The Quintessential Beach Boys Album

The Quintessential Beach Boys Album

by Phil Miglioratti

Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)

SIDE 1.

1  The Girl From New York City (1:54) [Brian Wilson]

2  Amusement Parks U.S.A. (2:29) [Brian Wilson]

3 Then I Kissed Her (2:15) [Phil Spector/Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry]

4 Salt Lake City (2:00) [Brian Wilson]

5 Girl Don't Tell Me (2:18) [Brian Wilson]

6 Help Me, Rhonda (2:45) [Brian Wilson]Single Version

SIDE 2

1 California Girls (2:36) [Brian Wilson]

2 Let Him Run Wild (2:20) [Brian Wilson]

3 You're So Good To Me (2:13) [Brian Wilson]

4 Summer Means New Love (1:58) [Brian Wilson]

5 I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man (2:16) [Brian Wilson]

6 And Your Dream Comes True (1:03) [Brian Wilson/Mike Love]

Discussions abound as to which of the many albums in the Beach Boys’ catalog is the best of all-time. While the casual fan would choose from an endless list of greatest hits packages, replies from hardcore fans range from Pet Sounds to Sunflower to Love You. Recently, some have injected That’s Why God Made The Radio into the discussion.

Best psychedelic album? Smiley Smile, for sure. Best R&B attempt? Wild Honey. Cars? Shut Down Vol. 2 or maybe Little Deuce Coupe. All Summer Long probably wins for best all-things-summer. Best "live" album? Four concerts and an unplugged party fuel a hot debate here. Surfing? Another multi-choice category. Most mellow? Friends. How about Holland for best FM album?

How is it that this surf and car culture group has released so many albums that fit is so many different categories?

Which leads me to the question, with such an expansive and distinct body of work, which one would be top your Best-Introduction-to-the-Beach-Boys list? Of their 30+ original releases, which album of new material (not a compilation of greatest hits) best acquaints a new listener with the most genres of their songs? If you could only play one album, for someone who has not yet heard any Beach Boys material, to demonstrate the breadth of their song categories and musical styles, which would you choose? Which one wins the crown of being the quintessential collection?

Pet Sounds, arguably the greatest rock/pop album of all-time (#1 or #2 on the most respected and reported international lists) is a masterpiece that showcases the creative-producing, genius-composing, harmonic-recording/singing skills of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

Today! featured a side of great rock and roll songs and a side of evocative love songs, the latter a prelude to Pet Sounds)s.

15 Big Ones is all over the musical map and covers tunes from the 50's and 60's, a song about meditation, a Beach-Boys-styled-single about summer - even a gospel-inspired, Gospel-preaching song.

MIU may have been Al’s, Light Album possibly Carl’s, but no album comes close to Sunflower showcasing the songwriting talent of all six of the Beach Boys.

SMilE, finally released, belongs in a category unto itself. Beautiful. Creative. Ahead of its time yet classic Americana at its core.

Others may also deserve consideration, but my candidate for the one album that would best prepare a new listener for the deep and wide range of the Beach Boys’ catalog is Summer Days (and Summer Nights!). Their second album of 1965, it went to #2 on the charts, buoyed by the hit single version of Help Me Rhonda and the summer release of California Girls. But why does Summer Days deserve to be the quintessential ("the most perfect or typical example or embodiment") album? Consider these benefits for the first-time listener:

• Four out of five band members tackle a lead vocal (Bruce was still an unofficial member, thanks to a tight contract with Columbia records where he produced groups along with Terry Melcher). Mike showcases two different styles on his lead parts on The Girl From New York City and California Girls, Brian steps into new territory on Let Him Run Wild and You’re So Good To Me, Alan hits both Help Me Rhonda and Then I Kissed Her out of the park (studio?), and Carl rocks on his first serious lead vocal for Girl Don't Tell Me. While Dennis seems mostly absent, new Beach Boy Bruce Johnston debuts in the background vocals of California Girls.
• This set of twelve songs provides us with 7 genres (“a class or category of artistic endeavor”) of Beach Boys tunes. Two monster hit singles. A cover version. An instrumental. Two summer fun songs. A subtle stab at humor. Three breaking their mold rockers. And a signature vocal snippet. 

