Revisiting the Beach Boys - The Early Years
- Tristan
- Jun 29
- 9 min read
I listened to every Beach Boys album ever produced in chronological order, including all 29 studio albums and several of their live albums. Here are my thoughts:
Preface
If you just want to read about the highlights from my discography binge, feel free to skip ahead to the A Brief Tour section. I plan to go through the band's entire discography, at least through the '80s, and talk a bit about my favorite tracks. In this post, though, I'll just be covering their early period. For the companion Spotify playlist, click the button below!
Let me start by saying that although I love the Beach Boys, I'm not one of those Brian Wilson worshipers you might have stumbled across in audiophile circles online or in musty record shops in the hipster part of town.
I don't think Brian Wilson was a genius, nor do I think his music is that unique, transcendent, or important in the grand scheme of things.
I'm not going to tell you that Pet Sounds is the greatest album ever made or that if Smile had been released as Brian intended, the entire landscape of popular music would have been irrevocably changed.
The Beach Boys made music, nothing more and nothing less.
But they made music that I and many others love. We can couch our love in pseudo-intellectual jargon, make sweeping claims about "best album" this and "revolutionary" that, and shame others for "not getting it." But why?
I love the Beach Boys, and I want to share a bit of that love with the world in the hopes that someone else out there will find some value in it. Not because it's the best music ever made but because I like it, and it means something to me.
Introduction to the Boys
The Beach Boys made music that glitters and gleams. It's radiant music - the kind that sparkles with inspiration and will go on sparkling as long as people have ears to hear it.
From the untethered, uncertain swells of "God Only Knows" to the unbridled, drunken joy of "Mona;" From the lo-fi, rooster-accompanied hums of "Country Air" to the soul-crushing, roiling organ and bass of "'Til I Die" - their music hits, and it hits hard. It has an ephemeral, dreamy quality that stirs something deep inside and a self-evident passion at its core that is somehow jaded and naive at the same time.
Their music is corny, trite, at times commercial, and lyrically hollow (for the most part), but there's something about it.
From the early days when it was just the Wilson brothers, cousin Mike Love, and school friends Al Jardine and David Marks, to the later permutations in the '70s, '80s, and beyond, what stands out most about the Boys is their relentless and infectious love of music.
The band seemed not to care about anything except for music itself. It's a kind of naked passion - bare, shallow, and void of deeper meaning. They weren't philosophers and didn't pretend to be. And they certainly weren't activists or advocates. But they loved music and they were good at it.
They're a really, really fascinating band, and words can't adequately describe what they mean to me. But considering Brian Wilson's recent passing and the fact that his death marks the end of the Wilson brothers, I thought it'd be worth a try, if only to honor their memory~
For those who haven't listened to much of the Beach Boys' discography, everything I'm saying probably sounds very dramatic and silly and altogether unfit for a teenage surf band. I mean, just look at those goofballs with their silly matching shirts!
For those who are familiar with the Boys, you probably don't care. But hear me out!
For the former group, I hope I can help you find a new appreciation for a much-maligned band, both over- and underrated in popular culture, and introduce you to some fascinating music.
For the latter group, I hope I can point you to sections of their discography that you may have overlooked or give you a new appreciation for an old band.
The Beach Boys' history contains so many paradoxes, so many absurdities, and so many tragedies. I certainly have my own thoughts about many of these, but I'll save those for a later date. People love to lament the missed opportunities of the band - all the what-abouts and could-have-beens - and I get it.
But also, at the end of the day, they left us with so much music to enjoy - decades of passionate, soulful music filled with joy and occasional sorrow but always heart. Always heart.
So, let me walk you through the band's history and point out some of my most cherished bits and pieces. Enjoy!
A Brief Tour - The Beginning
Full disclosure: this is probably my least favorite era of their music. I don't hate it; I just think it's...fine. That said, revisiting the Beach Boys' early years (and 100%ing them, nonetheless) was really fun and enlightening. Enjoy!
'61-'63 - The Early Years
From Surfin' Safari in 1962 through at least Little Deuce Coupe in 1963, we get the Beach Boys at their purest. Their music from this era brims with songs about cars, surfing, and girls, of course.
Now, I can believe their fondness for automobiles, being affluent teenagers in post-war California and all. But only Dennis surfed, and despite their budding fame, my gut tells me their stories of bodacious babes were more aspirational than autobiographical.
For most lay-people, this is the Beach Boys era that is most familiar. Girls, cars, and waves, dude! But it's also their roughest and most amateurish era, and that's hardly a critique since they were mostly teenagers at the time.
Still, there are some gems here and there. We get some alright covers of Surf Rock classics and some famous attempts at Rock 'n' Roll, none of which I find myself revisiting often since the originals are just so much better. Still, I like "Lonely Sea" off of Surfin' U.S.A (1963), which is downright beautiful and surprisingly soulful for a bunch of affluent California teens.
