The Beach Boys Album: “Surf's Up”

I found this album in a discount bin on Hollywood Boulevard when I was going to collage. Frank Zappa was my musical ideal at the time. The Beach Boys were already considered an oldies band. I had always liked a lot of their songs and some of their songs I liked a lot but considered them guilty pleasures. Certainly not in the league of Zappa or Hendrix, my musical heroes.

It was a long slow process but this is the album that started to turn the depth of my appreciation for the Beach Boys around. Like most all of their albums there are a few songs on Surf's Up I don't care for but there are more that are as good as any. One, "Surf's Up" is a masterpiece. The album is worth buying for that song alone. Brian Wilson's much deserved fame as a composer, arranger and producer aside, listen to his voice on the song "Surf's Up" as he sings the phrase that starts "I heard the word, wonderful thing". There is nothing in music more beautiful.

Carl Wilson is a significant contributor to the Beach Boys genius and his Feel Flow is one of my favorite Beach Boys songs. Cameron Crow used it to good effect in his movie "Almost Famous" but mysteriously left it off of the soundtrack. "Long Promised Road" is another good song. "Until I Die" is almost too painful to listen to knowing the emotional pain Brian was going through when he wrote it.

As my musical tastes expanded to include more Classical and Jazz the fact I was always on the look out for good Beach Boys compilations finally forced me to acknowledge what my heart and soul had known for so long, The Beach Boys may well be the music looked back on by future generations as some of, if not the best of the late 20th Century, or any other century for that matter.

This album was originally released in 1971. Although the Beach Boys had lost a lot of their popularity at the time, they were continuing to grow artistically. While Brian was having his well documented mental problems, the rest of the group was forced to step up and write more songs. But Brian did manage to contribute three songs to this album, two of which are excellent ("Til I Die" and "Surf's Up). Carl's two songs here are also great. Oddly, there are no songs by Dennis here. "Disney Girls", by sixth Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, is a bit more "MOR" than the usual Beach Boys song, but I still like it. The rest of the songs, by Alan and Mike, aren't all that special. And I know it was the early '70s and all, but did the album really need TWO anti-pollution songs? But this is still a very good album that Beach Boys fans should enjoy. Give a hoot, don't pollute!

...Brian Wilson's songwriting with the Beach Boys. This is a depressing and disappointing coda to the Beach Boys' golden age.

The cover is really ominous for the Beach Boys-a sunless, dark blue-hued rendering of what appears to be a vanquished medieval warrior of sorts riding his horse- body sagging, head down, lance down. It's actually quite fitting, since the material inside suggests a tired band in full retreat from the rebellion of the 60s. For example, Bruce Johnston reminisces about the 50s in "Disney Girls", and Mike Love counsels everyone to avoid a youth revolution after the events of Kent State. And Brian, well, he's retreating from just about everything at this point, of course. His contributions to the album are placed at the end of the record, as if the other bandmembers were ashamed of the songs. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since its not like there was a huge contrast between the other brothers' material-no one seems in top form nor particularly happy on this record-the only difference perhaps being Brian wanted to die and pretty much was telling everyone in no uncertain terms on "A Day In The Life Of A Tree" and "Til I Die".

If you are looking for the Brian signature sound, it comes thru a bit on the final two songs, but only briefly. The rest of the album is spare in instrumentation, with heavy reliance on studio gimmickry to psychedelize the songs...perhaps to mask the substandard composition.

I recommend this album as a document of an end-of-the-60s/dawn-of-the-70s mentality that is somewhat akin to Hunter S. Thompson's grim assessment of that period, but preaches a stance that is decidedly less confrontational.

It's not a bad record, but not a great, or even good record. It's a state of mind. A bleak, unsure one. Surf's up, time's up...the jig is up.