The Smiley Smile Message Board

I am nearly 40 years old, and own most BB albums (as well as most solo albums by Brian and of course POB by Denny). I got deeply into the BBs about 15 years while in college, after picking up a copy of the Sunflower/Surf's Up double album. That of course lead me to discover other later gems, such as Friends, Carl and the Passions, Love You (it's one of my favorites..), 20/20, etc. However, I must admit... as a kid, and even a pretty astute music fan in high school, I had no idea that the BBs had such a wonderful, prolific career in the late 60s and 70s. As a kid, I grew up listening to the BBs while riding in the car with my dad, or at home... you know, Surfin USA, California Girls, I Get Around, Surfer Girl, Help Me Rhonda, etc. And of course I was familair with Kokomo and the stuff they were doing on Full House with John Stamos. But again, it wasn't until college that I discovered the treasure chest of BBs material. I know MANY others my age now who had no idea that the BBs were even around in the 70s. In fact, I played Sunflower and Love You for a friend last weekend... he was totally blown away. So, I guess, as someone who wasnt around then, why is this music not as well known as the early stuff? Was it just not popular then? And if not... WHY?!

In their homeland in particular The Beach Boys were seen as uncool in the late 60s and very early 70s. Fred Vail has recounted the tale of taking Add Some Music to a radio station and being told that they couldn`t play it because The Beach Boys weren`t hip anymore. Outside America things were different with Cottonfields a big hit pretty much everywhere.

Why the hits then stopped pretty much everywhere is more debatable but probably comes down to a lack of really commercial singles...

Obviously the Brian`s Back campaign led to 15 Big Ones becoming a big hit but Love You was completely uncommercial and the record buying public probably realized that they`d been duped and weren`t going to fall for it again.

The Beach Boys were huge outside the US in the late 60s/early 70s cuz the American music consumers at that time had given up on rockNroll AND rockNroll wasnt a viable force anymore at that time but all the way up to 67 it was huge, go fig .

I don't know if you've listened to a lot of late 60's/early 70's Beach Boys albums, but they were hardly making rock and roll music during this period of their existence.

Smiley smile, wild honey, 20/20, sunflower ,surfs up and holland sound like rock to me, they sure werent country or bigband, ha/

Smiley Smile = weirdo pop music
Wild Honey = soul/R&B
Friends = lush pop music
20/20 = an amalgam of styles, essentially pop/rock
Sunflower = pop
Surf's Up = an amalgam of styles, essentially pop/rock
CATP-ST = earthy pop/rock songs (more rock)
Holland = earthy pop/rock songs (more pop)

Out of these seven albums that spanned six years, only two can really be considered rock and roll songs: "All I Want to Do" and "Got to Know the Woman", and neither were particularly good. If the UK was looking for rock and roll in the Beach Boys, they sure had to wade through a lot of other music to get to it.

I see what ya mean....still rock tho.

This has been discussed many times. The problem wasn't the music itself it was that the beach boys clean cut, squeaky clean image was out of step with the times and the bbs waited much too long to rectify this. Although they really had nothing in common with them, they became associated with bubble gum pop music acts. Capitol in the states really hurt them by continuing to market them as a surf act as late as 1968. But the bbs really allowed bad packaging and outdated photos to be used for lp covers and publicity for a long time.

   Best of The Beach Boys Vol 3 was a truly substandard compilation in the U.S. "Frosty the Snowman"???  Consider the next year's seminal Stones' comp Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol 2) and be struck by how poorly The Beach Boys were being marketed by Capitol Records.

I genuinely do not understand your claim here. On the one hand, you seem to be saying that the reason why The Beach Boys were successful in Europe post-67 is because American audiences abandoned "rockNroll" whereas European audience hadn't. Yet, as I demonstrated to you in another thread, there were PLENTY of big-selling hits in the U.S. post-1967 that could be easily characterized as "rockNroll." And, certainly, if you are going to characterize Smiley Smile as rock and not, say, psychedelia, then the vast majority of songs on the Billboard charts in the late 60s would have fit the bill.

Again, it is quite simply untrue to say that Beach Boys-style music (certainly the kind of music that they were making in the late 60s) was not "a viable force" in the U.S. Indeed, someone like Burt Bacharach had two top 10 songs in 1968, including a #1 song. Friends, meanwhile, charted at 126. Now I noticed that you conveniently left Friends off the list. So am I to assume from that that you don't consider that "rockNroll" - in that case, shouldn't it have been more successful than Wild Honey and 20/20 rather than less? In reality, though, Friends did what many other Beach Boys records did in the late 60s/early 70s: bad in the US, good in the UK. And, either way, it's not as if music that was like Friends that was produced by other artists didn't do well in the US. The problem, for American audiences, was not simply the music that was being played (that's demonstrated by reviewing the charts) but who was playing it.

