holland/end if an era,,

[donald]

As lot of music acts went retro around the same time the Beachboys did 15 Big O nes.   People say the last real B album was Holland because they followed that with ES and 15BO.   But think about the avalanche of others covering oldies in the mid seventies:   ronstandt, Taylor, Hot Tuna , and many others.   They later resumed doing more original and current music, same as the Beachboys.  That's really my only comment on this.  think about it from that point forward.

[Lee Marshall]

I don't know donald.  They just seemed to settle.  The progression was over.  [Except for Dennis who did it...and for Carl who tried...and then finally for Brian who succeeded.]

Settling is never a good thing.  They didn't know what to do.  Which way to go.  Their best stuff...except for Dennis'...was singing back-up for other artists.  Their own stuff?  Ehhh!!!  Too much of it was merely so/so...at least by Beach Boys standards.

I'm not into settling.

I don't think Brian is either.
---------------------------------------------------

Houses settle.  Humans?  That's the kind of thing that can kill a man.

[kookadams]

When regarding how they gravitated toward the early rock nostalgia its important to note how the mid 70s was the era of rockNroll rebirth...the BBs reestablished themselves commercially with Endless Summer and 15 Big Ones and then came the Ramones who indirectly picked up where the BBs left off; look at how Sheena, rockaway beach, shes the one, oh oh love her so etc all had a prevalent BBs flavor, it wasnt just irony~ joey & dee dee were advocates of Brian and Spector,..

[adamghost]

I think HOLLAND/IN CONCERT feel like the end of an era because there's a straight-line progression on every album up to that point.  HOLLAND is a VERY different sounding band from SURFER GIRL but you can see, bit by bit, how they got to that point through each of the progressive albums.  15BO represents more along the lines of a reboot for the band.  I agree with those posters who say that in some way "15BO" are MORE Beach Boys than the album that preceded them, in terms of vibe and what all, but it's a clear break from the progression up to that point.

I think, though you could make an argument that the thread on HOLLAND carries through PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE and dies out on LIGHT ALBUM (or BB85 if you want to really stretch the point, since it's about 50% Carl), whereas there's also a thread that starts at with Spring, "Child of Winter", 15BO, peaks on LOVE YOU, and starts to fade through MIU and KTSA.  It's almost like there are two timelines operating in tandem.  MIU and LA are interesting because they are consecutive albums but essentially are being made by two different bands (or two halves of the same band), and sound it.

[Don Malcolm]

Good points, Adam. I think what becomes clear is that the duality in the band--Brian's "architectural" creativity vs. Mike's ceaseless search for the demotic (a more high-falutin' way of saying the commercial center or "the formula"--has been in operation ever since it first came into full focus on the All Summer Long LP. You can see the shifting tides of those two forces playing out on the LPs, creating an ever-changing dynamic of duality that stays intact even as the other band members become active songwriters.

Carl and Dennis write material initially inspired by the two sides of Brian that emerged as he moved beyond the application of Spector to the original "formula"--Dennis beginning with ballads, and then taking up the latent rock'n'roll side that Brian had left behind; Carl trying to write in the fashion of Brian's "art" side. Bruce's material was taking Brian's ballad sense into the realm of the outright sappy, transcending the treacle with "Disney Girls," a song whose timing (at a point when many had become weary of the angry blare of rock's counterculture assault during the initial 60s-70s changeover) was so fortuitous in lending Surf's Up some added critical cachet. That success, and the acclaim given to "Disney Girls" may have emboldened Bruce to jump ship when he saw Carl (and, in his own mysterious way, Brian) taking the band in a more hard-rock direction, souping up the old sound ("Marcella") and pushing toward rootsier hybrids ("Mess of Help," "He Come Down").

It appeared that the Holland album had smoothed out the rough spots in the transition to a new incarnation of the band, but Murry's death and escalating dualism (Dennis vs. Mike, Dennis vs. the rest of the band, Mike's power play in bringing his brother Steve in to replace Reiley) started the pendulum moving back in the opposite direction. Wtih Brian entering into his seriously "spiralling" period, the next dualism (TMers vs. partiers) snapped into place, and this resulted in a creative stalemate. Ironically, during this time frame America rediscovered the Beach Boys, but the dualism had been calcified and battle lines were drawn and redrawn over how to best take advantage of the band's resurgence.

That got us 15BO, the beginning of the band's chained series of "WTF? moments" that came into being in the frenzied aftermath of the resurgence. And the dualism is even more pronounced in the albums that come out in the late 70s, as Adam notes. The problem was that whatever impulse to be "progressive" that had propelled the songwriting/production efforts on Holland had been dialed back into a vague, hazy sense of the late 70s "marketplace" on LA (the influience of Bruce as a producer) or a failed attempt to reconstitute the unique, unrecapturable synthesis of Sunflower (which was the model for MIU, but a model that it missed by a few hundred country miles in songwriting quallity).

Holland was the last time that the band was ahead of its audience. From that point on there was a dualism between trying to do that again (sorry, bad pun!) and simply grinding out the formula.

Richard Meltzer termed the Beach Boys output "schizoid rather than eclectic" in his 1968 "sham PhD thesis" which was eventually published as THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK. Even though Meltzer was himself one of those "pure products of America" who "go crazy," he was onto something with that statement. It was true in '68 and it is still true today--which is one of the reasons why Brian is still mostly loath to "get in a room with Mike," I suspect. And yet it's that dualism--in all of its variants--that makes the band and its music so inherently (and endlessly) fascinating.

[Smilin Ed H]

There's kind of an irony that there songs around the time of LA that had an element of that Holland vibe that weren't used - and two were by Al.

[Micha]

There's kind of an irony that there songs around the time of LA that had an element of that Holland vibe that weren't used - and two were by Al.

Which were they?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

What do we consider to be his first breakdown?

1964 plane ride breakdown.

Yeah, I guess that or SMiLE. Admittedly my terminology was kinda vague. The plane was an acute panic attack I think, while SMiLE was a drawn out creative and social regression. If I knew more about whatever happened on Holland I could say which one that more closely resembles.

I don't consider him having a breakdown during SMiLE - at least, not that I'm aware of. And the 1964 nervous breakdown seems on a whole different kind of scale from what he experienced in the 70s to the point where it becomes something altogether different. And it seems to me that there's a genuine breakdown of sorts in 1968 during the recording to the Friends follow-up - isn't that the period where he was actually institutionalized for a short time?

[Lee Marshall]

Yes Adam...and Don.  That's pretty much how I see it.  Once they fell behind the curve...except for Dennis...it was only sporadic in terms of creativity.  They became followers...of themselves.  It was WAY TOO TOUGH an act to follow...especially w/o Brian being fully engaged and Dennis holding onto his good stuff for solo efforts.

A dog chasing its own tail becomes less and less amusing and entertaining.

[job]

As lot of music acts went retro around the same time the Beachboys did 15 Big O nes.   People say the last real B album was Holland because they followed that with ES and 15BO.   But think about the avalanche of others covering oldies in the mid seventies:   ronstandt, Taylor, Hot Tuna , and many others.   They later resumed doing more original and current music, same as the Beachboys.  That's really my only comment on this.  think about it from that point forward.

The entire country went retro after American Graffitti.  Happy Days, Sha-Na-Na, etc.

[donald]

           Job,  That further illustrates my point.   I think

[Smilin Ed H]

There's kind of an irony that there songs around the time of LA that had an element of that Holland vibe that weren't used - and two were by Al.

Which were they?

Santa Ana Winds and Looking Down the Coast