Trivia / The Beach Boys

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• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Mike Love has denied ever using the phrase "Don't fuck with the formula!" in his arguments with Brian Wilson during the Smile sessions. It actually originated in a 1971 Rolling Stone article, as a phrase that band associate David Anderle used to characterize Love's attitude toward Smile, but not necessarily intended as a direct quote.
• Black Sheep Hit:
  • Though it only reached #49 on the charts, "Sail On, Sailor" got a fair amount of airplay on rock radio despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it sounds absolutely nothing like the rest of their catalog.
  • "Kokomo" hit #1 in 1988, mostly thanks to the Cocktail soundtrack. The Beach Boys set a new record for longest gaps between #1 hits (over 20 years before this song was released) thanks to this song (a record since surpassed by Cher, although the Beach Boys still hold the record for a band). Despite its success, its sound is closer to yacht rock than the band's best-known Surf Rock and progressive pop material.
• Breakthrough Hit: The group's initial single in November 1961, "Surfin'", went to #1 in Los Angeles and charted well in a few other markets, but that only added up to a national charting of #75. However, their next single in June 1962, "Surfin' Safari", shot to #14 in the national chart with the B-side "409" also charting at #76, putting the five guys from Hawthorne, California on the musical map. The key to their breakthrough was the label: "Surfin'" was released by the small-time Candix label (which folded the next year), while "Surfin' Safari" was released by powerhouse Capitol Records, by then a long-established major label.
• Bury Your Art: While The Beach Boys' career has often been described by fans and analysts as a qualitative rollercoaster, only two albums in their discography have never been reissued: Still Cruisin' and Summer in Paradise. Not only were the pair widely considered the band's worst albums by audiences (with the latter also being a commercial failure), but they were also derided by the band themselves, with even Mike Love (of whom Summer in Paradise was the brainchild) scarcely mentioning the projects in his memoir. The only representation the two albums see post-release is "Kokomo" being a Greatest Hits Album staple (and even then it was originally included on the Cocktail soundtrack) and the Title Track to Summer in Paradise being featured in their setlist.
• Career Resurrection: They were one of the biggest bands of The '60s, coming about as close to surpassing The Beatles in popularity that a band could at the time. But after their groundbreaking 1967 album Smile was never released, coupled with Brian Wilson's notorious reclusion and drug abuse, they faded into obscurity, continuing to make music but failing to penetrate the charts as they once had. But then in 1974, they released a greatest hits album, Endless Summer, which went triple platinum and made the band a hot item again, leading to sold-out concerts for many years after that. But as time went on, and as a string of terrible/bizarre albums was released, and their beloved drummer Dennis Wilson drowned, this success faded as the group went into the 80s. However, they found themselves becoming suddenly successful again when they released their 1988 hit "Kokomo", from the Cocktail soundtrack, which gave the group a #1 record for the first time in decades. The band's third noteworthy spurt of popularity came with the 1993 release of the Good Vibrations: 30 Years of The Beach Boys box set, which yielded their most successful tour in 13 years. Their last came in 2012, when the group's first new album in twenty years, That's Why God Made the Radio, met with critical acclaim, as did the ensuing 50th anniversary tour.
• Cousin Rivalry: In the 70s, the band splintered into two factions that also happened to divide along these lines. The Wilson faction led by Carl and Dennis frequently feuded with the Love faction led by Mike and his two brothers Stan and Steve who worked on the business end of the band. Band members Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston generally sided with the Love faction while the Wilsons got support from Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar. The Love faction eventually ended up winning out.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Carl and Dennis both hated M.I.U. Album with a passion. Dennis was so repulsed by the concept behind it (it was essentially Mike's paean to Transcendental Meditation) that he refused to participate in the recording sessions. He said of the album, "It should self destruct. I hope that the karma will fuck up Mike Love's meditation forever."
  • Carl absolutely hated the Andy Paley session songs and at one point walked out of the recording, causing everyone to have doubts about the project.
