The Beach Boys Surf’s Up (1971)

From ultimateclassicrock.com

Even the Beach Boys’ sunniest songs include a bittersweet tinge of melancholy, but by the early ’70s, the band seemed surrounded by an inescapable gloom.

The group’s 17th album, Surf’s Up, caught them at a particularly vulnerable moment. Just five years removed from the creative breakthrough of Pet Sounds, they’d been hit hard by problems both internal — chief songwriter Brian Wilson spent years sidelined by a variety of mental and emotional issues — and external, as changing trends and new rock subgenres left their once-thrilling vocal blend sounding dated.

It all added up to a precipitous sales slump for the once-dominant band, which in turn fed into a period of creative drift that found the lineup splitting into factions and churning in flux. Without Wilson to rally behind, the Beach Boys strained to achieve internal equilibrium even as they fought the growing perception that they were over the hill. Hopes were high when they departed longtime label home Capitol in order to establish their own imprint, the Reprise-distributed Brother Records, but their first release through the new arrangement, 1970’s Sunflower, was their lowest-charting collection of new material to date.

Yet even at their most scattered, the Beach Boys remained capable of startling beauty, and Surf’s Up is a case in point. Released Aug. 30, 1971, it presented a snapshot of a disorganized group whose members occasionally seemed to be running on creative fumes — and yet as uneven as the record is, it’s punctuated with bursts of spine-tingling harmony and heartbreaking insight that are almost enough to outweigh its ham-handed moments. It never quite coheres, but it’s also never less than interesting, and bits and pieces shine as brightly as anything in the group’s incredible catalog.

Like much of what the band released during this period, the parts of Surf’s Up that work do so essentially in spite of everything that was happening behind the scenes. The record’s genesis came from Brian Wilson, who’d turned his energies to running a health food store he’d named the Radiant Radish, making the acquaintance of journalist Jack Rieley, a passionate Beach Boys fan who used their interview as the opening for a personal relationship that led to Rieley ultimately taking over as the band’s manager.

It would later be revealed that Rieley had fudged his qualifications to some extent, but he was a passionate fan with a collector’s knowledge of the group’s increasingly legendary unreleased material and a few unorthodox ideas about how to make the Beach Boys hip again. Both sides of this approach came into play with Surf’s Up: The title track, which closes the album, had originally been recorded for the long-shelved Smile project, and made the track listing after Rieley convinced Wilson it needed to see release. While looking back, he tried to push the band ahead by urging them to write more topical lyrics focusing on the issues of the day.

Rieley’s push for Beach Boys songs inspired by current events produced mixed results. The album opens with “Don’t Go Near the Water,” an anti-pollution anthem that adds an ecologically aware undercurrent to the group’s longstanding depiction of the ocean as a place for fun in the sun. Less successful is “Student Demonstration Time,” a fairly clumsy attempt to comment on civic unrest with new lyrics set to Lieber and Stoller’s “Riot in Cell Block Number 9.” Neither track is as flat-out weird as “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” with lyrics (and lead vocals) by Rieley presenting a first-person account of … a day in the life of a tree.

Patient fans who sifted through the record’s less inspired moments, however, were rewarded with a handful of low-key Beach Boys gems. Carl Wilson, whose role in the band had been chiefly a vocalist and guitarist to that point, contributed the Rieley co-writes “Long Promised Road” and “Feel Flows,” both of which stood among Surf’s Up‘s highlights — the former ultimately becoming one of the band’s better songs throughout its post-Pet Sounds period — while presaging the greater creative role he’d assume in the years to come.

In terms of new music from Brian Wilson, meanwhile, fans were forced to make do with “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” but Surf’s Up pulled some worthy notes from his back pages. The haunting title track, which Wilson had to be cajoled into finishing, satisfied years of pent-up demand, while its predecessor, “‘Til I Die,” distilled the Beach Boys’ ability to wring beauty out of existential sorrow. Taken together, they were just enough to balance out the inclusion of “Take a Load Off Your Feet,” a deeply inessential older number about foot care.

It wasn’t the Beach Boys’ most consistent effort, but unlike Sunflower, Surf’s Up arrived at the right moment to find a receptive audience. The album peaked at No. 29, the band’s highest showing in years, and hinted at brighter days to come from a group already stuck between its storied past and an uncertain future. This comeback proved fleeting, but there’d be others after it — and more painful setbacks between.

