Product Description

Mike Love has worn down the Beach Boys' cars-and-surf soundinto empty exercises in nostalgia while Brian Wilson based his reputation among the rock intelligentsia almost entirelyupon PET SOUNDS and the unreleased SMILE. Nevertheless, there are many Beach Boys cultists who feel that SUNFLOWER and SURF'S UP are the band's finest work.
Released in 1970 and '71 as the first products of their new Brother Records deal with Warner Brothers, whose commercial and artistic expectations were much different than the group had experienced atCapitol, these are relaxed, confident records with a progressive, experimental edge. While there's some missteps--Love's "Student Demonstration Time" is possibly the band's worst song ever--the high points are exquisite. Bruce Johnston's "Disney Girls", Carl Wilson's "Don't Go Near the Water", and Brian's "Til I Die", "Cool Cool Water" and the astonishing SMILE outtake "Surf's Up" are among the band's very finest songs.

Track Listing

1. Slip On Through
2. This Whole World
3. Add Some Music To Your Day
4. Got To Know The Woman
5. Deirdre
6. It's About Time
7. Tears In The Morning
8. All I Wanna Do
9. Forever
10. Our Sweet Love
11. At My Window
12. Cool Cool Water
13. Don't Go Near The Water
14. Long Promised Road
15. Take A Load Off Your Feet
16. Disney Girls
17. Student Demonstration Time
18. Feel Flows
19. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
20. Day In The Life Of A Tree
21. Till I Die
22. Surf's Up

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2380 in Music
• Released on: 2000-08-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered

Amazon.co.uk Review
Many reckon 1970's Sunflower to be amongst the Beach Boys' finest moments. Certainly, it has a maturity and consistency which belies the turmoil the Wilson brothers must have been feeling at the time--a bitter split with their label coincided with creative lynch-pin Brian Wilson's withdrawal from the spotlight. This is no Pet Sounds, however. Tracks such as "At My Window" and "Slip on Through" display an unseemly fondness for pop schmaltz, while "It's About Time" is Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" diluted. Dennis Wilson's rather beautiful "Forever" and the timeless "Tears In The Morning" go some way to rectifying the balance, though. 1971's Surf's Up, meanwhile, is a decidedly patchy affair. Dennis had mostly succumbed to his elder brother's demons, and tracks such as Mike Love's pseudo-political "Student Demonstration Time" are plain embarrassing. Meanwhile, proto-green politics take over in places. Fortunately, the album is saved by two incredible Brian Wilson songs: the brass-textured title track (one of the highlights of shelved Smile), and the morbid introspection of "Till I Die". This joint reissue included new liner notes by Wilson biographer Timothy White. --Jerry Thackray

Customer Reviews

Two of the band's very finest....

Best songs on Sunflower: "All I Wanna Do", "This Whole World", "Forever", "Cool, Cool Water", "Deirdre"

Best songs on Surf's Up: "Feel Flows", "Disney Girls (1957), "Surf's Up", "Til I Die", "Long Promised Road"

Erratic they both may be, but Sunflower and Surf's Up are my two favourite albums by the Beach Boys....yes, better than Pet Sounds! Sunflower was tipped to be the band's major comeback following some commercially dry years following the seminal "Good Vibrations" single; it wasn't quite the hit it should have been, and I stress SHOULD have been. We're talking some of the most fantastic pop music ever created here. And, admittedly, some not so great tunes. But the brilliant more than outweighs the banal, and the result is one that's deservedly become a fan favourite. It's also the most musically democratic of any of the Beach Boys albums; with Brian Wilson retreating from the limelight (though still contributing some absolutely fantastic songs), the likes of Dennis Wilson and Bruce Johnstone shine the brightest on Sunflower, while Carl Wilson would come close to stealing the show on Surf's Up.

Anyway, back to Sunflower; after delivering some very strong songs on Friends and 20/20, Dennis Wilson's finest hour within the band was here on this album; the opening "Slip on Through" is uplifting, glorious and a perfect opening. Brian meanwhile delivers what he does best on the breathtaking "This Whole World", which feels like a glorious summer's morning in all of its wonderful two minutes; boasting more melodic beauty and sweeping loveliness than pretty much all of Pet Sounds, I'd go as far to say that this song is the man's most delightful song ever. "Add Some Music to Your Day" isn't really a favourite of mine; the lyrics are pretty grating, though the vocal harmonies and musical melodies are as peerless as ever. Instead, skip right to the next song; "Got to Know the Woman" is a total delight, another Dennis song and one that crackles and struts along wonderfully from start to finish; I don't think the rest of the band could have sung this song as convincingly, as Dennis appeared to be the only one of The Beach Boys would exuded any kind of sex appeal. The swaying, summery and romantic "Deirdre" is one of the band's most underrated; absolutely wonderful music, gorgeous atmosphere and a lovely lead vocal from Bruce Johnstone; on this album and Surf's Up he too would emerge temporarily as a formidable element of the band. He'd later vanish into the background, but for a while, his songs were delightful. Another Dennis Wilson song arrives with the exciting, rocking "It's About Time", and this is followed by the Parisian-tinged "Tears of the Morning", which is a melodramatic but entertaining Johnstone ballad, which has a really lovely, haunting finale.

