after Holland, did it seem like they gave up?

[MBE]

The BEST rockNroll was and will always be from the United States. NOT ENGLAND.   

Maxwell's Silver 'Ammer, came doon, upon his 'ead! Maxwells Silver 'Ammer, made sure that ee wurze dead *clang clang*

Will never understand why people rate Abbey Road so highly. 1/3 good, 1/3 mediocre and 1/3 utter, utter dreck.

I agree. It's not a bad album but I like all their other stuff better.

[MBE]

Why did Blondie leave? Could someone please provide me with some insight?

Mike's bunghole of a brother, who was managing the band at the time, got into a fight with him backstage and called him a n*****.

I saw something heavy go down with Blondie at a Winterland San Francisco show.

What went down?

[kookadams]

Yes-they made some good music-but you have to be honest all the same-only a small fraction of the music made between 1976-1992 is in anyway comparable to the music they made i962-72.  But than again-hardly any of their contemporaries reached such heights again either.  McCartney put out some decent albums but nothing to rival the Beatle years, the Who were basically a spent force by Who Are You in 78, Rolling Stones had a late creative spurt with Some Girls and Tattoo You and than basically fell apart, the Kinks had long since stopped being consistent and had put out a series of fairly mediocre records...You are only twenty-two once and as more responsibilities pile up (family, kids) its hard to stay focused on the music

It took me awhile to really figure it out but generally speaking as far as progression, contribution, consistency and IMPORTANCE I would say that the Beach Boys memorable timeline for music output would definitely be concluded by the Holland album. From the beginning to Pet Sounds they were a highly successful group  with a formulaic persona. 1966 was their pivotal peak of excellence, 67 to 72 was them taking control as a group and making cohesive contributions even if they werent commercial viable in the US at that time. The mid 70s was when their claim to fame was identified by a certain time frame and the landscape of rockNroll was no longer relevant in the mainstream- in otherwords from that point onward their reputation of importance was pretty much set in stone in the sense of nostalgia, that's a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. 1977 was the year that they put out their final significant album til 2012.
They never literally "gave up" after Holland but I would say its safe to say if they never made another studio after Love You it wouldnt have changed history that much in terms of relevance and importance. Holland was the last good album they did as a group with everyone contributing. Love You was Brians album like Pet Sounds- after that when Brian relinquished leadership again their new music for the remainder of the decade and ongoing til recently was pretty much disregarded as record company fulfillment.

[adamghost]

Mike's best solo stuff rivals Long Promosed Road, Trader and Feel Flows... really? I love some of Mike's solo stuff both with the band (Big Sur) and without (Viggie), but nothing he did ever touched the exceptionally high standard of these trio of Carl songs. They really are three utterly stunning pieces of work.

I wasn`t only talking about 3 songs and the fact that they can be individually named sums it up really. Carl wrote (or co-wrote to be more accurate) maybe 10 or 15 good songs in his career which spanned nearly 4 decades. I would say that Mike has written at least as many as that solo. If you include the lyrics, which it`s only fair to do, then he has to be seen as a better songwriter than Carl.

Not if Mike wrote way more crappy songs, he doesn't.   I get the point you're making, but the reason it doesn't quite hold up is the rather large number of BAD songs Mike was associated with, and the comparatively few Carl was associated with.  If you're comparing their skill level, you have to include that too.  You could certainly make the argument (and that's really what you are doing) Mike was more prolific than Carl...no question about that.  But by virtue of being more prolific, if you cowrote 100 songs and 20 were great, and another guy cowrote 40 songs and 15 were great, the first guy isn't the better songwriter.  He just wrote more songs.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

Not if Mike wrote way more crappy songs, he doesn't.   I get the point you're making, but the reason it doesn't quite hold up is the rather large number of BAD songs Mike was associated with, and the comparatively few Carl was associated with.  If you're comparing their skill level, you have to include that too.  You could certainly make the argument (and that's really what you are doing) Mike was more prolific than Carl...no question about that.  But by virtue of being more prolific, if you cowrote 100 songs and 20 were great, and another guy cowrote 40 songs and 15 were great, the first guy isn't the better songwriter.  He just wrote more songs.

Totally disagree with this...Carl just doesn't strike me as someone who had that songwriting 'spark', in the way that Brian or Mike, or Dennis did. Someone who is a good musician and arranger CAN turn out some changes, a bit of melody, if they're presented with a lyric, and that's what Carl's stuff sounds like- the product of 'work' rather than inspiration.

