The 1967 Beach Boys album that sounded even better 40 years later: “So much soul”
There has never really been much of a middle ground with The Beach Boys; either you hear a record of theirs that goes all in and attempts to create some of the most forward-thinking music you’ve ever heard, or it ends up being a phoned-in mess that nobody wants to ever hear again.
A large amount of this was down to the constant push and pull between chief songwriter and leader Brian Wilson, and the band’s resident troublemaker, Mike Love, who wanted to exert more control over proceedings than he was ever permitted to. The dynamic between the duo, who were cousins in a band dominated by a fraternal trio that also included Wilson’s brothers, Dennis and Carl, was frequently hostile, and with Love fighting to have his voice heard, it quite often impacted Wilson’s focus.
Granted, not everything Wilson ever did was without its flaws in the first place, but usually, if Love found himself victorious in his pursuits to veto one of his cousin’s ideas or introduce some of his own, it could end up having disastrous consequences.
For example, Smile was abandoned in part because of Wilson’s deteriorating mental state, but also because Love didn’t want to go further in the direction of making conceptual pop, and the band eventually found themselves having to compromise by releasing Smiley Smile, an album that touches on the original concept but never fully dives in. On the other hand, Summer in Paradise is as bad as it is because of Wilson’s absence from the creation of it, and it was largely Love’s desire to make something feel-good and accessible that helped turn it into one of the worst records ever made.
Here you have a perfect illustration of how the band were capable of going to both extremes, but that also begs the question as to whether there are any truly middling albums that the band ever released.
You could argue that something like Wild Honey, which was neither a commercial nor critical success, but also not a flop in either sense, could be seen as the perfect example of the band sitting in the middle of the road, but even that record has its upsides, which Wilson would later acknowledge in an interview where he reflected on its legacy.
“That whole record had so much soul,” he claimed. “We put a theremin on that one for old time’s sake. Mike got the album title from some actual wild honey that was out on the kitchen table. Eating healthy was good for our music.”
The album stemming from a period of good health may have aided their feelings on it at the time, and Wilson was still effusively praising it decades on. “Wild Honey was one of the records that I made a point of going back and listening to after a while,” he added. “It was after more than 40 years. It kind of swept me away.”
It’s still vastly underrated when you consider the pecking order of their discography, and while it isn’t going to be anyone’s favourite, there are still plenty of glorious moments on it. What’s more, it remarkably manages to find the perfect compromise between Wilson’s desire for experimentation and Love’s urge to make no-nonsense pop.
