The Beach Boys Post-Pet Sounds.
(The Fall of the Beach Boys.)
SMiLE - 1967 (STEREO)
SIDE A
Our Prayer<->Gee
Heroes and Villains
Barnyard
Do You Like Worms?
Cabin Essence
Wonderful
I Ran (The Ironhorse)
Child Is Father Of The Man
The Old Master Painter<->You Are My Sunshine
SIDE B
Good Vibrations
Vege-Tables
Im In Great Shape<->I Wanna Be Around<->Workshop
Holiday
Wind Chimes
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
I Love To Say Dada
Surf's Up
Smiley Honey - 1967 (STEREO)
SIDE A
You're Welcome
Darlin'
Little Pad
Can't Wait Too Long
Aren't You Glad?
Country Air
Gettin' Hungry
I'd Love Just Once To See You
Let The Wind Blow
SIDE B
Whistle In
Wild Honey
Lonely Days
A Thing Or Two
She's Goin' Bald
The Letter
Here Comes The Night
Time to Get Alone
With Me Tonight
Friends With 20-20 Eyesight - 1969 (STEREO)
SIDE A
Meant For You
Soulful Old Man Sunshine
Do It Again
When a Man Needs a Woman
Sail Plane Song
Wake the World
Be Here in the Morning
Passing By
Old Folks at Home/Ol Man River
SIDE B
Friends
Break Away
Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)
Anna Lee, The Healer
Busy Doin' Nothin'
Where Is She?
Diamond Head
I Went to Sleep
Transcendental Meditation
Sunflower's Up - 1971 (STEREO)
SIDE A
Add Some Music to Your Day
All I Wanna Do
I Just Got My Pay
Games Two Can Play
Deirdre
Carnival
Take a Load off Your Feet
Our Sweet Love
H.E.L.P Is On The Way
SIDE B
This Whole World
At My Window
Loop De Loop
Back Home
Good Time
Why?
Day in the Life of a Tree
'Til I Die
While on a December 23 flight from Los Angeles to Houston, the band's songwriter and producer Brian Wilson suffered a panic attack. The 22-year-old Brian had already skipped several concert tours by then, but the airplane episode proved devastating to his psyche. In order to focus his efforts on writing and recording, Brian indefinitely resigned from live performances. Freed from the burden, he immediately showcased great artistic leaps in his musical development. He began experimenting with song composition while under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a factor that yielded a great effect on the group's musical conceptions. From there on, their recorded material took a significantly different stylistic and lyrical path.
Pet Sounds is the 11th studio album by the Beach Boys, released on May 16, 1966. It has garnered worldwide acclaim from critics and musicians alike and is widely considered to be one of the most influential albums in music history.
SMiLE is the 12th studio album by the Beach Boys, released on June 16, 1967.
Its genesis came during the recording of Pet Sounds, when Brian began recording a new single, "Good Vibrations". The track was created by an unprecedented recording technique: over 90 hours of tape was recorded, spliced, and reduced into a three-minute pop song. SMiLE was produced in a similar fashion. Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, SMiLE was composed as a multi-thematic concept album. Brian touted the album as "a teenage symphony to God", incorporating a range of music styles including psychedelic, doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, yodeling, early American folk, classical music, and avant-garde explorations into noise and musical acoustics.
On April 14, 1967, Van Dyke Parks gradually distanced himself from Brian and the group. He avoided the sessions "like the plague" due to Brian's regressive behavior. He left the project before the album was finished. As a result of Parks having quit, Brian lost sight of the album's direction. He went back and forth considering many different ways to execute SMiLE, fluctuating between ideas such as a sound effects collage, a comedy album, and a "health food" album. Eventually, the number of possible variations for song edits became too overwhelming for him.
After undergoing several months of internal conflict, Derek Taylor announced to the British press on May 6, 1967 that the SMiLE tapes had been given to him and would see release. He let edit and released what he had, without Brians approval. Brian was in despair and was afraid. Not only was the album not finished, it also had the song "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" on it. The track is a musical adaptation of his second LSD trip, purported to have involved ego death as well as death by burning. According to Brian the song "created a disturbing picture that mirrored the screams that had filled my head and plagued my sleep for years... ...It was sick. Weird chords, it wasn't the straight eight and all that. I started thinking, 'Oh God, I'm flipping here.'" The music was considered an attempt at "witchcraft". It was recorded under unusual conditions. Brian instructed everybody in the studio to wear fire helmets during its recording. He also had the studios janitor bring in a bucket with burning wood so that the studio would be filled with the smell of smoke. A building across the street from the studio burned down and, according to Brian, there was also an unusually large number of fires in Los Angeles. Afraid that his music might in fact turn out to be magic fire music, he collapsed in a panik attack when the album got released.
