For those of you who were around back then…The Beach Boys released the smash hit single Good Vibrations in late 66…And then just as quickly began rapidly fading from what was hip. My question is, what could The Beach Boys have done to remain competitive with the teen/young adult audience after 1966?
I was going to reply with how good Pet Sounds was, but then I looked up Good Vibrations, and found out that it started during the Pet Sounds sessions, but became a convoluted, multi-session extravagance.
What an amazing story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Vibrations
Brian Wilson nixed them from appearing at Monterey in '67, which pretty much turned them into a nostalgia act. Since Brian wasn’t touring with them anyway, I don’t know why they gave him a vote, let alone the veto, on any concert/festival appearances.
Were they ever considered “hip?” They never had any relevance to me. I was listening to Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan and the Stones. “Little Surfer Girl,” I mean, really??
The Beach Boys were great until 1972. Not everyone gets to be "relevant’ to the pop music market. It just means there’s a lot more to go back and discover, when they weren’t that overplayed or hip. I get a lot more out of listening to the Beach Boys now than the stones. The Kinks weren’t popular in, and had a terrible late 60s and early 70s career wise. They just sound better every year since then.
Brian Wilson was the Beach Boys. Once his genius began to be crippled by his mental illness around/after 1966, the band became ordinary at best.
I think the Beach Boys did about as well as they could have under the circumstances. Some of what made them un-hip was already there; and if hipness, in the urban-upscale east coast and middle west sense is the gold standard,–and to a large extent it was–then the Beach Boys were doomed from the start.
On the other hand they’d always had fans, “advocates” if you will, of all kinds, and from all backgrounds. Relevant is, well, a relative word. Yes, I understand complete where the OP is coming from, however it’s a big world out there, and not every rock (with or without roll) fan thought what was hip was uniform back in the day, as we like to say.
It’s good to keep in mind that the number one hit single the day Bobby Kennedy was shot in that hippest and hippie-est year of 1968 was the Tommy James & The Shondells Crimson & Clover, no one’s idea of a hip song, but there it is. Tastes differ. A whole lot of teens and college kids loved that song. Yeah, I know: go figure.
Alas :smack:,–having read this many years ago I ought to have looked it up for sure–Crimson & Clover is way off for the number 1 single of 6/5/68. It was Simon & Garfunnkle’s Mrs Robinson, not a hip song, either, but marginally less white bread (all things being relative and all that). Also up there: Hugeo Montenegros’s theme for The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, which somehow feels more appropriate for that time; and also the blessedly surreal, off the wall one off from Richard Harris, MacArthur Park.
Yes, The Beach Boys could have remained relevant. They had a lot stacked against them. There was a lot of pushback from the group (and his father) when Brian tried to mature in his songwriting. And from the label. There were issues from being taken advantage of by his manager and, yes, from mental illness. But imho the beginning of the end was Brian’s drug use.
However given all of that I believe it was possible they could have remained relevant. Case in point, see the two links below from just two years ago:
In closing, while I’ll admit that surf music as a genre isn’t sophisticated, it has its place in rock history and The Beach Boys were certainly relevant in their heyday.
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The Beach Boys’ music was always a mixture of great music and goofy lyrics. “Good Vibrations” is the ultimate example of this. On one hand, it’s the most complex song in the history of rock and roll, and many of us consider it the best song in its history. On the other hand, it’s about “vibrations,” which are a ridiculous hip New-Agey idea. It’s exactly what you should expect from the best songwriter in the history of rock and roll just before a complete nervous breakdown.
Good Vibrations is a great harbinger. The fact that they couldn’t follow up on it for outside reasons is irrelevant. Keep that sort of beautiful music - combined with a simple message in the lyrics (This chick really gets me going) - and you had something that could go forward.
