The Beach Boys' 'Sunflower' Commercial and Artistic Flaw: No Mike Love Uptempo Rockers

Hmmm, well it's a pretty obvious conclusion. Considering how you never turn up in threads about The Beach Boys music or threads praising Brian or Dennis, and ONLY pop up when an obvious opportunity to trash Mike Love presents itself, ..... yeah

 

Not a theory. You clearly were not there in the early 1970s. I was. I was in school. I discovered The Beach Boys for myself in 1971 was mocked, made fun of, even to the point when I was spotted walking up the road to a friends house with some albums under my arm a kid had to run up to make fun of The Beach Boys records I had with me. And that was in California.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Easily debunked:

The Beach Boys discography - Wikipedia

The last US single to hit #20 was Do It Again in 1968 until a #5 in 1976 with their cover of Rock And Roll Music. In California we got to hear Sail On Sailor on FM every now and then in '73/'74, the next thing I actually heard on the radio played more than once was Getcha Back in 1985, then nothing till until Wipe Out and Kokomo hit in the late '80s.

Clearly this is not a band that 'kept scoring major hits' past their 1960s heyday. An historically accurate statement would be something more like, "The band scored a handful of minor hits past their 1960s heyday." The Beach Boys last big hit was Al Jardine's reworked Cottonfields which hit #1 in the UK in 1970. It would be another 20 years before they had another hit like that.

Simply wrong, for reasons I'll try to succinctly outline below.

Even members of the band themselves recognised they had a HUGE image problem by the latter part of the 1960s. Bruce Johnston is on record as saying The Beach Boys could hardly pull in an audience of 200 in a high school gymnasium in 1968 and the band was thought of as a group of surfing Doris Days:



Cultural changes during the era 1967 ~ 1973 were a HUGE blow to The Beach Boys fortunes in the US during those years (though they were still liked in the UK -- Sunflower was a hit LP there, stiffed in the US). It wasn't until America's Watergate/Viet Nam hangover that a nascent nostalgia boom boosted the band's fortunes -- again, I was there, I clipped articles out of The Sacramento Bee in 1973 where a columnist there was flat amazed at the college concert crowd reaction to The Beach Boys that year.

When you write something as dead-in-the-water wrong as "I don't buy the cultural changes theory" you communicate to everyone that you weren't there and that you don't know what you're talking about.

Fortunately, The Beach Boys "endured", not with especially good material in later years, but with a wonderful, superlative vocal blend that buying audiences, while not in great numbers, still recognised as unique, along with the presence of still loyal fans who were hungry for new product.

 

^ On the nose-y.

I was there too.

 

The album was well recieved in Europe and charted high in several countries, #29 in UK and #10 in Holland (I can't find any other specific statistics for other countries). Also the "Cottonfields" single (which was added to the album over here) was a big hit in Europe, #5 in UK and here in Sweden it was #1 (as well as in Norway, and also in Australia).

 

The success The Beach Boys had in Europe has always fascinated me. Clearly music lovers in Europe weren't nearly as concerned about image as simply the sound of the music. A musician friend of mine had a friend of his own who was backstage during a Beach Boys performance in the UK in the late sixties and while he wasn't a fan himself (or even much of a rock fan if memory serves), he said they were among the most professional acts he'd come across, very focused on being on key, etc.

 

"Do It Again" - Yes.
"Student Demonstration Time" - No.

 

"Add Some Music To Your Day" was simply a poor choice for a lead-off single. It's interesting in that it gives each member of the group except Dennis a solo vocal showcase (Brian's being the shortest), but it's a bit too long. A much better choice would've been "Our Sweet Love." One of Carl's best performances, and it's musically interesting. The choruses are in a different key than the verses.

 

Absolutely on the money. Let me just add that The Beach Boys worked the College circuit hard to rebuild their image and it worked for the most part. They built quite the reputation as being a great live act. Hell, by Spring 1972, they actually sold out the 14000 seat Philadelphia Spectrum. A show with 7 Beach Boys on stage, along with Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille as backup members.

 

Were both versions of COTTONFIELDS hits in different countries, or was it one specific version that got airplay everywhere?

 

Al Jardine’s country version was the hit single.

 

And for good reason.

 

A lot of well made points there but Cottonfields didn’t reach number 1 in the UK

 

Maybe a quick visit to the thread "most missed music stars" is in order for a stalker like yourself. Three likes so far and that's just the tip of the iceberg for supportive posts for the Wilson brothers and Al. The lovester being the wife beater and litigious clown that he is will always, yes always, will get his "due" from me, but you just bolt yourself in his corner and all the while listening to the swarmy crap on Unleash The luHv.