I also don't understand how in the same breath you can condemn Beatles albums like Sgt. Pepper and The White Album for abandoning the rock and roll aesthetic that they were so good at until 1966, and praise albums like Smiley Smile and Sunflower because they "sound like rock to me." How is something like Smiley Smile rock while The White Album isn't?

Also, wouldn't you say that some of what The Beach Boys were doing was country? What do you make of Cottonfields which charted at #103 in the US but #5 in the UK and #1 in many other places?

My belief is that you are trying to create a narrative in order to explain why The Beach Boys were unsuccessful in the US but successful in Europe. But the narrative is false and, as a result, you are forced into making contradictory claims. It is NOT true that US audiences were closed off to rock music after 1967 but since you are offering that as your premise then you are forced to characterize "rock music" that was successful as being "not rock music but psychedelia or production-pieces and you are likewise forced to characterize albums like Smiley Smile as "rock".

I'd like to add two comments and questions to consider with this, one of them I might take some heat for.

1. The Beach Boys were whistleblowers who exposed a hidden business practice that Capitol Records was taking advantage of to the tune of potentially millions of dollars which they were not paying to the artists who should have gotten a portion of that money. This was brought out in the 1967 lawsuit that led to both a $250,000 settlement for the band *and* the setup of Brother Records, which on paper would have given the band somewhat of an autonomy to make their own decisions while still remaining in Capitol's marketing and distribution chain.

But consider the implications of that: The Beach Boys got the money, they got Brother Records, but they also cost Capitol money, they exposed a not-so-honest business practice which was only discovered through a deep financial audit, and what we don't hear is how many other artists may have followed up on the same thing regarding their own books...to the tune of saying "The Beach Boys got ripped off, hey...did they do that to us too?". I know Allen Klein for one used a very similar tactic to win clients for himself by having a team of lawyers and accountants go over an artist's books and find money that he could win back for that artist, and it was usually something like the breakage/returns case that the Beach Boys won after suing Capitol. And Capitol had also not paid Brian Wilson certain producers' royalties and credits which he was due.

Capitol I'm sure wasn't too happy with this whole scene, and it could add an element to why certain marketing and business decisions were less than they could or should have been regarding the band post-lawsuit in 67, at least in the US. There may have been a price to be paid for blowing the whistle on a major label. Just a thought.

2. As of 2014 there is and has been a lot of pride from certain band members regarding contributions to certain now-classic songs like California Girls, I Get Around, etc. Consider if and when during this time period being discussed in this topic there was a lot of criticism and negative commentary if not outright disdain towards The Beach Boys music, suggesting it was "out of step", "corny", "naive", "lightweight pop", "bubblegum"...whatever the lingo of the times may have been, compared to whatever artists and music was being considered relevant, important, "having a message", whatever the case...

...Where were those band members then to step up and take more ownership and pride of that classic music in face of the criticism? Or did they and I'm just not recalling the quotes or interviews where they did?

Because it seems like a lot of the so-called hip and relevant folks were really coming down hard on the music, playing the out of touch card, yet how often did someone active in the band step up and say "You know what? These are great records, we're proud of them, and I'm/we were proud to be a part of them. The music holds up, simple as that. Next question."

The reaction...songs like "Student Demonstration Time", for me one of the most ham-fisted attempts at relevancy and trying to have a "message song" that any major artist has ever done.

Then when fans began to rethink and rediscover the 60's classics like California Girls, I Get Around, Good Vibrations...and they started to sell again...now the narrative changed to "I'm/we are so proud to have been a part of creating that music", "I can remember writing that one in the backseat of a car driving to the studio", whatever the case. That is still the message.

Where was the pride when the band's music was being destroyed by the hip and relevant folks? Again I can't recall any specific times when it was said, but maybe I wish the band had taken a more bold stance and challenged the criticism by saying something as simple as "These are damn good records, and we're proud to have them as part of our catalog."

Those few years were rough.

Guitarfool2002, all I gotta say is amen!

Ironically, if they had done "Riot in Cellblock 9" instead of SDT, it would have been more relevant at the time -- see Attica for an example.