The Beach Boys Surf’s Up (1971)

From classicrockreview.com

1971 was an exceptionally great year for rock n roll, and we at Classic Rock Review regret that we can not give a proper review to all the great works from that year in the short time we allotted ourselves. However, there is one that we felt we had to “squeeze in” before we’re done, due to it being probably the most unique and unusual album of that year – Surf’s Up by The Beach Boys. This 17th overall album by the group was also sort of a commercial comeback as it reached the Top 30 on both sides of the Atlantic.

To be honest, this album can be very frustrating. It is a mish-mash that, on the one hand, offers deep, rewarding, quality compositions worthy of the talent in this band. But on the other hand, there are some tacky, directed “social commentary” songs that, in many cases, barely rise to the level of musical Public Service Announcements. However, the album does possess a cohesive mood and tone and it does get more consistent and stronger as it goes along. So, in the end, we decided that the good here outweighs the bad and that the album needed to be reviewed.

Some has stated that Surf’s Up defined the band’s tumultuous career better than any other album, and this very well may well be the case. The Beach Boys rode to fame on selling good times, fast cars, surfing, and girls. In the process, the squeezed every bit of the “endless fun” out of California and over-used the term “surf” (which, including this album and title song, is used in some form in the titles of four different albums and eleven different songs). In the end, this was all a nice fantasy, but eventually you have to grow up and face the realities of life.

The band’s primary songwriter and musical driving force, Brian Wilson, retired from performing live by 1965 due to psychological and anxiety issues. He instead concentrated on studio production for the band. In 1966 he produced the brilliant Pet Sounds, a great departure from the band’s early work that was universally acclaimed.

Later that year, Wilson brought in Van Dyke Parks to collaborate on a follow-up album titled SMiLE, but due to growing artistic turmoil within the band, Brian’s deteriorating mental state, and a prolonged production problem, Parks abandoned the project in 1967 and the album was never released.

A key song from those sessions called “Surf’s Up” was performed live on piano by Brian Wilson for a CBS News special on “modern” music, which caused much curiosity and speculation by fans and critics about the unreleased “SMiLE” material over the next several years. During this time (1967-1970), The Beach Boys released several more albums, but each decreased in popularity, signaling a rapid decline for the band.

Then in 1971, Jack Reiley was brought in as manager, and he master-minded this new album. It was to be built around the (now mythical) song “Surf’s Up”, along with other abandoned out-takes from previous projects and new, politically-orientated songs. Reiley would also co-write a couple of fine songs with Carl Wilson and even performed the lead vocals on the psychedelic Parks/Brian Wilson song “A Day in the Life of a Tree”, after everyone in the band refused to sing it.

The youngest of the three brothers in the band, Carl Wilson had never previously written anything of significance for The Beach Boys, but his co-written contributions of “Long Promised Road” and “Feel Flows” are two the best songs on this album. Further, with Brian all but absent from the (1971) production of this album, Carl stepped up and assumed many of the producer responsibilities, although production credit was ultimately given to simply “The Beach Boys”.

The album’s sound is further diversified by the large number of other songwriting contributors. Al Jardine wrote some of the new “politically conscious” songs, including the opener “Don’t Go Near the Water”, an ironic message from a band that had been advocating the exact opposite for many years. Mike Love reworked a live standard into “Student Demonstration Time” and, although not quite yet an “official” member of the band, Bruce Johnston wrote and sang lead another on the album’s finer songs, the nostalgiac “Disney Girls (1957)” (Johnston was a long time “stand-in” for Brian Wilson on stage).

However, even though his actual participation was minimal, Brian Wilson managed to contribute the album’s two most significant songs, the two that close out Surf’s Up.

First, there was the newly-penned “Til I Die”, a beautiful but haunting ode to helplessness, which contains the tradition “Beach Boys sound” built around the rich harmonies of Carl, Brian, and Mike Love.

Then, of course, there is the climatic title song written five years earlier. A mini-suite in three distinct parts fused together seamlessly. The original, Brian Wilson produced backing track provides a backdrop for new vocals by Carl during the first part, while Brian’s original vocals are used in the middle part. The song’s concluding section was based on another SMiLE-era track, “Children Are the Father of Man”, and features Jardine on lead vocals and Carl and Brian doing harmonies. As a whole, even though the song distinctly changes and the lyrics are a bit thick, the message is undeniable.

Through the rest of the 1970s and well into the 1980s, Brian Wilson virtually dropped out of the music scene while the rest of the band would tour and play some of their greatest hits from the early 60s in what would become known as the “Endless Summer”. Surf’s Up proved to be their last, best effort as, artistically, the Beach Boys would not quite reach this level again.