Summer Days (and Summer Nights!) introduces the first-time listener to:

The Beach Boy Single

Help Me Rhonda, a revved-up remake of Help Me Ronda (notice variant spelling) from their previous Today! album, was the Beach Boys’ second number one single (each topping the charts in the Beatl-ear). In retrospect, it prefigures future single releases such as Little Girl I Once Knew (released a few months later), Darlin’ (post-Good Vibrations) and even Marcella more than I Get Around (their first number one hit). The single that became their opening live-in-concert anthem for decades, California Girls, topped out at #3 on the charts and now sits in between summer singles of their early career and those to come (Do It Again, Keepin’ The Summer Alive, It’s OK). Both singles are girl-themed but one points back to the California myth of sun and fun, the other continuous exploring serious relationships (such as Wendy, Caroline or Deirdre).

The Beach Boy Cover

Brian Wilson’s musical genius may be most easily discerned in the way he took a good song that had already hit the Top 40 and transformed it into a totally new sonic experience. Whether the original was rhythm and blues (Why Do Fools Fall In Love, Do You Wanna Dance), an old sea chantey (Sloop John B), or a Chuck Berry signature tune (Barbara Ann, Rock & Roll Music), a cover version by the Brian Wilson produced and arranged Beach Boys made it a completely different song. Carl also outshined the original with his production of I Can Hear Music on the 20/20 album.

With Then I Kissed Her, Brian faced the challenge of covering a song written and produced by the iconic creator of the vaunted wall of sound, Phi Spector (with whom Brian had a love – fear fixation). Be My Baby, another Spector production, has probably played over and over on either a turntable or in Brian’s mind on a daily basis for the past 45+ years. With Then I Kissed Her, Brian remained faithful to the original (unlike, say, Do You Wanna Dance) but took the song miles beyond the original production; especially vocally.

The Girl From New York City, technically not a cover but a Brian Wilson original, was nonetheless an answer/response to the Ad Libs’ The Boy From New York City. It may also have been a hats-off to Leslie Gore, the girl from New York City who appeared with them on the T.A.M.I. Show a year earlier.

The Beach Boys, possibly more than any group or solo artist, have beautifully exploited the use of recording an already known song (usually a hit) and, with their unique sound pallet, making it their own. In doing so, they often stole it, so to speak, from the original artist or group. Think of these future releases: California Dreamin’, Come Go With Me, Cotton Fields, and most certainly Barbara Ann from the all-cover-versions Party! Album. [Note: see full listing at www.CoversProject.com]

Instrumental

Summer Means New Love follows a dozen previous instruments-only album cuts (Surf Jam, Shut Down Part II)) but also hints at two amazing instrumentals on their forthcoming Pet Sounds release. Summer Means New Love is a step up from those earlier instrumentals and a step toward Let’s Go Away For Awhile and Pet Sounds as well as Fall Breaks on Smiley Smile and Passing By on the Friends album.

Keepin’ the Summer Alive

Salt Lake City represents the early surf and street songs that made the Beach Boys a household name and it was anything but an “album-filler.” Like Catch A Wave, reworked into Sidewalk Surfin’ and a top 30 hit for Jan & Dean, Salt Lake City could have been a successful release for a number of groups (for example: Rip Chords, Hondells, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Cowsills (It was reported that Bill Cowsill was briefly considered to replace Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys touring lineup)). "Listen to the instrumental track. Lot of stuff going on there.“ (Andrew Doe)

Amusement Parks U.S.A. takes us on a Surfin’ USA -type tour of the country. City-by-city we visit the best amusement parks of that day and, as with their early surfing songs, we experience each stop through the eyes of a teen-coming-of-ager (I still remember the rush of free fall on the parachutes ride at Chicago’s Riverview Park). And the fun, fun, fun continues as Beach Boys fan are still cruising after all these years … some still fogging up the windows in the parking lot.

Brian Wilson Humor

When I’m Bugged At My Old Man was initially released, Beach Boys fans had little information about the family dysfuntionality and dad Murry Wilson’s heave-handed discipline methods. Without that point of reference, I missed Brian’s point completely, until I recognized it was, as from earlier albums, an attempt at using humor to reveal an inner struggle. With the uncovering of biographical details of these now famous relational conflicts, what at first seemed silly is now understood as a not-so-subtle revelation.

