The Smiley Smile Message Board

I wonder how much the title of the Endless Summer comp impacted sales. I'd imagine quite a bit, particularly when paired with marketing, good timing of 1974, and of course the rock solid content.

But if in 1974, the BBs had released any of their future mid to late '70s albums of new material, and called the album "Endless Summer", would it have been a big hit as well? Did it really matter all that much what material the album contained, or could 15 Big Ones or MIU, for example, have come out in 1974 as "Endless Summer"; would those albums have been more successful than they were in '76 and '78 - and not just due to the timing of the band's 1974 resurging popularity, but due to the timing in conjunction with the album name?

I think that part of why that worked so well was the marriage of title to material. The early BBs hits were the "sounds of summer" and to combine that with a fantasy of an endless summer was great marketing.
I don't think the original 70's material was particularly summery, so the title would just have been another title.

Maybe, but if there was a marketing push with "It's OK" talking about the "sun ocean spray", maybe that could have been enough? I'm sure it wouldn't have reached the same levels of success as the actual Endless Summer, but maybe it could still have been a big hit. Almost surprising they didn't go the "Still Crusin" route in 1974 by pairing several oldies with some new tracks.

It would have been good to have a few new tracks on Endless Summer, but the group was not especially friendly with Capitol at that time. And I doubt anyone, including Capitol, expected it to be a #1, platinum selling album.

If you're talking about an LP consisting of their summeriest mid-to-end 70s material – for eg:

It's Okay
Palisades Park
Kona Coast
Some of Your Love
Keeping the Summer Alive
Going On
Good Timing
Sunshine
Going to the Beach…

(All recorded with consistent style and mastered consistently of course)

… I don't think it would go down well at all with their then fanbase, not straight after a string of progressive albums including Sunflower, Surf's Up, Holland and CATP. It'd be like suddenly turning the clock back to 1964… a major "WTF?" moment.

Back then (before my time really!) I wonder if the band had an "all things to all people" appeal. A night in with the Beach Boys - relaxed, glass of wine, alone with your LPs - would have been a very different thing to a night out - plenty of rocking hits, with mates, with a few beers.

Releasing such a retro sun surf and sand album then would have been like 1992, only it would have brought critical and fan ridicule for their released material 18 years earlier, and may even have ended their careers.

Or even on the label. It's  funny, I was under the distinct impression that the album was mildly successful as it stood.

Yes the distinction between a GH compilation and an album of new material is an important add-on consideration in my post above. (Cough…)

A somewhat off topic memory: I was 11 when I bought Endless Summer on cassette (it was the first music purchase I ever made) and I had no idea that it was a GH thing.  I just thought it was a "regular" album of theirs.  The vast disparity of production values between, say, Surfin' Safari and California Girls, didn't seem to register with me, and I just took it at face value.  I remember thinking, "Wow, this album is great!  Every song is like a hit!"   :lol   
I was a bit slow.  Probably still am.   :p

I was thinking not of whether the songs were about summer or summery things but that the songs on Endless Summer were already associated with summer and the California Myth in the minds of the audience, whether or not the lyrics had anything to do with summer. The California Myth songs collected on an album with a title that perfectly evokes the California Myth was the selling combination. Apparently in the mid-seventies a lot of people wanted to relive that. I don't think that putting that title on an album of non-California Myth songs, whether or not they are about summer, would have been particularly effective.
The idea that they might have put some new material on that collection is interesting, though. Would have gotten their new work a lot of exposure.

American Grafitti and thr resurgence of music from a simpler happier time in the early to mid 70's was a big factor and the title and cover came together at the right time.......backed by a double LP of superior content.

A title and a cover does not sell a greatest hits album, the music on the album sells the album. People wanted to hear and buy the music with fresh ears and perspective, it was the right time in pop culture history in many ways for the music to come back, and it did.