Beach Boys Surfs Up (1971)

From rollingstone.com
OCTOBER 14, 1971

I’ve been waiting impatiently for this record since Sunflower, and the small letdown I feel could be the other side of that impatience: the wish that they could have kept it a little longer to make it perfect. In this case that would not be a matter of production (why not expect technical perfection from a group that began producing itself in the early Sixties that handles the studio with such mastery?), but rather of waiting for the material to even out in quality. (Perhaps drummer Dennis Wilson’s absence as songwriter and, because of a hand injury, on five of the ten cuts contributes to this flaw; Wilson wrote “Forever,” on Sunflower, an incredibly beautiful piece.)

Still, I recall my own first reaction to Sunflower; some cuts at first seemed too thin, too light. (“Deirdre,” for instance, which later became a favorite of mine precisely for the cream-puff-thrown-in-the-machinery effect, and for Brian Wilson’s occasional showbiz-Broadway flair.)

But the important thing about the Beach Boys is just this aspect of their music. The production is usually flawless and the melodies so frequently exquisite that one tends to hear, then listen for and finally dismiss it as surface. Yet the surface is manipulated so carefully and so brilliantly that (and here I am forced by a certain poverty of analogy to shift senses) it becomes hologrammatic. Cotton candy: bite into it and the pink fluff becomes sugar on your tongue then, poof! mere aftertaste. Yet wait, there’s more pink fluff inside the cone, and more, and more … (Not to mention the best aftertaste in the business.)

Wilson, Wilson, Wilson, Jardine, Love and Johnston form rock’s only choir, and what one misses on Surf’s Up are more of the incredible group vocals that have been equalled in power only by the Band. I’m thinking especially of “This Whole World,” the most perfect example on the last album (aumdidit, aumdidit), but also of “Cottonfields” (so much more energy and emotion than Creedence’s) on 20/20, and the slightly ragged but good-natured title-cut of Friends. And especially Wild Honey, the entire album.

Now there is an under-rated album, Wild Honey; it is surely the most even of their post-surfer LPs, and the last time they truly rocked their asses off, one cut after another. Capitol has scratched all their albums after ’65, Pet Sounds and everything, including Wild Honey, that followed. But Wild Honey is a masterpiece. Sometimes the last thing I hear at night before falling asleep is from “Country Air,” Carl holding that note (“Mother Nature, she fills my eyeyeyeyeyey”) and rhyming it to the rooster’s crow that begins the cut.

“Surf’s Up” itself was to be the piece de resistance to Smile, the album that never was, Brian’s collaboration with Van Dyke Parks. The song itself emerges out of the legend that withholding it so long created. (It had been performed once by Brian at a piano, in 1967 on a Leonard Bernstein-bestows-his-blessing-on-rock television show, never to be heard again.) Is it as good as was breathlessly rumored by those who had heard the partial track? Well, yes. Simple as that well, not that simple. The production is ornate elephant calls melting into French horns and clarinets, percussion via housekeys slapped against a top-hat, and you name it yet never opaque.

Here it is, however, just part of the puzzle. Like “Cabinessence” on 20/20, another Smile number, it is the last cut on side two, and even though this version was recorded completely in 1971, there is something of the effect of Brian saying: “Oh yeah, that’s our new album, but hey, you wanna hear something we had left over around here?” In any case, there is cause to be grateful they got around to it:

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-step to lamp lights cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne.

It would have more than given a run to anything on Sergeant Pepper, which was the current competition, though an album full of these rich pastries might have been perhaps oppressive. Maugham said that you could only really look at a painting for a certain number of minutes. My guess is that there was one central musical concept on Smile, on sound, one brand new chord theretofore undiscovered and accessible only to the Wilson-Parks songwriting ear; to listen to this lost album might have been exhausting or, better, another visual analogy; blinding. That is what “Surf’s Up” is, dazzling almost to ear-blindness, from the diamond necklace in the first line to the muted lyrics of third and fourth stanzas, pausing for an extended pun:

The glass was raised, the fire rose
The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting
While at port adieu or die.

Parks’ lyrics make the most of the Beach Boys’ obsession with the polished surface of their music: one is never unaware of the artistry in their construction, and you are tossed mercilessly from content to technique, behind and before the scene, attention drawn to the song itself as an entity:

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

And:

Back through the opera-glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn
Columinated ruins domino …

Like their very best music, it is Light (ness) itself, fragile and transparent as sunshine.

Surf’s Up, the album, is almost a concept album (remember them?) in its near obsession with the subject of water (if not the Beach Boys, then who?); the last cut of Sunflower was “Cool Water,” five minutes worth, and the first track here is “Don’t Go Near the Water,” by Al Jardine and Mike Love. It begins without much promise, a rather trite melody that reminds the ear of commercial jingles, but the chorus is imaginative. Jardine wails the third verse with rather more soul than is called for with a lyric like:

Toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble-bath
So let’s avoid an ecological
aftermath.

