The Smiley Smile Message Board

Discuss, review and rate Endless Summer, released June 1974.

(http://www.smileysmile.net/images/albums/endless_summer.gif)

For what it's worth and what it meant to the band's popularity, it's a fine album. Incorrect versions aside, a close-to-perfect compilation. 5.

Probably the most damaging event in the band's career.
Great in content but sinister in intent.

First and only Beach Boys album I heard until the mid-90s, when I read about and bought Pet Sounds, meaning for about 15 years, this was the only Beach Boys I had ever heard. My parents had the vinyl.

I hated the Beach Boys until I bought Pet Sounds, which doesn't speak well for Endless Summer, I guess. But a look at the running order tells me I'd like it more if I were hearing it now.

"Probably the most damaging event in the band's career.
Great in content but sinister in intent."

You nailed it.

Ian is right.....content good....intent bad

Album also influnced me becoming a fan. Great songs on here. Good for the converter. But yes a mixed bag it is. Forever connecting them to sun and surf and nothing else forever. Sad.

The door I came in.  Serendipity of the sweetest kind.   

5.

The most important album - financially speaking - in the Beach Boys' history.

A great track listing, despite some serious omissions.

4

Yeah, it destroyed their reputation as artists and innovators. Actually I guess what's worse is that the Beach Boys themselves stopped trying to be innovative make artistic statements. They were only too happy to cash in.

Hate the cover, I hate the duophonic mixes. Really think Be True and Help Me should have been the 45 versions. It did have a horrible influence on the band but.............
It really was the way so many of us first heard The Beach Boys. I bought it in 88 and something like Girl Don't Tell Me made me realise they were more then a surf band. Yet could you image how cool it could have been if it had used the correct mono mixes and had maybe a half dozen more songs. Liner notes and photos would have been nice too.

did they even have an image as 'artists and innovators' back in 1973? i can't tell 'cause i wasn't there, but it's hard to imagine the beach boys being viewed that way even after the moderately convincing success of surf's up and the holland album. it's a bummer since i personally love their '68-'73 work enormously and i just wish they would have released it's ok as a single in '74 after endless summer and then went on releasing an album containing that song amongst carry me home, river song, hard times, good timing et al. it's not as if they wouldn't have had a choice in 1974. they just stopped for whatever reason expanding their work both commercially and artistically. at least that's the way it seems to me.

talking about endless summer on its own, it's a 5, hands down.

Everyone I have talked to who dug The Beach Boys pre Endless Summer and post 65 thought of them as a progressive, even underground, band.

The beach boys tried to change, but nobody was buying it....so this is the result

No-one made them give up on being inventive and experimental! So this album was a huge success? They didn't HAVE to therefore retreat back to being an oldies band to quite such an extent surely?

Love the cover though. Just the Wilsons - yeh, that's about right!!

I always thought the blond guy with the beard was Al Jardine.

Front cover to me looks like SMiLE-era Brian, Al, and Mike, and on the back Carl reading the comic book and Dennis' face on the surfboard, and on the inside,  1970s-era Brian or a really fat Ricky Fataar (highly unlikely) selling balloons, a really muscular version of either Dennis or Ricky Fatarr lifting weights, and Bruce Johnston inside the hotdog stand in the background.

This was my first introduction to the Beach Boys. When I was a little kid circa 1992 my mom was always blasting it from the stereo. First BB song I ever heard was California Girls. I always thought the "I got the pink slip, daddy" line from Little Deuce Coupe was "I got the big slip daddy". Whatever the hell a "big slip daddy" is. Unfortunately my first sight of a BB performance was the Lovester on Full House when I was 6 or 7, I more than made up for it a few years later when I saw Brian doing a concert/documentary on PBS in the late 90s (probably Imagination-I remember he dedicated a song to Carl-could've been Lay Down Burden, can't really remember).

Endless Summer is a pretty good comp, I've got my mom's old vinyl copy in my own collection now. But I absolutely hate what direction (or lack therof) they took after it came out. POB was the true follow-up to Holland, too bad the rest of the group decided to stop writing good songs (save for a few Brian songs).