We also get some tighter compositions in "Surfer Girl" and "In My Room" (both from Surfer Girl, 1963). Both tracks are pleasant, even moving, and I genuinely like them.
'64 - Improving Their Sound
We start getting to what I would consider their first genuinely great songs in their 1964 album, Shut Down, Vol. 2. They still sound amateurish, and the production is pretty atrocious to modern ears, but what they lack in polish they more than make up for with youthful charm and increasingly tight arrangements.
"Don't Worry Baby" is a bona fide classic, and no wonder. It's a beautiful composition, beautifully performed, and I can just imagine the collective swoon that must have swept through every California house that was home to a teenage girl the first time this track dropped.
Then we have "The Warmth of the Sun," and wow! Clearly, the earlier "Lonely Sea" was mere foreshadowing for this absolute classic. My only reservation is that the lo-fi double tracking on the lead vocals still sounds kind of annoying to me, and that does hurt my enjoyment of the track and really of all of their early stuff.
All Summer Long (1964) has several fun tracks whose sheer early-60s cheese is enough to forgive the dated production. "I Get Around" is a classic, of course, but I honestly also love "All Summer Long" and "Little Honda" (Mike Love's lead vocal on this one is smooth as heck - pure Beach Boys cheese).
Still, I find Brian's lead vocals in this period a tad grating - his falsetto, though much lauded, sounds shrill and whiny to my ears. However, middle-child Dennis "the Menace" has a really nice verse (more like one line, but it's good) on "Girls On the Beach," a track which I adore even with Brian's whining falsetto.
The Christmas Album also released this same year, featuring one of my all-time favorite Christmas songs - "Little Saint Nick." I know, I know...
But it's so catchy with that "Christmas comes this time each year" bit from Mike in his silly baritone. I don't like the rest of the album, though.
Still, the Boys' influences - Motown, Doo-Wop, Chuck Berry, etc. - overshadowed their own output in this period. The Boys were starting to sound less like derivative teen slop and more like their own thing, but they weren't quite there yet.
You'd be forgiven for ignoring their early stuff completely, considering you can find everything they were doing in far more talented and polished acts like Chuck Berry himself, Dick Dale, the Four Freshman, the Belmonts, the Ronettes, and on and on and on.
'65 - Perfecting the "Beach Boys" Thing
But by the mid-60s or so, the Boys were getting into the swing of it. In my mind, The Beach Boys Today! (1965) is a pretty decisive leap forward and their first solid album all around. Pretty much every track is solid, and some of my all-time favorites are here.
We've got "Please Let Me Wonder," the first of their softer ballads where the production doesn't annoy the heck out of me. In fact, the production on this track actually compliments the dreamy, molasses-like tone and performance. Brian Wilson's lead vocal on this is personal and affecting, and not particularly grating, plus we've got that enchanting interlude on the keys that blows my mind.
Following is their cover of "I'm So Young," which has one of my favorite endings of any song ever, and "Kiss Me, Baby." Gives me chills. And it's on these tracks especially that the Phil Spector influence is starting to surface as a key driver of their sound. The backing is lush and complex but silky smooth.
Their vocals are still nowhere near the cream of the crop for the era, but Brian's impressive production is beginning to elevate them above their competitors. About their lyrics, I honestly rarely pay attention to that - and on this album, eh... There's some silly romantic stuff that probably sounded really nice to teenagers, but a lot of it comes off as weird and a tad creepy to modern ears. I just block it out.
Dennis has a chance to finally shine on lead vocals in "In the Back of My Mind," which is probably my favorite Beach Boys' closing track on any album. Dennis' voice is my favorite in the band - though it's rough, it has a raw emotional weight that I find so compelling. We haven't heard much of it at this point, but trust me, there are some real Dennis Wilson treats ahead.
I haven't given their Summer Days (And Summer Nights) (1965) my due diligence, so I'll only talk briefly about it. "Then I Kissed Her" is quite nice and features a strong lead from Al Jardine, "Salt Lake City" is probably the most interesting song about that city, "California Girls" is a well-deserved classic but not my favorite (but still a quantum leap above any of their pre-Today! material, though), and "I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man" is an apparently-silly-but-surprisingly-dark blues track detailing abuse the Wilson brothers' received from their father, Murray.
Party! also came out in '65, and though it's often overlooked I find it quite fun. They do a number of covers (even treading on Beatles' territory), including the Regents' classic, "Barbara Ann." It's really a fun album, and as far as I know it's the first of its kind in that the whole album is supposed to be a kind of unplugged, ad-hoc party setting.
It's worth remarking on just how many albums they put out in their early years. Clearly, quality was not their North Star. Indeed, although there are some highlights in this period, the best is certainly yet to come!
Up Next - Revisiting the Beach Boys' Peak
Next time, I'll continue my tour of the Beach Boys through their most critically-acclaimed era, starting with Pet Sounds. This next era is where my real passion for the band begins - but not because of Pet Sounds. It's actually the era immediately following that alleged magnum opus that I consider their creative peak. But more on that later!
Comments