Sunflower (The Beach Boys album)

Background

Following their last album, 20/20, Brian Wilson proposed that the group change their name from "the Beach Boys" to "the Beach", reasoning for the simple fact that the band members were now grown men. Going to the effort of acquiring a contract which would declare a five-way agreement to officially rename the group, engineer Stephen Desper reported, "They all just kind of shrugged and said, 'Aw, come on, Brian, we don't wanna do that. That's how the public knows us, man. And that was it. He put the paper on the piano and it stayed there until I picked it up and took it away."

Throughout 1969, the Beach Boys engaged in extended recording sessions for what would have been their final album entitled to Capitol Records. Tension between the band and label inflamed on April 12 when the Beach Boys sued the label for unpaid royalties and production duties in the amount of two million dollars ($13,060,000 today). The band still issued two more singles through Capitol: "Break Away" in June 1969, a new original written by Brian and his father Murry; and "Cotton Fields" in April 1970, a rerecording of a track which appeared on 20/20 produced by Al Jardine.

At a press conference ostensibly convened to promote "Break Away" to the European media, Wilson said "We owe everyone money. And if we don't pick ourselves off our backsides and have a hit record soon, we will be in worse trouble... I've always said, 'Be honest with your fans.' I don't see why I should lie and say that everything is rosy when it's not." These incendiary remarks ultimately thwarted long-simmering contract negotiations with Deutsche Grammophon. The band's contract with Capitol Records expired on June 30, after which Capitol deleted the Beach Boys' catalog from print, effectively cutting off their royalty flow. In November 1969, Murry Wilson sold the Sea of Tunes publishing company (including the rights to the majority of Brian's oeuvre) to A&M Records' publishing division for $700,000. Brian, who had not approved this decision, was devastated.

The group's reputation had fallen sharply in the US since 1967, but Warner Bros. executive Mo Ostin agreed to sign them to Reprise Records in November 1969. This deal was brokered by Van Dyke Parks, who was then employed as a multimedia executive at Warner Music Group. The contract dealt by Reprise stipulated Brian's proactive involvement with the band in all albums in response to the minimal involvement he had with 20/20. Another part of the deal was to revive the Beach Boys' Brother Records imprint, initially founded during the Smile era and used only for the Smiley Smile album, and the "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry" singles before becoming dormant.

After returning from an April–May 1970 tour of Australia and New Zealand, the band assembled a new studio album named Reverberation, comprising unused material which would finish their commitment to Capitol, but the idea was dropped, and the band instead fulfilled their contract with the May 1970 album Live in London. Capitol had such little faith in the album that they chose to release it only where the Beach Boys' records were still selling respectably well—the UK.

Recording history

Dennis Wilson was the first Beach Boy to head back into the recording studio, and the other members followed suit. Over this period, the Beach Boys worked on about four dozen studio tracks. By late 1969, the Beach Boys accumulated enough material for a new studio album, initially entitled Sun Flower, and assembled a provisional 14-song tape reel shortly before achieving a record contract with Reprise. The reel's track listing follows:

The project was then renamed Add Some Music with the subheading An Album Offering From The Beach Boys while they finished several more songs. In early 1970 before leaving for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, they assembled Add Some Music and submitted the album to Reprise, which the label rejected. The track listing was as follows:

Around this time, the band assembled an album for Capitol with some tracks that would later be placed on Sunflower. It had working titles of Reverberation and The Fading Rock Group Revival. Although a master tape (dated June 19, 1970) of songs was put together, this album was never released. It is unknown if Capitol rejected the album or if the Beach Boys never submitted it.

After consideration of Add Some Music and the failed Reprise single, "Add Some Music to Your Day", Mo Ostin suggested that the group offer a few stronger tracks or their days at Reprise Records would be short-lived. The band was unhappy, but went into the studio one last time. During February 1970, they started to assemble what would subsequently be known as Sunflower and finished its last two songs in July 1970: "Cool, Cool Water" and "It's About Time".

Side one

The album begins with "Slip On Through", written and sung by Dennis. Brian later recalled "It was a really dynamic song. Dennis, I was very proud of, because he really rocked and rolled on that one. Dennis did really interesting energetic things on that." "This Whole World" was composed and written by Brian, who noted inspiration from "[his] love of the world, how [he loves] people, and how people should be free." Carl sings lead vocals while Brian sings in the background; their voices were doubletracked, as was common practice for many of their recordings. Brian also recounted the writing of "Add Some Music to Your Day", saying: "I think we wrote it my house in Bel Air. It was written by me and Mike and Joe Knott, who was a friend of mine who wasn't a songwriter but he contributed a couple of lines. But I can’t remember which ones! The lyrics are wonderful." "Got to Know the Woman" is another Dennis composition, which White noted was "one of the few Beach Boys songs that could honestly be called funky, its tinkly Dixieland piano a perfect foil for the coarse frivolity of the verses, which contain a boorish come-on to the object of one’s lowest bump-and-grind fantasies. "Deirdre" was primarily written by Bruce Johnston with lyrical contributions from Brian. Side one concludes with "It's About Time", an autobiographical rocker written by Dennis, Al Jardine, and outside writer Bob Burchman about the pitfalls of stardom and fame.