Also, I initially heard this when I was about 7 or 8 in 1987/88 was when my uncle played this album during a party......I loved Surfin' Safari....... I think the cover is great....really captures the bizarre essence of the band...."mysterious and scary....yet something reassuring and positive" ..... all from the cover!!! I think this is a great record....I love how LHRW is included on here...in college I was playing this CD and that was my 1st exposure to LHRW...unbelievable. The dynamics alone on LHRW are enough to impress, but with the voices, instruments, structure, and meaning....WOW.

Endless Summer is a great record, a great way to be introduced to the band....even if the duophonic sux.......but I prefer the Girls on the Beach from this record....


I give this a 5. Not only is there more hits than most bands could ever dream of creating, it has a really cool, creative, thought provoking, and original cover! IMO I mean could those bearded dudes really sound so sweet??

I've always loved this album, the cover, the music - it was the tape my parents would pop in as soon as we got close to the beach when I was a kid.  For me, it was the perfect introduction to what would become my favorite band. 

I would love to clear up if indeed the three men on the cover are Al, Brian and Mike?  The 'blonde' looks like Al, Brian is definitely Brian and I assume the last on to be either Carl or Mike.  It just seems like Mike was given more hair than I thought he had at that point?  I assume Dennis is on the surfboard and Carl must be the guy reading?  Any clarification would be great.  Thanks!

Dan

The guy in the middle has to be Mike.  You can't see the top of the guy's head, which would have been bald.  It was out of kindness to Mike.  Al is on the right of the album cover.

dennis is the one on the surf board...ie the "surfer" of the group.
carl is reading comic book sargent rock..ie his being drafted plus he has a life preserver on due to his "CO" status in the draft. i always got a chuckle out of that illustration.

I really like Endless Summer. So far it's the best.

Interesting that this came out in June 1974, exactly 10 years after the group started the sessions for Today.  In June 1964, they mostly left behind the surf & car cr*p and went to significantly more sophisticated tracks and lyrics.  In June 1974, they went back to the simple and the silly.  A 10-year run ended by a desire to cash in on the nostalgia boom.

This is an over-generalization, I know.  But not by very much.

Pet Sounds and this album define the core of the BBs legend. Five stars!!! ;D

I gave this a 5/5 simply because it's the first Beach Boys compilation I bought, and it has a solid line-up of songs. Without this album, a lot of people would not have been introduced to The Beach Boys. It cemented their place in history,and could possibly be the album that has given them, as a group, the longevity that they have had.

:) Mark

Endless Summer has often been the first or one of the first tastes of classic Beach Boys music many fans ever had. I'm one of those. Pet Sounds I heard first and that album alone made me a fan; picking up Endless Summer (on CD, a handful of years before it went out of print) after discovering Pet Sounds initially helped me get a grander view of the Beach Boys and how Brian as a composer and producer matured to that point in 1966. And on top of that, Endless Summer was the first Beach Boys album I ever bought (since the copy of Pet Sounds that I first heard belonged to a friend of mine I was staying with at the time).
As such, it's more valuable to me as a bottle of spirits that helped christen me a true fan, rather than simply as a good album by itself.

Endless Summer was first I album I ever owned. I was just a kid and I had a Popeye The Sailor Man record player, lol. I wore-out the needle because those two records were in constant rotation. As a little kid in the late '70s/early '80s I remember being in awe of every song on Endless Summer. I thought every song was so catchy and interesting. And at the time I prefered the fast car/surf songs, but I appreciated the slower ones as well. And like lots of kids back then, I would sit in front of my record player and study the album cover while listening to the album play. I liked Schoolhouse Rock and all the groovy cartoons that were around back then, and the Endless Summer album cover reminded me of that somehow. It wasn't until a few years later when I finally had the Surfer Girl and the Concert album that I discovered that the Beach Boys looked like young guys, and not the hairy bearded cartoon faces on the Endless Summer album cover. Oh, and the poster that came inside the album was on my wall, right next to a Kiss poster I had. My Endless Summer experience was awesome growing up. 5 stars all the way.