He may not have written a Kokomo, but apart from those Jack Riely co-writes, and Angel Come Home, I'd happily never listen to anything of his again.

[MBE]

I am writing this because I am shocked that at this point Mike is seen by some to have done little more than for instance Bruce. Mike's bad songs are truly bad, but so were Carl's. You can say Mike went to bat more often and thus had more good songs, but there was more to it than that. Mike was Brian's most frequent partner through 1965,  and after that (especially through 1970) they still often brought out the best in each other. Even Dennis gave Mike a lot of credit in interviews for being the main lyric guy and this was in 1977 a period that saw the real heavy division between them become more and more unworkable.

I'm not putting Carl down by saying this. He meant much more to the music side of things and was obviously the real glue that held the Beach Boys together. Judging by his 1971-72 work, Carl could have become better than Mike if he hadn't become very conservative in his tastes by the mid seventies. Sadly nobody else brought out that spark from Carl except Jack. He wrote some good things with Brian in the late sixties, but Trader, Feel Flows, and Long Promised Road are the only really great examples of Carl forging his own sound as a writer. Angel Come Home and Heaven are both fine songs, but considering what he wrote along with them they seem to be flukes. Again Carl was a great singer, producer, and leader, what he wasn't was a great songwriter. He got there a few times but Mike was obviously more dedicated to that aspect.

As far as Mike I think he did lose something as a writer in the mid seventies as well. Some of First Love is pretty good, a few cuts like Goin' On were cool, but he had dozens of great songs as a lyricist before the mid seventies. I can't really fathom why Carl would ever be seen as somebody as good as Mike in that one area. As bad as he got later, it doesn't dilute what Mike did before. I mean we got all those great hooks from him and Let The Wind Blow, Big Sur, Please Let Me Wonder, show him to capable of writing as sensitively as anyone.

I think there is that old thing about the Wilson's being art and Mike being commerce. It's true in some ways, and I don't deny Mike's direction has often been wrongheaded after Endless Summer. Yet his performances over the last ten years often show how much he treasures a lot of the more arty stuff as well, especially on the reunion tour. He obviously also cared about his work during the Beach Boys first decade. Perhaps the Wilson's would have been able to go further without Mike after 1973, but I seriously doubt it. After Murry died none of them were as vigilant about being current. Drug use obviously played a big part in it, but I think Murry provided his songs with a dysfunctional, but very real motivation that was never replaced.

I also want to say that while Carl obviously fought the first few years he came back for the show to be sharp, after Dennis died he seemed to do little but go along with the oldies stuff and didn't maintain the same sense of aesthetics. Of course the box set tour is a shinning exception, but the general goings on in 1984-97 were very dull and cheesy. I don't fault Carl personally for backing away after 1973 and more so after 1983,  but just because he was by most accounts a wonderful guy doesn't excuse his complacence as an artist any more than Mike's. Love doesn't have the personal rep Carl did, not by a long shot, but that he could be difficult doesn't make him more misguided than the others.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

I am writing this because I am shocked that at this point Mike is seen by some to have done little more than for instance Bruce. Mike's bad songs are truly bad, but so were Carl's. 

To be honest, even if we were ignorirng everything pre 1978, I'd still take Mike's efforts over Carls. Something like Sumahama is so gloriously tasteless, that it's somehow brilliant...Carls stuff is just forgettable.

[kookadams]

Subjects like this are a mindfuck. I think its easiest to look at their first ten years of output (up to Holland) as the consistent period. Even if Brian was pulling out before that he knew they could pull it together and their record sales in the UK from Pet Sounds and onward prove it. Even if there were prevalent changes after that it needs to be viewed as a sign of the times not as any decline. Its really a waste to dissect their music to the point where theres more discussion of what wasn't as good when there was SO MUCH that was good!

[bonnevillemariner]

I'm fairly new to the post-Holland stuff, so please don't crucify me for this very general and probably unfair, un-thought out comment.

I'm not sure I would call it "giving up," but there's a definite difference in quality (musically and production-wise) between the pre and post Wild Honey material.  I want to say they sound like a crappy Beach Boys tribute band, but it might be more accurate to say they sound like a different band altogether.  I find very, very little of their material post Wild Honey likeable-- emotionally or viscerally, to use AGD's terminology.  And it's not for lack of trying.  I want badly to like their post WH material.  I revisit and revisit and revisit, but no dice.  Love You, to me at least, is a joke.