  • Carl and Dennis both were disgusted by Mike's "Student Demonstration Time". Carl, a conscientious objector and vigorous opponent of the Vietnam War thought that the song was opposed to protesting in general, while Dennis felt that the lyrics glorified violent police tactics (such as at Kent State, which is mentioned in the song). They were only convinced to reluctantly participate after Mike told them that the song was encouraging peaceful protesting, not violence by protestors or police. When asked about it some years later, Carl dismissed it as, "Oh, that was Michael's."
  • The band seem to agree with the general public's opinion that Summer in Paradise is one of the absolute worst albums ever. Exactly one song from it remains in their setlist, Mike Love only mentions it once in his autobiography and it's never seen a digital release (which, considering the glut of outtakes, alternate takes, demos and other extra material that band has released, should tell you everything you need to know).
  • Brian himself regrets his belief in a Phil Spector-led Jewish conspiracy against him during the SMiLE sessions, describing himself as having become "fucked up" at the time out of jealousy towards both Spector and The Beatles.
  • Bruce Johnston is known among fans for his dislike towards some Beach Boys albums (for example, the Friends (1968) album which he has considered as wimpy music) but also towards his own material for the band, regarding songs like "Deirdre" or "Tears in the Morning" as tracks he wish he didn't make for the Beach Boys.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Probably the most famous musical one of all time: Brian Wilson. Smile, in both versions, is an incredible suite of music, but there's no way it could have been composed by someone with a stable mind. And the unstable mind prevented the Beach Boys version from being released as it was intended: once The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band came out, Brian Wilson lost motivation. Smile, which Wilson began working on in 1966, was finally released as a solo album in 2004.
  • Wilson's breakdown also heavily affected the Beach Boys' music. After shelving Smile, Wilson led the band to record the drastically stripped back and surreal Smiley Smile in its place, which was such a radical departure from their previous work, it alienated near all of their fans and confused critics (though now it's been vindicated as a classic). The record flopped and The Beach Boys went from hip musical innovators to spending decades languishing in commercial failure. Brian's mental state only decreased more and more, leading to depression, auditory hallucinations which he still has today, and gaining massive amounts of weight. His feelings around the time are captured on the track "'Til I Die" from Surf's Up (arguably their darkest record). He got better.
• Creator Killer: Summer in Paradise, the only album in which Mike Love had complete creative control and Brian Wilson wasn't involved at all, was such a critical and commercial failure that the band didn't record another album for twenty years. They've otherwise survived exclusively as a touring act.
• Cut Song:
  • "Land Ahoy" was planned as the opening track on Side 2 of Surfin' Safari but Capitol felt the LP would be more marketable if it included the group's first single "Surfin'" (which had been released on Candix Records), so they licensed "Surfin'" and dropped "Land Ahoy". When Brian Wilson needed Album Filler for Little Deuce Coupe, he rewrote "Land Ahoy" as "Cherry Cherry Coupe". "Land Ahoy" eventually saw release on the Beach Boys Rarities LP in the 80s before appearing on the 90s twofer CDs of "Surfin' Safari"/"Surfin' USA".
    • A cover of "Cindy, Oh Cindy" by Vince Martin and the Tarriers was also recorded during the sessions, but it was dropped from the album because the label felt that the album would've have too many cover songs. Like "Land Ahoy", it appeared on the "Surfin' Safari"/"Surfin' USA" twofer.
    • For Surfin' USA, a song called "The Baker Man" was recorded during the sessions and scrapped, but can be heard as a bonus track on the aforementioned twofer.
  • Sunflower was the composite of two albums - a final Capitol album Reverberation and an intended first Brother/Reprise album Add Some Music - so there's an entire album's worth of cut songs from it. Some appeared on later albums or compilations, and some have been leaked. At the time, the non-album single "Break Away"/"Celebrate The News" had been intended for Reverberation, and the b-side "Susie Cincinnati" had been intended for Add Some Music (the same recording, for some reason, later appeared on 15 Big Ones).