By the time we hear the original melody again, however, repeated with different words, it is rather lovable, and even the lyrics redeem themselves:

Don’t go near the water
To do it any wrong
To be cool with the water
Is the message of this song.

“Long Promised Road,” the next cut, is with “Feel Flows” on side two, Carl Wilson’s first solo composing effort, with lyrics by Jack Reiley, the group’s publicist. It is, as they say in more auspicious reviews, an auspicious debut. Carl produced and played every track on “Long Promised Road,” but it has none of the static feeling or self-indulgence one might expect from such megalomania. His vocal is gentle and displays superb rhythmic control, begins light and travels into a rocker without seeming to shift gears; Reiley’s lyrics are quite fine.

“Take A Load Off Your Feet,” with a too-thin melody, obvious production and some good but wasted solo vocals by Jardine and Brian Wilson.

For me, the best realized song on the entire record, aside from “Surf’s Up,” is “Disney Girls (1957).” In an album that takes lyrics as seriously as this one (they are for the first time enclosed with the record), Bruce Johnston’s contribution is, without reservation, brilliant, the lyrics as accomplished in their way as are Parks’; understandably we are more surprised by Johnston’s achievement. Nobody’s going to do the Fifties this well for quite a while:

Patti Page and summer days
On old Cape Cod…
Open cars and clearer stars
That’s what I’ve lacked
But fantasy world and Disney girls
I’m comin’ back.

Unrestrained sentiment, be forewarned (the Beach Boys have never hidden the emotion in their music), but not without a painless funny edge:

Love… Hi, Rick and Dave
Hi Pop… Well, good morning, Mom
Love, get up, guess what
I’m in love with a girl I found.
She’s really swell
Because she likes
Church, bingo chances, and old time dances…

Its placement on the record, and the understated group backing, lulls you for the last song on this side, “Student Demonstration Time,” new lyrics by Mike Love to the old Coasters’ hit, “Riot on Cell Block No. 9.” Sometimes I get the feeling that, because for so long there was a hipper-than-thou dismissal of the group, they are now trying too hard and maybe unnecessarily to prove their credentials. It’s great that they’re doing political rallies and benefits, but I suspect the real reason they’re being taken seriously again is their live performances; it is impossible to hear them, as I did last fall at the Whisky, and not be knocked out. Anyway, this song has some spectacular horn-playing (they currently travel with a ten-man section), superb crackling lead guitar by Carl, and a police siren or simulated siren that really does make it as an instrument, but the lyrics, with one exception:
The violence spread down South
Where Jackson State brothers
Learned not to say nasty things
About Southern policemen’s
mothers
strikes me as embarrassing. Somehow more generalized protest (Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?”) works for me, where this specific catalogue seems to trivialize the events themselves. In any case, I’m told this is the show-stopper at their current round of concerts, so chacun a…

Carl’s “Feel Flows” opens side two; an excellently produced number, the highlight is a break with Charles Lloyd’s flute that is incredibly good. The transition from this is a tantalizingly brief piano riff and Carl’s guitar, sucked back into the song in a weird imploding warp. The reverse or forward echo works beautifully with Reiley’s lyrics.

“Looking at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)” is folkish, hyped up with phase distortion. It grows on you, but the guitar work is over-delicate, if that is the word. It’s minor.

“A Day in the Life of a Tree” is reminiscent of “Wind Chimes” on Smiley Smile, with Brian on pipe and pump organ and lyricist Reiley the solo vocalist. At first it comes off as too somber, but one’s ear ripens for it. The real treat is the “Lord oh now I lay me down” chorus. This is another “ecology” thing, and even if I could get over the banal political position banal since audience and artist may be assumed to agree a word like “pollution” is a cliched catchword for a lot of other cliches. The line in question seems better, for instance, when it is sung in the background by Van Dyke Parks, whose voice frequently gives lyrics a campy resonance:

Trees like me weren’t meant to live
If all this world can give
Is pollution and slow death.

Even so, it is hardly forgettable. Haunting, even.

Brian sings alone on “Till I Die,” the last cut before “Surf’s Up,” but later the group joins in. “Till I Die” also has the disadvantage of meeting the ear first almost as a throwaway and then taking shape, listening after listening, inside the head. It is extremely moving.

