Dodging and Burning: Part One on Dennis Wilson

If we are to write meaningfully about the history of The Beach Boys, then what we are writing about is the evolution of one man’s skills in composition, arrangement, and production until the decline of his mental health. After this it is no longer the story of Brian Wilson, it is the story of every other member of The Beach Boys. Writers languishing at the foot of Wilson’s genius forget to pluralize the name; forget that they were a collaborative effort, one that may have been brought about by the efforts of one man, but, by the apex of their career, had evolved beyond his artistry and come to showcase the talents of each of its members.

Recently, their hand forced by changes in EU copyright laws, Capital Records has presented an opportunity to investigate this artistry. Three cut tracks from Sunflower, an album that marked their return to critical favor, and the most coherent and artistically accomplished release they had after of the loss of Brain Wilson as band leader. And given its importance within the scope of their later discography, every indignant, demanding, and petty part of me feels like I got cheated out of what should have been a full archival release, especially since members of the band have been teasing it for almost a year now. However, instead of getting irate about the pittance given, or stoking fires at erroneous canon redefiners that eventually crawl out of the woodwork, I’d like to consider instead what this archival material opens a door to. It invites us to consider an important and often forgotten part of The Beach Boys: Dennis Wilson—the man, his artistry, and smoldering potential for the band.

The first two singles off the Capitol records release are Dennis Wilson in a petri dish, showcasing him in all his polarizing dynamism: a man who could swing from a raucous, unhinged, and plain dangerous sex symbol, to a contemplative, soul-searching troubadour in Cali teens heartbeat. I’m Going Your Way, exudes pure musk and raunch in a way I never thought them capable of. Dennis croons and groans hip gyrating ‘70s sleaze rock, embodied in blues riffage and funky bass licks sitting prominent in the mix over a plodding drumbeat, which does little more—and frankly need not do more—than keep the time. A song so out of character within their catalog it leaves me wondering if they might have had a chance of charting with it. If you look at the billboards for 1970—the year Sunflower was released—the top charting singles are mostly rock and soul tracks: Jackson 5, War, American Woman, etc. Given what charted that year, and where Sunflower ended up as an album—(forgotten all but in critical retrospect)—there is a case to be made that as a passable blues rock song I'm Going Your Way could have done better given the atmosphere of music at the time[1].

And the alt-take of Sunflower’s Slip On Through? I was left balking. Psychedelia comes out in full dope-smoking, technicolor force. Gentle washes of reverb laden Hawaiian guitar cascade across the thunder of horn swells and bass lines like sunbeams after a storm—a medley with all the spectacular power of a natural disaster, toiling towards a keening guitar crescendo—towards bacchusical ecstasy, hazy emotional phrasing that leaves you somewhere between mourning and exaltation. For hours I switched back and forth between the official album version and the alt-take, stupefied at what gross, idiotic divinity sanctioned the woodblock clunking wank that made it to the album. This is what I imagine The Beach Boys would’ve sounded like, if their spirituality remained unaffected by the bourgeois self-help religion of the ‘60s elite, and all but one of them actually surfed. And given this bludgeoned-to-death factoid about the band, it’s unsurprising that one of their more aqueous songs—a rough yet heartfelt exaltation to the sea—is by Dennis.

Yet, despite how good these songs are, Dennis is often the first member of the band to be pigeon-holed into whatever surfboard shaped void history has made for him. These songs aren’t one-offs, no, they are emblematic of a whole catalog of solid songwriting. Dig through the ‘60s and ‘70s catalog and you’ll find a plethora of this brand of brilliance: Little Bird, Forever, Be With Me, All I Want To Do, Celebrate The News—actual singles—songs that drew numbers— pop songs in the proper sense of being popular. These weren’t just critical darlings, in fact one might say that Dennis alone was responsible for what few cents the band was able to make off of record sales during this period. Look at the numbers: Friends/Little Bird peaking at #47 US; I Can Hear Music/All I Want To Do at #24 US, and Break Away/Celebrate The News at #63. In the context of their release this a feat considering that the bulk of Dennis’s contributions were during their ‘60s commercial and critical slump—a period when the band approximated a traveling circus act more than a group of musicians—and that their higher charting singles were mostly held up by the strength of the SMiLE tracks included on them.

