Photo: Capitol Photo Archives
It’s not easy to separatethe Beach Boys’ music from the California Myth they helped create. Indeed, it’s a well-loved tale: suntanned bodies and waves of sunshine, little deuce coupes cruising through hamburger stands, endless summer days (and summer nights!!) with your honey. And, of course, surfing — which transcended mere sport into a sort of physical Zen, fusing mind and body with the natural world. The band’s canon of 1960s classics forged a new chapter in Americana, stoking fantasies of a beach utopia for generations of landlocked listeners across the globe.
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Given the sonic lineage, it seems only natural that these pop masterworks would translate to the orchestral stage — and now a new album takes the Bach ‘n’ Roll approach to soaring heights.The Beach Boys with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestrapairs 16 of the group’s most beloved recordings, ranging from 1963’s “In My Room” to 1988’s “Kokomo,” with symphonic arrangements recorded in March at London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios under the guiding hand of conductor/composers Steve Sidwell and Sally Herbert. Producers Nick Patrick and Don Reedman seamlessly weaved this instrumental embroidery into the familiar tracks, skillfully enhancing the Beach Boys’ trademark vocal blend. “I think it’s absolutely fantastic,” Wilson says of the fresh interpretation of his work. “It embellishes the vocals to the point where people can really enjoy the harmonies.” Love, who co-wrote many of the titles, agrees. “It’s a whole new incarnation — a reincarnation,” he adds. “It’s such a great display of our songs, with the Beach Boys at full strength.”
The inventive instrumental backing succeeds in not only exploring the richness of the original productions, but also in highlighting their status as timeless standards. “Symphonically, instead of being overpowering, they were very subtle. It’s like a velvet mist,” says Bruce Johnston, the self-proclaimed “new guy” who joined the Beach Boys in 1965 as a touring replacement for Wilson and quickly became an integral full-time member of the band. An effusive Jardine, who takes the lead on the raucous “Help Me Rhonda,” singles out moments from1966’sPet Sounds, Wilson’s legendary spiritual opus, as a major album highlight. “The beautiful orchestral arrangements and the brilliant preludes to the songs are wonderfully done.”
In celebration of this vibrant new take on their music, surviving band members Wilson, Love, Jardine and Johnston told PEOPLE the tales behind some of their greatest songs.
“In My Room” (1963)
Mike Love:“Be True to Your School” was a hit record for us, and on the flip side was a beautiful ballad, “In My Room.” The thing that attracted us to singing together in the first place is that my cousin Brian and I loved to harmonize together.We would do Everly Brothersand doo-wop songs and we studied the Four Freshmen, who were a huge influence on us. That’s why the Beach Boys’ harmonies are so complex and interesting and never boring. You cannot be in a singing group that does that kind of music and lag. Youhaveto pay attention.
Al Jardine:The singers — the family and myself — we really made some serious harmony. The singing itself is something that is often overlooked. Brian pointed that out on the [Royal Philharmonic album] press release: people like to be sung to. As kids we all had our favorite songs and we liked it when our parents sang to us. Music, and the human voice in itself, is so powerful that I think it’s often overlooked in big arrangements.
“The Warmth of the Sun” (1964)
Love:“The Warmth of the Sun” didn’t take all that long to write. We wrote it in the wee hours of the morning. It’s just such a beautiful song, and the interesting thing about it was I remember waking up that morning to the news that President Kennedy had been taken to the hospital in Dallas. A month later we recorded it, and it was charged with the extra emotion of that terrible event that had happened
Wilson:President Kennedy got assassinated and we wrote that on behalf of him. “What good is the dawn that grows into day”: I thought that was a very nice way to start out a song.
Love:It’s about being in love with someone and them not feeling the same way as you. Many of us have felt that, whether it was a crush in grade school, or junior high or high school or as a young adult when things didn’t work out — you were into it and they weren’t. It’s a kind of loss of love. However, the whole premise of “The Warmth of the Sun” is, having felt that way, the warmth of the sun is the love that still resonates within you. I did an album calledUnleash the Love[in 2016] and on that albummy daughter Ambha did the lead on “The Warmth of the Sun.”It’s beautiful with a woman singing — she’s a phenomenal singer.
