Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)

Per the stalwart Wikipedia, Dennis Wilson’s brother Brian Wilson said in a 1976 radio interview that he jeered at early mixes he heard of Dennis’s solo album. "Dennis, that's funky! That's funky!" he said. He wasn’t talking about Sly Stone. Mostly I take it as further adventures of the toxic Wilson family, but I have to admit I might have a kind of similar problem with Dennis’s only album. It’s got the mellow vibe of one lane of the ‘70s singer/songwriter style, hewing close to, say, Jackson Browne or the more depressed versions of the Eagles (say, “Desperado”). Where the Beach Boys were sparkling bright at their best, this strain of ‘70s folk-rock (they called it) tends more toward the resolutely dour. My problem, which I invite you not to have, is that I can’t get the idea of Dennis’s association with Charles Manson out of my head. For all the session pros lending a (hired) hand to support him here—and in fairness Pacific Ocean Blue is convincing enough as ‘70s rock tinged with weary experience—Dennis sounds eerily absent to me, removed, apart, disconnected. It’s an unnerving and out-of-step note at the center of this album. Is it really just a case of drug casualty? Or is it my imagination? Taking up the few songs that actually reached me, “What’s Wrong” stands out as a certain epitome of ‘70s rock, grinding in slow motion and exalting “rock ‘n’ roll.” “You and I” (which Brian later claimed to love) and “Moonshine” could well be the best songs here, but that could well be because they sound the most like the Beach Boys. It’s not really surprising, given everything we know, that Dennis is the “darker” Wilson (setting aside Murry for the moment). He’s not sweet like Brian and Carl, and he’s credited as having a hand in writing all of these songs. Carl, by the way, ever the loyalist, is on hand here playing lead and rhythm guitars. He also cowrote a couple songs (“River Song,” “Rainbows”). Mike Love cowrote “Pacific Ocean Blues.” On a certain level you have to wonder what Dennis might have done if he hadn’t died in 1983 at the age of 39. Then you might remember that, though he continued to work on material, he never released anything more in the six years after this album. Probably a drug casualty, all things considered. File under sad stories of rock ‘n’ roll.

The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (2005)

Jim Fusilli’s little 33-1/3 book raised the bar for me in terms of these authors liking, appreciating, respecting, and/or loving their albums under consideration. I assumed they all liked them but here is where I have felt it the most yet. Fusilli, who also writes detective fiction and used to be a house rock critic at the Wall Street Journal, is an unapologetic boomer. I am more of an apologetic one, but it may be the generational affinities that are reaching me here. My experience with the Beach Boys (and inevitably the Beatles) is different from Fusilli’s, certainly, but he’s only two years older than me and I always feel like I know where he’s coming from. He was raised in New Jersey, for example, and me in the Midwest, but I know very well his version of California as the perfect place. I was up on all the Beach Boys hits starting with “California Girls,” a little later than Fusilli. I had no sense of Pet Sounds really until the ’80s, aside from the many hits, and then I had mixed feelings about it. It took me a long time to come to really love it. It came to Fusilli a lot more quickly but he understands it basically the way I do, which meant some of his assessments felt so true they almost hurt. It reminded me all over again of the album’s uncanny strengths, now evocative even by title alone: “Sloop John B.,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Caroline No.” Fusilli does spend a good deal of time discussing technical aspects such as chord changes, which as usual are mostly lost on me, but in this case confirm my sense of how carefully constructed and rendered these songs are. The movie Love & Mercy, which came out nine years after publication of this book, is another good place to go for exciting portraits of Brian Wilson the studio original in action. Fusilli also talks about the hits and albums before and after Pet Sounds and has some interesting thoughts. He seems to have a good deal of loathing for “Barbara Ann,” a song I have come to like less and less myself over the years. But I must say I adored it when I was 12, even then understanding in the Beach Boys catalog it was one of those things not like the others. I suspect the taint of boomer may be on Fusilli for many readers. When he compares Mike Love to Eddie Haskell it feels as true as a poem, but perhaps too highly specific. So caveats. Also, Pet Sounds haters are unlikely to be convinced by Fusilli, technical points and all. That’s my hunch. For me, somehow—since approximately Love & Mercy—all encounters with the Beach Boys tend to make me insanely happy. This was just another one.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Love & Mercy (2014)