  • "We Got Love", dropped from Holland and replaced by "Sail On Sailor". Unbenownst to the band at the time, some copies had been pressed with it. A version ended up on The Beach Boys In Concert in 1974 before the studio version was officially released on a reissue of Holland 40 years later.
• Defictionalization: "Kokomo" was not written about any real life tropical getaway spot. However, after the song became a hit, at least two resorts sprang up sporting the name.
• Executive Meddling: Capitol Records meddled in their albums at least twice. The group was told that Pet Sounds needed an obvious hit, leading to the addition of "Sloop John B.", the only cover on the album, and the only track to break from the overall introspective mood. The Boys were later told to add "Good Vibrations" to Smiley Smile, despite the fact that it was already past its prime as a hit by that point, and it bore no relation to the stripped-down style of the album.
• Follow the Leader: After they hit it big, lots of Surf Rock groups copied the band's sound, but the most direct case came after Murry Wilson was fired as manager. He signed a popular local SoCal band called The Renegades, changed their name to The Sunrays, and turned them into a Beach Boys soundalike. They even got a moderate hit out of the deal ("I Live for the Sun", which got a lot of oldies radio airplay decades later despite only getting to #51 in Billboard). Despite the awkward situation, the two bands got along fine and The Sunrays even opened for The Beach Boys on tour.
• Franchise Killer: The collective failures of 1992's Summer in Paradise and 1996's Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 led to the shelving of any future Beach Boys projects (including a Stars and Stripes Vol. 2 and an Andy Paley collaboration album) until 2012's That's Why God Made the Radio.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes
  • For decades after its original release, legal mumbo-jumbo prevented Dennis Wilson's masterpiece Pacific Ocean Blue from being reissued on CD. 2008 finally saw that happen, even including sessions and recordings from Dennis's unfinished follow-up album, Bambu.
  • Summer In Paradise was only given one print run which bombed so hard that the distributing label, Navarre, nearly went bankrupt. As such, it's never been reissued or released digitally and copies typically go for $100 on Amazon.
  • Still Cruisin' is out of print as well; however, that one can still be found relatively cheaply used, and at any rate, the album's only hit, "Kokomo", is readily available on just about any compilation.
  • Smile was one of the first "holy grails" of music to surface on bootlegs.
  • Despite being well received, Mike Love's first solo album Looking Back With Love has been out of print for many years and is quite hard to find these days.
• Missing Episode:
  • For over forty years, Dennis' "(Wouldn't It Be Nice to) Live Again" remained inexplicably unreleased and unheard, despite the remaining "vault" songs being gradually released over time. Gradually, it amassed mythical status amongst the die-hard fandom on par with Smile. It was ultimately released in 2013 as part of the Made in California box set, and is viewed as very much worthy of its legend.
  • They probably had more aborted albums than any other major artist. Besides Smile there was also the proposed 1967 live album Lei'd in Hawaii, a live album of their 1975 tour with Chicago, and two 1977 albums that got rejected by their label: Adult/Child (1977) (basically "Brian Wilson goes Vegas") and Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys. Except for the Chicago album, a good chunk of the material for these albums has been released on various rarities compilations over the years.
  • Capitol rushed 1967's Wild Honey out without doing a proper stereo mix (essentially the two versions were a mono mix and a fake stereo mix). In 2017, they finally produced a proper stereo mix from the masters, released as "Sunshine Tomorrow" along with a load of outtakes from it, Smiley Smile, and the unreleased live album Lei'd in Hawaii.
  • Summer in Paradise has never been reissued after its first print bombed.
• Nominal Coauthor: Mike Love sued bandleader Brian Wilson in 1992 over authorship credits for 79 of the group's songs; he ultimately got his name added to 35 of them. Many of the affected songs featured him contributing minor ad-libs such as the lines "goodnight baby, sleep tight baby" in "Wouldn't It Be Nice?"