Side two

Side two opens with Johnston's second original, "Tears in the Morning", a melodramatic song with strings, horns, and accordions. The Brian Wilson–Mike Love song "All I Wanna Do" was referred to by AllMusic as "possibly one of the most beautiful and unusual songs and recordings" on Sunflower with an arrangement consisting of synthesizers, rotating organ, and pronounced reverb. "Forever" is the album's final original from Dennis, co-written with friend Gregg Jakobson; Brian praised the song saying: "'Forever' has to be the most harmonically beautiful thing I've ever heard. It's a rock and roll prayer." Jardine wrote the lyrics to "At My Window" about a bird, for which Brian also received a songwriting credit. "Cool, Cool Water" was an outtake extracted from 1967 Smiley Smile sessions, later attempted for Wild Honey. Lenny Waronker, then an A&R executive at Warner Music Group, heard the unfinished tape, and convinced Wilson to finish the track for Sunflower. Waronker was so impressed with the song's inspired simplicity, that he noted, "If I ever get the opportunity to produce Brian, I'd encourage him to do something that combined the vividness of 'Good Vibrations' with the non-commercial gentleness of 'Cool, Cool Water.'"

Unreleased

After the release of Sunflower, Stephen Desper assembled a collection of songs consisting mostly of Sunflower outtakes deemed suitable for a follow-up album, named Landlocked. Landlocked eventually evolved into Surf's Up. It was long thought that Landlocked was a complete album that was scrapped by the Beach Boys in between Sunflower and Surf's Up, but it has since been proven that such an album never existed.

Several songs which were cut from Sunflower eventually saw release in other formats. In 1970, Dennis' "Fallin' in Love" was renamed "Lady" and released as an A-side single credited to "Dennis Wilson & Rumbo". In 1972, "Good Time" was released as a single with new vocals by American Spring. Later, "Good Time" was placed on The Beach Boys Love You (1977) with its original vocals. In 1980, "When Girls Get Together" was released on Keepin' the Summer Alive.

Album photo

The picture of the band on the front sleeve, featuring all six group members, was taken on the golf course at Dean Martin's Hidden Valley Ranch near Thousand Oaks in Ventura County, California. Dean's son Ricci Martin, a friend of the band, took the photograph, also featuring Brian's daughter Wendy, Alan's first son Matthew, Mike's children Hayleigh and Christian, and Carl's son Jonah. The inner gatefold spread on the original vinyl LP featured a series of photographs taken by designer/photographer Ed Thrasher at the Warner Bros. studio backlot.

Reception

After recording over 30 different songs, and going through several album titles, The Beach Boys' Sunflower was finally released in August 1970. The album received considerable critical acclaim upon release in both the US and the UK, with one British writer declaring it the Beach Boys' analogue to Sgt. Pepper. This was offset by the album reaching only number 151 on US record charts during a four-week stay, becoming the worst selling Beach Boys album at that point. Jim Miller praised the album for Rolling Stone, calling it "without doubt the best Beach Boys album in recent memory, a stylistically coherent tour de force", but mused: "It makes one wonder though whether anyone still listens to their music, or could give a shit about it."

The album was preceded by the singles "Add Some Music to Your Day" (B-side "Susie Cincinnati") and "Slip On Through" (B-side "This Whole World"). Reprise was so excited about "Add Some Music to Your Day" that they convinced retailers to carry more copies of it than they ever had for any other Reprise single, but disc jockeys refused to play it on the radio. "Add Some Music to Your Day" peaked at number 64 during a five-week stay, while "Slip On Through" did not chart at all.

Reappraisal

In a retrospective review, Pitchfork Media called the album "perhaps the strongest album they released post-Pet Sounds." Rolling Stone magazine gave the album four stars, saying it is one of the Beach Boys' best albums. Music critic Robert Christgau gave it an A-. Paste wrote that the album "was, in many respects, their Abbey Road—a lush production that signaled an end to the 1960s, the decade that gave them creative flight. Sunflower was, in fact, largely produced by the youngest Wilson brother, Carl. Dennis Wilson contributed four stellar new compositions as well. Brian Wilson also wrote a number of new tracks at the time, many of which embody the 'Bedroom' aesthetic at its most pure—sweet melodies set to intimate lyrics and tender falsetto vocals." Popdose declared that "it stands as the definitive post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys album". The A.V. Club believed: "Sunflower is like the band’s answer to the wave of 'sunshine pop' and 'bubblegum' acts that had emerged over the previous couple of years, showing that no one could write and record slick, melodic, harmony-drenched songs quite like The Beach Boys."

Legacy

Johnston's "Deirdre" was later sampled in the 1995 Super Nintendo Entertainment System game, EarthBound.

Track listing

This variation of the album was released by EMI subsidiary, Stateside Records, in November 1970. Its opening track was "Cottonfields." "Got to Know the Woman" and "Deirdre" were placed in inverse order on side 1. The contents of the individual tracks were unchanged. This track listing has been superseded with the regular Sunflower running order, now released worldwide.

Personnel

Charts

Chart information courtesy of Allmusic and other music databases.