Sunflower's most beautiful song arrives in the form of "All I Wanna Do", which is, bar none, my favourite Beach Boys song ever; vocal-wise, I never found Mike Love to be my favourite in the band, but his singing here, coupled with some of Brian's most atmospheric, swooning, intoxicating and gorgeous music, is something to fall head over heels for. Evocative of a warm midnight summer swim, this is the kind of maddeningly underrated song that makes post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys music the treasured things of cult beauty they are. Even though they're one of the most famous bands of all time, they're also one of the most overlooked in regards to their wilderness era of 1968-1973. "Forever" is often regarded as Dennis Wilson's finest song ever, and the fans are right all the way; embellished with the kind of simple, heartfelt lyrics that really are quite lovely; it has some massively effective, building, rising yet subtle crescendos which thankfully fall short of the kind of bombast that would make his contributions on 1972's Carl and the Passions album a little tougher to digest. The tender, smitten "Our Sweet Love" is a glorious Brian Wilson gem; crammed with so many lovely moments that it's hard to resist. The Al Jardine sung "At My Window" is a little overly sentimental, but real pretty with it too. One of the more intriguing songs to be created during Brian Wilson's ill-fated Smile sessions, the closing "Cool, Cool Water" is magnificent, an evocative, surreal and strange suite, swirling with great vocals and some very impressive structural experimentation. One of the weirdest and most charming Beach Boys songs ever, it makes for a delightful close to a truly delightful album.

One year later and the band were almost a commercial proposition again, and they were even almost back in the realm of cool; this was mostly thanks to the terrific Surf's Up, which really could have been the start of a whole new era for the Beach Boys (despite Dennis` near total absence from proceedings)....if only had they hadn't spoiled it all with a distinctly below-average album after this one. Though the sentiments sometimes come across as naïve, the opening "Don't Go Near the Water" marked an interesting, environmentally concerned new direction; there are some interesting and entertaining musical and vocal flourishes. The album really takes off with the splendid "Long Promised Road", which is the first of Carl Wilson's formidable contributions to the album; featuring a dizzying, spellbinding musical interlude which sounds a lot like Pink Floyd but in a good mood, this is epic, spacious and really quite exciting, with one of the best-ever choruses the band ever composed. Hmm, I'm not so sure about "Take a Load of Your Feet"; it's charming in its own innocuous way, despite the often banal lyrics.

Luckily, the album really, really, REALLY gets better with "Disney Girls (1957)", which is Bruce Johnstone's absolute peak and a truly adorable thing of nostalgic wonder; I wasn't even alive in 1957, but this song just gets me in a way that makes me pine for similarly carefree, innocent summer times. Absolutely stunning harmonies, smile-inducing keyboard parts, a truly dreamy mid-section and a truly winsome chorus make this one a true Beach Boys classic, as good as the very best Brian, Dennis or Carl songs. True to Surf's Up erratic nature, we're jolted back into rough and ready rock with Mike Love's "Student Demonstration Time", which is a re-working of an old rock and roll staple, and actually, listening to it now, it's not as bad as I remember it being on first listen. Maybe it was because it followed "Disney Girls" that it seemed like a let down, and to be honest, it's nothing special, but it's not too bad at all.

