Remember 1967? When each new album was supposed to be an advance over the last? When the variety on Sgt. Pepper’s didn’t remind people of the Ed Sullivan show but of well, Dante’s Inferno? “A Day In the Life” as grandly depressed as T.S. Eliot. And Bob Dylan a better poet than Walt Whitman, who was stuck back there with words on a page, because electric guitars hadn’t been invented. When the idea of ’50’s rock revival seemed as impossible as Charles Manson. And heavy significance was just lying around even (especially?) in album covers, waiting to be discovered.

No one disagreed with this: it was just a question of who was included in. Some people thought the Beach Boys were, and as a matter of fact, thought that their next album after Pet Sounds and “Good Vibrations” — first called Dumb Angel and then changed to Smile — was going to be the all-time great perception snapper. The greatest work of art in the history of Rock and Roll. Cheetah magazine had an article by I think it was Jules Siegel called The Surfer Who Discovered God or something, and even if it made Brian sound a little eccentric, maybe being eccentric proved he was a genius! Such seemed to be the intent.

I was a little nervous about it at the time, because it was based on the assumption that old Beach Boys albums were for shit, primordial roots just waiting for Lennon-McCartney and acid to bloom into something good. This was when all their old albums were hitting the bargain bins, and so was I, having decided that I actually did want to own everything they’d ever put out. The more I bought and listened, the more I liked. I did hear what sounded like a progression from early to late, but it didn’t make the old stuff sound bad, just early.

There I was, finally letting myself falling in love with “Surfer Girl” and “In My Room” and being told the Beach Boys were going to do something totally different.

But the album kept getting postponed, and postponed again.

One time, walking through East Harlem at night, I saw it in the window — strange apparition — of a closed record store. Released as a promo, I’ve heard, although the record never followed.

In it’s place came Smiley Smile. Hip it was, and different. The two singles, “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villians” and a funny little assortment of goofs, semi-religio numbers and snippets. Parts of it were rumored to have been on Smile in another form. But it sure didn’t sound like that massive Work of Art. Instead of the Great Production Job, the sound was pruned back and minimal. Pointing out the sparseness and cleanliness of “Good Vibrations” itself. A lot of tracks but not symphony there, either.

I loved it, it was personal, and after the anxiety of “is Brian gonna produce his great work of art or not” very cooled out. I mean it used to calm me down personally, with my own little personal problems. It was a lot of stereo fun, and funny if you had a certain hip whimsical gross-out style of humor (I do, I flatter myself to think). It was also the first “religious” Beach Boys album in that the transcendent . . . angle in the Beach Boys sound was used for the first time not in relation to cars of young love, but subject matter which was a little bit considered religious. That’s not counting their old Christmas Album of course.

Of course, some of those conservatory-trained rock writers did mistake it for the avant-garde breakthrough they’d been awaiting. But any old listener could tell it was a lay back.

But if Smiley Smile was hard to understand, look out for their next one, Wild Honey (released in February ’68). O.K., Smiley Smile was a little disoriented, but surely the next one would be a Charles Ives.

Instead it was simply produced (reportedly in Brian’s just-built home studio), R&B-like, back to the roots or whatever you want to call it. A Beach Boys John Wesley Harding, and before John Wesley Harding itself was released! Like Smiley Smile, a touch too bare and a little neurotic, but infused with a lot more rocking rhythm and sexuality. Including the two AM top 40 hits, “Darlin’ ” (originally written for Three Dog Night) and “Wild Honey.”

A fabulous case of critical cultural confusion is documented in Paul Williams’ book Outlaw Blues. Williams, if you don’t know, was the editor of Crawdaddy!, which I think was the first Rock magazine. And he really liked the Beach Boys and Pet Sounds. A long part of his book is devoted to an interview with former Beach Boys insider David Anderle about Brian Wilson. At the time of the interview, Wild Honey had just been released and there they were, thinking the guy who was going to be the Beethoven of our, era . . . had totally conked out.

I was a devoted Rock Press reader back then and so I was glad to read anything positive about the Beach Boys. But even though Williams was full of praise, even gushy, I couldn’t understand his perspective.

According to this whole Brian is Beethoven thing, Brian was the kernel of mindblowing artistic breakthrough potential nestling in a bed of just plain normal talents of the rest of the group. Capitol records wasn’t to blame so much for holding the group back as was the rest of the group itself. Brian would try to move forward but the other guys would hold him back, hanging out at the hamburger stand when he wanted to drop a tab.

