Let’s get right to it: Sunflower? What about the legendary, universally acclaimed Pet Sounds? After all, it’s the original Teenage Symphony to God; home to the musical gems “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline, No;” and rival to that other ’60s magical artifact, Sgt. Pepper (by those other famous guys). Sure, it’s as great as everyone says it is, but it can easily be argued that Pet Sounds is less a group effort and more a testament to Brian Wilson’s own personal genius.
Not that group effort equates with quality: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s final album Mardi Gras (1972), for instance, split the songwriting three (roughly) even ways. This only served to show that bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford just didn’t have the songwriting chops of guitarist/lead singer/main songwriter John Fogerty, making the album the least loved entry in the CCR catalogue.
Nor does it mean that dominance in song composition relegates the rest of the group to the role of backup band for the principal writer. The Who is a good example of a group that for the most part relied on Pete Townshend’s skills as a writer, but always managed to retain the overall image of a band in the public’s imagination.
But clarity improves with hindsight – except in the cases where it gets clouded by legend. And everything about the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is indeed legendary: Brian Wilson retiring from roadwork so he could assemble L.A.’s finest studio musicians to help him pursue his singular musical vision; the tension between him the rest of the group when they failed to completely understand what it was exactly that Brian was trying to achieve; and the poor reception the album originally got from both the public as well as the critics.
It’s become such a part of rock ‘n’ roll’s mythology that it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that most of the people who believe in its masterpiece status don’t spend a lot of time actually listening to it. In fact, in some ways, it’s more like a Brian Wilson solo album: a collection of mental images detailing his personal interior monologue, each picture expressed as a song.
Sunflower, however, is the result of long process of bringing some balance back to the band. After a brief return to success (“Good Vibrations”) followed by another event soon to become “legend” (the abandoned SMiLE project), the Beach Boys settled into releasing a series of singles and albums that were disappointing in terms of both sales and critical acclaim. They finally parted on bad terms with their record company, Capitol, and signed with Warner/Reprise. Eventually, after having it sent back to tweak the song selection, Sunflower was released in 1970.
On Sunflower, fewer outside musicians were used – which meant that unlike on Pet Sounds, the band often got to play their own instruments. The writing credits show Brian Wilson still involved in his creative capacity, but the rest of the band are involved as well. In particular, drummer Dennis Wilson contributes some of the album’s strongest material, including the opening track, “Slip On Through.” Another track written by Dennis is “It’s About Time.” Sung by brother Carl Wilson, it’s one of those “open your mind, let’s all get together people and love one another” type of songs popular around the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Much the same could be said about the rest of Sunflower: It certainly sounds contemporary. That’s not to say that sounding like everyone else is a good thing, but part of the issue with Pet Sounds is that to this day it seems to exist in a space and time all on its own. Sunflower sounds like their attempt to reinsert themselves into the musical community, establishing relevance for the new decade.
After this, there was new management, a new album whose centerpiece was a song begun in 1967 (“Surf’s Up”), and the departure of long-time member Bruce Johnston, to be followed by decades of very public personal struggles, infighting and reclusiveness documented in print, film, and (of course) legend. But Sunflower was the Beach Boys being a band for one last moment in their eternal endless summer.
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PET SOUNDS and SMILE routinely jockey for the #1 BB album spot, but #3 is, and will always be, SUNFLOWER. I can scarcely believe the ignorance and flat-out stupidity of the record-buying public back then turning up their noses at this album only because it was made by the “un-hip” Beach Boys…which means of course that no one bothered to actually listen to these masterful songs.
Aside from the ones Mr. Mosquito mentioned, there’s the airy “All I Wanna Do,” the very liquid “Cool Cool Water” (see: “I Love To Say Dada), and Bruce Johnston’s “Tears In The Morning” which sounds like it belongs on somebody else’s album (I’m not sure whose), but it’s grown on me through the years. But my favourite song on the album is the other Bruce song, “Deirdre,” who takes her place as a hallowed Beach Boys girl like Wendy and Rhonda, but with a more mature 70’s bent!
As stated this was pretty much the last time all six members worked in relative harmony, each contributing something extremely worthwhile to the project making it a beautiful whole. SMILE and PET SOUNDS are masterpieces of Brian Wilson, but SUNFLOWER is indeed THE BEACH BOYS.
Dennis was an underrated songwriter and singer. I consider his contributions to this album to be a prelude to his “Pacific Ocean Blue” solo album which imho showed him to be far more talented than many (including his own brothers) had given him credit for. While I like Sunflower. When I listen to Beach Boys material from the 70s, Dennis’s POB is my “go to” album. Although “Sunflower” is my go-to BB album.
I’ve always gravitated more toward the followup album “Surf’s Up.” The Carl Wilson songs “Feel Flows” and “Long Promised Road” are a lot like “Slip On Through,” a glimpse to what the Beach Boys could have been without trying to imitate their early surf music. I also regard Holland to be a serious outing, but then three years later you have 15 Big Ones and the Beach Boys are well on their way to creating the “oldies” genre.