Interesting theory.  The one thing I would caution about is that even though the lawsuit cost Capitol Records money, the fact that The Beach Boys' records stopped selling as well as they did earlier in the decade also cut back on the company's profits.  It would take a lot of spite on the part of Capitol to sabotage one of their own band's careers (which is not to say that that isn't what happened).  On the other hand, it's possible that the lawsuit irreparably damaged their relationship so that the band and Capitol weren't able to coordinate an updating of the band's image as well as they might have had they been on better terms.

WMMS-FM in Cleveland started playing SDT in July 1971. Known as one of the most respected rock stations of that era, I don't believe they thought the song a sour attempt. Of course, Kent State U being close by may have played into their decision. Just the guitar work on that song alone makes it a winner. It certainly helped Surf's Up popularity.

People don't like it now, so when they look back, they project their own views of the songs onto other people and say "everyone must have hated it" - and they didn't.

They were never a rock band though.  not in the sense of the types of rock bands which inhabited the late 60's and early 70's.    But there was plenty of pop that was successful and well thought of  during these years - lighter sounds or whatever.   The music wasn't the problem, as has been stated, it was all perception and a seeming inability to over come that.   I also think Warners made a mistake in micro managing the groups albums. 

Two different questions being conflated here. 1) Why did it take them until 1971 to cross over to the counter-culture FM radio audience? 2) Why did they stop having AM radio hits in the US circa 1969?

The answer to question 1 is well understood, I believe. As to why they were abandoned by top 40 pop radio after 'Do It Again',  I've never seen a convincing explanation. 'Hipness' or the lack of same wouldn't be a concern while the Carpenters, say,  or the Archies were topping the charts.

Here's another paradox. At a certain point (BEFORE Endless Summer!), the fans in attendance at their shows would respond with indifference to much of the then-new material yet respond ravenously to the 'classics', much to the consternation of the band members...INCLUDING Mike. (the excellent In Concert book has quite a bit of contemporary dialog concerning this). Image was outdated, and hurt record sales.  Concertgoers wanted the oldies, against the wishes of the band. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And yeah...why WAS the band considered to be too out of touch when Sunflower came out, considering some of the other stuff that was selling well in 1970?

I think it has been somewhat answered in this thread, but I have my own theory which is that The Beach Boys were in an awkward position. For years they were successful almost as a novelty act or a bubblegum band. In retrospect, we can see that they were always more than that, but I think that that accounted for a great deal of their fan base. Then they started making more serious music, but serious music fans would have written the band off because of their early songs, while fans of their earlier songs may not have appreciated the more serious turn.

On the other hand, in England, the Beach Boys weren't as pegged in the same way. They had had some previous hits but up until Sloop John B., Beach Boys songs always did far better chart wise in the US than they did in England. Of the songs that did chart, Surfin' USA, When I Grow Up, Dance Dance Dance, Help Me Rhonda, and California Girls all failed to crack the top 20. Only I Get Around was a Top 10 hit from that period. By the time Pet Sounds came out, the band simply didn't have the same kind of legacy in the UK as they did in the US and therefore were more easily appreciated by more serious fans.

That doesn't quite explain how, say, The Beach Boys did far better even in Canada throughout that period when Canada had access to all the early hits too. But it's a start.

1. This is true. Capitol was unhappy and weren't going out of their way to promote an act that was giving them so much trouble.

2. If a band member had stepped up and defended those songs he would've been thought of as even "less cool" than the songs themselves. I'm not a boomer but I talk to a lot of music fans who were teens during that era. The Beach Boys (and the old songs) were seen as establishment shills or music for jocks. A lot of that could've changed, of course, had SMiLE come out and the band played Monterey. As one friend of mine put it "The Beach Boys were The Beatles for morons". That's an incendiary statement on THIS board (and a none too subtle insult directed at me for sure) but not a rare notion in 1969.

The Dave Clark 5 and Herman's Hermits were as big as the Beach Boys, and were dropped from US radio playlists at about the same time as the BB(while  all 3 continued to have UK hits through 1970).

Were there radio industry newsletters at the time, advising programmers which recording acts were past their sell by date?

Saint Louis 1971, Arena Annex. After playing new music and the fans rejecting it and shouting out song names, Bruce grabbed the mic and said, "I'm getting really pissed off at you people for not respecting our new music. Stop shouting for old songs." I've told this story here before.

