Fifty Sides of the Beach Boys

The Songs That Tell Their Story

Mark Dillon

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781770901988
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

"A vivid account... Young and old fans alike will enjoy" ( Publishers Weekly ). This book offer a unique journey through The Beach Boys' long, fascinating history by telling the stories behind fifty of the band's greatest songs from the perspective of group members, collaborators, fellow musicians, and notable fans. Filled with new interviews with music legends such as Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Alan Jardine, Bruce Johnston, David Marks, Blondie Chaplin, Randy Bachman, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Lyle Lovett, Alice Cooper, and Al Kooper, and commentary from a younger generation such as Matthew Sweet, Carnie Wilson, Daniel Lanois, Cameron Crowe, and Zooey Deschanel, this story of pop culture history both explores the darkness and difficulties with which the band struggled, and reminds us how their songs could make life feel like an endless summer.

Peter Ames Carlin on…

Johnny Carson

Written by: Brian Wilson

Lead vocal: Mike Love and Carl Wilson

Produced by: Brian Wilson

Recorded: November 10, 1976

Released: April 11, 1977, on The Beach Boys Love You

If part of the point of 15 Big Ones was to reacclimate Brian with the studio, artistically it paid off. In late fall 1976, he recorded enough original tracks for the next album and then some. Earle Mankey recalls Brian adhering to a more disciplined regimen. He would come down to Brother Studio every morning at 10 or 11 and work until early afternoon. Landy was employing a carrot-and-stick approach. As Brother Studio manager Trisha Campo recounts in Peter Ames Carlin’s Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Landy would have one of his lackeys hovering over Brian with a baseball bat, as if to say, “Write songs or else!”1 But, according to Mankey, if Brian did as he was told, he got one joint — a guilty pleasure Landy allowed.

Sitting at the piano at Brother, Brian would sing about whatever crossed his mind. After staring at a stained-glass window of the stars he came up with “Solar System.”2 In several other compositions he looked to revive the adolescent perspective of the pre–Pet Sounds era, writing about roller skating, classroom crushes and dealing with your girlfriend’s folks. But having The Beach Boys, now grizzled rock stars, sing these teenage ditties made the tunes a little creepy. Nonetheless, these are the themes Brian imagined fans wanted. The fast — and presumed fun — songs would occupy side one of the next album, The Beach Boys Love You, while on the second side a more adult point of view would be reflected in the nocturnal longings of “The Night Was So Young” and in the parental affection of “I Wanna Pick You Up.”

Of course, Brian was no ordinary adult. Carlin, in an interview with this author, calls the record “a tour through the cracked fun-house mirror of Brian’s imagination. He’s got this weird story he wants to tell — a suspended-animation story about this young, rich pop star who essentially has been on the bench for 10 years, living in his own world and who has to some degree lost his connection to reality.”

It was the closest any Beach Boys album came to being a Brian solo record. He is credited with the words and music on all cuts except the co-writes “Let Us Go on This Way” (with Mike), the 1970 Sunflower outtake “Good Time” (with Alan) and “Ding Dang” (with Roger McGuinn). He expediently plays nearly all the parts himself, leaning even heavier on the buzzing, honking, gurgling, bleeping Moog synthesizer than he did on 15 Big Ones. Electronic textures define the record’s oddball sound, which is miles removed from the organic, orchestral feel of old. Brian even handled much of the drumming, building tracks on a simple hit of the floor tom and snare. “This guy whose life was built for a very particular kind of music is now throwing up stuff that says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t give a shit’ — except for the fact that he can’t help but write really interesting songs,” says Carlin, a former writer for People and The Oregonian and author of Paul McCartney: A Life.

Dennis participated in some of the tracking, as did Carl, who is also credited as “mixdown producer.” Mike and Alan again were rarely around, but everyone ended up singing several leads. Billy Hinsche was tapped to sing “Honkin’ Down the Highway” but recalls getting into a dispute with Landy, who then convinced Brian to scrap his vocal. Alan would rerecord it for the released version. Alan’s intact voice, along with those of Carl and Mike, provide a welcome respite from Brian’s and Dennis’ leads, which are in places just as strained as they had been on the previous album.

“It’s strange how Brian’s voice is so rough and bad on that record. This is a guy who years earlier would stop takes because he didn’t think the background ‘ooo’s’ had enough emotion. Now he’s singing in this gravelly, messed-up baritone and often slightly off-key. It’s the behavior of a very different kind of person, and in some ways it almost feels like a suicidal gesture,” says Carlin. The author remembers eagerly picking up the album as an eighth grader. “I was at the height of my excitement created by 15 Big Ones and the joyous sense of Brian being back,” he continues. “This was his big return — all original songs; a complete Brian production. And you listen to it and you were like, ‘What the hell is this?’ It’s so different.”

Everything about the album was peculiar, starting with the title. Reportedly, Brian had wanted to call it Brian Loves You3 as a thank-you to fans for their support. The change to The Beach Boys Love You echoed a dedication on the inner sleeve from Carl, Dennis, Mike and Alan that begins “To Brian whom we love with all our hearts . . .” Dean Torrence lobbied to have the record titled Cowabunga, a term that had been Chief Thunderthud’s catch-all exclamation on Howdy Doody. It was hardly authentic Native American, but it tied into both the cover — which Torrence designed to look like a Navajo rug — and the Brother Records’ logo based on Cyrus Dallin’s Native American statue Appeal to the Great Spirit. The expression was also adopted by surfers as a yell of exhilaration, and as such captures the LP’s sometimes joyful abandon.