USA, 121 minutes
Director: Bill Pohlad
Writers: Oren Moverman, Michael A. Lerner, Brian Wilson
Photography: Robert D. Yeoman
Music: Beach Boys, Atticus Ross
Editor: Dino Jonsater
Cast: Paul Dano, John Cusack, Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth Banks, Kenny Wormald, Jake Abel, Erin Darke, Joanna Going, Brett Davern, Max Schneider, Hal Blaine

Though director Bill Pohlad owns many impressive credits as a producer (Brokeback Mountain, The Tree of Life, and 12 Years a Slave, just to start), Love & Mercy is only his second film as a director and his first in nearly 25 years. This shows in both good and bad ways: he's bold or naive enough to try the dual casting—Paul Dano and John Cusack, respectively, play Brian Wilson as a young man and as a middle-aged man—but in many ways the picture proceeds with easy TV rhythms and obvious conflicts that are often reminiscent of Lifetime movies. I enjoy Lifetime movies, but a little can go a long way and it's hard to miss how predictably they move and develop.

What sets Love & Mercy off as something more special, transcending the TV movie feel and the inherent problems of a biopic, are the studio scenes where Brian Wilson is shown inventing in real time some of the greatest pop music ever made. The best of these scenes, which are all too brief, are even better than similar scenes in Grace of My Heart (another movie about Brian Wilson but in a more fanciful context). The mid-'60s were an impossibly exciting time in pop music, and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys are not the only artists around which a movie like this could be built. Similar movies could—and should—be made about similar studio-bound adventures by the Beatles, Phil Spector, Berry Gordy, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Norman Whitfield, Frank Zappa, Shadow Morton, and many others. For now, Love & Mercy might be the best we have, for all its weaknesses and shortcomings.

Beach Boys, "California Girls" (1965)

Aug. 7, 1965, #3
(listen)

"California Girls" appealed to me first for the pro forma geographical name-checking in the lyrics, a version of Chuck Berry's original strategy in "Sweet Little Sixteen," like ticking off boxes on a medical form: "East Coast girls are hip ... Southern girls with the way they talk ... Northern girls with the way they kiss," etc. But it's much more than a lyrical schema that appealed to a 10-year-old. The grand production, which opens so big on the chorus, is hard to miss even across staticky AM radio. Coming at the top of their game, "California Girls" remains one of the absolute best by the Beach Boys. The instrumental section reportedly took 44 takes to get, more evidence for Brian Wilson the mad genius who knew very well exactly what he was doing. What I didn't know until recently is that the song is also partly a result of an LSD experience, Wilson's first trip actually, during which he hammered out much of the musical framework (Mike Love also made contributions, evidently unconnected with LSD). I like "California Girls" for sentimental reasons, because it reminds me a lot of the first summer I spent listening to AM radio, down to specific images and experiences. But it's also a great example of the group's deceptive complexity. Modeled self-consciously on the Drifters' very fine "On Broadway," it's simple enough rock 'n' roll on one level, as filtered through Nik Cohn's concept of the high school years of the early '60s—it's not hard to believe the singer really wished they all could be California girls. But it is also rich with melody, sophistication, and production technique. Like the ocean they lived next to and reflexively exalted, in the fullness of time it beats you down to sand.

Beach Boys, "God Only Knows" (1966)

Sept. 17, 1966, #39 
(listen)

Leave it to Brian Wilson to turn a figure of speech into a prayer and back again in the conventional space of some 2:54. We are listening to the hosannas still, and I come to deliver another. "God Only Knows" was the b-side to the top 10 hit "Wouldn't it Be Nice" and somehow, from that position, managed to crawl into the top 40 on its own, reaching #39 (I guess jukebox play or something had to be a factor). The various accolades are quite colossal at this time: Paul McCartney's favorite song of all time, #25 on a Rolling Stone list (500 Greatest Songs of All Time), and perhaps most unbelievably #1 on a Pitchfork list (Greatest Songs of the 1960s). I like "God Only Knows" because I like the sound of everything that came of the Pet Sounds sessions: the brilliant harmonies, and the songs, inflected equally with rock 'n' roll and European pop song, earnest entreaties to a heartless universe, a touching faith and its incipient erosion. Here it is plain as can be in the shrewd choice of phrase to lean on, so plaintive and heartfelt in the stained-glass cathedrals of the harmonies: "God only knows ... God only knows ... God only knows." What I'd be without you, to complete the thought. But the real energy here, always, is more on the order of agape—even as it is not entirely clear that it's not the girl herself who might be God. In which case, that's creepy. But of a piece with the sense we have of Brian Wilson's complexes, which include among other things a certain compulsive need to worship. He breaks that off pretty clean here, and produces a song that is endlessly beautiful, not to say exalted.

