Surf's Up, Aboard A Tidal Wave
- Abigail Devoe
- Jul 16
- 20 min read
Surf’s Up proved, though they were irrevocably changed, the Beach Boys refused to sink yet.
The Beach Boys:
Mike Love: lead vocals on “Don’t Go Near The Water” and “Student Demonstration Time”
Al Jardine: lead vocals on “Looking At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song),” co-lead on “Don’t Go Near The Water”
Brian Wilson: lead vocals on “Take A Load Off Your Feet,” co-lead on “’Til I Die” and “Surf’s Up”
Carl Wilson: lead vocals on “Long Promised Road,” “Feel Flows,” “’Til I Die,” and “Surf’s Up”
Dennis Wilson: backing vocals on “Student Demonstration Time” and “Surf’s Up”
Bruce Johnston: lead vocals on “Disney Girls (1957)”
Special guests include: Blondie Chaplin, bass on “Student Demonstration Time;” Charles Lloyd, flute and saxophone on “Feel Flows;” Daryl Dragon: keys, bass, and vibraphone; members of the Wrecking Crew, “Surf’s Up,” Jack Rieley, lead vocals on “A Day In the Life Of A Tree;” Van Dyke Parks, vocals on “A Day In The Life Of A Tree” lyrics of “Surf’s Up”
Produced by the Beach Boys
cover by unknown artist
There’s no denying the Beach Boys’ point of fracture was the failure of SMiLE. In the words of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys: The Complete Guide to Their Music author Andrew Doe, “The roots of just about every ill later to beset the band and their leading light can be traced to this ten-month period of towering creativity.” I think I’ve talked enough about SMiLE at this point, but Surf’s Up wouldn’t have its title track without it. This album definitely wouldn’t have happened at all had SMiLE not played out the way it did.
I’ll start with the reason no one talks about enough. By nature of how SMiLE was written and recorded, it was in a state of constant flux. It existed in bits and pieces; always swapped around like balls under a cup. No one knows what the intended running order of SMiLE was supposed to be. Not even Brian knew. When the Beach Boys returned from their European tour in the spring of 1967, they found SMiLE in complete disarray. On top of that, David Anderle, the guy the Boys trusted to start Brother Records, was Brian’s right-hand man in all this tent and sandbox-building nonsense. Dennis was SMiLE’s biggest fan; he handed out the first bootlegs to his friends. But not all the Boys were sold. Mike Love bullied lyricist Van Dyke Parks out of the project over a line we will get to later. This dealt a huge blow to the project, as not all the songs had lyrics yet. Constant friction between all these people running around, and the element of substances, made Brian more paranoid. This wasn’thelped by the infamous “magic fire music” incident; a truly bizarre coincidence.
The “Heroes and Villains” single failed. It made no sense outside of the context of SMiLE, and made even less sense chopped down to three minutes and change for said single. Audiences saw it as little more than a novelty tune, and Jimi Hendrix derided it as “psychedelic barber shop music.” With David Anderle gone, the formation of Brother Records was not going to plan.
Terry Melcher said:
“...knowing that everyone in that group was married, and had children, and a house. I think (Brian) felt like more of a benefactorthan an artist. I picked that up a few times, that he felt like he was expected to do certain things on time: We’ll have a hit record every three months, a tour every two months, and an album every four months. He was the creative force, and there were five other people – five other families – relying on his creativity...”
quoted from: Tom Nolan, “Beach Boys: A California Saga” Rolling Stone, 10/28/1971.
At a certain point, it dawned on Brian that he’d bitten off more than he could chew. SMiLE was just too big for one man to complete. He needed support from those he was supporting, and he just didn’t have that anymore. In my SMiLE vs. SMiLE episode two years ago, I said, “Brian’s brothers and bandmates no longer believing in the vision? That's something a sentimental, sensitive, lifelong people-pleaser just can't get past.” In May of 1967, Derek Taylor officially announced SMiLE was shelved. A couple weeks later, at the last possible moment to do so, the Beach Boys dropped out of the legendary Monterey Pop festival lineup. This was not a good look, and this kid named Jann Wenner in the then-brand-new Rolling Stone ripped the Beach Boys a new one for this.
