Take Five: Key Beach Boys Tracks from the Mid-’70s

The Beach Boys and their music have gone through many phases. From their early songs about Southern California culture – surfing, girls and cars – to the ambitious baroque pop of Pet Sounds and SMiLE, from the pastoral late-sixties material to the band’s current status as a popular nostalgia act, every phase of the group’s music has brought pleasure to listeners.

An oft-overlooked period in Beach Boys history is the mid 1970s, a time when leader and primary songwriter Brian Wilson returned to the group, bringing his unique musical vision to rejuvenate the band’s creative fortunes. The centerpiece of the Beach Boys’ output during that time was 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, a widely misunderstood album that met with middling-to-negative critical reaction on its release. But time has been kind to The Beach Boys Love You, with modern-day listeners and critics alike finding value in the record’s prescient adoption of electronic instrumentation. The album is now considered a forerunner of the synth-pop sounds that would dominate the pop landscape in the early 1980s.

The album’s belated reassessment has been aided by a new and expansive boxed set, We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years. This 73-track collection builds upon the sessions for The Beach Boys Love You, adding a plethora of outtakes, alternate mixes and demos that help complete the story. In honor of the new set, here are five key tracks from the Beach Boys’ mid-’70s artistic resurgence.

“Honkin’ Down the Highway”
Originally planned as a Brian Wilson solo album, The Beach Boys Love You became a band project. But Wilson not only wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, he produced the sessions and played most of the instruments himself. With lead vocals by Al Jardine, the original album’s “Honkin’ Down the Highway” features Brian on ARP String Ensemble, Minimoog synthesizer and other instruments. According to recording engineer Earle Mankey, Electric Light Orchestra co-founder Roy Wood had involvement in the session as well, though the specific details aren’t known. Early sessions for the song featured guitarist Billy Hinsche on lead vocals; that previously-unreleased version is included on the new boxed set, and it’s the one I’ve included here.

“Johnny Carson”
In the 1970s, television personality Johnny Carson was a high profile figure in popular culture. His Tonight Show was wildly popular, and Brian Wilson was a fan of Carson and his work. Somewhat idiosyncratically, when it came time to write songs for the project, Brian Wilson chose subjects like his daughters Carnie and Wendy (“Roller Skating Child”), the production style of producer Phil Spector (“Mona”) and the late-night TV host. Brian supplied Minimoog, piano, organ and drums, while a session player (Ed Carter) played guitar. Joined by Brian, Jardine and Carl Wilson, Mike Love sang lead on the recording. The boxed set includes this alternate mix of the song.

“The Night Was So Young”
Side Two of The Beach Boys Love You opens with the quirky “Solar System,” but then the album moves into a three-song suite. That section begins with Carl Wilson taking the lead vocal on “The Night Was So Young.” With lovelorn lyrics about Brian’s fan-mail sorter Debbie Keil, the song’s arrangement hearkens back to the Beach Boys’ monumental Pet Sounds album. But where the ‘66 LP used the Wrecking Crew and lush orchestration on many tracks, the new song’s instrumentation was built around analog synthesizers. We Gotta Groove includes this lush vocals-only remix of the tune.

“I’ll Bet He’s Nice”
The suite continues with “I’ll Bet He’s Nice,” a Brian Wilson song with similar style and arrangement to its predecessor. Brian shares the lead vocal with brothers Carl and Dennis. The song’s lyrics express a kind of love that is more commonly associated with young teens than fully-grown adults; that’s part of its winsome charm. A previously-unreleased cassette demo of “I’ll Bet He’s Nice” – with only Brian’s voice and acoustic piano – is featured on We Gotta Groove.

“Let’s Put Our Hearts Together”
The suite of songs on Side Two of The Beach Boys Love You concludes with this song, a duet between Brian and his wife Marilyn, a successful singer in her own right with groups The Honeys and American Spring. A new mix of the song’s coda features on the new boxed set along with Brian’s original cassette demo of the song; here we’ve included the original version released in 1977.