Pet Sounds (1966)

(Previous shenanigans and assays here and here.)

Over the years I have come to think of this more as some obscure object of cult adoration, maybe on the order of Forever Changes or Secret Life of Harpers Bizarre or Five Leaves Left, a secret I share with maybe only a few thousand others on the planet. A delusion, in any case (and with all of them), but why do I think this? Fallout from the Smile debacle, maybe a little, which legend of course claimed as their Sgt. Pepper (which would then make this their Revolver, yes? So what's the problem?). Pet Sounds did spawn four top 40 hits, remember (counting the Brian Wilson solo, "Caroline, No"), two of them top 10s. But I don't know—I still have the impression that this familiar pantheon selection has been marginalized some, maybe more than it deserves. Or maybe not. It's hard to tell. It's an odd one, no denying that.

Spring, "Shyin' Away" (1973)

(listen)

Earworm: Approach with caution. Produced by Brian Wilson (it says), featuring his then-wife Marilyn with Diane Rovell, formerly the Honeys, "Shyin' Away" is one of the last things we got from Spring before the acrimonies of divorce and various hapless comeback efforts threw it into obscurity for good. Even an obscure band from the UK had the legal clout to force the change of name to "American Spring." Such indignities do not prepare one for the pure confectionery pleasures of "Shyin' Away," which is approximately what you would expect, from the times and from the talent. Equal parts TV theme song and nagging early-'70s AM radio style, it's got something that went to work on me when I finally crossed it more than 30 years on: the upbeat chug-a-lug, the whispery clarion vocals climbing over one another, the swoops and darts of the verse melody, the way it sails into the chorus like a boat into a harbor at sunset. It's a terrible earworm but a beautiful one for all that, one I do not mind hearing when I wake or it comes floating into my head at all hours. It has its chin out and is plucky as hell. Wilson got top billing for production but most parties seem to agree that his contributions were much less than those of David Sandler, a point underscored by the songwriting credit on the 45 (their last of three), which goes to "D. Sandler - B. Wilson - D. Rovell." I think even Sandler might agree it's running away the best thing he ever did. For me, I'm pretty sure I saw the drama play out in the movie Grace of My Heart. I can never quite get it out of my heart now, let alone my head.

75. Bryan Ferry, "Don't Worry Baby" (1973)

(listen)

As far as I'm concerned the best solo album Bryan Ferry ever made was his first, 1973's These Foolish Things, a collection of oldies covers that was at once arch, bold, surprising, perverse, eccentric, sincere, and just plain entertaining nearly every step of the way. Even the duds were redeemed simply by the fact that he tried them, and the winners make you laugh for exactly the same reason. The ones that most typically excite comment are Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" (which I find a bit overly cute) and Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," which probably gets the prize for most unexpected, not to mention how well Ferry makes it work in the sultry atmosphere in which the set lives and breathes. My own favorites include the title song—it glides in and out on a '70s production magic flying carpet, but retains all the romance of the Depression-era original. But the Beach Boys cover is the one that reliably blows me down. Ferry takes Brian Wilson's already nearly perfect gem about drag-racing and the quaking fear of the singer who is doing it anyway, because the girl loves him, and amps it all up even further. For the 4:15 that this goes on, the drums boom harder, the strings are sweeter and more deliberate, the chick singers mean it more, the singer is more certain than ever of his imminent death, and the heaven that beckons from the beyond is even more ... heavenly. As if to emphasize the point, it spends most of its last minute fading imperceptibly. Flashing guitar hero Phil Manzanera's all too brief licks and solos just leave you wanting more. Which is approximately how, among other foolish things, that it becomes one to play over and over.

"Wouldn't it Be Nice" (1966)