Capitol needed something in place of SMiLE. Smiley Smile was good enough, but a huge letdown when you compare it to what it was supposed to be. The Boys negated it almost immediately with the Wild Honey LP just three months later.
These two albums kicked off off two straight-up bad years for the Beach Boys.
Their focus was scattered. Mike Love went to India with Donovan and the Beatles to meet the Maharishi. Meanwhile, Dennis became a fixture of the Laurel Canyon scene, and a grade-A PR nightmare. That communeof hippies he opened his home to, and gave a cumulative $100,000 to? They turned out to be a murderous cult.
Dennis’s association with their leader ended his marriage, and to this day, is the stain on the Beach Boys’ legacy.
A suit for $275,000 of Brian’s producers’ royalties just kinda fizzled out. The Boys were going bankrupt before that; Brother Records still was not going to plan. So far, the only non-Beach Boys-adjacent group on Brother was a group called The Flame...and their album flopped. And as one final fuck-you to his own flesh and blood, in 1969, Murray Wilson sold the publishing rights to his sons’ and their friends’ life’s work for a measly $700,000.
As the Beach Boys floundered, they released a handful of albums. Friends is steeply underrated. Though it was a commercial disaster, Sunflower is genuinely good, and accidentally invented a whole genre of music. The rest were cobbled together from the leftovers in the Beach Boys’ fridge.
Flash forward to summer 1970. Oh, the Jack Rieley of it all.
It’s safe to call this guy the antihero of Surf’s Up. He meddled, egged on the Boys’ infighting, swindled them,and (allegedly!!) faked cancer...but you can’t deny he had some genuinely good ideas!
Thanks to Van Dyke Parks, who was now working at the parent company of the Beach Boys’ new label, theBoys appeared at the Big Sur Folk Festival – on the very Monterey stage they thwarted three years before. (They almost blew the whole thing by saying they’d only play if the live record was released on Brother, but nevermind that!) Jack booked the Boys at hip venues like the Whiskey and the Fillmore East – where they played with the likes of the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band – and an employee of Bill Graham’s hatched a hairbrain scheme to get the Beach Boys to Carnegie Hall.
Word spread: the Beach Boys were coming back. Surf’s Up was recorded from early to mid-1971 at Sunset Sound, United Western, and the studio in Brian’s home. One of Jack’s strategies was urging the Boys to writesocial commentary songs. In his mind, that’s how they’d keep up with other big California acts, like Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. That’s how we get “Don’t Go Near The Water” and “A Day In The Life Of A Tree” about pollution, Dennis’s “4th of July,” and Mike’s “Student Demonstration Time” about college kids protesting the Vietnam War.
Brian’s involvement in Surf’s Up was limited. He had checked out after the failure of SMiLE. He couldn’t cope with the failure of his masterpiece. His heart was broken. Instead, he kept busy producing his wife’s group…another Brother Records flop. Dennis had little involvement as well; he injured his hand and couldn’t play drums for three years. Enter Ricky Fataar of the Flames.
Andrew Doe claims Brian didn’t want “Surf’s Up” released. But as Van Dyke Parks pointed out, “If they call that album Surf’s Upwe can pre-sell a hundred and fifty thousand copies. And Brian can keep his house on Bellagio.” By Jack’s standards, Surf’s Up went to plan. The Boys landed a gig on live TV at Central Park, and landed the cover of the October 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. But as David Leaf put, “...the Beach Boys were firmly on their way back. If it involved exploiting Brian and dredging up a lot of bad memories, so be it.”
