The 1976 album The Beach Boys couldn’t stand: “We were heartbroken”
It’s a lot easier to look at The Beach Boys’ discography on a curve half the time.
Brian Wilson should be commended for making some of the finest records of the 1960s and be put on the same level as John Lennon and Paul McCartney in terms of greatest songwriters, but when you look at his band’s body of work, the less good albums are usually the ones where he’s taking a back seat to the rest of the band half the time. And while Wilson did have more than a few personal favourites, he and his brothers realised when they were making one of the most pointless records of their career as well.
But when you look at the pre-Pet Sounds era, a lot of their best albums feel like they were pumped out on an assembly line. Half of their songs felt like they were following the same formula of ‘surfing-girls-cars-rinse-repeat’ on every other track, and while that might have worked from a business perspective, Wilson didn’t want to be known as the fun in the sun guy for the rest of his life.
He had a lot more to offer, and when you listen to tunes like ‘Surf’s Up’, he was clearly pushing the band in a different direction. He wanted the opportunity to make something that no one had ever heard before, but after frying himself with LSD one too many times, Mike Love started to insert himself into the leadership role a little too much. Love was always a great force in the band, but as a songwriter, he was no Wilson.
And especially when it comes to their business decisions, the idea of making a record like 15 Big Ones felt like a huge step backwards. The band was still working together perfectly well, but there were more than a few times when they seemed to be wearing their influences a little too hard on their sleeve. We all know that they idolised people like Chuck Berry, but whereas the father of rock and roll made music that made people want to dance, their version of ‘Rock and Roll Music’ makes you want to find a nice cosy spot against the wall.
Although Brian was pretty much dictating where everyone was going to go at this point, Dennis was the first one to consider the album one of the worst things that they had ever made, saying, “[It was] a great mistake to put Brian in full control. [The] whole process was a little bruising. We were heartbroken. People have waited all this time, anticipating a new Beach Boys album, and I hated to give them this.”
But surely Love would have something nice to say about the record, right? Well, no. Even at the time, Love refused to comment on the record despite being one of the biggest cheerleaders of the group. He didn’t necessarily need to have warm feelings about everything they did, but since this was the same man who tried to make the best of an album like Summer in Paradise, you’d think he’d at least have one nice thing to say about the record after the fact.
Then again, the album was just an excuse for the band to inch closer to more experimental projects like The Beach Boys Love You. Wilson’s influence might have been a bit too apparent on that record and made for some of the more awkward records that the band has ever made, but I would gladly take interesting over whatever strange kind of detours that this album took into the glory days of rock and roll.
Because, as much as The Beach Boys got dogged for not being the coolest band in the world, 15 Big Ones is about more than just a simple bad record. This was the crossroads moment where they could have kept going or become a nostalgia act, and considering Love is still touring the world without Wilson at this point, it seems like he made his decision of what he wanted to be a long time ago.