Cassius Love vs. Sonny Wilson, Our Favorite Recording Sessions, Bull Session with Big Daddy – cuts record executives considered album-fillers (Capitol failed to include these tunes in early re-issues of the original albums) and often skipped over by casual listeners  (especially in the digital age when you do not need to worry about scratching a vinyl groove!) – were “funny” on the surface but revelatory on a deeper level.

Cassius Clay (now Muhammed Ali) and Sonny Liston were two champion boxers of the 60’s and their fights drew international attention. That boxing competition motif continues to be played out in the relationship of Mike and Brian. Mike’s sarcastic humor (see an insightful interview with Mike by David Beard @ http://www.examiner.com/beach-boys-in-national/david-beard), intimidated Brian. Their pretend battle in Our Favorite Recording Sessions is another hint at their fiery competition, albeit one that has produced some of the best songs of the rock and roll era. SMiLE, while evolving into a serious landscape of how American manifest destiny pushed its way west, was originally conceived as an album devoted to humor (“You’re under arrest!” survives in Heroes & Villains).

With that background, it is easy to see I’m Bugged At My Ol’ Man in the same vein. Brian, utilizing humor, dark as it is, and a noticeably different (silly? funny?) vocal style while pounding out an old-time boogie-woogie, reveals once again some of his personal and painful story. Looking back, Brian was giving us clues to a painful inner struggle; a confessional not unlike the more sophisticated Till I Die on Surf’s Up. He may also have been preparing us for his desire to Break Away from his life as a Beach Boy and go back in his room for physical safety and spiritual peace; a place of shelter.

Breaking the Mold Rockers

Three songs on Summer Days have musical roots in the first side of the Today! album while also bridging to Pet Sounds and beyond.

Girl Don’t Tell Me is a great summer song for a summer days themed album but it is also one of three rockers that may have been Brian Wilson attempts to stand nose-to-nose with the Beatles. Though, in retrospect, Brian had at least matched the Beatles in sound and substance, the British invaders had certainly won the Top 40 and Gold Album races. You’re So Good To Me (an older cousin to Don’t Hurt My Little Sister?) reminds me a little of John Lennon’s lead vocal on I’m A Loser and the wailing bridge on Break Away. The sound Brian created on Let Him Run Wild could have fit between Beatles’ releases of Ticket to Ride and We Can Work It Out. It was a precursor to the Little Girl I Once Knew (this late 1965 single, highly praised by Beatle John Lennon, never made it on any original Beach Boys album and was prematurely bumped off the Top 40 by Capitol Records’ release of Barbara Ann) and rockers to come (such as Dennis’ It’s About Time or Got To Know the Woman on Sunflower).

 

SMiLE

And Your Dream Comes true connects us to the amazing Beach Boys’ harmonies we heard on Graduation Day and Their Hearts Were Full of Spring as well as Our Prayer on the forthcoming 20/20 album.  This brief (1:03) Disney-esque ending to the Summer Days (and Summer Nights!) seems unfinished but it is a clue to Brian’s snippet approach he took with Good Vibrations and the entire SMiLE album. Like, You’re Welcome (this flip side to Heroes & Villains was another Beach Boys song that never appeared on an original album), it is a brief burst of sonic harmony; too quickly gone but never to be forgotten.

So there it is, my candidate for the album most suited to introduce a newbie to the musical catalog of the Beach Boys. This is the make-it-your-first-iTunes-Beach-Boys-album-download. First-timers get a tip of the hat to the past and a peek into the future but unlike other Beach Boys albums that also reached back and pushed forward (such as Today!), Summer Days (and Summer Nights!) also offers a half dozen or more types of songs scattered across their unparalleled catalog of music. It is obviously not possible for every sound or every style to be represented on one 12 tune album but Summer Days (and Summer Nights!) is the closest. The most representative album in the Beach Boys’ catalog of the Beach Boys’ catalog.

Copyright Phil Miglioratti, Pray For Surf

•200+ rare Beach Boys videos @ http://uk.youtube.com/BB45s
•Fred Vail - Early BB History Podcast @ http://prayforsurfblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/beach-boys-50th-anniversary-podcast.html
•Visit http://www.PrayForSurf.net for more "stuff"