Of the post-SMiLE Beach Boys, Surf’s Up was never my go-to album. It would’ve been Sunflower or Holland,even Smiley Smile; as patchy as it is, I like its quirky feel. I didn’t pay Surf’s Up much mind until I spoke with God Only Knows: Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys, and The California Myth author David Leaf about his new SMiLE book. When I asked him “Why SMiLE?” This is what he said:
“I was in college, I’d studied – started as a journalism major and studied Edward R. Murrow; the great broadcast and radio and television journalist...And what I learned about Murrow was that by telling a story, you could actually change the outcome of the story. And that stuck with me. I wasn’t thinking of any particular story at that time, but I was in college in Washington, DC, during the Nixon administration. Very contentious times, I used to joke we got tear gassed whether we wanted to or not. And so, it was – I was wondering what happened to democracy. I went to see Norman Mailer speak with a friend of mine from high school, and we got chased by police wielding giant clubs. And I was thinking, ‘Wait a second, this is the right of assembly, this is the right to free speech, what’s going on?’ Another day, I opened the blinds to my dorm window, and the 81st or 82nd airborne division was getting out of armored vehicles to surround our campus. And – and – so it just stuck with me that something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but there was this kind of self-righteous anger. And then when I was 19, I stumbled upon the story of Brian Wilson and SMiLE.”
Hearing how this recording of “Surf’s Up” quite literally changed his life path...a college kid on a very different career path, hears song unlike anything else they’ve heard before, and inspires them to pursue a crazy dream writing about music...does that sound familiar at all? It inspired me to give Surf’s Up another shot.
One big thing has changed since I last covered the Beach Boys in the spring: Brian Wilson has passed away. A Pet Sounds redux might be a “better,” more traditional Brian tribute, but I’m saving that for its 60th anniversary next summer. I’ve already covered SMiLE pretty extensively – I have two whole videos about it on my YouTube channel. Why not examine one of the ripples cast off by Brian’s initial attempt at his masterpiece? Surf’s Up is odd. You can tell these arrangements are trying to sound like Brian’s, because he’s hardly on this thing. The music comes from so many points of view; some conflicting. The songs come from so many voices...even Jack Rieley’s.
Surf’s Up opens with Don’t Go Near The Water. What a song to open a Beach Boys album called Surf’s Upwith. For all our young lives, these guys said “We’re goin’ on a surfin’ safari!” and to have “fun fun fun” and taking our 409 to the beach to go surfin’. Now they’re warning us, “don’t go near the water.” It gives the phrase “surf’s up” an apocalyptic or dangerous edge.
I love “Don’t Go Near The Water’”s arrangement. The chords are dissonant and uncanny. The backing vocals through the second verse take these huge steps up, with uneven down. Steve Desper’s Moog makes this albumwhat it is. Where a more pure instrument, like piano or bells, might invoke clear water, the artificial sound of the Moog makes the water feel viscous; polluted with oil. The song modulates to a quintessentially Beach Boys key at the end, letting their fabulous group vocals shine. Juxtaposing an “old Beach Boys” moment with the new is haunting. We can hear those old records, but they won’t feel the same. We can’t go back to the innocence. It’s especially haunting for us modern listeners, who now know how great of a role mandolin and harmonica played in SMiLE.
What drags this song into the undertow are the lyrics. Other writers have qualms about “Don’t go near the water, don’t you think it’s sad? Our water’s going bad!” but I don’t. The childlike word choice adds to the song’suneasy feeling. Save for Pet Sounds and SMiLE, written by Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks respectively, the Beach Boys were never known as Bob Dylans. The line I have a bone to pick with is:
“Toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble bath
So let’s avoid an ecological...aftermath?”
It’s not made much better by Al singing the line with such conviction, and a Paul McCartney “Wooo!” What are we doing here?
A song so bluntly about environmental causes might seem cheesy today, but in the early ’70s, environmentalism was a brand new thing. The first Earth Day was only held a year before Surf’s Up’s release!
Long Promised Road was composed by Carl, with lyrics co-written with...Jack Rieley. In fact, looking at the credits, the lyrics might’ve been the only thing Carl didn’t do on his own. He plays the guitars, bass, keys, synths, drums, and percussion, and sang the lead vocal! It’s the Carl Wilson Show! This track sets the stage for Carl coming into his own on Surf’s Up. His perspective on life has changed: “So hard to answer future’s riddle/When ahead is seeming so far behind/So hard to laugh a childlike giggle/When the tears start to torture my mind.” We are our own worst enemies, and that’s not helped by our circumstances going awry. Lord knows the Beach Boys’ circumstances were just about as bad as they could be in the late ’60s. It doesn’t get much worse than associating with Charles Fucking Manson.
