Ink Tea Stone Leaf

The soundtrack to the 1995 documentary I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times consists mostly of new performances by Brian Wilson of songs recorded years earlier by himself and the Beach Boys. The sole exception is a demo of an obscure song from 1977, titled “Still I Dream Of It,” an uncommon ballad of loneliness and desperation, delivered in a crackling voice over crackling piano chords:

Time for supper now
Day’s been hard and I’m so tired
I feel like eating now
Smell the kitchen now
Hear the maid whistle a tune
My thoughts are fleeting now

When I first heard this track (around 2005 or so), I was becoming used to the idea that Brian Wilson had possessed two singing voices over the course of his life: the youthful tenor of his glory days, and the weathered elder voice, reduced in range by age and years of neglect and drug abuse. The sound of “Still I Dream Of It” took me by surprise: it sounded younger, but also rougher, as if Brian were choking on the melody. Yes, it was only a demo, but as far as I knew at the time there was only ever a demo, and the pain it expressed was so palpable that for many years I found it extremely hard to listen to. It almost felt like it was wrong, somehow, to listen to something so intensely personal, private, and raw, from such a dark time in a person’s life.

I had a similar reaction the first time I listened to 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, the group’s 21st studio album in their 15 years of existence. One of the strangest records ever issued by a major artist on a major label, nearly every track feels transgressive in one way or another. The lyrics are naive and unpolished, and the instrumentation is synthetic to a scandalous extent, if synths in classic rock can be said to carry hint of scandal. Strangest of all is the voice of Brian, heard on most songs and lead vocal on about half of them, bringing us lines like “love is a woman/so tell her she smells good tonight” with a hoarse sound that is almost unrecognizable from his precise and disciplined singing in the 1960s. Given his unique personality and his documented struggles with mental illness, it is probably not surprising that Brian Wilson could produce an album like this. It might be more surprising that he actually got way with it.

I avoided purchasing a copy of Love You for a long time, because I didn’t really know what to do with the music: it didn’t sound anything like Pet Sounds to me, and what I understood of the historical context made it seem unsavory, or even exploitative. That there was another album recorded in the same year, the ultimately rejected and unreleased Adult/Child, did not dispel my sense that darkness lay heavily upon this period for Brian and the Boys. “Still I Dream Of It” was an Adult/Child song, and that fact alone spoke volumes.

In time I came to appreciate that this hesitance did not really make sense. My proper introduction to the world of the Beach Boys was Brian’s iconic recreation of the legendary lost album Smile, and it was the aura of strange genius compromised by madness that drew me into songs like “Heroes and Villains.” Of course, The Beach Boys Love You doesn’t sound anything like Smile, either. It doesn’t really sound like any other album by anybody, and that is the heart of what makes Love You special. There is darkness and pain in the music, but there is also sunshine and gleefully uncomplicated joy—in other words, it is a Beach Boys album, and a thoroughly Brian Wilson production.

So I came around on Love You, in time to appreciate all its supreme silliness and pathos as Al Jardine presented it to the world anew while on tour with the outfit formerly known as the Brian Wilson Band. And I kept my ear to the ground for news of the rumored reissue package, particularly with regard to the possibility that it would be accompanied by the first official release of Adult/Child. It materialized sooner than I feared, and this week the box set known as We Gotta Groove arrived at my home. Consisting of three vinyl records and three CDs with expanded track lists, and totaling 73 tracks and over three hours of oddness and whimsy, it is a lot more music from the “Brother Studio Years” than I once anticipated adding to my collection. It also raises questions that I find diverting to ponder, so I shall ponder them as I listen once more.

Part 1: Love You

One thing that comes across in the box set’s lavishly illustrated booklet is the extent to which the other Beach Boys saw, or otherwise wish to present, Brian’s activities in the studio in 1976 and 77 as a form of “therapy,” which they were all determined to support. The Beach Boys Love You certainly feels like an expression of Brian’s inner, unfiltered self, and the band all seem to throw their hearts into bringing that expression to life. However, it is hard to ignore the tension between such heartfelt concern for a friend and family member, and the commercial incentive to encourage a successful songwriter to resume his former level of productivity. In another year the production keys would be taken away, and Brian would slide into another period of darkness. But by his own account, he felt more creatively fulfilled while recording Love You than at any other time.