I'm not a BB history expert so I won't pretend to speculate whether they gave up or not.  All I know is I should probably give up trying to like their later stuff.

[hypehat]

How can't you find Friends likeable? It's so dopey and sweet and chilled out.

I reckon it'll come to you. I remember coming to those albums up to Holland expecting 5 lost Pet Sounds and coming away a bit non plussed on my first few tries. So IDK

[kookadams]

There's no way I could stop at Wild Honey. Friends has its moments, 20/20 is a great album, Sunflower is a great album, Surfs Up has a few great songs, and Holland was great too. I understand how their music declined in the mid 70s but Love You is good- it's not Pet Sounds but its a solid fucking album.

[rab2591]

Friends is the grown-up version of Pet Sounds. It's the most underrated BB album of all time.

I'm not the biggest fan of Sunflower or Surf's Up. Call me a Brianista, but I guess I liked it when Brian was in control of the album's vision: then it didn't seem like a collection of random songs.

Love You is no joke. It's a beautiful collection of songs that sticks it to the man in the greatest way possible. It's a rebellious album with Brian Wilson chords and harmonies strung all throughout it. God, just let us go on our way - aching cry for help to get a girl. "We'll do it holding hands, it's so cold I go burr" - some of the greatest not-one-f*ck-given lyrics in rock history. If you listen to 'Mona' with vintage Spector in mind, it's the greatest rock tune never to be recorded in the early 60s. Johnny Carson? Screw the rules, I want to write a song about Johnny Carson. Side 2 is vintage (not literally) Pet Sounds material: The chords in 'I'll bet he's nice' are stunning, the harmonies in 'The Night Was So Young' are breathtaking. Airplane is AMAZING. Give it another try. I disliked this album at first, but it grows on you fast though, and never lets go.

[kookadams]

Friends is the grown-up version of Pet Sounds. It's the most underrated BB album of all time.

I'm not the biggest fan of Sunflower or Surf's Up. Call me a Brianista, but I guess I liked it when Brian was in control of the album's vision: then it didn't seem like a collection of random songs.

Love You is no joke. It's a beautiful collection of songs that sticks it to the man in the greatest way possible. It's a rebellious album with Brian Wilson chords and harmonies strung all throughout it. God, just let us go on our way - aching cry for help to get a girl. "We'll do it holding hands, it's so cold I go burr" - some of the greatest not-one-f*ck-given lyrics in rock history. If you listen to 'Mona' with vintage Spector in mind, it's the greatest rock tune never to be recorded in the early 60s. Johnny Carson? Screw the rules, I want to write a song about Johnny Carson. Side 2 is vintage (not literally) Pet Sounds material: The chords in 'I'll bet he's nice' are stunning, the harmonies in 'The Night Was So Young' are breathtaking. Airplane is AMAZING. Give it another try. I disliked this album at first, but it grows on you fast though, and never lets go.

EXACTLY!  Love You is not only a great album, it was the LAST good Beach Boys album and the last Beach Boys album worth getting.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

EXACTLY!  Love You is not only a great album, it was the LAST good Beach Boys album and the last Beach Boys album worth getting.

I dont' 100% agree, basically because of the Bambu tracks on LA, but yeah...Love You is definitely the last AWESOME Beach Boys record, for me.

Have we got the point where we can admit TWGMTR was an unlistenable, autotuned mess yet? B/W I've been smashing the f*** out of 'Chain Reaction of Love' recently. I really wish they'd come through with that proposed '96 lp...that could have been awesome.

[kookadams]

I concur. The Light Album has Good Timin, Angel Come Home, and Baby Blue- the rest of it is forgettable. Keepin the Summer ALive  has the title song, rad Chuck Berry cover, and Goin On and likewise the rest is forgettable. The Beach Boys were pretty much wasting studio time after Love You.

[rab2591]

Have we got the point where we can admit TWGMTR was an unlistenable, autotuned mess yet?

Some days I love that album. Other days I question why I love that album.

The lack of cohesion kills it for me. I listen to Daybreak more than any other song on that album (well, besides PCH)....yet I think Daybreak and Beaches ruin the vibe of that album epically. It's a solid effort by a great band, somewhat tarnished by inner band politics and modern day production. I still get enjoyment from it though.