“So hard to plant the seeds of reform/To set my sights on defeating the storm...” So many bad things happened to these guys in such a short period of time that Carl has trouble getting his hopes up for the future. But he stands up strong, ready to take charge. “So I hit hard at the battle that’s confronting me, yeah!/Knock down all the road blocks a-stumblin’ me/Throw off all the shackles that are binding me down.” He sings it like he means it. He’s ready to hit the long promised road at dawn, even if there are bumps. The synth solo is futuristic and fucking groovy, and the inclusion of drum machine is super cool. The Beach Boys were all about embracing new technology in their in-between era. It’s really cool to think that Sly Stone was experimenting with drum machine at the same time on There’s A Riot Goin’ On.
Brian’s Take A Load Off Your Feet was a leftover from Add Some Music, a working version of Sunflower I didn’t even mention before this because it’s simply a topic for another episode! I have little to say about this song, because I’m mad. I’m mad we got a song about swollen feet and “Student Demonstration Time” instead of one of the best songs Dennis ever wrote: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice To Live Again.” He pulled it, and “4th of July” from consideration because the former couldn’t be the album closer. Before I knew this specific piece of trivia, I thought “Live Again” would’ve made a wonderful side one closer. It’d be a perfect fit if you knocked off “Take A Load Off” and “Student Demonstration Time.”
Thankfully, Surf’s Up redeems itself with a song that thaws any frostiness I’ve incurred from a song about swollen feet. Bruce Johnston is often accused of writing the cheesiest Beach Boys songs of this period. He gets it right on Disney Girls (1957) This sweet, old-school ballad mourns the simplicity of childhood. The days of dances, lemonade stands, Tootsie rolls, and the Mickey Mouse Club. Or the “Dis-a-ney girls,” as Bruce sings. You gotta give it to him for cramming a whole extra syllable into “Disney.” The song’s subtitle comes from Patti Page’s 1957 hit, “Old Cape Cod.” That song annoys the shit out of me, but hey. I get why it’s shouted out here, it’s evocative of the squeaky-clean naive time.
Bruce’s tender, boyish voice carries “Disney Girls”’s innocence, but his performance has weight to it; especially through the bridge and key change. The lyrics may not know it, but the players and performers know we can’t go back to this time. Oddly enough, “Disney Girls” is a hint at what we’ll see in broader American culture following Watergate and our botched exit from Vietnam: a return to the perceived innocence of America before the Kennedy administration. “It’s a turned-back world with a local girl in a smaller town.” Hemlines got longer, bowling shirts and two-tone shoes came back into fashion. A colonial revival came along with America’s bicentennial. Everything was suddenly red-white-and-blue. The hippies grew up, cut their hair, got big-boy jobs and settled down. The ’50s revival of the ’80s really hammered this home, with all the pastels and rock-and-roll revivalists.
It seems the only one who likes “Student Demonstration Time” is Mike Love.
It’s one of the most-derided songs in the entire Beach Boys canon. I’m gonna be so real with you, it’s not thatbad. It could be much worse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s flawed. Aside from the truth bomb “The pen is mightier than the sword/But no match for a gun,” the lyrics are both-sidesey. I was shocked by the audacity of how the Jackson State University massacre is treated in song:
“The violence spread down south to where Jackson State brothers
Learned not to say nasty things about southern policeman’s mothers”
“Open-firing on unarmed students isn’t okay, but neither is insulting someone’s mom!!” Oh, please. Just goes to show you’re not gonna get much deeper than surface-level social commentary out of Mike Love!
Holy mixing error, why is the siren so much louder than everything else? What is this, a Bob Dylan harmonica solo? “Student Demonstration Time’”s strength is the plugged-in instrumentation...which isn’t even “Student Demonstration Time’”s. This song is a rewrite of “Riot in Cell Block 9” by the Robins; a song the Beach Boysworked into their sets in this era.