“Fun, Fun, Fun” (1964)
Wilson:Mike wrote the lyrics for “Fun, Fun Fun” [on tour] in Australia in 1963 and when we got back to California I wrote the music. We used to drive up and down the strip. That’s how we got “I Get Around” — “I’m gettin’ bugged driving up and down the same old strip.” And then I moved to Hollywood where the kids were hip!
Love:The Wilsons grew up in Hawthorne, I grew up in the Baldwin Hills, which was a few miles away but close. For us, we had the Wich Stand [as the “hamburger stand” in the lyrics], for them it was the A&W. It was all that post-high school life — well for Carl and Dennis itwashigh school. I was the old man in the group. I was the only one who didn’t need court approval in 1962 when we signed with Capitol Records. I was the old man of 21. [laughs]
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“Help Me, Rhonda” (1965)
Love:We originally recorded “Help Me, Rhonda” [first released as the album track “Help Me, Ronda” on 1965’sThe Beach Boys Today!], and we felt it wasgoodbut thought maybe it could even be a little better. So we went back in and did some additional background parts and so on. The single version was a little more peppy, and it went to number one. I wrote the words and Brian and I worked on the music. Al did a great job singing that one.
Jardine:“Help Me Rhonda” was something that evolved. At the time we were on the road quite a bit. We were growing pretty quickly songwriting-wise, and we were singing all these songs live and Brian was not. The idea was that he was home writing things that were totally new for us, musically. Basically, I replaced Brian in the touring band. He wrote this for me so that I’d be able to go out and promote the song and our careers. I’m grateful for that.
“California Girls” (1965)
Love:I’ve always felt that the intro to “California Girls” sounds like the prelude to a symphonic composition. My cousin Brian outdid himself with that. He worked with what they call the Wrecking Crew—some of the best musicians in Southern California—to come up with some of those tracks.
Wilson:Carl [Wilson] played the intro on electric 12-string [guitar]. Instead of going through an amplifier, he went directly into the recording board at Western Recorders [studio]. That’s why it sounded so pure. He went through direct. It took a while to make but we finally got it together.
Jardine:That was a technique Carl and Brian worked out together. It was very, very, carefully done and recorded straight into the chamber. There was no bleed from any of the other players. It was clean and magnificent. It has a very “Western Suite” flavor to it — a very Western feel.
Bruce Johnston:I was the new guy! That was one of the first ones I recorded — one of Mike Love’s great leads. When I joined the band, they were starting an album and Brian had a track: “Yeah, I call it ‘California Girls.’ Mike, I need some words!”
Love:Brian was in the studio with the Wrecking Crew doing this amazing track, and I stepped out into the hallway and thought, “Hmmm, California Girls.” We wanted to be inclusive, so we put East Coast girls, West Coast, Southern, Northern, and from all around the world. “I’ve been all around this great big world and I’ve seen all kinds of girls. But I couldn’t wait to get back in the states, back to the cutest girls in the world.” Some people misunderstood and thought we were saying that California girls were best, but California is a microcosm of the US, which is the microcosm of the world, and we were trying to be inclusive.
Johnston:I watched Mike in the hallway of Studio 3 at Western Recorders sit with a yellow legal pad and write the lyrics, scratch ‘em out. Write the lyrics, scratch ‘em out. Write the lyrics, keep some. He spent a couple hours while the track was being done.
Love:I wrote it while they were finishing up the track, and then I sang the lead. It was great. The beauty of it was that Brian could focus 100 percent on the tracking and the arrangements and I would focus on the hooks and the lyrics, primarily. Lyrics combined with music hooks — that was my contribution. And Brian is unchallenged when it comes to chord progressions and harmonies. Nobody was ever better.
Wilson:Mike and I wrote the song together. He’s the one who came in with all the great lyrics: “I’ve been all around the world and seen all kinds of girls.” He came up with some very brilliant words.