• Out of Order: The UK releases of their albums was in a particularly strange order. For example, Surfin' USA (from 1962) didn't come out in the UK till 1965, and Surfer Girl (from 1963) did not come out in the UK till 1967 - both after "Little Deuce Coupe", which included tracks that had been taken from those albums. In terms of singles, "Then I Kissed Her" (from 1965's "Summer Days And Summer Nights") came out in the UK as a single in 1967, to the confusion of the band, who were putting out more advanced singles such as "Good Vibrations", and "Do It Again" came out as a single before "Friends" (1968) despite being released afterwards in the US. As a result of this, the impression of The Beach Boys in the UK for years was that they had always been about surfing, cars and girls, despite having moved on from those subjects. "Pet Sounds", however, did come out in 1966 as scheduled, which is just as well, as it became a big influence on The Beatles.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: The Landlocked album is a classic example of this, as it did not exist (at least not in the form people thought it did), but if you didn't know any better you would think it did. The Beach Boys assembled a reference reel of Sunflower outtakes in order to potentially use them on their next album. Meanwhile, Surf's Up was going to be called Landlocked (and some early promotional ads) until Brian allowed them to use the title track (from the Smile era) in order to increase its commercial potential, and the title was changed accordingly. Many put the two together and assumed that this reel of outtakes was an unreleased album called Landlocked. In fact, there are only two tracks in common: "Take a Load Off Your Feet" and "'Til I Die". Several other tracks from that period did end up released later.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Jeffrey Foskett was a big fan of the band when he was young and was discovered by Mike Love in 1981. He performed with the band at Live Aid and also spent many years performing with Brian Wilson in his solo career. He eventually became a full time member of the band starting with the 50th Anniversary reunion.
  • John Stamos is a huge fan, having toured with them as a drummer and performed a Cover Version of "Forever".
• Real-Life Relative: Their 1969 song "Break Away" had a Brian Wilson/Reggie Dunbar writing credit. Dunbar was a pseudonym for none other than Wilson family patriarch Murry Wilson, marking his only songwriting contribution to the band's career.
• Saved from Development Hell: Smile served as an Ur-Example for the concept of 'musical development hell'; created as a follow-up to Pet Sounds and intended to release in 1967, the project was aborted when Brian Wilson suffered a Creator Breakdown of epic proportions and sank into a fog of mental illness for years. Wilson eventually re-recorded and released it in 2004, 37 years later, as a solo project. Later, a persistent rumor that Wilson deleted the original masters during his breakdown was debunked when The Smile Sessions finally came out on November 1, 2011. A recreation of Smile using all the material recorded back in The '60s, it was released in many formats, including a two disc set and a five disc box set, among other things. The box set features over five hours of session material, most of which was previously unreleased.
• Similarly Named Works: "All I Want to Do" vs. "All I Wanna Do". "Oh Darlin'" vs. "Darlin'". "Good Time" vs. "Good Timin'".
• Stillborn Franchise: Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1, a 1996 album featuring them singing re-recordings of their hits as duets with Country Music stars, was supposed to be the first of a series (hence the title). After the album was ripped apart by critics, any future installments were scrapped.
• Throw It In!:
  • "Here Today" has some background studio chatter that Brian Wilson apparently failed to notice. "Wendy" does, as well, including an audible cough. It was removed in the stereo mix.
  • Brian Wilson frequently incorporated suggestions from his backing musicians into his songs. A notable example is the staccato instrument break in "God Only Knows", which is one of the song's most memorable hooks. It came from pianist Don Randi.
• Troubled Production:
  • Smile is one of the greatest rock albums never released, and there are many factors as to why it was never released.
    • During the time of recording, Brian Wilson began experimenting with more potent drugs like LSD and cocaine. This took a toll on his already degrading state of mind. One famous incident led to him experiencing ego death during an acid trip, and inspired the song "The Elements: Fire".