Who knows, maybe there was some truth to it. But since I liked the Beach Boys music, if the rest of the group was supposed to represent the past, then I had to give the rest of the group a little credit. More than one group had fallen off the deep edge trying to be innovative and artistic out of context.

Besides, the myth of the unity of the Beach Boys as a group was important to me. First, that it was partly an actual blood family that had sung around the Christmas Tree and stuck together ever since. So that you could imagine maybe they were together for reasons other than just success or fucking each other over. True or not, it was important for me to imagine some sort of mutual respect in the group. Because the fantasy/fact of a group of guys who all felt it was o.k. to express sentimental, corny and tender emotion was a part of their attraction. Their music and long history suggested it. But if Brian was going to leave the group to be great, that would have cracked the myth pretty bad. /

And any way, I loved Wild Honey. It was a great record. It made me happy listening to it. I got a lot of ideas from it about love and sex.

Right. I get ideas from Rock and Roll records. I remember, years before, when the Stones’ “Play With Fire” came out, dancing drunk to that record at a party. And mock whipping the woman I was dancing with into mock submission. Mock sure. I don’t doubt that us straight rock fans who missed or just plain ignored Mick Jagger’s bisexuality, given his brilliance and success a little bit wanted to or tried to emulate his rebelliousness, sensuality and degradation of women. And thought they were interconnected. Such an approach was bound to fail if you weren’t a super-star of course, but you could always blame it on the women’s hangups. Mick did, and he was a genius.

I’m not trying to claim that the Beach Boys were free from sexism or that I was once I became their fan. There are dangers, too, as I found out, in the more romantic myths the Beach Boys often use, instead. But I know it was important for me that I had a public sexual stance like theirs to relate to that incorporated gentleness, affection and interest that could last longer than one night.

One song in particular, called “I’d Love Just Once to See You.” always knocked me out. It’s just a little description of a guy puttering around the house and mentioning to someone how he’d wish they would drop by. The last line is the title repeated three times. But it isn’t, really. It’s just a buildup to the real last line which is dropped in an off-hand way. “I’d love just once to see you ... in the nude.”

I love it. I can’t help if. It’s great.

But it sure isn’t raunchy.

All Down Hill Since Help Me Rhonda After All

In the middle to late ’60’s, for a post high school kid traveling towards hipness and despair/enlightenment, the Beach Boys golden era (62-65) was the immediate past, or perhaps still a contemporary competitor with the Beatles and the future they represented. Or like for me at the time, it was a time that recalled lots of bad memories.

But for someone that age today, ’62-’65 might be the earliest beginnings of rock and roll fandom. What Elvis of the ‘50s’ could mean to me (“Oh yea, come to think of it, I remember, not bad after all”) the Beach Boys and the Early Sixties or even The Beatles Themselves mean to a late adolescent in the Seventies. Somebody 20 years old today, for instance, was about 11 when the Surfin’ Safari album was released.

Somebody 26 now (me) was 17.

Meaning that even us old farts are beginning to realize that the early sixties were a long time ago. Before the Revolution, Psychedelic-Rock, hippy junkies and Rock Criticism itself. What was once either threatening or disgusting culturally has become a highly respectable nostalgic era. Even a superior moment of lost innocence, given the counter-culture calamities and lost dreams of the last few years. Look at Carole King, whose recejit superstardom is enhanced, not undercut, by the fact that she was a Brill Building song writer back then.

At a recent college tour in New York — New Jersey, when the Beach Boys did their old hits which once brought them scorn and ridicule,' the audience didn’t so much just applaud after a few notes, but gasp with a shock of recognition, astonishment and pleasure.

Or even in my own little circle, New Year’s Eve when I put “Dead Man’s Curve” and “Surf City” by Jan and Dean on the phono; everyone enjoyed it! I’ve tried it before, and it never worked. But this time, lots more people danced than to the Doors.

Holy Late Sixties Reversal! Somethin’s going down for sure. And it’s got to be one of the reasons for the Beach Boys reestablished success. That they are a living link to all that.

Although it hasn’t been used yet as a marketable point of view. But let’s see. Capitol just might start hustling those Beach Boys oldies with a The-EarlySixties-W ere-Where-I t’sA t ap proach. Particularly if the new Jan and Dean reissue on United Artists starts selling weW.fWhich it has. — Ed.)

Which comes with, among other things, a pro-Jan and Dean pro-punk essay by Dave Marsh. Which

just goes to show, that although the “Aesthetic Re-evaluation of the Early Sixties” hasn’t been used much yet to sell records, it has become part of a new Rock myth. Which,

just as the Beach Boys themselves are making a tentative foothold as hip, committed artists, comes along to declare that the Beach Boys haven’t finally got it together at all, but have finally gone totally off the wall.