That's a good question. I would think it was just in the culture. kind of like "That's the old stuff we used to dig, now it's all about Canned Heat/Woodstock/blues boogie/etc.". Come to think of it, The Beatles weren't running around extolling the virtues of "Love Me Do" in the late 60's either, but they had successfully made the transition to an FM rock act in the states (regardless of what anyone thinks of Sgt. Pepper onwards in 2014).  

Yikes! For the Beach Boys in particular, that seems a bit... off-brand.   :lol

Take a look at a chart of the top singles of 1969 : the Archies, the Cowsills, the Fifth Dimension, Bobby Sherman, Tom Jones, Oliver, the Ventures -- even the Lettermen had a huge hit.

To repeat, the Beach Boys' problem was not that they were too unhip for top 40 radio.

Yeah, but if you want to be part of the hip rock scene in 1969 (and The Beach Boys did) that is NOT the crowd you want to be part of. In hindsight it's all great music, and much better than the "serious" stuff on FM at the time that now seems naive and juvenile in comparison, but we're talking perceptions in 1969...

That's exactly right: chart-toppers and hipness are by no means synonymous, and are probably closer to antonymous. (I don't mean to value one over the other, just to note they're entirely different things.)

Ok ,then, but what are we discussing? The Beach Boys were dropped by AM top 40 radio for reasons unclear, arguably as early as 1968 with the underperformance of 'Do It Again' -- a subsequent classic and potential no.1 that only went to no. 20 nationally. AM radio cared nothing about the hipness of the acts that they played.

FM rock radio, on the other hand, did care about hipness or relevancy. And it was FM radio that played the Beach Boys when top 40 radio would not. So, hipness was not a problem for the band, except in their wilderness years (1968-1970).

I have no idea.  ;D I was just commenting on the truth of that last post.

Yeah - it seems that if the music that the Beach Boys were making in the late 60s/early 70s was going to catch one with anyone, it would be a "hip crowd" but the problem was was that the hip crowd largely (though, I guess, not entirely) wrote the Beach Boys off because of the overall perception of the band, which was a lightweight novelty act. I think they probably caught on a little with albums like Surf's Up, but ultimately not enough to put them in the top 10 again.

I think it's a fairly easy answer.  They missed the boat on the whole "summer of love" scene in '67, and then by the time '68 and '69 rolled around, their music was too sophisticated to fit in with the AM bubblegum trend.  In other words, they were in a commercial no man's land.

So, 'Breakaway' was too sophisticated, but big hit singles by the Stones, Creedence, and Sly and the Family Stone were bubblegum? That doesn't make sense.

My speculation :

1) The Maharishi tour bombs, word spreads through the music industry that the Beach Boys are washed up. In consequence, their new singles are not added to radio playlists.

2) Meanwhile, the legend of SMiLE grows among music hipsters. The band releases 'Surfs Up', containing the most legendary of the lost cuts, along with several FM-friendly numbers. The lp makes a splash in the music press, and it gets played on FM progressive rock radio.

3) CATP and 'Holland' also get decent FM play, and the band establishes itself as a middle-of-the-bill progressive rock act.

I'm only 37, so it's hard for me to understand the mind set of people back then. But I think one major flaw on a commercial level is that from Party to Holland, there wasn't a steady progression of a certain style of music. That doesn't bother me, but the masses have a hard time figuring them out.  I agree that around the world it was easier because they didn't have that surf/garage band label.  Pet Sounds was a bit of a departure, but it was still respected.  If they had released Smile and continued in that progression,  I think they could have won over the hip crowd,  also ditching the matching suits sooner would have helped.  Smiley Smile was extremely artsy, but I see how it could have a hard time finding an audience.  It wouldn't surprise me if many of you are like me in that SS, WH and Friends took me a while to get. It sounds corny at first listen, yet also nothing like what the core BB audience liked. Over time,  I have come to love these albums.  The music listening experience of these has nothing the do with hit singles, or being hip. It is not of the times,  but timeless.  

I also think the Beach Boys were recpected by the hip audience twice in their careers.  In both cases,  they blew it. First was following Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations.  But when Smile was ditched and they waited too long to release the follow up single,  which was watered down from the original,  and continued to wear striped shirts in 67, they blew it. The second time was in 71. This short period preceding Endless Summer,  they got respect from the underground and Rolling Stone especially with Surfs Up and Holland.  But with the oldies selling so well in 74, I'm not sure it would've been possible to continue that direction.  But the guys that wanted to keep moving forward artistically into the late 70s weren't organized because of drug issues.  

So Jack Reiley made a point about the image being their own fault to a large degree.

