The decline of Brian’s creative genius was gradual, not sudden, and at least three of your examples were written before his eventual collapse. His sparse contributions to later Beach Boys albums, despite being below par compared to his earlier output, were still the gems on otherwise forgettable records. In my opinion, of course, which is no more or less valid than yours.
None of which are comparable to Brian’s compositions. (IMO.)
The Beach Boys DID stay “relevant” after 1966. In spite of all Brian Wilson’s issues, they made some good and interesting music through the mid Seventies. But they couldn’t hold on to their old image and fans while also pursuing Brian’s vision. At some point, they had to be EITHER a perky, wholesome nostalgia act OR an innovative band.
To me, the Beach Boys’ post-Pet Sounds output, especially in the early 70s, sounds fragmented in much the same way that the White Album does. There’s definitely some good and/or interesting songs there (and not every listener is going to agree about which ones they are), but it doesn’t add up to a unified whole that sounds like the work of a single band working together on a shared vision. Rather, it’s a collection of individual musicians each doing their own thing while being backed up to a greater or lesser extent by the others.
(Possible exception: Wild Honey, which is enjoyable and worthwhile and does IMHO work as an album, but which wasn’t the kind of thing that anybody was expecting or hoping for at the time.)
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Well I’m not a harsh critic of artists who make great songs I’d admit, because I follow the great songs wherever they are. They had a lot of problems, but
1 The Beach Boys were a group and grew into it as composers, Bruce, Carl and especially Dennis. Bands don’t do that very often. Leaving this town, Be still, Long Promised Road… there’s more than just a few. They had charted songs with 5 different lead singers over the years. Also pretty special.
2 Sounds like you’re going to grade his mental state according to how you like his music, by retrofit. But he was collapsing while he was composing those songs. The LP didn’t get made.
3 20/20, Surf’s Up, Friends, Wild Honey, Sunflower, Holland: Overlooked maybe, many times spotty, but not forgettable.
Perhaps their later albums *shouldn’t *be overlooked or forgettable. In fact they *are * and by the vast majority of listeners, even of that age.
Doesn’t “forgettable” mean trivial? I’d say then they are not.
If someone says “Beach Boys: that surf music is played” which they have, or 'Brian Wilson, that drug casualty. Liked em before" it’s not an informed discussion of their music, to say the least.
We (Americans) didn’t have a “Beatles”, as such. Many groups and, especially, promoters and record company execs tried, and they all failed, no fault of the groups in question, just the way the mustard poured.
We had Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs early on, then the highly touted, for a while, Paul Revere & The Raiders, who, dressing up in Revolutionary war costumes were near to an American “answer” to the Beatles.
On TV and on AM radio, especially, there were The Monkees, but some were Brits. They were as a group as American as apple pie.
Then there were that teenybopper geared oddity, the Turtles, whom I believe,–don’t quote me on this–played at Tricia’s wedding (Nixon, I mean).
Later on, the Buffalo Springfield and the Band bid fair to be truly American Beatles, and sounding American, and with their “country look” quite a contrast to Mod and Carnaby Street, they were supergroups alright, but neither seemed to be attempting to be the American Beatles.
All true. In cities, in the east anyway, foreign films, British and French especially, were uber hip, but with a certain demographic. Georgy Girl was as big a hit as a movie as its theme song was as a top ten (or was it twenty?) hit. The Swedish Elvira Madigan even put Mozart “on the charts” for a spell, but that probably wasn’t what was happenin’ down in Texarkana. America is a big country.
Also, regions and cities had styles of their own, often imposed, and not always obviously, on the kind of music they produced: the (at the time still living) spirit of Andy Warhol seemed to hover over what New York produced; while Boston and New England were “unslick”, and more folky and anti-war. San Francisco had a history all its own, and it’s there in the Mamas And The Papas and The Lovin’ Spoonful. There was always an “agin’ the system” undercurrent to that most unique and still very pre-Yuppie city.
Trends came and went with amazing speed. My sophomore year in high school (1967-68) began with guys still wearing dress shirts with fruit loops, football players admired and looked up to by many if not most kids; the “collegiate” music of Andy Williams wafting through the air, so to speak; and within ten months I and most of my fiends had been suspended from school for “minor infractions”; bright boys were growing their hair long, bright girls dressing like hippie chicks; Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were dead; folk rock had been replaced by acid rock; and the Summer Of Love seemed like not last year but ten years ago :smack:.