Trying for Art, Art, Art, instead of Fun. Trapped in their own pretensions. Snarled up with their new audience and their insecurities about not being significant. Becoming irrelevant with Pet Sounds, instead of the opposite, as others thought.

What irony!

I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous myself about the tendency on Surf’s Up towards self-consciously significant songs on important issues with either an obvious point or incomprehensible lyrics. The long-unreleased title cut, supposed-

ly one of those great-breakthrough songs from Smile — “Surf’s Up” — is largely incomprehensible to me. A beautiful song, with heart-breaking singing from Brian once again. And for me, the way the phrase “surfs up” appears in the song is heavy and touching. But I’ll take an old Beach Boys lyric over Van Dyck Parks instigated lines like “columnated ruin dominoes.”

Maybe it’s just a new convolutipn of that old rock and roll thing where you really liked the song but couldn’t understand any of the words. It used to be because the singer slurred and yelled the words. (And Mick Jagger still does!) But what does it mean if you can hear the words, even read them on the lyric sheet, but still not understand them?

To me, and most people I know, that smacks of elitist modern poetry and is taken as a pretentious affront. “See, the singer’s trying to show he’s so smart we can’t understand him.” But other people relish “words that are hard to figure out.” I don’t understand what the fun is myself, and in fact always think it’s used to cover up the fact that the lyricist just doesn’t know how to get more specific or clear. To real situations that might actually happen.

I’ve got to admit that Hike “complicated” songs like “American Pie,” which tantalizes you to know enough about the history of rock and roll to understand it. Or the complicated/obscure/convoluted era Bob Dylan, even if he Eventually found it a trap and fled. For that I was willing to admit — “it’s all so weird it can’t be expressed any other way.” Although maybe it wasn’t.

But “wounds of evolution,” “Passion nectar,” “tablets of time,” “while port adieu or die” and other phrases from certain songs on Surf’s Up don’t ring a bell anywhere inside of me, while the music they’re with does. Except the bell that says that important and lofty thought can only be expressed in ancient language, foreign-culture references or lots of complicated words. I’ve never liked that idea.

It’s been a part of the They’re-GreatArtist$-Now faction that the Beach Boys words didn’t used to be very good at all but are getting better. Symbolized by the fact that for the first time on Surf’s Up they have a lyric sheet. I’ve never understood this. The compact cat lingo of Shut Down amazes me every time I hear it. And all those old (and new!) love songs always had (have) the same words I was looking for in my heart. The words to Pet Sounds, evidently cowritten by someone named Tony Asher — I used those words to explain my life. Or you mean to say nobody cared about the words to “Fun, Fun Fun?” Bullshit.

But what if the Beach Boys themselves believe this?

More than one rock act has been ruined by inflated self-importance and believing the gushy praise inspired by their own success. The latest examples, I believe, being David Crosby and Steven Stills, and Grace Slick and Paul Kantner, as the final incantation of the Jefferson Airplane.

Which isn’t to say that what the Stars do has no significance. This article is sort of based on the assumption that it does. From my point of view, it really mattered that they’ve added a woman to their band. I guess there’s a fine line between being spokesmen or examples of rock culture and imagining that you are the creator or leadership. One of the nice things about Rock and Roll was also that it didn’t have to be significant all the time. Unlike poor old out-therein-the-forefront of reality jazz. Or John Cage. I’ve always liked the social context stuff instead myself.

BUT

Although they are now singing “So hard to lift the jeweled sceptre” (a line from a song I really like, by the way), this is not the only thing the Beach Boys are singing.

Because ever since Wild Honey, each album has seen the emergence of new Beach Boys writing talents. So that the albums begin to reverberate with several song-writing careers at once.

Like for instance, Dennis Wilson’s.

Which started out with both the “heavy subjects dealing with existence” and raunchy stud styles. (“See, the Beach Boys do have their own Rolling Stone,” I used to think out of my Beach Boys inferiority complex, before I decided being a Rolling Stone wasn’t so good.) Culminating with the cut “Cease to Resist (Never Learn Not to Love)” on 20/20' which it turns out was written not by Dennis at all but Charles Manson. He called it “Cease to Exist.”