Ultimately, “Student Demonstration Time” came four years too late for it to mean anything. Even later, if you count shouting out “Berkley Free Speech,” that was in 1964 – when the Beach Boys were at the peak of their surfingcarsandgirls escapist period.
Once again, Surf’s Up redeems itself with Carl’s defining song, Feel Flows. Cameron Crowe chose this song for I believe the end credits of his semi-autobiographical opus, Almost Famous. It’s one of many thoughtful and accurate picks for the film’s soundtrack. Come 1971, the Beach Boys were finally in the good graces of the freakin’ bible at the time, Rolling Stone Magazine.
“Whether whistling heaven’s clouds disappear,
Where the wind withers memory,
Whether whiteness whisks soft shadows away,
White-hot glistening shadowy flows, feel flows.”
That repeating “w” sound plays well with the reverse echo effect on Carl’s vocals. It teases out the soft “w” sound against that harsh guitar solo. Layer that with the flute solo and I think saxophone? Maybe clarinet? And it’s freaking cool. It’s the most psychedelic song on the album, and Carl’s most creative moment as a composer.
Lookin At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) is Al’s interpretation of a classic blues tale: the man’s lost his job, and he’s relying on whatever odd jobs he can find to make ends meet. It’s almost as classic a blues trope as, “My woman did me wrong!” “Welfare Song” is my favorite of the eery songs on Surf’s Up. The super-processed acoustic guitar feels unbearably hot, like toiling away in the beating sun. Where Carl’s reverse echo felt like a cool breeze, Al’s feels like heat stroke. The flanging is nutty as well; I feel like I’m fading in and out of consciousness!
I may get heat for this, but “Welfare Song” is oddly reminiscent of Led Zeppelin. This is yet another instance of a “Stairway Song” (Zeppelin pilfered a whole lot from Black blues men, but I’ll go down with the ship preaching they didn’t steal that chord progression from Spirit!) And the melody Al hums wound up in “Achilles’ Last Stand.” It’s far-fetched, I know, but once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it.
A Day In The Life Of A Tree is the first of Brian’s main three contributions to Surf’s Up. Of course these threesongs are the best. It’s Brian. He wrote stone-cold classics in his sleep!
Jack Rieley does his best Brian on the lead vocal. He claimed he was tricked into doing it? Whether this was in earnest or one of Brian’s – in the words of so many Beach Boys biographers – “classic put-ons,” who knows. The organ is breathtaking. It reminds me of the organ solo Neil Young did for the Dead Man soundtrack, which Radiohead directly referenced for their own organ moment on “Motion Picture Soundtrack.” It might just be me having that context, but hearing that sound reaches into my chest and seizes my heart. It acts as the coda of the album, leading into the grand finale, and the coda of life itself.
There are three Beach Boys songs that stand out from the rest for me. Brian’s first masterpiece, “The Lonely Sea,” my very favorite Beach Boys song “She Knows Me Too Well,” and ’Til I Die. On these three songs, Brian bares his soul for the listener to such a harrowing degree that the listener is taken aback. “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” does the same, but it’s less sharp because Pet Sounds is full of confessional songs. Surf’s Up, on the other hand, is not. We’ve had lovey-dovey saccharine ballads, an attempt at a blues, surface-level social commentary, and a song about taking care of your feet. Nothing is deeper than skin. Until,
“I’m a cork on the ocean,
Floating over the raging sea.
How deep is the ocean?
How deep is the ocean?
I lost my way...”
Brian said this about writing the song:
“I was in my car, and I was thinking to myself, in the universe, I’m so small...it’s an absurdly small idea to think of how small you are in the universe. And I went to the piano and I said, ‘What are some ways that I can express being small?’ So I thought, ‘I’m a cork on the ocean, I’m a rock on a landslide, I’m a leaf on a windy day.’”
quoted from: Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE (dir. David Leaf, 2004.)
