The Smiley Smile Message Board

What songs were supposed to be on the Sunflower Album!  in the Made in California Box Set i found some songs that were supposed to be on the album like

1 Where is She
2 Back Home the 1970 Verison

Last time I checked, Slip On Through, This Whole World, Add Some Music To Your Day, Got To Know the Woman, Deirdre, It's About Time, Tears in the Morning, All I Wanna Do, Forever, Our Sweet Love, At My Window, and Cool Cool Water were supposed to be on Sunflower...unless the band changed it recently and didn't tell us!

I don't think "Where is She?" was necessarily supposed to be on the album. Perhaps if it was finished further, it would have been considered.

AGD's website lists this:

1. Sunflower (original)

Slip On Through, Walkin', Forever, Games Two Can Play, Add Some Music To Your Day, When Girls Get Together+, Our Sweet Love, Tears In The Morning (original version), Back Home, Fallin' In Love, I Just Got My Pay, Carnival, Susie Cincinnati, Good Time.

Although, as he goes on to say,  this was most likely a survey of what songs were available to them.

2. Add Some Music

Susie Cincinnati, Good Time, Our Sweet Love, Tears In The Morning, When Girls Get Together, Slip On Throughl, Add Some Music To Your Day, Take A Load Off Your Feet -This Whole World, I Just Got My Pay, At My Window, Fallin' In Love.

This was the the first "real" album, which was rejected and reworked into Sunflower.

Interesting to note that, in one form or another, all of the songs that didn't make the cut ended up being released in the next 11 years anyway.  The band clearly thought about the songs enough to get them out there, which is more than you can say about a lot of their unreleased work around this time.

IMO Back Home (1970) doesn't fit that well on Sunflower, however it fits excellently in the 1974-76 period as an alternative to 15BO Back Home feat. Brian's worst vocal performance to make an album.

The song has this jammy country rock feeling to it which makes it suitable in the context of songs such as Barnyard Blues, River Song, Out In The Country, Carry Me Home and Hard Times.

I thought it was interesting that the 1970 version of "Back Home" mentioned Sunflowers. I'm wondering if this came before or after the album title or if it influenced that title. I always thought the Sunflower title was one of their best in terms of the title fitting the contents of the album.

It's also interesting to note that one of the only ones that didn't make it onto a studio album is "Fallin' In Love," in spite of being a significantly better song than "Susie Cincinnati," "When Girls Get Together," or "Take a Load Off Your Feet."

Not for me. I'll even go further saying it's one of the most boring BBs-related songs I heard in my almost 3 years of fandom. The American Spring v-n is even worse. So I'm glad it didn't make into any studio album, full stop.

Wow, really? Such different tastes and opinions on this board! Lady is without doubt one of my all-time favourite BB tracks! In fact, I'll go as far as admitting that if I listen to it in a certain frame of mind, the "love, in love, in love" fade often leaves me a little moist-eyed... It's one of those tracks I can listen to on repeat and never tire of. I think it would've been a fantastic addition to Sunflower, preferably in place of Tears... Or on Surf's Up in place of TALOYF.

Anyone acquainted with Rover's opinion on all things Dennis need not be surprised that she doesn't like Fallin' in Love.  :lol

*apologies if Rover is actually a "he". I have the impression that Rover is a "she" for some reason.

They certainly did have a LOT of good songs around Sunflower. Back Home (the lyric) is where the LP title comes from. A 2 LP set would have been ideal (had the Beach Boys been selling anything like they should have been).

"Lady" took ages to grow on me. I still can't say I love it or anything, but I do like it. Maybe Ms.Rover just needs a couple more years to think it's okay, too (MAYBE!!!).

Lady is just like most of Dennis's post-Sunflower songs. Booooring, preeedictable, cliiiiiiiiiche.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII don't know......I got mixed feelings about FIL.   I really really want to really really like the song, but there's a lot of weirdness in the arrangement.  The strings, while trying to be dramatic are somewhat obnoxious to my ears.  The Spaghetti Western guitar part is pretty cool though.  Dennis' vocal is great, and the song itself has a lot of potential.