Those numbers may not look incredibly impressive given the scope we are used to considering pop hits in but let me give a sense of how sheer their fall was. Consider who The Beach Boys, America’s band, were in the early ‘60s. They defined an aesthetic and an era in one of the most populated states in the country and pushed it beyond what should have been its sandy and regional confines[2]. They invented, innovated, or spearheaded at least four different genres of music, and competed in the charts with—and sometimes even topped—The Beatles, a band who constituted at least three percent of the GDP of the UK. In a matter of a few years after charting with Good Vibrations, and some modest success with Smiley Smile, the band managed to chart their lowest ever with Friends. Come 1970 and Sunflower they don’t chart at all.

Given that the loss of Brian coincided with a loss in even general aesthetic direction, the fact that at least one member of the band was churning out some forward-thinking hits is incredible. Stripped of critical retrospective and understood in the context of their release, nothing in their late ‘60s catalog is wildly impressive by the standards they set in the early to mid ‘60s. Smiley Smile—less an album and more a collection of lo-fi SMiLE demos—kicked off the run by teasing fans with Good Vibrations, and instead offering what amounted to a fart in the wind of the single’s promise. Friends—while looked back at fondly by critics—and one of my favorite albums of the ‘60s Beach Boys—only clocks in at a stunted thirty minutes, and only further alienated critics and fans of the band, subverting their maximalist direction and doubling down on the rushed lo-fi production and simplicity of Smiley Smile. Wild Honey is perhaps the worst offender: a commercially and sonically misguided incursion into soul, spurred by the assertion that the boys had an unfortunate encounter with a medieval choir director, assaulted with its self-titled opening like a bad omen. Thinly mixed, sparsely scored, poorly written, and with unimaginative and comparatively childish instrumentation to boot, Wild Honey has the slimmest pickings of the ‘60s catalog. The otherwise golden-voiced Carl Wilson manages to rupture ear drums and windows with his pubescent schoolboy wailing, which is to give his toneless attempt at mimicking soul singing a fair degree of charity. A band’s soul for a soul record, a deal so raw it still bleats. Among the lovely treasures offered to listeners who bought this album on release was an ill-advised Stevie Wonder cover, plagued by all the same problems. It just gets worse from there, 20/20, plagued by poor song choices, is only salvageable in the session cuts.

This is the band in existential crisis, unsure of who is in charge and which direction to take. During this period of albums—especially during and after Wild Honey—Brian prompted Carl to take full control of both the songwriting and production, unfortunately showcasing his ineptitude with both[3]. Wild Honey was produced by Carl in its entirety and flopped; reactive to the point of being defensive, it lost what redeeming qualities it could have had in how hard it tried to fabricate an imago of masculinity and unearned artistic maturity. Ironically, in lieu of Brian as the driving force of their development, the boys failed to become men. They would not catch up to their audience—would not mature and become demographically relevant again—until their baby boomer peers aged enough to long for their childhood, until the band could also participate in the obstinate, rose-tinted nostalgia that became so characteristic of their generation.

That plummet is what makes those numbers so significant, and it was all so unnecessary. Had The Beach Boys ever really wised up to what the times required of them, they would have known that what they needed to get back on the charts was to get with the times and not avoid or coquet them. With Brian gone, their innocent youth fading, and their connection to the youth waning, they needed an output that touched upon the themes of the era in the same way that they were verging towards. The problem in my eyes was that most of the group lacked any genuine connection to the counterculture in the ’60 and ‘70s. They did embark on more than a few ill-advised attempts, looking forward Surf’s Up is the biggest bastion of them, with the cynical “protest dollar” cash grab that is Student Demonstration Time, and the ham-fisted environmental warning Don’t Go Near The Water among the many. Jack Riley, their new manager, while launching the boys back into a shadow of their notoriety, also helped to make at least half of Surf’s Up the most lyrically insincere in The Beach Boys catalog[4].

