Sunflower 50: A Look at The Beach Boys Lost Classic

Throwback issue including thoughts on 'McCartney III'

Dec 31, 2020

This year, Rolling Stone issued an update to their always controversial but mostly sterile list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time.

While there were some updates and much shuffling (addressing the Beatles overload in the Top 10 and adding more women and people of color), the number two album stayed the same. The Beach Boys’ most praised and most known album, Pet Sounds, was in the same place as it was on the inaugural list in 2003. Does this confirm that it’s the best album of time because of it’s staying power?

Pet Sounds is a classic that should be included in any “I just bought a record player, now what?” starter packs. Its sessions had the band’s enormous hit “Good Vibrations,” a song that leader Brian Wilson left off of the album, and the two most overplayed wedding songs (rightfully so) “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows.” The album is considered to be an important advancement in production and one of the earliest concept albums.

I love Pet Sounds, especially “I Know There’s An Answer,” “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” and the album’s first single, “Caroline, No.” But to not listen to any of the Beach Boys’ albums that followed is a mistake, as they are one of the most brilliant but bizarre bands of all time. As Brian Wilson became less involved in the band, their songs may have dropped off the charts, but they had so many great moments left in the tank when he committed to the effort.

One of those moments is their 1970 album Sunflower. This year, celebrating its 50th anniversary and 20 years since the record was played for me for the first time, Sunflower is my favorite Beach Boys record. It’s a group effort that finds the band rolling into middle age while also confronting their uncool status as they headed into the new decade.

In high school, I was working nights and summers at a deli.

One of my favorite parts of working in the summer meant that you were scheduled more day shifts with the “older” college kids. We’d all take turns playing different CDs in the back, which were mostly mixes featuring downloads from the Napster and Kazaa days.

One day, a stoner named Mike brought in two Beach Boys albums, Sunflower, and 15 Big Ones. I knew the band from listening to Kool 105, a local Oldies station, as they were mixed in with other things from the late 50s and early 60s. They were the band that wrote songs about surfing and were pretty lame because of their appearances on Full House. “Kokomo” and John Stamos were inescapable.

While 15 Big Ones is a chore to listen to and shouldn’t be experienced until well into a Beach Boys journey (I’ve been asked to turn it off as recently as this summer), I couldn’t believe what I heard with Sunflower. Gone were the feel-good summer songs about cars, and in their place was an album full of orchestral pop melodies and gorgeous harmonies. It was time to reevaluate the Beach Boys.

In the late 60s, The Beach Boys were not having a good time.

The release of Pet Sounds had not flown with the suits at Capitol Records, and they were looking at every opportunity to take the band off their roster. In 1969, 20/20 was released, a collection of individual efforts (think the White Album) and songs that were generally throwaways from other sessions.

It’s most notable today for the song “Never Learn Not to Love,” a song originally written by Charles Manson under the title “Cease to Exist.” Before the infamous murders, drummer Dennis Wilson had picked up hitchhiking Manson girls a few times. Returning home after a recording session one night, Dennis found Manson standing in his driveway on Sunset Boulevard. For the next six months, the Manson family took over his house, resulting in Dennis moving to a friend’s basement in Santa Monica after growing fearful of the situation.

Almost wholly missing on 20/20 was Brian Wilson. Brian’s mental health declined, having stopped touring with the group in 1964, and his drug use was out of control. While contributing a few songs here and there on the albums following Pet Sounds, Brian spent most of his time holed up in his house, banging away at the piano. He also tried opening a health foods store, The Radiant Radish, which went out of business in the early 70s.

Before his infamous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech (stay for the hilarious Elton John cameo) and his pathetic showing at a Trump rally earlier this year (thanks Vic Berger for bringing this abomination into my life), QAnon cousin Mike Love was at the end of his rope with the Wilson brothers and on his endless quest to revert the band to their doo-wop days. Multiple label lawsuits and excessive lifestyles left the band broke and without a distributor. The Wilson’s father, Murray, had sold the publishing rights to the band’s catalog, believing their run was over.

Luckily, Reprise Records was keen on the recording sessions the band was putting together in 1969 and signed The Beach Boys to a deal, contractually requiring Brian to be heavily involved with the records. The new label gave the band life.