CD One of We Gotta Groove is pretty straightforward: it’s Love You, and closely related outtakes. Once your ears are properly adjusted to this particular soundscape, the raw creativity is easy to appreciate: even with whacked-out tunes like “Johnny Carson” and “Solar System” in the mix, Love You generally barrels forward without losing momentum, indulging in melody and novel textures, and projecting humor without descending into jokes or parody. Its success hinges on the perception that no matter what the Boys are singing about, they are being completely sincere.

Buying into that premise, unfortunately, means reckoning with a few problematic lyrics. However, I believe it is a mistake to put too much emphasis on the literal meaning of these words. The art of writing songs is an ancient one, and the art of writing a modern pop song is laden with decades of stock phrases, cliches, and conventions that matter less for what they say than for what kind of atmosphere they create.

Well she’s a roller skating child with a ribbon in her hair
She gets my heart to beatin’ when I see her there
You know my heart starts smiling when she sings
She’s such an angel, I bet she’s got wings

And we’ll make sweet lovin’ when the sun goes down
We’ll even do more when your mama’s not around
Well, oh my, oh gosh oh gee
She really sends chills inside of me

Lyrics were never really Brian’s strength, anyway.

A song like “Roller Skating Child” may be shocking for its lack of subtlety, but it is part of a long tradition of excessively glamorizing youth and lyrically infantilizing romantic interests in song, an offense that is quietly perpetuated every time a singer calls their lover “baby,” or even refers to a grown woman as a “girl.” The overall lyrical approach of Love You is to dispense with subtlety and embrace deeply colored emotions directly: it might not always land comfortably, but it won’t stop rolling.

As for the outtakes, some of them are strong enough to inspire the game of alternate history re-sequencing. Love You is short enough that it could have accepted another track or two: “Sherry She Needs Me,” “We Gotta Groove,” and “Hey There Mama” all have the right sort of energy to blend in with the existing songs. I doubt “Marilyn Rovell” was ever intended for anything except making Marilyn smile, or at least blush. There’s an argument to be made that Al Jardine’s lead vocal should have been used for “Love Is A Woman” instead of Brian’s, because he technically sings it better, but perhaps that simply wasn’t the point. The point, as they say, was therapy, and maybe that’s really what this is after all.

The way people talk about Adult/Child, you wouldn’t necessarily expect that it is largely defined by jazzy, trad-pop string arrangements, provided by Dick Reynolds. It sounds very little like Love You, except to the extent that Brian’s legendarily unhinged arrangement of the folk tune “Shortenin’ Bread” is reminiscent of his unhinged original composition “Ding Dang.” Peering back from today to 1977, it is easier to understand how Love You was accepted and Adult/Child was not, as despite its idiosyncracies the former is almost definitely a rock album, while the latter defies any real categorization.

But the version of this album/not album we get here is actually more sonically cohesive than the notorious bootleg, which was to include four songs that had been recorded a few years before the Adult/Child sessions. Two of them were outtakes from the early 1970s that have already been released on multiple compilations; the third, a cover of “On Broadway,” is actually included in this compilation, but not on this disc. The fourth is “Hey Little Tomboy,” which is in my opinion the very worst Beach Boys song. I make this claim in full awareness of the many Beach Boys songs that are not very good at all. That being said, while I do not want to hear “Hey Little Tomboy” again, I cannot actually explain why it is not included here. Yes, a rerecorded version of it eventually came out (for some dreadful reason) on another Beach Boys album, but the same is true of “Shortenin’ Bread.” I can only assume that “Tomboy” was excluded as an act of mercy, and for that I am grateful.