If you care or have ever cared about Brian and his work, hearing such dire thoughts in song is distressing. “These things I’ll be until I die,” forever descending in its melody, feels like an intrusive thought.
Finally, the mysterious, enigmatic, dark title track. All of the previous adjectives have been overused when describing this song, I’m sure. The Surf’s Up we hear is a piecing together of various elements recorded in 1967 and 1971. The instrumental and Brian’s vocal were recorded during the original SMiLE sessions. Carl’s vocals were among the last things cut for Surf’s Up in June of 1971, along with Bruce’s “Disney Girls.”
When asked by Van Dyke Parks how he was feeling when he composed “Surf’s Up,” Brian said, “I just felt some love. A whole lotta love.” It certainly doesn’t sound that way. You can’t grasp exactly what it is that Brian is saying with the music, it’s the feels. And it doesn’t feel good.
My steepest disadvantage with the Beach Boys, one that’s always been glaringly apparent, is my lack of technical knowledge of music. Brian compositions are all about the chords and I don’t know what the fuck chords he’s using! (Then again, do any of us know? People are still making YouTube videos trying to figure out what key “God Only Knows” is in.) I only know the motion those chords move in, and how they make me feel. Thankfully, Brian composed for feeling.
“His musical theories were based upon emotion. He could sit down and write a chart, anytime, but when he described the music it was always in artistic or literary allusions, colors, mental responses.”
quoted from: Tom Nolan, “Beach Boys: A California Saga” Rolling Stone, 10/28/1971.
“Surf’s Up” is one of the greatest melodies Brian ever wrote. It tumbles in the tidal wave through ritardo and accelerando. Ebb and flow, like a wave. I feel submerged and suspended in dark water when the instrumentation pulls back. Though some daring production and musical choices have been made on this album, this cut makes me sorely miss the Wrecking Crew. There’s nothing like the Beach Boys with the Wrecking Crew.
Van Dyke Parks’s lyrics are often called “impenetrable,” and it’s true. Parks used imagery that’s intentionally tough to grasp; like a silver fish in a wave. From what scales I can find in the sand, this is my interpretation of “Surf’s Up.” The diamond necklace playing the pawn, the pomp and circumstance of a “handsome-mannered baton” and drums, “hung velvet” and a dim, dingy chandelier, this is the old world. A concert hall. The establishment.
These aren’t my ultimate favorite lines in the song, but they is the most revealing:
“A blind class aristocracy,
Back through the opera glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn”
Van Dyke is known for his wordplay, this is just one line I’m singling out. “Adieu (do) or die.” The triple-meaning of “port” is enough in itself: the port a boat pulls into, the port and starboard side of a boat, and the port wine often found in cheese. The “blind” aristocracy looking through opera glass(es) is his surrealist way of saying the establishment’s perspective is warped. Invoking Edgar Allan Poe is one hell of a choice – nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. This concert hall we’re in and its stuffy ways reek of death. It invokes slow, painful death. With the “hung velvet,” I think of the color red; significant to Poe’s writing as well.
As for the Columnated Ruins Domino in the room. Brian explained:
“Empires, ideas, lives, institutions – everything has to fall, tumbling like dominos.”
quoted from: Steven Gaines, Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys (1995 ed.)
This revealing quote poses “Surf’s Up” as an uncanny prediction of the collapse of the happy hippie ’60s. The Beach Boys were intimately involved in this collapse. Further, “Surf’s Up” interprets this as the natural conclusion. “The music hall, a costly bow/The music, all is lost for now.” (Now, that’s my favorite line.) There’s a karmic debt to pay after a decade of flowers and love.
“Surf’s Up”’s coda is a “reprise” of “Child Is Father To The Man,” from the original SMiLE project. This is a tune that didn’t appear elsewhere on Surf’s Up, hadn’t been heard on any of the albums between Smiley Smile and this, and most people hadn’t heard at all since Brian was featured in Leonard Bernstein’s Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution documentary.