I actually hadn't thought about this before.  Personally, I've never bought an album because of the title.  It's the artist or a specific track or tracks that cause me to buy a record.  Is that normal?  I guess I've always assumed that.

I've never consciously thought that I was buying an album because of the cover or cover art. But I remember browsing record stores, back when I for some reason had plenty of spare money (?), and pulling out a dozen or so records that I'd carry around until I had to choose a final few. I suppose while flipping through the stuff, if I was thinking, "Do I want this Beach Boys Greatest Hits or this Beatles Greatest Hits?" at least subconsciously, the title and image on the cover might sway me.
I certainly don't think the cover or title is the main reason, but it probably makes a marginal difference, back when one was browsing large physical items.

It also got a very big advertising push from Capitol. They even did TV commercials, which were pretty rare in 1974. I lived in the Phoenix metro area back then, and the commercials were played on a regular basis throughout that whole Summer.

The title "Keepin the Summer Alive" didn't help that collection of new material, so no, I don't think Endless Summer would have been a hit either with new material.

One of those commercials is on youtube; and I recall seeing a tv commercial for Spirit of America in '75 - I think it started off with Barbara Ann, which was new to me. Capitol did everything right in promoting those albums. Too bad Warners didn't put similar effort behind Good Vibrations - Best of the Beach Boys.

In all my years of music appreciation, I have bought one, and only one, album purely because of the cover art: hadn't heard a note of music. Turned out to be a very wise decision.

The cover art sucked too...

... ?   

Eta: so........ What was it?

From the perspective of the teenage buyers in 1974, of which I was one (age 15)... I had no sense of who the Beach Boys were.  Except for the college-age crowd, they weren't popular.  I knew Elton John, The Beatles, etc.  But I always got the Bee Gees and the Beach Boys mixed up.  They weren't high profile.

When I first heard their music - on Endless Summer and on the radio - I had no sense that it was "old music."  Just that it was a particular sound that I hadn't heard before, except in American Graffiti. It was new music in my head, just like the song "Beach Baby," when I first heard it on the radio.  I thought it was the Beach Boys, too.  I imagine a lot of kids my age did.

We didn't really think of Beach Boys music as anything other than new music, about sun, surf, cars, girls and everything else.  It was current stuff to us.  Gave us a certain feeling; a rush every time a song popped up on Big 89 WLS.

As good as it all was, I don't think there's anything they were recording in the 70s that would have had near the same impact as Endless Summer, at that time. 

Nope.   It was a hit because they had all those hits to promote.  And the cover whatever one thinks of it certainly seemed to resonate with the public, very eye-catching if not so artistically great.  (BBs as aging hippie beach bums!)  Remember there for a good long while, a re-release of "Surfin' USA" was their biggest hit single of the seventies.

Well I guess the other question is, if most everyone agrees that it had to be a compilation of proven hits in order for the album Endless Summer to be a hit, did the title really matter that much? I, for one, think it's a good title - but did the title really have that much of an impact? Instead, of say, calling it a more generic thing of "Greatest Hits Ever" or something, but with marketing muscle behind it?

Mike plays the title up, and maybe he's right in that it made a big difference. Yet it seems most everyone here says it was the content that made it a hit, and repeatedly people are saying in this thread that nobody ever buys a record based on the title. I suppose in this case it was the perfect timing, marketing, and combination of the title + the content? It certainly wasn't the ugly LP cover that shifted units!

I agree the cover wasn't helpful! I do think mainly content + timing, but I think the marketers were creating an idea around the music that lasts to this day, and the title supported that idea and the idea helps sell the music.

I mean, it's an album, so of course people are primarily buying it to listen to, not look at.
That said, I think the cover and title, give it a certain vibe that seperates it from other compilations.
As you say timing was great as well. If ES, SOA, and SD are looked at as a kind of trilogy, you see how the concept wanes the farther from the epicentre you travel.
Love Endless Summer. Mike's Pet Sounds!