Wednesday 9th May

I must have first heard the Beach Boys in 1962 or 63, at the time they were just another exciting sound coming from America, if someone had said it was surf-music I wouldn’t have even known what the term meant – I didn’t even know what surfing was, I just loved the sound.  “Help me Rhondda” and then “Barbara Ann” and “California Girls” were wonderful songs but just as the Beatles were changing so too were the Beach Boys and they were coming out with songs such as “Wouldn’t it be nice” and “Sloop John B.”  and “God Only Knows” which I didn’t realise at the time were all from an album called ‘Pet Sounds’, which so impressed the Beatles that they wanted to outdo it with ‘Sgt. Pepper’.  Then came the wonderful “Good Vibrations”, a song almost perfect in every way and which I was in love with in my mid-teens, even arguing with my music teacher that it would last as long as Beethoven.  Maybe not.

It was around this time that Brian Wilson, the main songwriter and creative force behind the Beach Boys had some sort of breakdown.  The Beach Boys struggled for a while to find a new direction.  But in the early seventies they came up with two albums that surpassed all their earlier efforts.  The first was “Surf’s Up”, with Feel Flows, Disney Girls, and the title track; songs of pure wonder and beautifully performed.  Brian was still a sort of member of the band, writing but not playing or singing with them anymore.  This was followed by the even more wonderful “Holland”.  Here they excelled even the heights they had scaled before, especially on ‘California Saga’ and ‘Sail on Sailor’.  But both albums are brilliant and can be played over and over without ever sounding boring.

Brian has now split from the remaining Beach Boys, who still tour the old songs; he has had something of a rehabilitation, and is now knocking out albums as a solo artist.  These are all okay, but listening again neither these nor even those early hits come anywhere near to the perfection of “Surfs Up” or “Holland”.