“Sloop John B” (1966)
Jardine:That was an old Kingston Trio song. When I sat down with Brian I suggested we add a few extra chords to give it that Beach Boys flavor and lo and behold we were able to stretch it out a little and give it that vocal identity that we’d been so well-known for.
Wilson:We didn’t know really for sure if it was right or not. Al taught me the song and together we arranged it. I did the arrangement and a couple weeks later we recorded it.
“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (1966)
Johnston:Christmastime ’65, Mike Love, [producer] Terry Melcher, [the Mamas and the Papas singer/songwriter] John Phillips, myself, and [Melcher’s mother] Doris Day heard [the Beatles’]Rubber Soul, and that changed everything. That made Brian think, “I can make an album that’s one theme.” Not unlike Johnny Mathis albums, or Frank Sinatra albums at the time, which were one romantic theme.
Love:We must have done one section of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” maybe 25 times to get it. I started calling Brian “Dog Ears” because he heard stuff that normal humans can’t hear. It was a vibration to the harmonies. People can sing the individual note, but they don’t necessarily blend very well. So we were obsessed with blending. And beyond blending it was, “Is everybody paying attention? Is everybody right in sync? Is everybody feeling good about the part?” There are all of these existential elements that were a part of what we were attempting to do.
Jardine:We suffered greatly through that one. [laughs] We sang so many iterations, and of course just the mixing process itself took a while — combining all the vocals properly and preparing it for the next day of recording. We labored on that one and “Good Vibrations.” We were always focusing on those two in particular. Those were the most important ones as far as we were concerned.
Johnston:I don’t know to this day if Brian likes the way we sang it. [laughs] We re-recorded the vocals so many times, and he didn’t like what we were doing rhythmically. Then hehauled a Scully four-track up to his dining roomat his house in Beverly Hills, then we went back to Western Recorders Studio 3 and recorded. I guess eventually he finished it, but it was hard to sing. He was definitely, as I always describe him, General Patton. He knew what he wanted.
Wilson:Harmony — something like that. We were looking for a good harmonic sound.
Love:There’s a box set ofPet Soundswith an album of just the vocals, so you can listen to just the harmonies and it’s just amazing. It really is good, but it didn’t come easily all the time.
“God Only Knows” (1966)
Wilson:Tony Asher and me wrote “God Only Knows” and when we got into the studio I started to sing it. Then I said, “Nope, this one’s for Carl.” He goes, “Brian, I don’t want to do that. That’syoursong!” I said, “No, Carl, I want you to sing it.”… We prayed. We prayed that people would like the album, [and] that it would go over well.
Johnston:I said to my girlfriend [one night], “There’s this session. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll watch it for a while.” And so we went over to the studio and Brian was just starting “God Only Knows.” And Carl had been telling me, “You better watch out for this album. It’s going to be special, Bruce.Pet Sounds —you won’t even believe it.” And that’s when I totally got hooked, just watching it come together. If you listen to the [Pet Sounds Sessionsset] you’ll hear the tracking session for “God Only Knows” and you’ll see exactly how switched on [Brian] was and how he made it happen. It’s fantastic.
Johnston:That’s what I heard. I was standing in the studio as they did that. He and [session player] Don Randi were putting white tape down on the piano strings so they wouldn’t ring. Now you have a computer with a sample piano and you just move the filter and you get the same sound … That’s what’s missing in today’s recording: the leakage. Brian had several more people than the studio would hold, and in the little small string section the drums would leak into that. Now everything is so separated, it’s not the same. The leakage is missing.
Wilson:Phil Spector taught me how to combine instruments into one sound, where you can’t tell what’s what.
“Good Vibrations” (1966)
Jardine:That was the pinnacle, when you think about it. It was the pinnacle of an era.
Wilson:That was a very complex record. We cut that in four studios. The verses at Gold Star, the bridge at Sunset Sound, the background music for the choruses at Western, and the vocals at Columbia. My brothers said, “Brian, this is going to be a No. 1 record.” I said, “I know!”
Love:The track was done in several different studios over six months time, and finally my cousin Brian said, “OK, this is going to be the single. This is the arrangement.” Everything was done in terms of the [instrumental] track, including the Theremin.