15. Beach Boys, "Wouldn't it Be Nice" (Aug. 20, 1966, #8)

Once again emerging from inside the confines of his head, Brian Wilson here offers us perhaps the most audacious, naïve, heartfelt, genuine, wrongheaded, thrilling, foolish fantasy of love and marriage ever committed to recording media, here, now, anywhere. With one possible exception (still ahead) no hit on the radio ever captured the seductive simplicity of the fantasy quite so completely. It is never, not even for one second, the least bit embarrassed about its addle-headedness, and therein resides its everlasting charm. Used effectively as the kickoff to one of the great rock 'n' roll albums, Pet Sounds, it starts with deceptively gentle guitar goofing, a drum hit, and then the shimmering, overwhelming wall of vocals and melody and words. It can penetrate like the rush from a drug, that moment when you suddenly realize everything is different now. Listen to them putting it down: "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older / Then we wouldn't have to wait so long / And wouldn't it be nice to live together / In the kind of world where we belong," they sing, and the sincerity sparkles through. They are evidently as high as we are now, and they continue, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up / In the morning when the day is new / And after having spent the day together / Hold each other close the whole night through." Then they clinch the deal: "Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true / Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do." The genius of Wilson & crew here is that they accomplish all this with such basic elements: words, sounds, melody, harmony. This thing is just about perfect the way it is. It doesn't need any help. It's all there all at once.

"Don't Worry Baby" (1964)

23. Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby" (June 27, 1964, #24)

It's a well-known fact that Brian Wilson did not surf—nor, by the time he set himself to paying tribute to and matching the various heights of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," had he ever taken to hot-rod racing, in the streets or otherwise. But obviously he knew it would have been the kind of thing that would worry him if he did. And so, with co-writer Roger Christian, he sighed softly and leaned back and imagined a girlfriend, one who would comfort and help to relieve him of these worries. One who no doubt looked a good deal like Ronnie Spector. And in letting his imagination roam among the febrile fantasies of the gunning engines, the hooting and the jeering, in the gloaming which closes down so heartlessly, he hatched something that will always be tremendously beautiful. It moves at a stately pace, with cascading sheets of harmonies that drop in like fruit falling from a tree, with a harsh but sweetly insistent rhythm guitar, and words that tell the story straight and bare the feelings plain: "Well it's been building up inside of me / For oh I don't know how long," he says. "I guess I should've kept my mouth shut / When I start to brag about my car / But I can't back down now because / I pushed the other guys too far." But, and this is the good part on every level, "She told me 'Baby, when you race today / Just take along my love with you / And if you knew how much I loved you / Baby nothing could go wrong with you.'" And the chorus: "Don't worry baby" X 3. In the face of this, how can anyone possibly be surprised by our disappointment that life isn't always just like this?

"Good Vibrations" (1966)

29. Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations" (Oct. 29, 1966, #1)

At the time it was new, I liked this about as much as any Beach Boys hit (yes, even "Barbara Ann")—it sparkled and moved and I enjoyed it when it came on, though I wasn't ever switching around stations to pick it up like I would with others. If anything, in fact, I was a little suspicious of the falling-over-themselves acclaim this so regularly received from all quarters, even after it had faded from the airwaves and, later, become a fixture on oldies stations. Call it my reflexively contrarian nature, that unique curse. Slowly, however—talking decades now—the thing started to nag at me. Particularly when I saw the way it was used in movies, the hard core of its eternal beauties began to disclose. Most memorable for me, perhaps oddly, was in the documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, where it flew off the screen in an unusually apt transition, embracing and engulfing. Now I wonder how I ever could have been the least bit indifferent to it. It sneaks in so soft-footed, adds simple elements, takes off like a speedboat on the chorus. The organ is impossibly soulful in its light touch, when you manage to notice it; ditto the sawing cellos, which are thrilling. Oh yeah, they can sing some too. The use of theremin is absolutely perfect, taking this strange instrument out of the realm of '50s science fiction movies yet retaining its disquieting sense from those movies. The song inhabits and roams its strange structure easily and at will, almost randomly, and has enough going for it that it could easily triple or quadruple or more the 3:38 duration of the single release and would no doubt hold interest. As it is, I'm happy now and then simply to play it over and over.

Pet Sounds outtakes (1966)

"Sloop John B (Highlights from Tracking Date)" After all these years, Brian Wilson is the only Wilson left. That was nobody's expectation -- he was more likely going to be the first one to go. Yet, oddly, a lot of these outtakes answer the question about why Brian turned out to be the survivor: Pure life force. My own sense of him has always been of the classic fucked-up rock star royalty, an introverted, passive figure, the kind of guy who rarely talks and then only mumbles or whispers. My bad. He may have been or still be that way with journalists and in front of cameras, but not in the studio, where his performance as producer is nothing less than riveting. He goes all unconscious at the board assembling the beautiful bits that comprise their pop masterpiece, barking orders, calling encouragement, tweaking sound effects, pulling, prodding, messing, discovering. Hearing the pieces all fall together, witnessing via sound a brilliant artist at work, is a wonder to behold.

More information in comments.