Paul Williams
[The Beach Boys] are moving forward all the time.
Each Beach Boys album since Pet Sounds has been (or seemed) a little less sophisticated. Retrogression? Not at all, but to prove that, we'd better decide what "forward" is.
Forward is the direction in which time moves. It's kind of like "out," which is the direction in which cosmic matter moves. There is no possibility of reversal inherent in this movement, nor even of angular shift. Those concepts have no meaning. Can a line stretching from zero towards infinity turn around? I mean, try to visualize it. At best, it would no longer be a line; and the basic assumption we make in calling something a line is that it is, at least, a line. So forward is a description of how time moves, just as outward might describe how space moves, if we think of "space" the concept rather than the objects that move about within space.
Now, "forward" as applied to the Beach Boys must have to do with their relationship to time. Do they move forward in time (or rather, with it)? Yes, of course, everybody does. Do they make progress? To answer that, we must consider their work as existing in time, and ask: is there a real movement (if there is, it couldn't be anything but forward) from the Beach Boys' earlier creations to their more recent ones? Not, do they get better?—that would require a highly subjective judgment (I, personally, do not think they get better; I feel they are as great now, or conversely, were as great then—I don't favor any particular period). Rather, do they incorporate the past in the present, do they seem to learn, do they operate out of some kind of awareness of past accomplishment and failure, or are they striking out anew from the beginning, the origin, every time? The question is, is there some kind of real expansion evident in the achievements of the Beach Boys as time goes on, something that would justify our considering one album as a step forward from a previous one?
This is very difficult to answer; it breaks down into a matter of subjective judgment no matter how we try to avoid that. I would say that, taking the various albums the Beach Boys have done and shuffling them, it is not necessarily evident that there are "more advanced" and "less advanced" albums. They have reached different audiences at various times sophisticated. Retrogression? Not at all, but to prove that, we'd better [say] that they were only good up to this point, or since that point ("Good Vibrations" is one popular dividing line). However, I would argue that, from the point of view of the longtime listener who has taken them pretty much for what they are, the Beach Boys have covered more distance than almost any other group in rock.
Can I explain that statement? I hope so. It must be remembered that the consistent listener himself moves forward with time; he heard Pet Sounds in 1966 and Smiley Smile in 1967 and Friends in 1968. So each new record the group releases may well seem to him not merely another piece of plastic to be measured against past pieces, but rather the most recent advance of a continually expanding body of work…. (pp. 9-10)
In terms of the listener, he feels himself moved further (at least I do) by each new album the Beach Boys produce. This is not true with most groups, even very good ones…. The Beach Boys, in their work since Pet Sounds and I believe throughout their careers, have been pressing constantly on, relentless in dissatisfaction, in the need to express more and more of themselves (as opposed to the need for expressing the same thing more and more effectively).
So what happens to the listener is this: he is familiar with the Beach-Boys, he likes them, meaning he enjoys most of what they've put out and rather expects that they will continue to create worthwhile (to him) music. He sees a new Beach Boys album in the shop window, purchases it, takes it home and plays it and lo and behold he cannot relate! Is this the same Beach Boys I know and love? he wonders, knowing full well it is, the voices certainly sound familiar, but somehow this is not what he expected. It is not more of the same. It is something entirely new as though the group had just appeared on the scene and expected to be listened to with no preconceptions whatsoever.
Not more of the same. And as a result, it is extremely difficult for the listener to say whether or not he likes the record. On first listening, it appears to have no relevance, either to him or to his idea of who the Beach Boys are.
But (I hope) he continues to play the record. And slowly but surely he finds one song and then another quite stuck inside his mind, he hears the music in his head as though his mind were a portable radio and the song were being picked up by him directly as waves in the air. He finds himself more and more deeply involved in the album, until he hears each separate song with great pleasure and feels an affection for the album itself. Quite unconsciously, he has come to like the record, and now he may say, after the fact, that it's good, I like it, the Beach Boys have done it again.
Do you know what has happened? His head has been opened. A whole new thing, which he responded to not at all at first, has been added to his consciousness, he now responds to this strange music warmly and with sensitivity, and he is not at all the same listener he was before he bought the album. He has, bien sur, made progress. Progress not just within a context but beyond the contexts he as a listener was familiar with.
I have seen this happen, with Pet Sounds, Wild Honey, Friends. I've had it happen to me and I've spoken to many people who seem to have had the same experience. And I know very many people who've turned off the Beach Boys because they never got beyond that first baffling exposure to the album. It seems to me essential, if we are to stay as children, if we are to remain open to the world and what's in it, that we not take defensive postures, that we never hold on tighter to what we have when faced with something strange and new. Our only chance at escaping stagnation is to continue to grow almost in spite of every urge towards security and safety that we feel. True security can only be found in the ability to respond fully to any situation.
So let us praise the Beach Boys for their progress. Friends is not the least like Wild Honey, though it retains Wild Honey's achievement of the casual and the everyday and the immediate (and explores these things somewhat further). It is not at all Smiley Smile, although its explorations of organ sound as it relates to melody and to the human voice continue. Friends is, furthermore, no return to Pet Sounds, though it might please those who have been seeking in the Beach Boys the calm, the softness of Pet Sounds (Friends lacks Pet Sounds' passion—which you can find even more in Wild Honey, but it is in many ways both more comforting and more adventurous). Friends is merely a new Beach Boys album and as such both the successful expression of their current interests and feelings and a real step forward on the part of the Beach Boys music in general—not because this is a better album than any before, but because Beach Boys music and Beach Boys' listeners' perception of music are now that much further developed—more sophisticated, through being deeply sensitive to apparently simpler stuff—than they ever were before. An important product indeed. (p. 10)
Paul Williams, in Crawdaddy (copyright © 1968 by Crawdaddy Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of the author), September, 1968.
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