IN MEMORIAM: BRIAN WILSON (20 June 1942 – 11 June 2025)
BEACH BOYS RECONSIDERED
Brian Wilson died last week at the age of 82 (having outlived both his younger brothers) and there was the usual outpouring of adulation, always still referring to the “genius” tag and as the champion of American rock in a quest to equal or better what The Beatles did, as well as his mental struggles and late career resurgence.
The motivated me to relisten chronologically to all the Beach Boys studio albums up to Holland.
I am extremely fond of the best of the surf and car songs but it’s very apparent, probably because of a release schedule that sometimes required as many as three LPs a year, albeit usually of brief duration, that those early records contain a significant amount of filler, amongst which the classics really shine. This is also true of Beatles albums; it seems to me that there is such blind adoration for their output, that the accepted view is that everything on a Beatles record is brilliant because it’s on a Beatles record.
Brian Wilson was a brilliant arranger of vocal harmonies and writer of memorable melodies and on so many tunes those are the only elements of value.
The best way to enjoy the early Beach Boys is on a good compilation album, such as the original 20 Golden Greats (later expanded to 25 Golden Greats) released in the UK and South Africa, or any of the US compilations from the mid-’70s onward.
The huge clamour of claims regarding Brian Wilson’s alleged genius, stem from the period after he’d left the touring group and started making records without them, at least when recording the backing music to which the others simply added their vocals and harmonies, turning into a Phil Spector-like record producer, with vaulting ambition and a penchant for moving away from standard pop song writing to high concept weirdness, even more so that the Beatles could achieve with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which period they dealt with whimsy rather than the off-the-wall weirdness Wilson came up with.
I came to Pet Sounds (1966) late, though I knew the best tracks from 20 Golden Greats and some of the others from a strange, budget South African compilation, and I am utterly underwhelmed by it as complete album. It might be one of the best records ever or the best (fully realised) one Brian Wilson ever made and I suppose the conventional, uncritically repeated critical opinion will always rate as it as one the top five best rock albums but it doesn’t particularly resonate with me and I still hold it as a truth that it has its fair share of filler, albeit very well recorded filler.
Perhaps, like Sgt Pepper, one should’ve been young and impressionable when Pet Sounds was first released.
From Smiley Smile (1967) onwards, Brian Wilson’s role and input in the band’s record gradually recede, the pop sounds are left behind and the Beach Boys become a quirky kind of rock group with an emphasis of laid back tunes and hardly any rock, as I understand it, and very few memorable songs, though each album has a few tunes worth compiling into a Beach Boys playlist.
Smiley Smile is the least interesting record because it sounds like a bunch of drugged up guys goofing off in a recording studio rather than musicians focused on and committed to making a worthwhile record. 20/20 and (for me, but against conventional critical opinion) Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” are the best of the bunch but, for example, “Funky Pretty” on Holland (1973) almost on its own, never mind “Sail On Sailor,” mitigates an album that closes with what was probably supposed to be cutesy, whimsical quirkiness yet sounds like a children’s record that lost its way and is stranded on the adults’ beach.
After Holland the quality drops off sharply and if it’s an iffy proposition to include anything after Pet Sounds(1966) or perhaps Summer Days (and Summer Nights) (1965) in your record collection, there is no merit in any Beach Boy album after 1973. For this period, more than any other, only a compilation of the best tracks will do.
I believe, at their best, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were at least as good as the Beatles but the quality reduced much earlier in their career than that of the Beatles, who released good records until they broke up, and had the benefit of a concentrated lifespan where the odds of decline were far less and obviously, terminated while the Beach Boys carried on and on and on, as careerists, long after they no longer offered anything that had average value, not to mention higher than average value.