It makes for a fascinating inclusion. So is the countermelody’s blatant similarity to “A Day In The Life’”s “aaah,” I don’t know why people don’t point that out! It’s hard to separate my prior knowledge of “Child Is The Father” from this iteration of “Surf’s Up,” but I imagine audiences at the time were mystified by this.
To end this review, I’d like to include the tribute to Brian I posted to my Instagram page a couple days after his passing.
I’ve only ever associated Brian Wilson’s music with joy. My dad’s favorite Christmas album was The Beach Boys’ Christmas. I’ve tried reviewing this album at least three times, but I just can’t. How can you quantify joy? How can you critique a childhood memory? This was the soundtrack of my dad’s childhood – lots of sailing, sun, and water – as it was the soundtrack to mine. (With a lot less sun, sailing, and water.)
Of course, Pet Sounds is one of the greatest albums of all-time. Of course, SMiLE was the greatest album almostmade. Of course, Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Through his career spanning six decades, he was the composer soundtracking life’s most beautiful moments: growing up, falling in love, falling apart, splashing around in the waves, Christmas morning. He crafted melody and harmony no one else could. Modern Mozart, modern Gershwin. Those songs brought us so much joy.
Then there’s Surf’s Up. There’s so little joy. It’s burdened by the knowing of life after a sunny childhood. Its stinkers hold it back from being Pet Sounds-level good, but as a whole, in wake of the generation-wide loss of innocence the late ’60s were, this album gave the Beach Boys cred. Were its positive attributes – maturity, deepness, darkness, experimentation – because of Jack Rieley’s meddling? Or in spite of it? That’s up to you to decide.
From Terry Melcher, in the Beach Boys’ Rolling Stone cover story: “(Brian) left the music, yes. He left it. It never left him.” In a world that seems to grow more brutal by the day, it’s difficult to hold the line of joy, fun, and whimsy. In time, Brian would triumphantly reclaim his own. His ear should be willed to the Smithsonian, but his spirit was one-of-a-kind. He wholeheartedly believed in love and goodness, even when the world didn’t show it. He filled the world with love, and knew he did good for it. He showed that joy, fun, and whimsy are essential to the creative process – and to life itself.
Brian showed us you can, in fact, lead with love and mercy. As Surf’s Up evidences, living like that will hurt like hell. It’s cork-on-the-ocean, leaf-on-a-windy-day, dissociating-at-the-opera lonely. But you can change the world this way. Brian’s philosophy was genius.
Why do I say all this in relation to Surf’s Up, an album Brian’s hardly on? There’s a gaping hole in this album, one that will only grow through the split in Beach Boys’ public personality and personality on record. It’s evident in everything following Pet Sounds, really. It’s especially resonant, now that we have to live in a world without Brian.
But the music refused to betray him. In turn, it refused to betray the Boys. They still made beautiful music about a dark, polluted, unjust world. The skies were dark, the sails tattered. The Indian on the shore about to collapse. Surf’s Up proved, though they were irrevocably changed, the Beach Boys refused to sink yet.
Personal favorites: “Don’t Go Near The Water,” “Feel Flows,” “A Day In The Life Of A Tree,” “’Til I Die,” “Surf’s Up”
– AD ☆
Watch the full episode above!
Badman, Keith. The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America’s Greatest Band, On Stage and In the Studio. San Fransisco: Backbeat, 2004. https://archive.org/details/beachboysdefinit0000badm/page/207/mode/1up
Doe, Andrew. Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys: The Complete Guide to Their Music. London: Omnibus, 2004. https://archive.org/details/brianwilsonbeach0000doea/
Gaines, Steven. Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys. New York: Da Capo, 1995 ed.
Leaf, David, dir. Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE. Showtime: Chautauqua Entertainment, 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SriaRRcA6w&t=3962s
Leaf, David. God Only Knows: Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys, and The California Myth. London: Omnibus, 2024 ed.
Nolan, Tom. “Beach Boys: A California Saga.” Rolling Stone, 10/28/1971. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beach-boys-a-california-saga-244579/
Sail on, Brian Wilson. Thank you for making the world smile better.
love swapped around like balls under a cup