Even in my adult life, with Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis, the fall of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 twin towers disaster have I seen the mood of the country change so drastically, so radically, in such a short period of time; and even, a dozen years later, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men of Ronald Reagan’s presidency couldn’t turn the clock back, make things “normal” again. It was almost like the Beatles’ A Day In The Life, with the funereal closing notes the head-bashing Chicago police outside the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1968.
Our opinions obviously differ regarding the post-healthy-Brian BB’s, but in matters of taste neither of us can be right or wrong. We like what we like.
However, I disagree with the text I highlighted above.
Yes, Brian was collapsing during the SMILE sessions, and yet he still managed to very nearly finish several masterpiece songs before crashing and burning. When they were eventually included in the Friends, 20-20, Wild Honey, and Surf’s Up albums, they were conspicuously “better” than the other tracks, including those that Brian himself had in fact recorded more recently (i.e. post-breakdown).
To me, Brian’s efforts after the SMILE debacle were markedly less complex (and interesting) harmonically, as well as in the instrumentation; his melodic gifts were still intact, thank god, and “Time To Get Alone” (for example) is breathtakingly gorgeous. Even a simplistic trifle like “Passing By” is one of my favorites.
I’ve always judged Brian’s compositions on their own merits, and formed my opinions accordingly. On the other hand, his state of mind at various times are matters of fact. How those opinions and facts correlate on a timeline doesn’t mean that one influenced the other. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Cheers.
Agreed. When it’s put that way it’s a ridiculous oversimplification, not to mention ignorantly incorrect in implying that Brian was merely “surf music.”
The informed discussion, the one currently underway here, concerns the merits of the Beach Boys while Brian was the guiding force behind the band, as opposed to afterward. And yes, “forgettable” does mean “trivial”, and your objection to the term is a valid opinion.
The OP asks how “The Beach Boys” could have kept going as a “hip” act after 1966, which is when Brian broke down. So “afterward” is actually pretty much the only issue here, in the OP anyway.
The members stepping up to the plate and writing tunes is very germane to that issue. And Brian’s failures are only part of that story. I think it’s fair to judge the other’s music against their peers rather than pitting them against brian. (You wouldn’t do that to anyone else I assume.) By that measure I treasure their LPs up until 1972 for what’s there and not found anywhere else in music.
To be exact, Helen Reddy, the Turtles, and the Temptations played at a party hosted by Tricia Nixon called the Masked Ball that was held at the White House. It was on May 10, 1969. Incidentally, the Turtles snorted cocaine while they were there. Mark Volman fell off the stage five times.
To clarify what I thought I’d already made obvious:
The Beach Boys, with Brian running the entire show (composing, arranging, singing, and producing), made terrific records that were better than those of most of their competitors.
Without Brian in full creative control, they no longer made terrific records that were better than those of most of their competitors.
I think I’m finished with this argument. You like the The Beach Boys.2 , I don’t, and we’re not going to change each others’ minds.
No sweat on my part. I just like to make sure mid period BB gets a little love too. Some people don’t even know it happened. You know what you like. Some people will bypass it and miss even the stuff you like.
Well, shoot - I was hoping to hear how Jute liked the show last night.
Thank you. Pet Sounds has been one of my top three LPs since I was five years old (no joke), but I am not familiar with the 1967-70 Wilson-penned songs and albums you (and a couple others) have mentioned in this thread. I look forward to giving them a careful listen, probably over next weekend.
I agree with the body of your post but I have to nitpick. Both were New York bands who moved to Los Angeles. They were never San Francisco bands, even if you include John Phillips’ involvement in the Monterey Folk Festival.
Informed discussion is always interesting but I think even the group’s defenders (I happen to be enamored of the Holland album and saw them in concert at its peak: Brian discussed how he came to write “Caroline, No,” a special favorite) have to admit they are discussing a period that the public paid little attention to at the time and even less attention since.
Ten gazillion fine artists/works of art/periods of creativity have been forgotten by the public and an equal number of grotesque mediocrities and failures are fondly and enthusiastically remembered. Quality has little to do with memory.
Brian played with them in 1972?
Maybe it’s “Memory has little to do with quality”?
I don’t think he stayed on the entire Holland tour, but he was there that night. Nobody else in the band could have told that story. “Caroline, No” was even released as a Brian Wilson single, not a Beach Boys single.
Works either way.