For those of us living in Northwestern Pennsylvania, 2009 can be remembered as the year without a summer. The seeming dominance of below-average temperatures and frequent rainfall prohibited that true summer feeling that accompanies sweaty, scorching afternoons and muggy, sleepless nights.
Despite these quirks in the climate, I always knew that I could get in touch with my inner summer-not with a trip to Atlantic City, but through picking up good vibrations from my favorite Beach Boys CD or LP.
It might be a cliché to describe the music of the Beach Boys as the de facto soundtrack of summer, but I find it impossible to associate the rich harmonies, twangy guitars and overall innocence of the music with any other season.
At this point you might be thinking, "Well no s--t." Sure hit songs such as "Fun, Fun, Fun," "The Warmth of the Sun" and "All Summer Long" are right on-the-nose with the summer imagery. However, lyrics alone don't totally account for the inexplicable sense of place, time and err, warmth conveyed by the music gestalt. (A side note: This explains why I find their Christmas album to be a bit self-defeating).
One could easily attribute the Beach Boys' summer vibe to their California origins or their rise to fame in the "innocent" early '60s, but as far as this author is concerned, the Beach Boys could have sung about differential calculus and tax laws and still imbued in the listener the same Panama Jack-scented romanticism and carefree sentiment.
The Beach Boys story has been told often, and I won't repeat what is readily available elsewhere (especially in Peter Ames Carlin's excellent "Catch a Wave"), but it begins and ends with the Wilson brothers, Brian, Dennis and Carl, in the early 1960s.
The progeny of a musically-minded family, brother Brian was wunderkind, gifted with the ability to "see" music and think in six-part harmony. His love of the close-harmony styling of the Four Freshmen, combined with Carl's passion for Chuck Berry riff-age and Dennis' love of the newfangled institution of surfing was grist for Brian's early songwriting efforts.
The Wilsons brought in first cousin and family sing-along veteran Mike Love on lead vocals, friend Al Jardine on rhythm guitar and dubbed themselves the Pendletones. The group recorded the track "Surfin" for a local indie label but were shocked to discover upon receiving copies of the single that the record company re-christened them the Beach Boys.
Despite this change in name, the "Surfin" single propelled the Beach Boys toward a major label deal with Capitol Records, where they quickly established themselves as the foremost surfing band in the country.
Early Beach Boys surf-pop hits like "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Catch a Wave" certainly rocked, but at the same time were fraught with insincerity. After all, Dennis Wilson was the band's only true surfer and Brian hated the beach. It's pretty clear that the boys were mining and exploiting a popular trend for commercial success.
Capitalism aside, however, it wasn't so much about the lyrical content of the songs and the pinstriped Pendleton shirts, as it was about the feeling. The infectious melodies, double-tracked harmonic wash of "ooohhhs" and "ahhhs" and Brian's sweet falsetto ensured that one could get lost in the music even if they lived in Des Moines, Iowa and had no friggin' clue what "shootin' the curl" meant.
Though Brian Wilson was the architect of many pedestrian boogie-woogie surfer songs, his lofty ambition pushed the group into more adventurous symphonic-pop territory as the '60s progressed. Surfing and hot rod anthems of yore were giving way to insecure and introspective ballads like "Please Let Me Wonder" and "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)." The sparse sonic textures of Fender Jaguar guitars through twin-reverb amps were replaced with the multi-instrumental bombast of Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production techniques.
After Brian Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown in 1964 thanks to the rigors of touring coupled with growing artistic pressures (replaced on the road by Bruce Johnston, who would become a full-fledged band member,) he stopped touring and was free to fully devote his time to writing and producing. This freedom spelled fertility, as he was able to compose the songs that would define his career and establish his place in the canon of great American songwriters.
This era produced the eternal paean to sunbathing beauties that was "California Girls," the transcendent psychedelic love declaration of "Good Vibrations" and the critical apogee that was the "Pet Sounds" album.
I'm going to avoid the usual rapture rhetoric that often accompanies "Pet Sounds," but within its grooves Brian Wilson and lyricist Tony Asher painted a stirring, if occasionally melodramatic portrait of love in all its complexities, from childlike conceptions of bliss ("Wouldn't It Be Nice") to existential pining ("God Only Knows") to disillusionment and loss ("Caroline, No"), all topped off with the group's lush harmonies and the impeccable musicianship of the legendary "Wrecking Crew" of L.A. studio players.
Yet, "Pet Sounds" is by no means an album of love songs, but also songs of alienation and denied self-actualization. However, even with such Prozac-worthy themes present, "Pet Sounds" sounds downright celebratory. Summer-like, if you will.
After the successes of "Pet Sounds" and "Good Vibrations" in 1966 and 1967, Brian Wilson set out to turn the pop music world upside down with a "teenage symphony to God." The brilliant yet eccentric music that followed was destined for an album called "SMILE" that would sadly never see the light of day (the Brian Wilson solo album, despite being great, doesn't count), thanks to the intransigence of certain group members (Mike Love) and Brian's own hallucinogen-fueled eccentricity making things difficult.
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