SMiLE was acclaimed by a majority of notable music critics. The Los Angeles Times encouraged "...university composition departments, music professors, budding recording engineers and composers should study it...". But SMiLE was not a commercial success.
Smiley Honey is the 13th studio album by the Beach Boys, released on December 18, 1967. Its name is a double entendre suggesting both edible honey and "honey" as a term of endearment.
The Smiley Honey sessions were preceded by an attempt at recording a live-in-the-studio album, Lei'd in Hawaii. But Brians mental illness mixed with drugs, made those sessions chaotic and when conflicts arose, the idea was dropped in favor of a new studio album. Brian, fatigued by the multi-tasking role he had taken up with the Beach Boys for several years, requested that Carl become more involved with album's recording. Carl explained: "Smiley Honey was music for Brian to cool out by." It was the first album to credit "the Beach Boys" as producer instead of Brian Wilson.
Critics generally received the album with confusion. It is best known for being the first in a trilogy of lo-fi albums. The album has an avant-garde and protominimal rock approach to arranging mixed with grand R&B and soul music. The album was largely recorded at Brian's makeshift home studio.
SMiLE was a commercial failure and because of payment disputes with Capitol Records Smiley Honey was distributed with Brother Records, a new record label and holding company founded by the group. Smiley Honey has grown in stature over the years to become a cult and critical favorite in the Beach Boys' oeuvre.
Friends With 20-20 Eyesight is the 14th studio album by the Beach Boys, released on February 10, 1969.
Brian was wrecked and the Beach Boys didn't release new material throughout 1968. Due to growing mental instability and addiction to cocaine, Brian entered a psychiatric hospital for a brief period of time. Only when he started feeling better with the help from his friends, who could "see better than him", did the Beach Boys start to record again.
The album was met with a mild critical reception and got the group's worst chart performance to date. Many of the album's songs were inspired by Transcendental Meditation and the group's recent interactions with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As the second in the trilogy of lo-fi albums it was recorded primarily at Brian Wilson's home studio. The lightly produced album was the closest the group ever came to sunshine pop. It has several autobiographic slice-of-life songs and includes a variety of different genres including hard rock, country and psychedelic pop. It was the first Beach Boys album to feature significant songwriting contributions from group members besides Brian.
Sunflower's Up is the 15th, and last, studio album by the Beach Boys, released in August 30, 1971.
Brian was working at his health food store The Radiant Radish throughout 1969-70, and was trying to stay healthy. It took until March 1971 before "the boys" hit the studio again. Brian said "We owe everyone money. And if we don't pick ourselves off our backsides and have a hit record soon, we will be in worse trouble..."
The album that was eventually made was met with an enthusiastic critical reception but was an commercial failure. it continued a pattern established in Smiley Honey, giving production credit to "the Beach Boys". Brian proposed that the group change their name from "the Beach Boys" to "the Beach", reasoning for the simple fact that the band members were now grown men. Engineer Stephen Desper reported, "They all just kind of shrugged and said, 'Aw, come on, Brian, we don't wanna do that. That's how the public knows us, man."
It's the third in the trilogy of lo-fi albums and blends rock with progressive/psychedelic pop. It starts with sunshine, lyrics about hope, and ends with moonshine, lyrics about death. The last two tracks are what make Sunflower's Up such a masterpiece. "A Day in the Life of a Tree" was experimented upon for days with a harmonium, an antique pump organ, and a smaller pipe organ. Van Dyke Parks and Jardine join Rieley to sing the song's coda. According to Jardine, Rieley sang the song when "no one else would sing it because it was too depressing.". It's simultaneously one of Brian's most deeply touching and bizarre compositions. "Til I Die" was a song Brian had been working on for a while but initially rejected by group members. He spent weeks arranging the song, using an electronic drum machine and crafting a harmony-driven, vibraphone and organ-laden background. The song isn't the love song the title suggests; it's a haunting, fatalistic piece of pop surrealism that appeared to signal Brian's retirement from active life.
In a retrospective review, Pitchfork Media called the album "perhaps the strongest album they released post-Pet Sounds.". Rolling Stone magazine gave the album four stars, saying it is one of the Beach Boys' best albums.