Reading The Family by Ed Sanders, about Manson and his gang, gave the song’s authorship a certain goulish appropriateness. Because who actually took Male Chauvinism, Sexual Prowess and a generally “together” counter culture guru image to its bizarro extreme conclusion. No-one but Manson. While the Beatles, Stones and Dylan were manipulating the Hip Spokesman Myth on the most glittering media level, Charles Manson played it out at the gritty bottom. Fooling Dennis Wilson for a time, among others.

This isn’t to knock Dennis Wilson, but if the Beach Boys wanted to lay something really heavy on us they could lay out an explanation of the Charles Manson trip. Because that’s the worst profound/committed/ hip has ever produced.

I never liked “Cease to Exist/Resist” even when I didn’t know Charles Manson had written it. (Thank God, what if it had been my favorite *cut?) But I can’t just point the finger at the Beach Boys, because I have to admit, like other blind hippies, when I first found out who wrote it, I thought that Charles Manson on a Beach Boys album would give them a much needed notoriety. Like “heavier” good/bad groups like the Stones always had. Particularly after Altamont. Or the Dead’s “friendship” with the Angels.

A 100% fucked-up thought for sure. But don’t forget, back then, for a brief time, Weatherman Was calling Charles Manson a revolutionary.

And I can’t knock Dennis Wilson because since then he’s written some of my all time favorites. Including, on Sunflower, a beautiful Beach Boys love song called “Forever,” and the all time great anti-spokesman summation “It’s About Time.”

I used to be a famous artist proud as I could be Struggling to express myself for the whole world to see. I used to blow my mind sky-high looking for a lost elation. Little did I know the joy I was to find in knowing I’m only me.

And since then at least two other simple love songs he’s done in concert, “In Love With the Lady” and “Barbara,” which would have balanced Surf’s Up out nicely, maybe making it as full as Sunflower. But a group feud, or a broken hand, or private changes led to Dennis taking them off the record, or so it’s been reported. I sure hope they’re on the next one.

I could go on here, describing Bruce Johnston’s fantastic super-sentimental, nostalgic and movie-music breakthroughs, or the songs of A1 Jardine or Mike Love. Or anticipated the two new guys, whose stuff is supposed to be on the new album. I don’t know anything about the Colored (referring to that distinct South African category) Culture in South Africa, but if what they did at their debut with the Beach Boys at Carnegie Hall is any indication, there’s going to be a black or soul sound in the mix from now on.

I can’t wait for Carl and the Passions! But all of these memories and speculations are just to point out that rather than collapsing after Wild Honey, or progressing to the point where they’re all Beethovens — each Beach Boys record reverberates with many careers. It seems unlikely that any future albums will have the “coherence” of an allBrian album like Pet Sounds or Wild Honey or earlier stuff. But I like that because my own feelings, memories and expectations about the Beach Boys are always going backwards and forwards in time anyway.

And it makes it impossible for any one image to become a trap.

Besides, although they use moogs and theremins and symphonies and all that big shot stuff, the Beach Boys have never struck me once as musically pretentious. Even those Surf’s Up cuts whose lyrics make me nervous hit directly my musical feelings. I never think “gee, that sounds advanced.”

It all might just be a probe into new areas that would have gone unnoticed on one of those earlier totally ignored albums. As it all happened, after moving to Warners/Reprise and decent publicity and putting out Sunflower, which got lots of recognition in the press, it was setup for their next album, no matter what, to sell well and be the fi^t album in the public spotlight since maybe Beach Boys Party. On the other hand, maybe the mix on Surf’s Up was crucial to their refound success. Probably both.

No matter what they explore, their music is firmly rooted in the music of Pop America — including the music of their own songwriting Pop, Murry Wilson. Whose own album on Capitol is corny and schmaltzy but not at all pretentious. A big distinction. And an excess I prefer (try to exhibit?) myself.

The Many Moods of Murry Wilson. Why I just enjoyed listening to it this morning.

How They Fought The Oldies Trap And Why It’s Important to Me

I dig those old cuts where the Beach Boys or anybody evoke strong religious tones out of apparently mundane teenage subject matter. But I’m older, and so are the Beach Boys, and so’s Rock and Roll as an art-form or whatever it is. Yearning for the day when semi-intellectuals discovered hidden artistic greatness in trashy popular art may be just nostalgia for a historical circumstance that’s ended. Or a style of pop elitism that has been around long enough to be absorbed. Maybe the “pretentiousness” that annoys some rock critics is only a phase in a process whereby rock and roll absorbs the self-consciousness that rock critics used to provide from the outside. Things looked pretty fucked-up in general to me, and the more understanding everybody has about what they’re doing the better. As far as I’m concerned.

Continued on page 70.