Carl's majestic "Feel Flows" was featured in Cameron Crowe's utterly charming film Almost Famous, and it was watching this film and being entranced by this song that made me venture further into the Beach Boys more obscure era; as a result, I'll always have a special place in my heart for this song, it being more or less responsible for discovering the multitude of wonderful songs this most wonderful of bands have created. A song of ethereal, magical, beguiling power, it rises and rises into some kind of unheard of plane....when I say that this album could have marked a whole new era for the band, it's this song that establishes this truly miraculous new direction the best of all. Words defy me trying to encapsulate just how good this song is; for me, you can keep your "God Only Knows", "I Get Around", "Good Vibrations" and "California Girls", this is the kind of song I think of when I think of truly, truly brilliant Beach Boys songs ever. Well, we're on a high at this stage, and Al Jardine's rather fine , brief interlude "I've Been Waiting for Tomorrow" is an eerie, haunting folky lament, effectively dressed up in a spooky, echoing production. One of the oddest Beach Boys songs ever follows; "A Day in the Life of a Tree" is indeed told by the viewpoint of the eponymous subject; it's a miracle this song even comes to close to working successfully, but it does, and Brian's decision to select the band's manager as singer was an inspired moment of lateral thinking. Two eternally magnificent Brian creations close the album; "Til I Die" is utterly haunting, moving, heartbreaking and yet bizarrely life-affirming; it's as though the song is resigned to the laws of nature and life/death, but not crushed by such harsh truths; startling, direct lyrics, astonishing singing.....it's a true gem. Amazingly, this is surpassed by the truly brilliant title track, which was the centrepiece of the Smile project and reworked here to include that same album's "Child is Father to the Man" segment and with new vocals by Carl Wilson during its first half; it's a regal, magisterial, wintry and truly strange creation, given an oblique, bizarre edge by Van Dyke Parks' painterly, poetic lyrics and during the captivating second half (which features the original Brian vocals), a simultaneous sense of melancholy and comforting beauty....the "I heard the words, wonderful thing, a children's song...." moment is pure crystallised loveliness.

These are two great, great albums, an absolute must and perfect introduction for those wishing to know more about the Beach Boys beyond Pet Sounds and their early, radio-friendly surf/hot rod staples. There are some truly beautiful moments to savour here....listen and be entranced.

Very mixed bag of pap and classics
I'm in two minds over this 'twofer'. On the plus side, it's nice to see a record company admitting that, with so many records of the 60s and 70s coming in at rather less than 39 minutes, it's easy to squeeze two of them onto a single CD. On the negative side, the weaker album does tend to dilute the impact of the stronger one.

In this case, I regard SURF'S UP as a classic. (Yes, it's got a couple of weak tracks on it, but it's also got some stunners.) The trouble is that SUNFLOWER, to my ears, is mainly dross, so I can't wait to get past the first twelve tracks.

SURF'S UP has rightly received much attention over the years. I only bought the LP after hearing Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues selecting the title track as one of his all-time favourites on a radio show in the late 70s. Then one of the Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs featured Bruce Johnston singing 'Disney Girls' solo at the piano. And of course 'Feel Flows' features in the end-title credits of Cameron Crowe's ALMOST FAMOUS. A personal favourite of mine is 'Long Promised Road' which has a wonderful guitar/kazoo(?) solo towards the end.

The sleeve notes are fascinating, not least because they fail to mention the whole Charles Manson thing. (Manson used Dennis Wilson's house for a while before the Sharon Tate killings.) Equally intriguing are the details on the 'Surf's Up' track, which imply that all of it was recorded not in 1970, but in 1966. (That four-year difference is vital for anyone who followed the creative battles between the Beach Boys and the Beatles.) 'Surf's Up' was actually intended to be a pastiche, apparently, which should (but doesn't) make us have second thoughts about awarding it true classic status.

I have a very small collection of Beach Boys albums, but in my view, the best two are SURF'S UP and the Brian Wilson selection of Greatest Hits, whose name I forget. (I am less enamoured by PET SOUNDS, because they seem to think the CD was better released in mono.)

From innocence to darkness
Unintentional symbolism marks the transition between the two albums featured on this CD. Brian Wilson's inspired and celebratory 'Cool, Cool Water' makes way for Al Jardine's ecologically aware 'Don't Go Near The Water', representing the step from 1960s innocence to 1970s realisation. Both tracks, in this sense, typify the moods of their respective albums. 'Sunflower' is aptly-named, a largely positive collection on which Dennis Wilson asserts his ability to contribute worthwhile material. 'Slip On Through' slots well into the upbeat Beach Boys tradition, 'Got To Know The Woman' is a return to driving rock 'n' roll and 'Forever' is just sweet and delicate. Bruce Johnston adds mature ballads and Brian Wilson, while not supplying anything of the stature of past hit singles, is on good form.

'Surf's Up', despite its darker feel, is lovingly-crafted throughout. Only Mike Love's 'Student Demonstration Time' disappoints. It's based on The Coasters hit, 'Riot In Cell Block No. 9', a song I've never liked. Carl Wilson weighs in with an unexpected gem, 'Feel Flows', and Al Jardine hits a purple patch with his three songs. Yet Brian Wilson's contributions, three songs left until the end, steal the show. 'Til I Die' is a spine-tingler and the title track is a tour de force.

This is the best two-for-one Beach Boys CD available and offers consistent quality, though it doesn't contain any of the band's classic singles.