Mike and Carl manage to muck things up on this front even more by being the two biggest participants in the Transcendental Meditation craze that was sweeping through the ranks of the West coast elites. However, in terms of any actual relationship with the people involved in the musical trends and cultural changes of the time, the only two members with actual ties to the kids and artists roaming California were Brian and Dennis[5]. Therefore, it is not surprising that the few successful attempts at this—and any sense of coherent, forward-looking direction—after Brain’s departure, comes from Dennis. For a band that came to find themselves out of time, with numb fingertips clambering for the pulse of the era, the brand of ‘60s/’70s bohemian excess that Dennis brought to the table seems perfect salve for the gaping wound that Brian left in the band’s dynamic.

Of the four rough albums that were released before the recording of Sunflower in 1969 Dennis shines on all but Wild Honey and Smiley Smile, and, has a song that charts on all of them, alongside Carl. More than this, he had something that none of the boys had that was desperately needed if they were ever to reconnect with the youth demographic: sex appeal. If the any of the boys were ever burly, sexy men in the eyes of their young audience, it was Dennis, this I promise you this with mesmerized and obsessive certainty. Dennis was the only member of this band you could qualify as hot[6]. Dennis had an on-stage magnetism and charisma that the band never possessed, even in their most vaudeville variety-show-esque performing periods. Watch any recorded concert that Dennis is in (I personally recommend some of the early ‘60s concerts), watch whoever is on mic introduce each band member and hear the difference: people would get excited for the rest of the band, but for Dennis? They would have torn each other into gory bits just to touch him. It wasn’t limited to his youth either, Dennis maintained this magnetism up until the end of his touring period. Look at this last performance of You are So Beautiful—a bit of a trademark Dennis number that he would pull out during concerts—and you wouldn’t think it possible that a pop star well past the prime of his looks could draw so much lustful and exuberant shrieking.

His promise as a solo artist alone was tremendous. Pacific Ocean Blue is the only competent and replayable solo work that any member of The Beach Boys has been able to produce largely independent from the rest of the group, (bar some lyrical contributions from Mike and Carl singing on a few tracks). It proved its own merit and Dennis’s at the time, despite failing to hit the success that Dennis anticipated for it, the record managed to outsell Love You, and unlike Love You it sounded distinctly of its time. Unlike the tentative dip into the future that Love You took, and the fifteen steps back of 15 Big Ones, the big-dick-cocaine-AOR-sheen-style to the production was right on the mark for what the late ‘70s expected of a record. Unprecedentedly loud for a beach boy recording[7], the technology of the era allowed for a fullness and volume of sound that the available methods of the ‘60s— of which is Brian’s favored wall-of-sound production is an example—never could. It was the door to a new era for the band, an open invitation for a new direction and audience, and showcased the compositional potential that Dennis had, an ability to write hits that had always been latent, but was now staring them down in the face.

And much of it was subject to the same dollar-per-word schmaltz that plagued criticism surrounding the band. Cheap water metaphors abound, reference to his boozing lifestyle, various feminine liaisons, and, as of the critical revival and rewrite the band went through after the release of Pet Sounds Sessions in ’97, Dennis too has garnered the genius moniker, but with an idiot savant flair. Beyond statements that allude to Brian teaching Dennis some chords, writing on Pacific Ocean Blue is typically bereft of any mention of where you can square Dennis’s influence. Instead, there are various stories about things Dennis was doing, how he had this or that experience and somehow divinely intuited the melody for River Song by looking at a river, sans any mention of Dennis’s long-time passion for soul, his love of Sam Cooke.

 Dennis was cultivated. His music was not divinely intuited. As far as resemblance to The Beach Boys goes there is little: his arrangement, instrumentation and composition are miles from Brian’s ornately made baroque and doo-wop fusions. Vocal harmony and arrangement bare slight resemblance—a double track here, some blended instrumentation there—but overall, the record has more in common with Chicago’s[8] first album than it does anything that Brian worked on. Dennis, like any musician, summons the muses from what he listened to. Soul dominates the texture and tone of the vocals, with these big-band-esque arrangements reminiscent of Sinatra that put Dennis’s croon front and center in the mix on most songs. Bits of psychedelic folkery pulled from The Lovin’ Spoonful crop up on You and I and Rainbows accompanied by some of the trademark harmonies all the boys were rooted in. Where those cheap metaphors do nail an aspect of the music, they don’t do it justice: aqueous tracks like You and I, River Song, and Pacific Ocean Blue, contain more than a cheap wet gimmick. Soul, Blues, and funk abound on all three, in a more competent mix than any single member had been able to elicit in sound either alone or together.