Wilson:One of my uncles had a Theremin, the kind that you hold like a crystal ball. You move your hand up and down and it makes a sound: [demonstrates] oOoOooOo. Me and my brothers flipped, we couldn’t believe it. [Later], my brother Carl asked me if we could use a Theremin in the studio. I said sure, so we called up the Musician’s Union and they sent a Theremin player. We used it and he played on “Good Vibrations.”
Love:When I heard that Theremin — that really weird oOoOoo sound — I thought, “This track is so far out that I’m not sure how people are going to take it. Our fans are used to hearing ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ ‘California Girls,’ ‘I Get Around,’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ and ‘Surfin’ USA,’ — how are they going to take this sound?” So I said, “The one thing that’s going to connect — the one thing thateveryoneunderstands — is boy/girl.” So I came up with, “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations.” “Excitation” may not be in Webster’s Dictionary, but it rhymed!
Johnston:On the drive to the recording studio, Mike’s wife was in the passenger seat as Mike wrote and dictated the lyrics all the way from Beverly Hills to Hollywood.
Love:It was 1966 and there was that whole hippie thing going on, so I wrote the lyrics as a poem about a girl who’s all into peace, love and flower power: “I love the colorful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.” It was a poem I dictated to my then-wife Suzanne, who’s the mother of two of my children, Hayleigh and Christian. I just dictated this poem and handed it to Brian and we went over it. My cousin Carl sang the verses, I did the “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations” part on the chorus, and we all did the background harmonies, which are amazing. It was true collaboration.
Wilson:It was quite a thrill to hear the new sound that we got. Quite a thrill.
“Heroes and Villains” (1967)
Jardine:That’s another great Western kind of song. It has the flavor of the cowboys and Indians thing that we grew up with as kids. It’s the story of the American frontier. I love songs that tell stories. “Heroes” was one of our favorites, and we liked to do that onstage. Just a fun, rollicking kind of story. That’s from theSmileperiod, which evolved a little slower and took a little longer to complete —like 40 years!
Johnston:Sadly,Smiledidn’t come out until years later [in 2004], and [the scaled down]Smiley Smilecame out [in 1967] instead. So it was a tough, tough creative time. And the label yelling, “Come on, make some hits! Be commercial!” Brian did something amazing but I think it gobbled him up.
Jardine:When Brian produced “Good Vibrations” — how do you follow that up? It’s kind of like you have to start all over again. You have to be prepared for reinventing yourself, and “Heroes and Villains” kind of came out of that period. We morphed into a different style, more of a homespun kind of thing because we started using our home studios around then. But it didn’t affect the songwriting.
Johnston:“Heroes and Villains” had many incarnations. I went to England and they debuted the final mix after the Bee Gees played live. This was discothèque time, right? They debuted “Heroes and Villains” in London, and people totally freaked out. They’re dancing to “Heroes and Villains” and then comes the tempo change — and they just stopped on the floor. They didn’t know what to do! And I went, “Uh oh. Maybe that’s not a good idea to change tempos.” But, to argue against myself, look at “Good Vibrations” with the tempo changes. Italsoslows down. That went to No. 1 all over the world, and so Brian did it again. But I don’t think it worked this time. But musically, oh my God —sointeresting to hear.
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“Disney Girls (1957)” (1971)
[When I was writing it] I was thinking, “Gosh, here are 15, 16, 17-year-olds smoking marijuana and doing all this stuff — let me show you whatmylife was when I was that age.” So I wrote about going back to a Disney time. It was just a real way of expressing my frustration because I was watching everyone in the music business, I thought, short-circuit their careers with the drugs. “Oh, this’ll bring out the depth of your creativity…” Wrong! It didn’t work out that way.
The line “She’s really swell ‘cause she likes church bingo chances and old-time dances” — that comes from being at a dance in a church basement. The girl I was dancing with, her parents were upstairs playing bingo. It so happened that the girl I was dancing with, her father was Woody Herman, a famous bandleader.
“Kokomo” (1988)
Love:It went to No. 1 in 1988, and it’s said to be our largest-selling single ever.
source: people.com