The cover is the first thing you notice about Sunflower. It’s a group photo of the band, including their children, photographed on Dean Martin’s golf course.

The fantastic wardrobe and sunny atmosphere say, “hey, we know we’re middle-aged, but we’re going to lean into what we know best.” Back on the cover was Brian, and every member was ready to contribute.

From the first track, “Slip on Through,” it’s clear that Dennis is the star on this album. Known as the band’s only real surfer and teenage drummer heartthrob, Sunflower was his first real opportunity at contributing multiple songs to an album. While Brian and Carl Wilson could sound similar in their impeccable harmonies, Dennis had a raspy voice that set him apart from his older brothers. It was road weary and showed all the signs of the nonstop party, but also brought welcomed humanness.

In addition to the energetic opener, Dennis contributes the R&B funk of “Got to Know the Woman” and “It’s About Time,” a bongo extravaganza about rock indulgence. The breakdown with Dennis, Carl, and Al Jardine's building vocals is one of the album's finer moments. His fourth and most praised contribution, “Forever,” is a ballad so full of gorgeous harmonies that Brian referred to it as a “rock and roll prayer.” Later in the 70s, as Brian disappeared again, Dennis’ songs became the highlights among some truly terrible Mike Love tracks, as he became the face of the band before falling to drugs and alcohol and eventually drowning at Marina Del Ray. If you’ve never experienced his solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, you’re in for a real treat.

The contractual requirement to involve Brian pays off in spades. With writing credits on seven of the twelve songs, Sunflower was his most significant contribution since Pet Sounds and would be until “The Beach Boys Love You” in 1977. “This Whole World” is a “peace and love” product of its times, with Carl taking the lead and Brian and his wife, Marilyn, singing the double-tracked harmonies. “Add Some Music to Your Day,” cowritten with Love, was the first single released by Reprise but was met with low numbers.

“Sunflower is the truest group effort we'd ever had. Each of us was deeply involved in the creation of almost all the cuts. Someone would come down to the studio early and put down a basic track, and then someone else would arrive and think of a good line or overdub.” - Carl Wilson

The album’s b-side includes “All I Wanna Do," sung by Love and Bruce Johnston through some heavily reverbed vocals. In recent times, the song has been called “proto-shoegaze” by Pitchfork and is considered an early example of chillwave, which wouldn’t become a thing until the 2000s. Another highlight is “Our Sweet Love,” a Brian song sung by Carl, and demonstrates that he may have been the group’s most rounded vocalist. (Submitting “Feel Flows” for this consideration, too).

Sunflower also includes the best tracks by Bruce Johnston. Hired in 1964 to replace Brian in the touring version of the band, Johnston tends to be the corny mental image of the Beach Boys. Saccharine and overly sincere, Johnston contributes the beautiful “Tears in the Morning” and “Diedre” while contributing lead vocals on “At My Window,” a song about birds in Brian’s backyard.

Paul McCartney - McCartney III

Paul McCartney released McCartney (1970) after the Beatles broke up, and McCartney II (1980) after the same result with Wings. They’re both known as being more experimental than his normal output, full of scraps and sketches. Both albums weren’t critically acclaimed, and it seemed this practice was over, considering it’s been forty years since the last one.

2020 has been full of surprises, and Sir Macca provides another with McCartney III. No band breakups have been involved, and instead, this record is a product of McCartney’s isolation and convenient access to a home studio. All of the instruments are played by McCartney, and he produced it as well.

I wasn’t a huge fan of 2018’s Egypt Station as it went in one ear and out the other, but I am pleasantly surprised with McCartney III's results. It’s bookended by “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” an instrumental jam that clocks in over five minutes, and “Winter Bird / When Winter Comes,” a classic little ditty in the same vein as so many of his songs through his career.

While the instrumentation is energetic, it’s a shock to hear his voice on “Women and Wives," where his voice is in a deep, older timbre, reminiscent of something off of Rick Rubin’s Johnny Cash albums. The best track is “Deep Down,” where McCartney repeats the same lyrics while letting the layers build.

This is a fun record without any expectations, considering the artist is 78 years old and more welcomed than something from Ringo.

Rating: ✌️✌️✌️/ 5

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