr. Landy’s bill. At this point they declared Brian “fixed enough” and set about promoting the new as-yet-unrecorded album with a whole “Brian Is Back!” ad blitz and campaign.
But Brian wasn’t quite back all the way. He agreed to produce a new album, but he didn’t really have any songs written. So he produced a record mostly full of malt-shop doo-wop oldies with a handful of originals thrown in. To celebrate their 15th year together the album was titled 15 Big Ones. Thanks to be the big marketing push, this became one of the Beach Boys biggest sellers in nearly a decade. Thanks to Brian’s diminished mentally capacity, this also was one of the worst albums the Beach Boys made. It’s just a bloated mess with no clear vision or even any enthusiasm from the participants
People were so burned by the mediocrity of 15 Big Ones that they just skipped the next album The Beach Boys Love You which is a shame because that album is actually very good. Certainly off-putting at first listen, but as raw and vulnerable as any outsider artist like Daniel Johnston or Wesley Willis.
It was originally planned as a solo album (called Brian Loves You) it was far more of a solo venture than even most of Brian’s solo albums. Eschewing a lyricist, Brian wrote all the words himself – even if they were just about how great he thinks Johnny Carson is or what he knows about astronomy. It is very simple and naive. In addition, Brian also played all the instruments himself, meaning all the bass lines are handled by a fart-y sounding Moog synthesizer. He even plays the rudimentary drums, sounding like Meg White with one arm tied behind her back. The rest of the band just swooped in and added the vocal harmonies on top of all this. It is very strange to say the least.
While Brian was unable to complete his solo album in 1977, Dennis was. And even more of a surprise, it was really good. While technically not a Beach Boys record, I did include a couple of tracks from Pacific Ocean Blue on this playlist.
Next up, Brian decided to do an album called Adult/Child that was going to be all crooning Sinatra-styled songs with a big band sound. While Brian was working on this Mike was recording a second Christmas album to be called Merry Christmas From The Beach Boys. Reprise Records rejected both. So The Beach Boys decamped in Iowa and rewrote the lyrics for a bunch of the Christmas songs to make them less seasonal and added a few of Adult/Child‘s less brass-heavy songs and called it M.I.U. Album. It was named after the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. It was a lot easier to swallow than The Beach Boys Love You, much slicker and more polished. But also boring as all hell. The Beach Boys commercial slide continued, so Reprise insisted that the next record be produced by Brian himself.
Only Brian had been brought back on the road to replace the fired members of Flame and had slid back into a lot of the bad habits that Dr. Landy had discouraged. He was in no shape to produce a record again. All he felt like doing was playing the old tune Shortenin’ Bread over and over again. So once again Bruce Johnston was brought in to replace Brian, only this time not as a touring member but as the album’s producer. Reprise was not happy, but what could they do? Bruce’s first idea was to take an obscure Wild Honey track called Here Comes The Night and turn it into a 10-minute disco remix. And that was one of Bruce’s better ideas as producer! Even with that monstrosity eating up a good portion of side two, the Beach Boys had to convince Dennis to give up a couple of tracks from his planned second solo album, Bambu, in order to fill out the rest of L.A. (Light Album). The subtitle was overly accurate as the album was extremely featherweight. And thanks to that album, Dennis never finished Bambu which may be an even more egregious mark against this album.
As the seventies ended, The Beach Boys seemed destined to be only remembered as a oldies band whose only hits came before Brian self-destructed in the 1960s. But the Eighties were going to throw a few curveballs at this narrative.