Has to be a 5 - hit after hit, and Capitol didn't even include every hit from those years. Was the first BB's album for me.

While it made the Beach Boys very popular again, in my opinion this compilation marks the beginning of a slow decline for the Beach Boys.
After "Endless Summer" came out, all the fans wanted the "hits" and the "oldies". Keep in mind this is pre-"Pet Sounds" material.
In the long run, this would damage the Beach Boys image, almost irreparably. For example on major music sites, major music forums, and major music pages on Facebook, while the other Rock Gods are mentioned daily and are major names everyone likes such as the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc. The Beach Boys always gets a brief mention. Usually it's only when something big happens with them. Such as the MIC box set coming out. Reactions to them are always either "I don't care" or "I hate surfin' bullshit". Or even "Bubblegum crap". Worst part is, they've been reduced to the 50's 60's section, not the Popular section.
This all started with "Endless Summer". Of course it's not just this compilations fault. Capitol Records, Mike Love and Jim Guercio are also to blame. But it was this that really started it. The beginning of the fall from grace to degenerate to another oldies group.

1.5 out of 5

Interested to find out what music on this album rates it a 1.5? If you think what happened after Endless Summer was a fall from grace, just look at how they were looked upon from Smiley Smile through Sunflower. They couldn't sell records or tickets to shows. At least fans wanted to hear the old music in the 70's and beyond.

The music itself i'd rate 4 out of 5. But the album itself and the impact made me rate the album 1.5. While the Smiley Smile to Sunflower era was largely unsuccessful commercially, artistically they are some of the best albums the Beach Boys ever made. Same with Surf's Up to Holland. All of these were artistically brilliant. Why it wasn't commercially successful still shocks me.
After Endless Summer, the artistic quality dropped significantly, with mediocre albums such as 15 big ones and M.I.U. (with the exception of Love You, and to an extent, L.A. light album). People only wanted to hear the pre-1966 songs, so they became almost strictly just another oldies group, churning out the old hits.

Totally agree, but it was mainly Mike and to an extent, Al who was happy to cash in. Brian was by then mentally ill, and Carl and Dennis wasn't too happy with Mike and Al about cashing in

Also, I just realized. It was only in America that they really weren't popular and were struggling. Most other places, especially Europe still held the Beach Boys in high regard and they still sold well over there

Ive met so many people over the years that either were turned onto BB or reminded of the group and became fans again because of this release.. The influence of this record can not be discounted .. IMHO.. Ugly cover but music is 5/5.. And as far as people sayin this turned them into an oldies band.. I think not.. And it isn't Mike's fault either.. That was much later in 90's.. The AUDIENCE turned BB into oldies act.. When your playin the  best of your latest stuff and audience is unruly and yelling for Surfer Girl what the heck are you gonna do..?.. Two choices.. 1} Retire + pump gas  2} Play em.. I don't blame BB.. They tried.. All's forgiven.. The oldies are great anyway.. How are you gonna top ..GOOD VIBRATIONS...?

I give it a 1. Ruined their artistic careers, spawned a chain of "greatest hits" albums that cheapened their image. I have always gotten flak for being a BBs fan, and this album began that terrible process.

I never think of the Beach Boys - even in their artsy, Pet Sounds, Smile era - as having any connection musically with bands like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. I wouldn't expect a fan of those bands to like the BB's - too sweet, too cheery, too pop-sounding, not enough heavy guitars, or indecipherable lyrics (Van Dyke Parks aside). It always amazes me that people that mostly listen to hard rock or 'art rock' like the Beatles. I don't know if they just mean the Beatles of the white album and Abbey Road, or if they actually do appreciate A Hard Days Night and Meet the Beatles. IMHO there was a divide in rock music in the late 60's - bands like Zep and Floyd had no interest in creating hit singles, it was all about the album as an art form. The Beatles, Beach Boys, Stones had always worked at creating great singles. Now, suddenly, in, say 1969 or '70, you were looked down on if you were a band like the Guess Who or Creedence that actually tried to create hit singles.