(Maybe, in another five years pretension rock itself will be a thing of the past and a much cherished by-gone excess, the way greaser rock is now or the way early British Invasion rock is soon to become. The Vanilla Fudge, Ultimate Spinach, maybe even Hendrix, and then perhaps the Moody Blues will be idolized and collected for their remarkable campy tangents, who knows?)

Although they do the old hits in concert, there is no way to return to turning out the same kind of music with the same sort of unself-consciousness. Rumor says a live concert album is in the works, which would give a nice historical reverb if released at the right time, with the right balance of old and new. (Have you heard “Good Vibrations” live, the new version of “Help Me Rhonda,” or the brand new version of “Wild Honey” sung by Blondie?) But there is no way for them to be the Beach Boys of 1964. Even the goldenoldies straight-jacket contains its own style of self-consciousness. Because a group that chooses to perform as soand-so from 1959 to 1962 is involved in the bogus artistic perspective of nostalgia when they do their original act.

The biggest blessing of the popularity of Surf’s Up for a regular concert goer like me is that now, when they perform, most of the audience knows, or is even awaiting something the Beach Boys have recorded in the last couple of years. Until fairly recently at concerts people would be yelling all through the concert for various oldies. Which were nice to hear when they did them at encore time. But important to leave til then to maintain the existence of their career since “Good Vibrations.”

This has to be a somewhat slow and steady procedure. Because, as a ten year old rock group in, then out and back in the public eye, it would be hard to come up with a cool move that would smash their old image while creating another. Even if this was desirable.

Look at Dylan himself. After awhile, nothing he did could be as dramatic as When He Went Electric or When He Quit Going Electric. “Protest” song “George Jackson” was a dramatic change, from his recent stuff, but it reverberated into the past of his own career in everyone’s mind. It wasn’t all new. What would be that he could do and still be Bob Dylan?

Of course, it’s fair for someone to say that they prefer the excitement of newer Pop images, that old acts have a certain staleness, and that the life of a good Rock and Roll star should only be about three years. I used to like the Kinks as much as the Beach Boys but after awhile I just got tired of them, and didn’t want to buy any more albums by \ them and didn’t give a shit about what changes they went through. I know some people are as fanatical about the Kinks as I am about the Beach Boys, so I’ni sure some people are as bored by the Beach Boys as I am by the Kinks. I still like the Kinks albums I have from the era I liked them during, and I dug “Lola,” so I can’t begrudge someone who just likes the Beach Boys at some brief moment or one single gone by.

But I really like, in fact, really Need to pick up on what the Beach Boys keep producing and so I have a need for them to continue in some dynamic balance between What’s Going Down Right Now and their own 10 year career. Meaning What’s Going Down Now and 10 years of my life.

Beach Boys Music is my own most important personal rock and roll myth, intersecting with lots of others, I would hope. A pop phenomenon that started in its simplest form with the first person to say “This song reminds me of my high school prom,” and progressing in correlation to the increase in size of people’s record collection.

I own everything by the Beach Boys I could get my hands on, and by the way would like to know if anybody knows of a relatively cheap way to obtain in or near New York City

1)the two live concert albums released in Europe and not in the States.

2) The Flame album produced by Carl Wilson on Brother/Starday-King

3) “Little St. Nick” on a 45 with “The Lord’s Prayer” on the back

4) A fabled record featuring the Beach Boys with Annette

5) The theme song they recorded for the T.V. show “Karen”

Anybody having any answers can contact me through this magazine.

Footnote

Fellow fan Terry Morgan, who provided me with a lot of the information in this article, told me about a swell new Beach Boys re-issue. Called, what else?

Good Vibrations (Pickwick spc-3269). It’s the same as Best of the Beach Boys Vol. Ill minus “Frosty the Snowman” which was never a hit and was just another cut on their Christmas album and which stinks out of context and “Surfin” which was their first hit but doesn’t sound too good on ,an album with later stuff. So it only has nine cuts but they’re all good. It’s got the title cut and big hits as late as “Darlin’ ” and as early as “409”, including “The Little Girl I nee Knew” which was a hit single but never appeared on a regular album and “Girl Don’t Tell Me” which wasn’t a hit, I don’t think, although it was the flip side of “Barbara Ann” and is one of my favorites, besides having been Carl’s solo singing debut.

But best of all, Pickwick is the cheapo wing of Capitol so at the most it should only cost $2. — If you want just one Beach Boys album this might be it. The graphics are real good and the liner notes are even positive in an up to date way. Look for the silver cover. All right!