The Beach Boys: Eleven Years On
[There] is one group—and one group only—for whom [a] preoccupation with the aging process seems to have no relevance whatsoever. (p. 67)
[Despite] the attrition of years, the virtual disappearance of the surf and car culture from which they sprang, and the inevitable distancing from their audience their growth from boys to men must bring, the Beach Boys are still fueling the fantasies of adolescents and of those of us long beyond them. This is a most remarkable achievement; other musicians who, like them, began their careers at the same age as their first fans have for the most part hung on to these same fans as the greater part of their audience. Paul McCartney, Dylan, the Stones, and the Who (to say nothing of Elvis, who is in many ways outside time entirely) have, to be sure, attracted new devotees. But only the Beach Boys' audience, among those of the classic rockers', seems to remain forever young, forever fifteen.
The answer, I think, has something to do with Innocence, which, like most things in life, is a much more complicated proposition than it at first appears. Certainly, the Beach Boys were innocents when they began; how could they, a bunch of teenagers growing up in an unremarkable suburb like Hawthorne, California, as a tight little family unit and interested in nothing more sophisticated than cars and girls, have been otherwise? You can see it on their earliest album covers—those incredibly young faces smiling on the back of "Surfing U.S.A." seem like extras from the cast of Leave It to Beaver or some weird, surreal foreshadowing of Happy Days. But there is pain in the passing of innocence, and Brian Wilson, who captained the group from its inception and who blossomed as an enormous talent almost overnight, felt it most strongly. (pp. 67-8)
But Brian was not merely an overly sensitive teenager; he was a remarkably gifted musician, and the fantasies that obsessed him turned into a series of records that sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before…. Some rocked like mad (Little Deuce Coupe, Dance Dance Dance, I Get Around); some were ballads of aching melodic beauty (Surfer Girl, The Warmth of the Sun, In My Room). Either way, these evocations of youthful joys and sorrows were on a level approaching the very finest folk art, and few could resist them.
For the first few years of their career, the Beach Boys clung to their innocence as they traveled the world in triumph, enormous international stars….
As the world rapidly changed, their innocence began to weigh heavily against them. They had represented good times, hedonism, materialism, even an Andy Hardy-ish school spirit, and by the middle of the decade the teenagers who had once adored the Boys were rejecting those values with a vengeance….
The amazing thing is that, throughout [the] whole chaotic period [of the late sixties], the beset Beach Boys turned out a series of albums that are perhaps their best and certainly among the least dated relics of their era. There was "Pet Sounds," Brian's pre-"Sgt. Pepper" concept record, both a triumph of studio technology and a heart-rending chronicle of lost love. There was "Smiley Smile," a curious but entertaining piecing together of fragments of a project Brian had been working on with Van Dyke Parks. And, finally, there was "Wild Honey." Cut totally in Brian's basement studio, it anticipated the return to pre-psychedelic simplicity of Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" by several months, but, for all its primitive sound and back-to-the-roots naïveté, it was as perfect a piece of music as they had ever come up with—ten gorgeous originals and perhaps the first cover version of a Stevie Wonder tune ["I Was Made to Love Her"] ever attempted by any white rock band. Despite the success of the title track as a single, "Wild Honey" sold hardly at all, and it is only now beginning to get its critical due. It has been reissued, though, and if you don't own a Beach Boys record, it is certainly the one you should buy first….
[Through] it all, incredibly,… original innocence has somehow endured, a slightly battered assurance of survival. If their obsession with the California dream of the early Sixties—cars, surfing, the good life—has a contemporary parallel, what is it if not their involvement with conservation and ecological matters, their continued dalliance with transcendental meditation? These are fitting backgrounds for dreams of more Endless Summers and other Promised Lands, and they now include the knowledge, derived from experience, of the price of those dreams, the understanding that good times have to be earned if they are to be worth having. How wonderful that you can get all of that along with some of the most beautiful songs and performances in American music. (p. 68)
Steve Simels, "The Beach Boys: Eleven Years On," in Stereo Review (reprinted by permission of the author). May, 1977, pp. 66-9.
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