This is a good album, probably as good as Sunflower, which is terrific, and which I’ve had six months more to listen to. It is certainly the most original in that it has contributed something purely its own. Perhaps because of the ecology theme, it is not as joyous. But it will do to keep the turntable warm until their next. (Myself, I hope it will be live, to show what they can do in concert.) They remain unique, and though they still promise more than they deliver, this group has delivered plenty throughout its history. For that reason, they are perhaps still the most important and certainly the most “accomplished” of all American groups.

You can come home, guys, all is forgiven.

The Beach Boys Surf’s Up (1971)

From donignacio.com

Dennis Wilson had been emerging as one of the Beach Boys’ main songwriters in previous albums, but he suddenly left that stage for Surf’s Up. On top of that, Brian also was less-functional when it came to song writing. Apart from a few co-writing credits (in which he most likely only ‘help a bit’), his only contributions were a depressing ballad, “Til I Die,” a minimalist tune about a tree, “Day in the Life of a Tree,” and an unused outtake from the busted Smile sessions, the title track. This of course meant that Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston had to come up with the remaining songs. And they did it surprisingly well. (Except for Mike Love.)

Carl Wilson, who apparently hadn’t penned anything for the band at this point, contributed “Free Flows,” an oddball and completely original song that proved the guy had some bottled up creativity. The chord-progressions certainly aren’t as majestic as Brian’s (in fact, there are only two chords being used in a major section of this), but the harmonies aren’t the point of it. The choppy chords are somehow mesmerizing, and that mystical jam in the middle (basically a duet between a flute and a mysterious electric guitar) is quite exciting. It more closely resembles Frank Zappa than the classic Beach Boys, and that is a really compelling aspect of it. (Of course, they still wanted it to be relatively accessible whereas that wasn’t a main concern for Zappa…) Carl also wrote the more traditional “Long Promised Road,” a multi-part suite that is nearly as ‘epic’ and tuneful as one of Brian’s. The only major difference, again, is it doesn’t quite exhibit Brian’s incredible knack for harmonies. But it was surprisingly close.

Bruce Johnston wrote a surprisingly heart warming gem, “Disney Girls (1957).” It’s a ballad that probably belongs in 1957, but I guess that was the point. It’s a sweet song with one of those melodies that’s prone to stick in your mind. Al Jardine co-wrote a quirky pop tune (with some help from Brian), “Take a Load Off Your Feet.” You’re more likely to remember the somewhat overactive vocal performance amidst the sound-effects-ridden instrumentation, which could be described as ‘a lot of knocks.’ It’s sort of fun to hear, though. “Don’t Go Near the Water” is another funny pop song, except the melody is a little cliché and Mike Love wrote terrible lyrics about water pollution. I do like those rubbery synthesizers they use to give the overall song a watery texture! That was a brilliant move in what would have otherwise been a dull, routine pop song with terrible lyrics. Another Al Jardine contribution was the folk ballad “Lookin’ At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song),” a formidable piece of song writing but ultimately unmemorable.

A lot of die hard Beach Boys really hate Mike Love. Whether or not such sentiments are deserved, his only major contribution is the only real drag on Surf’s Up. “Student Demonstration Time” is the same thing as “Riot in Cell Block #9,” a blues song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but he rewrote the lyrics to reflect the college campus protest riots. The Beach Boys weren’t known for playing blues-rock, but they did OK considering they’re the whitest band on earth. But that melody was already generic blues-rock, and those incredibly pretentious and dated lyrics don’t help. Bluh!

Naturally, the three Brian Wilson contributions are the ultimate highlights. Even though the band members hated it, “Til I Die,” is a gorgeous masterpiece and further proof that the guy had a natural ear for harmonies. True, it’s incredibly depressing, but there is a lot of beauty to be seen in this black-and-white picture. “A Day in the Life of a Tree” isn’t as compelling to me, although it’s much more minimal than you’d expect a Beach Boys song to be. The predominant instrument there is a very plain-sounding organ and somewhat shaky vocals. It’s not Brian’s best work, for sure, but it is also oddly majestic and something that could be easy to take to heart. And the title track, of course, is a fairly well-known classic. It’s one of those classic sentimental, multi-part suite that shows all the pre-breakdown Brian Wilson at the height of his powers. It sounds a little bit like a demo to me (though with a little bit of orchestration that was actually recorded in 1966), but they probably lacked the budget and inspiration to go crazy with the song production they had originally planned.

Despite its flaws, Surf’s Up is a very enjoyable middle-period Beach Boys album that any pop-rock fan should listen to. There’s too much good material here to pass up. Considering it’s available on the same CD as the also-splendid Sunflower, there’s really no excuse for not picking it up.