Magic Transistor Radio has some good points there. For one, it's up for debate of course, but the image of the band that was touring behind the #1 single Good Vibrations did not match either the music itself or the scene from which it originated. This scene was ahead of the curve by at least half a year or even a year. The things going on in LA in 1966 were ahead of the more widespread recognition and attempted labeling of it which was to center around the so-called "summer of love", which naturally wasn't even called that in 1967. There were festivals in LA before Monterey like the Human Be-In, like the Fantasy Fair - templates for what would soon explode. There were kids on the Strip protesting and rallying around something as basic as a curfew, which led to Pandora's Box and the so-called "Riots On Sunset Strip".

Hell, The Monkees even wrote and released several songs with references to it, and millions of fans at the time probably had no idea. Nesmith's "Daily Nightly" was directly addressing the mass media's total ignorance on what was happening and why it was happening.

I'll argue and defend any day the notion that Brian Wilson either by default or by the kind of music and scene he was making and involved in was a major part. Name several LA bands - Love, Byrds, Doors...what they were doing in LA had a far bigger effect than some would even know because many of those activities and records never "hit" outside of LA, yet kids would line up around the block to see Love. Arthur Lee and the band were celebrities around LA, it eventually went to their heads too much, yet if they walked around Chicago or any other major city I doubt they'd be recognized. David Crosby was like the young mayor of Los Angeles in some circles, he knew everyone. The Doors, once they stopped chasing Love's shadow, were the same. Major live act, terrific debut album, and freakin' Jose Feliciano outsold them with their own song.

Then there is Brian Wilson - nothing but respect from those peers, nothing but respect from the music business peers. To the point where Pet Sounds could have sold less than it did, but those in the know *knew* what was happening. Good Vibrations - he crystalized in that one record a scene which had been bubbling under the mainstream radar for at least a year, the fact it was a number one was like opening a door to what was happening in LA, on the Strip, etc...

Then look what followed.

Basically, I agree. The group for a variety of reasons simple blew it, and squandered it. Good Vibrations was massive, it crossed over between the underground who knew, and the kids who liked a groovy record with a killer sound and hook.

Then you get the scene of Dennis Wilson, in the middle of all this, returning from a tour and confessing almost in tears how bad it was to have been taking heat for the striped shirts and the overall look. Doesn't that also illustrate a part of why all this was happening? Dennis Wilson near tears over being heckled or mocked or whatever it was over the outfits they were wearing.

And the fact that there was never a mind-blowing follow-up to Good Vibrations was devastating, but as Brian himself has said, how could anyone top that?

Whew... :-D

This is probably blasphemous but I think if the group had released a rocking version of "Heroes & Villains" like the way they performed it live in 72-73, I could imagine that track taking off in a big way. I'm always reminded of the story Bruce told about going out to a club and the DJ putting on "Heroes & Villains" and the crowd getting all excited and running to the dance floor. When the track slowed down immediately, they all left. He said "That's when I knew we blew it with that record".

Again, I love the 45 version of "Heroes & Villains" but the live version maintains the artistic integrity but adds a solid backbeat to it that I can't help but think might've made it more commercially successful.

I felt the same way, when I first saw one of the live clips, may have been the early 70's Central Park when they did Heroes, the beat was simply rockin' and the crowd was jumping up and down. It had that *groove* when they did it live that way, and Good Vibrations also slowed down but underneath it still had the same pulse, and you could keep moving to the same pulse and beat, basically even though it slowed down. Genius.

But the 45rpm Heroes, as cool as it was, it did in fact lose the dancers. And a lot of folks still wanted to dance to the Beach Boys, even though the cool-hip listeners were getting off on FM playing 20 minutes straight of Ravi or Quicksilver.  ;D

I agree about H and V. But that's not the only time the BB should have released a more live sounding version. The studio versions in the late 60s--70s -early 80s lacked something, like they were timid. I think Marcella, Sail on Sailor, and KTSA to name a few would have been more well received had they sounded like the live versions.

I might argue that several of the artists you mentioned-- Fifth Dimension, Tom Jones, Oliver, Lettermen -- were traditional MOR/ Adult Contemporary acts that scored hits that were so big that they crossed over to the pop charts. The Beach Boys, due to their surfer/ rock 'n' roll image, never were MOR staples, even though in retrospect some of their late 60s/early 70s music might have fit pretty well on those stations.

Likewise, stuff like the Archies and Bobby Sherman were part of a new wave of music geared at pre-teens. The 10-12 year olds who powered that scene coveted new acts that were geared more directly at their demographic. The shelf life of teen idol and bubblegum pop acts had always been minute, and trend conscious youngsters only had time for the latest fad.