Yeah.....no.......yeah........

well........

I think Dennis could have benfited by expanding his lyrical subject matter more often. Most of my favourite Denny tunes are the ones where he's singing about something other than how much he luuuurrrvves someone.

I love Dennis Wilson's Music because all of his songs relate to my Feelings towards my father! 

Even All I Want To Do?
Yuk.

LMAO

I guess my taste is the opposite of yours. Lady is my favorite Dennis track, the string arrangement is gorgeous, and the "Landlocked" mix with no reverb on Dennis' first line is great. I can listen to it one time after another. When I listen to "Landlocked", I listen to Lady at least 3 times in a row.

I'm sorry but this post reads like you want to have sex with your father.

the dude is a joke.

Anybody who credits David Spade as "my favorite beach boy" doesn't belong here.  ::)

Take it easy on Surfer. Could be any number of reasons to explain his unique posting style but it seems the knee jerk on this board is to assume that unusual = troll.

At the end of the day he's clearly a fan and is just being honest about how the music makes him feel. It's not rocket science that the pain in Dennis' music is in part an expression of his feelings towards his father and Surfer is picking up on that.

ML wasn't the sentimental sap, it was Dennis!

I really dig most of DW's material but songs such as FIL are too sappy for my taste. I can enjoy some of it, but FIL ain't one of them and I rarely play it. The added string intro for the 2009 release did little to help that  ::)

I'm a sucker for the sappier lyrics in Beach Boys songs. I wouldn't even consider this sappy compared to some of Brian or Bruce's Sunflower era tunes.

And what a melody. It's a pretty conventional pop melody to my ears, much more than a lot of the sweeping, grandiose stuff he would go on to write. I'd take more Dennis pop gems like FIL over any of his CATP contributions, any day. That's not to say I don't love the more overblown stuff but I think when he kept it simple as he did with FIL, he could really nail it.

I like the elctronic drum beat thing too, reminds me of Sly & The Family Stone. I guess it's the same machine.

 

The songs like Be With Me or the other songs Of Dennis Wilson relates to my feelings towards my father.  All I Want To Do is about me and former Girl friend not my father.

Agreed, Mike. The band was on something of a roll in 1969-70, even if they were experiencing commercial difficulties in the USA. This is the period where Carl is still emerging as the "key man" in decision-making, prior to his symbiosis with Jack Reiley that would lead to the "swap" of Bruce for Blondie and Ricky. A two-record set might have done better in the marketplace (really, it couldn't have done worse) simply for the "weight" of the material.

Might be interesting to speculate a bit on what that 2-LP set would have looked like. A retrospective today would probably include close to 30 songs, but I suspect a 2-LP "Sunflower" would have been more like 20-24, and would not have been likely to include Dennis' solo stuff, or "Break Away"/"Celebrate the News", though today we'd probably want to include them in a "69-70" retrospective....

I think Sunflower as it is remains one of the band's most brilliant moves in terms of record cohesion and production. Most of the songs are very strong, the singles are certainly not smash hits but certainly respectable and all the groups members contributed, thus causing more cohesion in the group and a stronger belief in their own abilities after Brian gave up the leadership role and wrote less material.

 It was a damn shame and lack of fortune which prevented Sunflower from being a bigger release back then.

Wouldn't it be nice
To live with dad again
High on a hill
Makin' pinewood derby cars again

This reads like I don't care for all the songs written/sung by Dennis which is a big misstatement. I've mentioned here quite constantly about how I like Never Learn Not to Love, Rainbows, Slip On Through, Barbara, Pacific Ocean Blues, Tug of Love, Forever, Be with Me, It's About Time, Carry Me Home, Steamboat, River Song, Celebrate the News, 4th of July, as well as about Dennis's 1st-class vocal contributions on the early 60s-70s songs. Moreover, having listened to <Made In California> I dug (to some degree) every inclusion of his new music - Barnyard Blues, Mona Kana, My Love Lives on, WIBNTLA (in this order). So I don't really catch your point. There are loads of songs in Brian's, Mike's, Bruce's, Carl's solo careers I find boring or almost unlistenable.