The Beach Boys, who released their first record 30 years ago, have been living off their past for so long that it's easy to hate them for it. It hasn't helped that the heroes-and-villains saga of the group and its creative soul, Brian Wilson, is as twisted a melodrama as anything in show business, let alone rock & roll.
But somehow, none of this has ever diminished the records, which remain remarkably
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fresh and endlessly influential. Precious few artists boast a legacy as rich as the dozens of songs written and produced by Brian Wilson between "Surfin' USA" (1963) and "Good Vibrations" (1966), a catalog that's touched musicians from the Beatles to ex-Pixie Frank Black, who recently covered "Hang On to Your Ego." A mid-'70s reissue of the hits,
Endless Summer, ensured the Beach Boys a lucrative eternity as an oldies act.
Good Vibrations, a five-CD set with one disc devoted to alternate takes and studio rarities, puts the hits in a broader context, capturing the group's powerful ascent and painful fall.
The Beach Boys were the vital link between the vocal groups of the '50s and the rock bands of the '60s; they were also the first major pop group to both write and produce their own records. The Beatles had an essential partner in producer George Martin; the Beach Boys had Brian Wilson, who wrote the songs with a variety of collaborators but who defined them with his singular ear for melody, vocal harmony and instrumental arrangement. From the hedonistic fantasy of "Fun, Fun, Fun" to the adolescent angst of "Don't Worry Baby," the Beach Boys defined the early-'60s innocence of teenage America with rock songs of almost folklike simplicity. "The Warmth of the Sun," a pensive ballad written in response to the assassination of President Kennedy, suggested a cultural sea change, and indeed, as Disc 1 ends with a sweetly rendered, previously unreleased concert version of "Hushabye," the sound of the Beach Boys seems already touched with nostalgia.
Brian Wilson's musical inventiveness, however, kept the Beach Boys on the cutting edge with the galvanizing propulsion of "I Get Around," signaling a whole new level of achievement. By 1965, Wilson, who had already experienced a nervous breakdown, had quit touring with the group to write songs and record instrumental tracks with the best session players in Los Angeles. The result was a carefully sculpted style epitomized by the stately introduction to "California Girls," with keyboards, guitars and horns arranged in a manner so precise as to highlight the flourish of a cymbal. Increasingly, Wilson's productions reflected a keen appreciation of the work of Phil Spector, but while Spector's celebrated Wall of Sound massed musical parts into a nearly indistinguishable whole, Wilson was a master at illuminating the individual voice of each instrument, a vision brilliantly realized in the rich musical weave of the Beach Boys' masterpiece, Pet Sounds.
Wilson was as o
