Californian Pastoral: The Beach Boys’ ‘Friends’ Revisited

The music Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys recorded after the failed Smile project – I’m talking about records released between 1968 and 1973 – has been long misunderstood, ignored, or dismissed. The standard narrative is that Brian, after the triumphs of Pet Sounds and ‘Good Vibrations’, burnt out creatively and mentally trying to complete Smile; his fellow Beach Boys slapped together a stoner substitute called Smiley Smile; the band cemented their cultural irrelevance by withdrawing from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. “You’ll never have to hear surf music again,” mumbled Jimi Hendrix on ‘Third Stone From The Sun’.

Hendrix’s forecast might have proved correct (although by now the Beach Boys were not creating much ’surf music’). A succession of Beach Boys albums and singles failed to sell. It looked as though their prominence in the American popular music scene had passed forever. Of course the band eventually reclaimed their popularity with the oldies surf music compilation Endless Summer in 1974 and, under the leadership of Mike Love and with the occasional participation of the disturbed Brian Wilson, became a touring surf music jukebox of increasingly diminishing returns (It never ends: in a few weeks the Mike Love/Bruce Johnson band masquerading as ‘The Beach Boys’ will begin their 2008 summer tour at the Hilton in Atlantic City, NJ).

But let’s look back to that period of commercial failure. Smiley Smile was followed by Wild Honey (1967), Friends (1968), 20/20 (1969), Sunflower (1971), Surf’s Up (1972), Carl and the Passions – So Tough (1972) and Holland (1973). There were also two concert albums, Live in London (1968, released 1970) and In Concert (1973).

These records contain some of the band’s very best music. In contrast to the total authority Brian Wilson exercised on Pet Sounds, his songwriting and production contributions in this era tended towards collaboration. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The band had a lot to offer beyond flawless harmonies. Carl and Dennis Wilson, in particular, emerged from Brian’s shadow to create their own classic songs.

The surf and hot rod mythology of the early Beach Boys records was superceded, temporarily, by other concerns. Peter Ames Carlin in Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson (Rodale, 2006) writes of Brian’s mindset post-Smile:

His psyche battered by its most recent journey into the wilderness, now Brian (often writing with the assistance of Mike and sometimes combinations of other bandmates) looked for transcendence in the textures of the natural world and the simple, homey life unfolding beneath its bowers.

…

What begins to emerge in this period – which extends into 1968’s Friends with songs such as ‘Wake The World’, then on through ‘Cool Cool Water’ and another bird song, ‘At My Window’ – is an awe for the natural world that echoes ideals that found their first voice with the transcendentalists of the mid-nineteenth century. For like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Brian and, to an extent, the other Beach Boys created a vision of life in which beauty (interpreted perhaps as the presence of God or a connection to the sacred) becomes most vivid in the absence of the usual clamor of life.

…

And though this lyrical pose often put the group’s music at odds with the reality of their own lives, it’s the same contradiction that lurked beneath the Beach Boys when they were nonsurfers who just happened to be the nation’s most successful purveyors of songs about surfing. What also remained consistent was the yearning that fired their dreams. For even if they couldn’t quite attain the simple happiness they described, there was nothing phony about the desperation that animated their fantasies.

Friends is perhaps the best expression of this appealing, idealistic yearning: a pastoral song cycle about nature, romantic love, and having kids. The mood is gentle, celebratory, and funny. The lyrics are simple and optimistic:

“We’ve been friends now for so many years
We’ve been together through the good times and the tears
Dim dipple ee dim dipple ay dim dipple oo dim dee aye oh.”
(‘Friends’)

“Wake the world with a brand new morning
Say hello to another fine morning
Got my face in the running water
Making my life so much brighter now.”
(‘Wake The World’)

“Little bird up in a tree
Looked down a sang a song to me
The trout in a shiny brook
Gave the worm another look
And told me not to worry about my life.”
(‘Little Bird’)

“Again at the park on a nice summer day
High up above me the trees gently sway
A bird flew away and I went to sleep.”
(‘I Went To Sleep’)

Who would guess that Dennis Wilson befriended Charles Manson during the sessions for this pacifistic album?

Here are some clips. First up is a promo film for the ‘Friends’ single featuring the band (without Brian):

Carl in a promo film for ‘Wake The World’ – out in the snow:

Here is ‘Busy Doin’ Nothin” illustrated with some stills of Brian:

‘With Me Tonight’ (a Smiley Smile track):

And here is ‘Time to Get Alone’ (a 20/20 track) illustrated with various stills:

A few years ago I tried to improve on what I considered the flaws and missed opportunities of the original LP by reprogramming the album for CD-R. I dispensed with ‘Diamond Head’ and ‘Transcendental Meditation’ – two pieces that seemed anomalous – and borrowed a few tracks from the other late 60s albums that fit right into the mood (‘Time To Get Alone’ is surely one of Brian’s great near-forgotten songs). The track order roughly reflects a day in this pastoral life, from morning to night. Create a mix-tape or MP3 playlist and listen to how it works as a whole.

Meant For You
Friends
Wake The World
Be Here In The Morning
Busy Doin’ Nothin’
I’d Love Just Once To See You*
When A Man Needs A Woman
Passing By
Let The Wind Blow**
Anna Lee, The Healer
Little Bird
Be Still
With Me Tonight#
Time To Get Alone+
I Went to Sleep+

* from Wild Honey
** from Wild Honey; but the best available version is the stereo remix from Hawthorne, California
# from Smiley Smile
+ from 20/20

I’ve always felt that one of Brian Wilson’s greatest talents is orchestration. This revised Friends is a fine example of his art, with idiosyncrasies unique to the period (the album was partially recording inside Brian’s Bel Air home). Somebody’s out-of-tune honky tonk piano is used often: listen to its juxtaposition with the bass guitar at the beginning of ‘Let The Wind Blow’. ‘Wake The World’ is centred around a bass line, with support from the piano, some sort of organ, strings, tuba, and drums. ‘Busy Doin’ Nothin”, a bossa nova about Brian’s procrastination, plays off an acoustic rhythm guitar with the dense chords of the woodwind ensemble (a range of clarinets and flutes). The music is never aggressive; Brian’s orchestration of Friends is in perfect consonance with its outlook.

This venture into Californian pastoral had no success in the U.S. at the time of release (a peak at #126 on the charts), but deserves re-appraisal. It is, after all, Brian Wilson’s personal favourite.

[This post is illustrated with stills from Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse (1967) available at the Movie Screenshots Blog. I originally posted on the subject of my revised Friends on the Cabinessence message board back in December 2007.]

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Concert Notes #1: Brian Wilson at the Sydney Festival, January 8 & 9, 2008
• Brian Wilson’s That Lucky Old Sun: Full Album Stream
• “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys (1966)
• Beach Boys Apologetic (part-5)