 

On the stalker note: I’m pretty sure Mike’s people keep their eyes on you.

 

The Beach Boys just wasn't meant for these times.

 

Gotta disagree. Sunflower was a major achievement and more of a success in England anyway. Guess the USA didn't "get" it. In England it was considered the Beach Boys' Sgt Pepper--if not a best seller.

Pretty much great start to finish with another great closer comparable to Surf's Up in Cool Water. I have a rare vinyl with the LP numbers for Warner and Caribou on the spine of the gatefold.

This from Rolling Stone in 1970...yep. Agree 100%



RS-by Jim Miller, Oct 1, 1970

After a long period of recovery, mediocrity, and general disaster, the Beach Boys have finally produced an album that can stand with Pet Sounds: the old vocal and instrumental complexity has returned and the result largely justifies the absurd faith some of us have had that the Beach Boys were actually still capable of producing a superb rock album — or, more precisely, a suberb rock muzak album. "Add Some Music to Your Day"; hip supermarkets might program this album for contented browsing among the frozen vegetables and canned fruit.

As a reassuring note, most of the lyric impotence of the group remains, though not so prominently displayed as on such colorful recent outings as Friends. In what is mainly a simple collection of love songs, Dennis Wilson has explored some aspects of rhythm and blues while Brian continues to work within his own distinctive framework. Thus on the one hand we have "It's About Time" and "Slip on Through," hints of the soft hard rock that marked "I Get Around," "Help Me Rhonda," etc., transferred to the domain of contemporary Motown. Dennis even pulls off a rib-tickling imitation of Barry Melton imitating James Brown on "Got to Know the Woman." All of these tracks are executed with a certain aplomb that often was lacking in post-"Good Vibrations" Beach Boy music, as if the self-consciousness of such homogenizing enterprise as making a new Beach Boy record has been again overcome. As a result, the naivete of the group is more astounding than ever — I mean, good Christ, it's 1970 and here we have a new, excellent Beach Boys' epic, and isn't that irrelevant?

In any case, Brian's new stuff is great, especially "This Whole World" and "All I Wanna Do." Which brings up the engineering and production work on this album: it's flawless, especially in view of the number of overdubs. There is a warmth, a floating quality to the stereo that far surpasses the mixing on, say, Abbey Road. The effects are subtle, except for the outrageous echo on "All I Wanna Do" that makes the song such a mind — wrenching experience. And then there is "Cool, Cool Water," Brian's exquisite ode to water in all its manifestations, which, like "Add Some Music," is encyclopedic in its trivial catalogue of the subject at hand. "Cool, Cool Water" pulls off a Smiley Smile far better than most of the material on that disappointing venture.

The inevitable saccharine ballads are present in abundance. "Deirdre" and particularly Brian's "Our Sweet Love" rejoin the ongoing tradition of "Surfer Girl," although "Our Sweet Love" is most reminiscent of the mood of Pet Sounds. Of course there is some lesser stuff here, like "At My Window." No matter: as a whole, Sunflower is without doubt the best Beach Boys album in recent memory, a stylistically coherent tour de force. It makes one wonder though whether anyone still listens to their music, or could give a **** about it. This album will probably have the fate of being taken as a decadent piece of fluff at a time when we could use more Liberation Music Orchestras. It is decadent fluff — but brilliant fluff. The Beach Boys are plastic madmen, rock geniuses. The plastic should not hide from use the geniuses who molded it.

 

Success $$$-wise, no....success artistically, yes. I like different and like to be surprised, as I was with Sunflower!

 

I thought this was a fake post at first... Sunflower is a perfect album as is.

 

I love Mike and the recent interview in Mojo has me rethinking all the negative press he always gets. A very good and measured guy it seems.

But I wouldn't say Mike Love is the most important Beach Boys' gift to the world. The whole band yes a great gift, with Brian, Carl (& Dennis' later contributions) to me are the greatest and most important gift the Beach Boys keep giving. I truly believe that if not for Brian's insecurity, Pet Sounds could have been the greatest, and still the #1 or #2 greatest album of all time. Maybe... I say...but then there are the boys giving us the most beautiful harmonies of their career with Brian's quest for perfection egging them on. I love seeing him directing the vocal sessions with his hands like a great orchestra conductor.
Heaven.

 

yep. me too.

 

Dennis has so much soul.

 

Golly, gee, I sure hope so as that would be the icing on the cake. Bring it on!

 

Alright, into the Vibe-Room you go

 

I'm not sure the following words have ever been spoken aloud...

"What this album needs is more Mike Love."