    • As time went on, Brian's mental health further declined and grew increasingly more eccentric and erratic. He shelved "Fire", believing that it was magically lighting fires throughout the town. When he walked into a theater showing the film Seconds (1966) (which was partially financed by Brian's main inspiration, Phil Spector), a character coincidentally said, "Come in, Mr. Wilson." This convinced Brian that Spector was following him and made a movie about him. He cut off contact with one of his friends because he was convinced that his friend's girlfriend was using ESP to stop Wilson from making the album. He suspected that his father was spying on him from behind the scenes, and at one point started to believe that Spector was leading a Jewish conspiracy against him, hiring people to spy on Spector as a result and briefly driving away his friend David Anderle, himself Jewish (Brian would later go on to openly regret this display of anti-semitism. It's also worth noting that his wife at the time, Marilyn, was also Jewish). As the recording sessions progressed, he even began hearing voices.
    • Frustrated with their lack of creative control, the Boys decided to attempt to end their contract with Capitol Records and form their own label, Brother Records. Unfortunately, this led to a brief lawsuit between the Boys and Capitol where the band demanded unpaid royalties and termination of their contract.
    • During the formation of Brother Records, Carl Wilson was drafted into the United States Army. He refused to report for duty, and was arrested for being a conscientious objector in May 1967.
    • Brian's insistent perfectionism would prove to be his own undoing, as he would repeatedly miss release dates so he could continue to tinker with already completed songs. The way he recorded the album was that he would record each section of a song separately, and splice them together to create the final product. This modular approach to recording led to him splicing sections together in many different ways, trying to find a final product he was satisfied with, which ultimately led to nothing getting done for a good part of 1967.
    • In 1967, after missing another release date, he decided that he needed to focus on preparing the two tracks "Heroes and Villains" and "Vega-Tables" for release as potential lead singles. It was during this time that he began to doubt his own abilities, and started to fear that the public would hate the album. What didn't help was pressure from the label and Mike Love to stick to a more conventional sound over concerns that this new sound would alienate their audience of teenyboppers. Brian's fears would turn out to be justified in his mind when "Heroes and Villains", the follow-up single to "Good Vibrations" and the centerpiece to SMiLE, flopped on the charts. He took that as a sign of rejection of his growing artistic abilities from the public.
    • During the sessions for the song "Cabin Essence", Mike and Brian's lyricist Van Dyke Parks got into an argument over the lyric "Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield" and its supposed meaning, to which Van Dyke argued there is none. Between that incident and Brian's increasingly bizarre behavior, Parks began to distance himself from the project.
    • Brian was aware that The Beatles were working on their own ambitious concept album, and felt like he had to race to get SMiLE on the street first. When they released "Strawberry Fields Forever", a song with a multifaceted modular structure not unlike the SMiLE music, as a single, it fed his paranoia. Then he heard rumors that the Boys' publicist, Derek Taylor (who previously worked for the Beatles), played the SMiLE tapes for the Beatles behind his back, and started doubting the people around him. When Sgt. Pepper was released first, he took it as a sign that the Beatles won, and it severely demotivated him to work on SMiLE.
    • The final straw was when Van Dyke Parks left the project. He had his own debut album, Song Cycle, to work on and he was worried he was the cause of the friction among the band. This left Brian without a direction for the album, and was unsure how to finish it.
    • In the end, Brian broke down, and cancelled the album altogether. A stripped-down replacement called Smiley Smile was hastily recorded, and SMiLE would not see release for decades. However, material from the album would slowly trickle out as album filler. After decades of battling mental illness, Brian would pull himself together and re-record SMiLE in 2004 to critical acclaim and in the end, the original Beach Boys sessions would finally see release in 2011.