Members of the group have attributed the album’s ultimate lack of sales to apathetic promotion by Warner Bros., which was aware the band was jumping ship to CBS. In a 2009 Record Collector interview, Alan points even to the record jacket, which has an unusual matte finish. “Everything about that thing is homemade. . . . They didn’t spend a penny on Love You. . . . They used real cheap cardboard,” he said.4 But according to Torrence, a paper of above-average cost was used to simulate a stitched texture. Featuring the album title in colored squares, the cover inadvertently suggests a Lite-Brite toy, which suits the childlike wonder of the record’s contents.

Warner Bros. certainly showed apathy by not issuing a preview single to build anticipation around the LP. “Honkin’ Down the Highway” was released seven weeks after The Beach Boys Love You hit stores, and after the album had plummeted to #108 on the U.S. charts from its #53 peak. (It made it to #28 in the U.K.) “Honkin’” is tremendously goofy and catchy rock ’n’ roll, but missed the charts altogether. If Warner Bros. had wanted to really get people talking, it might have instead chosen “Johnny Carson,” Carlin’s favorite cut on the album. “It’s a fascinating piece of work,” he says of the song. “It stops you dead. And it takes something to make people look at each other and go, ‘What the fuck? What is this? What is this about?’”

What — or rather, who — it’s about is exactly what the title says: John William “Johnny” Carson, king of American late-night TV — then 51 and halfway through his remarkable 30-year run as host of The Tonight Show. “Brian is musing on how masculine Johnny is, how charming and how he can just go and go and kick ass,” Carlin notes. “He’s like the surfer of the airwaves, the king of the beach. He won’t stop. He can’t stop. He’s just such a winner.” Not unlike Brian for a stretch in the ’60s.

Who else but Brian would have even thought to write a song about Johnny Carson? Those who find it beyond the pale are missing Brian’s dry sense of humor, underlined by Mike’s lead vocal delivery. Since the beginning, Brian displayed a comical eye for unlikely subject matter — how about “Chug-a-Lug,” that ode to root beer off Surfin’ Safari, or the Smile numbers “Vega-Tables” and “Wind Chimes”?

The music in “Johnny Carson” is as unique as the words — a Wall of Sound built on synths, organ and piano. Carlin remembers a DJ spinning it on FM station OK 102 and a half in his Seattle hometown. “I remember he said, ‘Here’s a song from the new Beach Boys record that I really love. What really knocks me out is that organ solo,’” Carlin recalls. “So I’m listening and thinking, ‘Organ solo? What organ solo?’ And then I realize it’s that part at the end — it’s like three notes: ‘dun, dun, dun, dun, ba ba da bum!’ It’s simple, but there’s something really anthemic and powerful about it, too. It’s yet another herald for our man Johnny.”

Carlin feels the entire track is put together with great purpose. “Brian is doing something really interesting musically,” he says. “The rhythm — the way he uses the synths and drums — sounds like a factory. It sounds like serious work is being done. It’s got this crunch and grind and those hooting synthesizers. It sounds like machinery moving, and he’s singing this tune about Carson — the longtime, hugely successful, completely unbeatable host of The Tonight Show.”

In a 1979 Rolling Stone interview, Timothy White asked Carson if he had heard the song. The TV host was either humbled by the tribute or as baffled as many others. “Sure I heard it,” he replied. “Someone sent it over to the office. I don’t think it was a big seller. I think they just did it for the fun of it. It was not a work of art.”5

For some, neither is The Beach Boys Love You. For casual listeners, it’s way too idiosyncratic, while some fans have a hard time with the rough-and-ready vocals and production. To them, Carlin observes, “It’s Brian being lazy, nobody caring enough to make the record what it ought to have been, and the other guys letting him get by with what are essentially pretty chintzy demos.” But it found immediate champions among highly esteemed critics including Circus’ Lester Bangs, Creem’s Mitchell Cohen, NME’s Nick Kent, Village Voice’s Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone’s Billy Altman. “Godmother of Punk” Patti Smith was moved to pen a poetic response in Hit Parader. To them, a great Beach Boys record didn’t need high-minded lyrics or a chamber orchestra. It just needed Brian’s unbridled creativity, and this was the first Beach Boys project that offered that through and through since Smile went down. Brian has on several occasions referred to the album as his favorite.

After years of prog-rock and overproduced AM cheese, some welcomed the record’s rawness as an almost punk-rock statement and now see it as a progenitor of new wave. Carlin lines up with these supporters. “It was hard to get into at first, but it’s kind of funky. The songs have a rough-edged charm of their own. When I get into listening to the record, I really get into listening to it,” he says.

For all those who got into it, the LP promised Brian was indeed bac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Preface
• Intro
• David Marks on . . . Surfin’ U.S.A.
• Peter Bagge on . . . I’m Bugged At My Ol’ Man
• Lyle Lovett on . . . God Only Knows
• Mike Kowalski on . . . Do It Again
• Peter Ames Carlin on . . . Johnny Carson
• Endnotes
• That’s Why God Made the Radio
• Copyright