So we are left here with a core of string-heavy songs, constituting about half of a proper album. Is it any good? Comparisons to Smile are always tempting, but that project was infinitely more expansive, and musically more ambitious. Adult/Child feels smaller, and much more personal, like reading the margins in the journal of a person who, it should be remembered, was not mentally well. On songs like “It’s Over Now” or “Still I Dream Of It” (lusciously orchestrated in non-demo form), the words express a bittersweet longing for hope in the midst of a powerful depression; meanwhile, songs like “Life Is For the Living” and “It’s Trying To Say” are like self-administered pep talks, doggedly advocating a healthier, more optimistic outlook on life, with an eye toward the simple joys:

Batter swings and the ball goes sailing out in the crowd
(Out in the crowd)
Round to third, safe at home and the fans start screaming loud
Baseball’s on
Baseball’s on
Baseball’s on
Baseball’s on
Baseball’s on
Baseball’s on

Really, how can we be depressed when baseball’s on? That this kind of lyricism is both totally nuts, and yet somehow the platonic ideal of isn’t-this-neat Beach Boys songs, is a big part of what makes this band so appealing to me. I don’t know how Adult/Child would have fared commercially back in 1977, but the more I listen to these songs, the more convinced I am that Brian Wilson was as completely disengaged from that question as it is possible for a recording artist on a major label to be. It might be that it is actually impossible to appreciate these songs unless you have already become invested in his story, or have gone through similar traumas as he has—but then again, there are more people like that than is often acknowledged. Maybe Adult/Child would have found its audience; maybe it still will, or maybe it already has.

While Love You and Adult/Child are often thought of as Brian’s solo albums rather than proper Beach Boys albums, I find it more fitting to describe them as albums primarily by the Wilson brothers. Brian’s songwriting is obviously paramount, but Dennis and Carl’s voices are all over these songs, and they worked closely with him even as the rest of the group mostly kept their distance. The second half of the disc moves the spotlight over to the younger brothers, featuring songs and fragments that were recorded contemporaneously for their own solo projects, particularly Dennis Wilson’s classic Pacific Ocean Blue. They don’t sound like the Adult/Child songs, or have words for the most part, but they are deeply soulful and beautiful to listen to; paired with Brian’s songs, they paint a moving family portrait.

Marilyn shows up again toward the end of the disc, singing an old love song called “Honeycomb,” seemingly having little to do with anything else here. However, the disc concludes with a very fascinating track: a piano demo of Brian’s reinterpretation of “In The Back Of My Mind,” the closing track of 1965’s The Beach Boys Today! A new version of that song, orchestrated and arranged in the style of “Still I Dream Of It,” would have seemingly fit Adult/Child like a glove.

Part 3: 15 Big Ones

Well, not exactly. You might think that the natural thing to do would be to repackage 15 Big Ones along with Love You on this set, the way that they were paired together on CD. Instead, we have a set of outtakes from that album, without the album itself. Disc 3 is hard to explain, which is a real achievement within a box set of what is probably the Beach Boys’ most incomprehensible music. Something more comprehensive may have been in order, or possibly something less.

That said, I think it’s good that they found a place for “On Broadway,” which would have fit in pretty well if Adult/Child had seen the light of day; I also think it’s good, again, that they did not see fit to squeeze in “Hey Little Tomboy.” I’ve long thought that “For Once In My Life” was the strongest cover song on 15 Big Ones, so I am pleased to find a version of it here. The rest of the tracks are mostly pretty good, but the specific choices are confusing (why only the backing track of “Rock And Roll Music?”) and ultimately feel inessential.

The remaining tracks on the CD version return to the world of Love You and Adult/Child, which is really what brought us here in the first place. The alternate takes and mixes are intriguing, in an academic sort of way; more interesting are the raw piano demos that close the set, offering one last look at the essence of Brian Wilson’s songwriting, and the state of his mind and heart:

When I was younger
My mother told me
Jesus loved the world
And if that’s true then
Why hasn’t he helped me to find a girl
And find my world

‘Til then I’m just a dreamer

Inevitably, it all ends with the same piano demo of “Still I Dream Of It” that I first heard all of those years ago. It’s been cleaned up a bit, with most of the tape hiss having been scrubbed away, but it still hits much the same. There’s the loneliness, the naivety, the clumsiness and the weariness, delivered by the weariest of voices. Still it haunts me so, like a dream that’s somehow linked to all the stars above.

Perhaps this music isn’t for everybody, but I do think that feelings like this are part of why we have music in the first place. There is something even in our most private thoughts that wants to be shared, and there is almost always somebody out there who needs to hear them. There is room in the world for something so unique, even if nobody knows where to put it.