[BillA]

I dont' 100% agree, basically because of the Bambu tracks on LA, but yeah...Love You is definitely the last AWESOME Beach Boys record, for me.

Have we got the point where we can admit TWGMTR was an unlistenable, autotuned mess yet? B/W I've been smashing the f*** out of 'Chain Reaction of Love' recently. I really wish they'd come through with that proposed '96 lp...that could have been awesome.
[/quote]

The last three songs are the best post Holland Beach Boys work.  FTTBA is among my 15 favorite Beach Boy songs.

[Wild-Honey]

I think there is that old thing about the Wilson's being art and Mike being commerce. It's true in some ways, and I don't deny Mike's direction has often been wrongheaded after Endless Summer. Yet his performances over the last ten years often show how much he treasures a lot of the more arty stuff as well, especially on the reunion tour. He obviously also cared about his work during the Beach Boys first decade. Perhaps the Wilson's would have been able to go further without Mike after 1973, but I seriously doubt it. After Murry died none of them were as vigilant about being current. Drug use obviously played a big part in it, but I think Murry provided his songs with a dysfunctional, but very real motivation that was never replaced.

I don't quite agree that none of them were vigilant about being current after Murry died.  I think Dennis and Carl wanted to move with the times. Look at what Dennis did with POB. I remember reading somewhere that Brian said Dennis was the most up to date musically (paraphrasing).

[MBE]

Friends is the grown-up version of Pet Sounds. It's the most underrated BB album of all time.

I'm not the biggest fan of Sunflower or Surf's Up. Call me a Brianista, but I guess I liked it when Brian was in control of the album's vision: then it didn't seem like a collection of random songs.

Love You is no joke. It's a beautiful collection of songs that sticks it to the man in the greatest way possible. It's a rebellious album with Brian Wilson chords and harmonies strung all throughout it. God, just let us go on our way - aching cry for help to get a girl. "We'll do it holding hands, it's so cold I go burr" - some of the greatest not-one-f*ck-given lyrics in rock history. If you listen to 'Mona' with vintage Spector in mind, it's the greatest rock tune never to be recorded in the early 60s. Johnny Carson? Screw the rules, I want to write a song about Johnny Carson. Side 2 is vintage (not literally) Pet Sounds material: The chords in 'I'll bet he's nice' are stunning, the harmonies in 'The Night Was So Young' are breathtaking. Airplane is AMAZING. Give it another try. I disliked this album at first, but it grows on you fast though, and never lets go.

It would be wrong to say Sunflower lacked Brian's vision. Though Carl took over mixing, Brian's voice, songwriting, and musical style is all over it. Though Brian took a much bigger back seat to Carl on Surf's Up, there were still tracks where he lead the group and if not at as many sessions he still wokred on almost every song.
Love You I don't get myself. I just don't like much of it and find only a few teacks to be anything special. I do however like much of the unreleased follow up, Adult Child. TWGMTR sounds muffled on CD but the vinyl has a better track sequence and sound.

[DonnyL]

My opinion is that Dennis is really the only member who came close to Brian as a songwriter and producer. After Dennis, I think Al was fully capable as well, but seemed to spend more time in the studio and was sort of kept on the sidelines due to group politics.

Carl was certainly an outstanding producer and mixer, and excelled at finishing what the rest of the group started. I get a sense that Dennis sometimes abandoned some of his works-in-progress, Al seemed somewhat a perfectionist, and of course Brian was just tossing nuggets out to the group here and there. Carl brought it all into one 'Beach Boys' unit. I doubt the band could have pulled together any of the records of the 20/20-Holland era without him. But I don't really view  him as a songwriter specifically. Not that he wasn't capable, I think he was just more focused on the other aspects, including gluing the whole deal together.

Mike Love is a great songwriter. The proof is in the pudding ... if he only ever did the Wild Honey record, that's enough for me. Not a producer at all of course.

[Lonely Summer]

I am writing this because I am shocked that at this point Mike is seen by some to have done little more than for instance Bruce. Mike's bad songs are truly bad, but so were Carl's. You can say Mike went to bat more often and thus had more good songs, but there was more to it than that. Mike was Brian's most frequent partner through 1965,  and after that (especially through 1970) they still often brought out the best in each other. Even Dennis gave Mike a lot of credit in interviews for being the main lyric guy and this was in 1977 a period that saw the real heavy division between them become more and more unworkable.