And God those vocals! Every time I listen to this album, I find myself stunned that he manages to draw emotions from me with some of the cheesiest trash lyrics possibly written; that he was able to weave together all these disparate influences—overcome his own inexperience—to weave a tapestry like the soundtrack to the remainders of a Saturday night, rearing their head on a palm-shaded Sunday morning. See here Friday Night, an example of Dennis Wilson channeling profundity through the ear of a golden retriever if there ever was one. He lifts a phrase and (what is very loosely) the theme of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, but completely misses the satire of it, and instead writes a whole tribute to the drugged-up motorcycle excess of the Hollywood elite, complete with some out of theme references to Jesus, and his football-prayer-esque relations to rock and roll. And while I chuckle it still grooves—that opening bass riff still gets me moving, that first time I hear him belt out “White punk play tonight,” I soar, “Shirts off you motorcycle rider,” still evokes a personified Harley Davidson playing guitar.

If you go with the narrative about Pacific Ocean Blue that appeared around time of the reissue it’s heart-warming. The boy who had to have his mother threaten his brothers to get him into the band; who writers had to strive for to find an eloquent way to describe his heavy-handed plodding at the kit; who eventually had to be replaced at times for recording because he couldn’t sit still; who boozed and drugged more than he sang and played; who’d rather catch a wave than sing a song about it, managed to make a masterpiece. It’d be nice picture if it wasn’t so cropped.

 Dennis had proven that he had the energy and commerciality to be the next biggest asset to The Beach Boys time after time—and yet, he was thrown out of the band, prevented from performing live, and iced out after his solo work. There is ample reason why, all too ample. As much as his lifestyle inspired and pushed his creativity, and pushed the band along, all those qualities that would have made Dennis The Beach Boys next biggest asset, were also those that made him their greatest liability and a rocket powered hell for those around him.

Endnotes

[1] Does I'm Going You Way hold a candle to them? No, no of course it can't hold a candle to Paranoid, Led Zeppelin III, All Things Must Pass, Deja Vu, Abraxas, etc. But it would have had at the very least been a contender.

[2] Both my grandfathers here in Michigan had strong memories of this popularity. One had a whole trove of Dick Dale and other surf group records, and the other continued watching surf films like Gidget well into his forties. This sort of devotion to a genre and subculture in a state where surfing is present, but in such a reduced capacity that most who live here aren’t aware that you can surf on the lakes, is stunning to say the least.

[3] I feel like I’m going to get lost in trying to reach this point and not give Carl credit where credit is due, or worse, make it seem like I hate the man (I do not). Most of his first solo album is good: Heaven is an undeniable classic, and some of the offerings on Youngblood are not nearly deserving of the critical panning it received. On Youngblood Carl finally found somewhat of place for his latent obsession with soul and blues. Above all Carl was an angelic singer, there are countless songs well known to anyone who has a place for this band in their lives that without Carl would not nearly have the impact they do. Top four Carl songs: This is Elvis, Heaven, Coda, Feel Flows. Go! Listen! 

[4] At least Wild Honey had conviction and earnestness about what it wanted to lap up. Lyrics he penned in this vein on A Day In The Life of A Tree are saved mostly by virtue of Riley’s delivery, the mournful character of which makes the metaphor sound more confessional than environmental.

[5] Coincidentally, Dennis, intrepid trendy that he was, was also the first member of the group to both get onboard with TM and the first to disembark from the Maharishi’s lucrative boat.

[6] One almost feels sorry for Mike “Already Balding in ‘62” Love, trying to embody a pastiche of swagger and attitude in that candy cane jumpsuit.

[7] To qualify this, listen to POB and then like any record by the boys before it, there is a level of loudness they don’t surpass until well past the prime of their career.

[8] It’s not by coincidence that Dennis chose to work with Caribou Records, the label owned by James William Guercio, then both manager and producer of Chicago (one of Dennis’s favorite bands), who was also a personal friend of Dennis. Incidentally, Guercio would also manage and play bass for The Beach Boys