So essentially the Beach Boys by 1968 were not popular with teens, pre-teens or adults, likely because their music was neither heavy rock, bubblegum nor particularly suitable for old fogies. They just sort of slipped between the established genres.

Also, rock 'n' roll artists having a shelf life of more than a handful of years was practically unheard of prior to the Beatles and Stones. None of the Beach Boys' forebearers or peers (Chuck Berry, Jan and Dean, Little Richard, Fats Domino, you name it) were able to maintain on the charts during this period except for the mighty Elvis, and even he had his troubles. Even the Byrds, as great as they were, were unable to keep their commercial momentum going more than a year or two.

We constantly lament the fact that The Beach Boys didn't stay relevant and became "unhip", but I think we lose sight of the fact that many of the groups that were hugely popular in the early 60's were victims of the British Invasion and weren't even around by the time Brian produced Pet Sounds. They became old news a lot more quickly than the 'Boys. The Beach Boys not only weathered that storm, but were one of the few groups to give The Beatles some competition on the charts. In the late 60's/early 70's they struggled to find a place in a rapidly changing music scene and, yes, the striped shirts had become passé.  But by the mid 70's it all came around full circle and  they were "hip" again, due to the nostalgia craze and Endless Summer. I believe the real breakdown occurred when they weren't able to find a way to capitalize on that resurgence in a way that allowed them to celebrate their previous successes and yet still go forward with new, creative material that would get airplay.

Yes, it was a tremendous accomplishment to not only weather the British Invasion, but to come through it bigger than ever, even while the genre the Beach Boys created -- vocal surf and hot rod music -- died under the British onslaught. A 1967 SMiLE release and Monterrey appearance might have bought them a year or so in the hipness/relevancy sweepstakes. Maybe they could have then been viewed to be roughly as hip as Donovan, say, or the Mamas and the Papas, or Eric Burden and the Animals -- that is, marginally hip. Beatles, Stones, or Hendrix levels of hipness were never in the cards.

It was not until about 1971 that the breach between pre-1967 commercial pop and counter-culture rock began to be closed, Carole King's 'Tapestry' being an important landmark in that regard. The Beach Boys were no longer an ideological enemy.

10 years later there would be another popular music breach -- once-hip bands like the Stones and Pink Floyd became embarrassing dinosaurs for a few years, before the ideological divide closed once again.

Agreed. It's all cyclical. A group bursts on the scene with a new sound, and they become the next big thing. With time, a new group with a different sound comes along, and the old sound is… old. Then, a new generation discovers that first group and they become new again. The Boys did okay. They weathered the British invasion, evolved away from surf and car songs to continue making hits, influenced a new style of music, and are still bringing in large audiences of mixed ages in concerts.  They weren't political when "message music" was the driving force behind "hipness." But, years down the road, how many people are going to Country Joe and the Fish concerts to bop along to the "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag?"

When did Pink Floyd become embarrassing?

I also want to state that there is a difference between commercial sales and hip. I think the Beach Boys were hipper and more respected in 73 than 76. Why did RnR Music hit big?  Because people weren't taking them seriously any way.  Endless Summer and Spirit of America defined them at the time.  People just wanted fun, fun, fun from them. 

Punk had something to do with that. Johnny Rotten used to wear an "I Hate Pink Floyd" T shirt.

It wasn't just Pink Floyd - any kind of prog rock was sneered at by the punk rock movement. 2 minutes was about the average time of a punk song, while it wasn't uncommon for a prog band to average 20+ minutes per song.

Floyd fared pretty well relative to other bands of the time...bands like ELP did not do so well.

The BBs never became  "unhip" or less relevang, the context of musical appreciation just wasng active in the US at that time, europe and elswhere it was .then mid 70s came back in america.

never ?  ::)

Highly disagree. ..the band would disagree as well,

I never got into the whole "hip" or "unhip" thing in the 60's.  I either liked the music or I didn't.  But then I've never been who anyone would mistake for a trend-follower much less a trend-setter.

In theory, there was mainstream, commercial music ( the Beach Boys ), and then there was "underground" rock (the Grateful Dead, say).

In practice, the underground bands wanted hits, and the mainstream acts wanted to be counter-culture -- see Sammy Davis in his Nehru jacket and love beads, or Mike Love's ridiculous hippie beard circa 1970. As a cultural war, it was all a bit phony.

They should have covertly switched bands.