I'm not putting Carl down by saying this. He meant much more to the music side of things and was obviously the real glue that held the Beach Boys together. Judging by his 1971-72 work, Carl could have become better than Mike if he hadn't become very conservative in his tastes by the mid seventies. Sadly nobody else brought out that spark from Carl except Jack. He wrote some good things with Brian in the late sixties, but Trader, Feel Flows, and Long Promised Road are the only really great examples of Carl forging his own sound as a writer. Angel Come Home and Heaven are both fine songs, but considering what he wrote along with them they seem to be flukes. Again Carl was a great singer, producer, and leader, what he wasn't was a great songwriter. He got there a few times but Mike was obviously more dedicated to that aspect.

As far as Mike I think he did lose something as a writer in the mid seventies as well. Some of First Love is pretty good, a few cuts like Goin' On were cool, but he had dozens of great songs as a lyricist before the mid seventies. I can't really fathom why Carl would ever be seen as somebody as good as Mike in that one area. As bad as he got later, it doesn't dilute what Mike did before. I mean we got all those great hooks from him and Let The Wind Blow, Big Sur, Please Let Me Wonder, show him to capable of writing as sensitively as anyone.

I think there is that old thing about the Wilson's being art and Mike being commerce. It's true in some ways, and I don't deny Mike's direction has often been wrongheaded after Endless Summer. Yet his performances over the last ten years often show how much he treasures a lot of the more arty stuff as well, especially on the reunion tour. He obviously also cared about his work during the Beach Boys first decade. Perhaps the Wilson's would have been able to go further without Mike after 1973, but I seriously doubt it. After Murry died none of them were as vigilant about being current. Drug use obviously played a big part in it, but I think Murry provided his songs with a dysfunctional, but very real motivation that was never replaced.

I also want to say that while Carl obviously fought the first few years he came back for the show to be sharp, after Dennis died he seemed to do little but go along with the oldies stuff and didn't maintain the same sense of aesthetics. Of course the box set tour is a shinning exception, but the general goings on in 1984-97 were very dull and cheesy. I don't fault Carl personally for backing away after 1973 and more so after 1983,  but just because he was by most accounts a wonderful guy doesn't excuse his complacence as an artist any more than Mike's. Love doesn't have the personal rep Carl did, not by a long shot, but that he could be difficult doesn't make him more misguided than the others.

I don't believe Carl was complacent - one of the things he hoped would come from his solo tour and album was to kind of kick the rest of the guys in the butt, get them motivated to do some great new music. Carl's solos may not be to your personal taste, but give him credit for not just cranking out Beach Boys soundalikes. After the 1985 album, he did seem to step back a bit, probably sensing that he was fighting a losing battle. His attitude may have been along the lines of "I can't fight the oldies thing, but at least I can try to get the guys to go out and do those songs the best they can". It may not have appeared so, but even in the Love-lead years of the 80's and 90's, Carl was still the onstage leader.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I don't believe Carl was complacent - one of the things he hoped would come from his solo tour and album was to kind of kick the rest of the guys in the butt, get them motivated to do some great new music. Carl's solos may not be to your personal taste, but give him credit for not just cranking out Beach Boys soundalikes.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Mike was trying to convey was the fact that Carl stopped being a progressive artist after Holland. Some of it was due to personal issues, but once he cleaned up, he made music that was very safe, inoffensive music. Not to say it was bad (although much of it is not to my own personal taste), but he lost his edge. Vocally, he was great in studio until Still Cruisin'. He was great live for the rest of his life.

[kookadams]

Yeah when you really dissect the songs as far as what he was writing in the early 70s and then after... but it got to the point from the mid 70s onward where their records had a "forced" vibe due to the hostile atmosphere they were in and the climate of the music industry/pressure from the record company.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Well, yeah, considering that 1) 15 BO was a rush job,  2)Love You was a BW solo in all but name  3) Dennis and Carl were almost totally absent from MIU  4)LA Light was basically So Tough as far as structure, minus the progressiveness 5) KTSA was more of a real album, but Dennis wasn't around . 6) BB85 was the last actual 'real' BB album until TWGMTR .   

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

The last three songs are the best post Holland Beach Boys work.  FTTBA is among my 15 favorite Beach Boy songs.

I'm glad you like it...I don't get any pleasure from finding it unlistenabl. I can imagine that one Al sings being great, in another dimension, where they just recorded his voice, rather than tuning the piss out of it.