BEFORE: Obviously the Beach Boys are the topic here, so they all carry over from their appearance in the T.A.M.I. film, as seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown". That's Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine all carrying over.
THE PLOT: Five dudes from southern California surf the waves of 1960's radio, with hit after hit of original songs.
AFTER: The history of "Pet Sounds" is a lot more complicated than I first thought. I remembered there was some delay in its release, or something. Or was it some controversy? Turns out that because it was a "concept" album, and not just another typical collection of beach songs about girls and cars, the record company executives didn't really get behind it. Since they thought it was going to bomb, they went ahead and released a Beach Boys Greatest Hits compilation at the same time, and therefore the predictions of failure became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The album wasn't regarded as a work of musical genius until decades later.
If you ask me, "Sloop John B" is the best Beach Boys song ever, so I was a little disappointed today to find out that they didn't write it, it was an old folk song that had previously been recorded by the Kingston Trio. But I love love LOVE the Beach Boys version, so any documentary that takes me inside the making of that song, with a guy sitting at a sound board moving those little levers up and down to showcase different parts of the song, well, I'm glad to be along for that ride.
And of COURSE I know "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "God Only Knows" and "Caroline, No". I sort of knew "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" because of that Brian Wilson tribute concert a few years back, but I'm afraid that for the rest of the songs on the "Pet Sounds" album, I was flying blind, more or less. "I Know There's an Answer"? "I'm Waiting for the Day"? I'm sorry, I'm waiting for a HIT SONG, and those just aren't. I guess every great album has to have a couple bad tracks, even the "Sgt. Pepper" album had that weird George Harrison sitar track.
This documentary follows the same pattern as the one about Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall", in that the first half is devoted to the background of the band, and then there's sort of a track-by-track analysis of the album in question. I don't think you have to dig too deep to get a feel for how important the Beach Boys were to American rock music, even though they were basically teenagers when they started. They really captured that feel of California in the early 1960's, pre-hippie, pre-Woodstock, sort of the bridge between the "Beach Party" movies of the late 1950's and the drop-out San Francisoc culture of the later part of the 1960's.
It's interesting to me that Brian Wilson sort of followed the same path as the Beatles, when he gave up on touring to spend more time crafting albums in the studio. Now, of course the Beatles made this decision as a group, but Brian did this as an individual, which allowed the rest of the band to keep going on tour, but he honestly felt more comfortable in the studio, it was his sonic playground. Working with the Wrecking Crew (we'll see more of them tomorrow...) really allowed him to develop as a composer, at least this was before he was housebound for several decades. But it's a fair compromise that he could continue in the studio while the rest of the band toured.
This almost felt TOO short, with a running time of just under an hour, but I'm hard-pressed to point out anything that was obviously missing, so maybe it's just about right. And if there's any Eagles-like animosity between the members of this band, then they're all hiding it really well.
Also starring Bruce Johnston (umm, he's a Beach Boy too, but I'm not sure if he was in yesterday's film...), David Marks (ditto), Karl Engemann, Hal Blaine (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Don Randi (ditto), Keith Altham, Tony Asher, Bruce Botnick, Mark Linett, Lucy O'Brien, Helen Shapiro, David Wild, with archive footage of Carol Kaye, Phil Spector (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Ronnie Spector.
RATING: 5 out of 10 thumbtacks in the piano
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