  • It is far from the only album that the band had issues with. In 1992, they got together to record what was to be another triumphant return for the band, Summer in Paradise. Unfortunately, Brian Wilson was struggling with leaving the care of Eugene Landy at the time and couldn't make the recording sessions. This left Mike Love in charge of the recording. Love demanded synthesized drum and bass parts, prevented certain band members from being able to play on the album, insisted on allowing John Stamos to sing on a track despite band member wishes, and made things a general living hell for those involved. The album barely sold 10,000 copies, was critically lambasted, was left out of the 2000-2001 reissues, and is seldom acknowledged by the band, with not even Mike acknowledging it despite it supposedly being his pet project, as he only mentions it once in his entire biography.
• What Could Have Been
  • Smile was originally planned to be released in 1967, but wasn't actually released until Brian Wilson revisited the project as a solo album in 2004.
  • Roger Waters was planning to have The Beach Boys sing backup vocals on several songs for The Wall, but the band declined after learning what the lyrics were about. He did get Bruce Johnston, though. (The other story is that the Boys were okay with it, but Waters cancelled the session for some reason and settled for just Johnston.)
  • In 1970 Brian wanted to change the name of the band to The Beach (since they weren't "boys" anymore), but the others vetoed the idea.
  • Brian Wilson and Andy Paley were working on a Beach Boys album together in the mid-to-late 90s. Unfortunately, due to numerous factors, it was shelved. It was the last album that Carl Wilson worked on before he died.
  • Dennis Wilson was supposed to sing the lead vocal on "Good Vibrations", but due to a bout of laryngitis, Carl Wilson stepped in at the last minute.
  • They were involved with the creation of the Monterey Pop Festival and were at one point scheduled to headline and close the show, failed to perform. This resulted from a number of issues plaguing the group. Carl Wilson was in a dispute with officials over his refusal to be drafted into military service during the Vietnam War. The group's album Smile was recently scrapped, leaving Brian Wilson in a state and unwilling or incapable of performing (he had not performed live with the group since late 1964). According to friend Michael Vosse, Brian thought the Beach Boys would have been criticized by festival goers who were intent on seeing British acid rock groups. Mike Love said that "Carl was to appear in federal court the Tuesday after the concert, but for all we knew, they were going to arrest him again if he performed onstage...None of us were afraid to perform at Monterey." In 2017, Love reflected that drugs were influencing the band's decisions at the time. He maintained that pulling out of Monterey was not his decision. When asked about the decision, Bruce Johnston said "it went from 'Here's the money, here's the offer, you're headlining' to 'Now this is gonna be a non-profit show' so we pulled out."
  • They were asked to play at Woodstock, but there's never been a specific reported reason why they turned it down. However, 1969 was a terrible year for the band all around. They were badly in debt and manager Murry Wilson had just sold the rights to their song catalog behind their backs, devastating Brian. They may have just wanted to take a break from the spotlight.
  • Before releasing "Surfin'" by the group then known as The Pendletones, Candix had at one point intended to rename them The Surfers before settling on The Beach Boys, a remnant of which can be seen in the master numbers having "TS" where other Candix singles have the artist's initials. The change was due to there being another group already called The Surfers, an Hawaiian vocal group which recorded on Hi-Fi Records.
  • On at least two occasions they passed up an opportunity to release a song that became a #1 hit for someone else. Brian had initiated writing "Surf City", but gave it to Jan Berry to finish, and it became the Signature Song for Jan and Dean. Murry Wilson was reportedly furious about Brian giving away the song. Then in the first part of The '70s, they worked with Terry Jacks, the leader of the Canadian band The Poppy Family. He suggested they cover "Seasons in the Sun", Rod McKuen's English translation of Jacques Brel's "Le Moribond". They did an initial version, with Carl on lead vocals and the others doing harmonies, but they declined to finish and release it. Instead, Jacks took the arrangement, rewrote some of the lyrics, and became a One-Hit Wonder with his own version, while the Beach Boys version sat on the shelf for over a half-century (finally getting a release in 2021). Another #1, Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs", was written by Bruce Johnston during one of his hiatuses from the band, leading fans to speculate whether they might've had a shot to record it as well.

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