Having grown up in LA, I’ll posit this: The Beach Boys exemplified a certain type of Los Angeles/SoCal. That of the youth culture of the early-mid 1960s. To remain relevant, they could have grown into the very different Los Angeles/SoCal of the early 1970s. I could easily see - had he remained in control of himself - Brian Wilson absorbing the latino rhythms and such into his signature sound. That would have moved them forward with the baby boomer generation that was aging out of teen fantasy already.
Imagine what a mashup of some sincere LA bands - War and The Beach Boys - could have produced. It would have been glorious.
Just saw George Clinton last night*. I counted 16 band members dancing onstage at one point –
A War/Beach Boys amalgam might have had that kind of energy.
*(fo’ free, at a Brat Fest…welcome to the midwest!)
Did they ever try dropping acid? Of course, that might have really mind-fucked Brian, but that’s where music was headed in 1966.
Or The Beach Boys with the remaining Doors after Morrison’s death. Or with CSNY? Two totally different styles of harmony.
Again, glorious.
What are you referring to with the term “relevant?” I’m asking, because I’ve seen where different people mean different things by that, especially when talking about music and music stars.
Many people simply mean that the music person or group continued to have hit pop songs for a long time. Others get more esoteric, and refer to the music person having changed their style to match trends.
In some ways, the Beach Boys are STILL relevant, because the music they put out decades ago is still popular today.
You couldn’t have been around in 1968 if you’re saying this. “Crimson & Clover” was regarded as a superhip psychedelic song. “Mrs. Robinson” came from the hippest movie of the sixties, The Graduate. What felt hip at the time isn’t necessarily the same stuff that we look back at 50 years later. Nothing was hipper than The Beatles’ White Album in 1968, yet what can you point to today that seems so forward-looking or psychedelic or in tune with with the times?
As for The Beach Boys - in my top few favorite acts at the time - I agree that nothing could have saved them once Brian stopped touring and had his breakdown. He was trying to do all by himself what John, Paul, and George Martin were doing as a magnificent team. You need an alternate universe to produce a different Brian. And a different set of musicians to play a totally different sort of music. How long did the Mamas and Papas last after 1968? Yet they were West Coast hip royalty.
Wendell Wagner: Brain didn’t usually write lyrics. Mike Love wrote the inanities for “Good Vibrations” to try to bring it down to record buyers level. Brian was working with Van Dyke Parks on lyrics in 1967 and he is responsible for tripe like “Heroes and Villains.”
John Mace: Brian did drop acid. He’s said since that it “fucked him up.”
…well, I did get tickets for the last show of his Pet Sounds Tour here in Santa Barbara, tomorrow night. Never thought I would do that, but the GF talked me into it!! :)I’ll report back.
As a lifelong member of the “beach” community, the Beach Boys have always sort of been part of the soundscape, commercials, wafting from peoples houses…parties, that sort of thing…at least at the coast.
I’ve always preferred the surf instrumental sounds, but have some Beach Boys songs cued up in my truck for early morning surf drives to the beach. Fun tunes…
You want to get a party rockin…(ha well, baby boomers I quess) put the song Surfing USA on full volume. works every time.
They could have released all that Manson music.
This is the main issue. Of course Brian did acid and had a breakdown. Anybody not know this? But they were far from ordinary. I assume you haven’t heard the records if you say that.
If you listen to 20/20 (From 1969) now, it doesn’t sound any more dated that any other music from the time. In fact much less so that Simon and Garfunkel or Tommy James for two. Some of the best music ever. If you love a song it’s relevant and the Beach Boys have been very relevant in that measure for 55 years.
(You want badass? This LP is the only one to ever to involve 4 murderers: Leadbelly, Phil Spector, Charles Manson and Jim Gordon. Any metal bands want to step up to the plate and try that?)
To say the Beach Boys were only surf music ignores what’s on the record. Surf ended way before 1966 as a fad. Were they just surfing all the way through the 60s and competing with the Beatles at the same time? Hardly likely.
Also does anyone know that the Beach Boys have always been influential with rock and alternative musicians just about forever? How would this be called “irrelevant”?