The Beach Boys, We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years: Review

In 1976, after a few years of personal and creative setbacks, the Beach Boys‘label at the time, Reprise Records, launched a publicity campaignproclaiming,”Brian’s Back!”

It was a bit misleading: While Brian Wilson‘s role in the group’s album that year, 15 Big Ones, had expanded since 1973’s underratedHolland, where he was virtually absent, he cowrote only a handful of songs on the covers-heavy LP, and his production credit has been undermined for years by band members and associates who said he was in no shape to fulfill the task on his own.

Things somewhat improvedon 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, which included 14 songs, all written or cowritten by Wilson, andonce again a “produced by” credit for the troubled singer and songwriter, who by then was under 24-hour supervised care by controversial psychologist Eugene Landy. Initially developed as a solo project, on which Wilson played most of the instruments, Love You amounted to a 35-minutejourney through his fractured psycheviastream-of-consciousness songs about the solar system and Johnny Carson.

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The era is thoroughly and expertly documented in the three-CDWe Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years, which dissects the makings of15 Big OnesandThe Beach Boys Love You, as well as Adult/Child, the now-mythical abandoned album that was to follow Love You. Though their standing has improved over the years, especially the early synthesizer experiments onThe Beach Boys Love You, neither of the released records is ever mentioned in the same revered breath asPet Sounds,Surf’s Upor even Holland.We Gotta Groove probablywon’t change that.

But there is new insight to be uncovered in the 73 tracks, 35 of them previously unreleased, mostly recorded in 1976 and 1977 at the Beach Boys’ Brother Studio in Santa Monica, California.The Beach Boys Love You, included on We Gotta Groove in its original 1977 mix and with26 additional tracks from the sessions (including Wilson’s original cassette demos), remains one of the most personal and oddest records (“Honkin’ Down the Highway”? “Solar System”?) Wilson ever made. Yet it’s the slightly more conventional songs that stand out: the lively “Let Us Go on This Way,” the nostalgic “The Night Was So Young,” “I’ll Bet He’s Nice” (featuring scarred vocals by all three Wilson brothers), “Airplane,” with its end-of-song tone shift, and the previously unreleased “We Gotta Groove.”

At the time, Love You was seen as a commercial disappointment following 15 Big Ones, the Beach Boys’ first Top 10albumsince Pet Sounds. But the 1976outing — represented here by a dozen outtakes and alternate mixes— sprung to life only a few times, particularly on the Wilson cowrite “Had to Phone Ya” (a “Deconstructed Mix” is included) and theTop 5 cover of Chuck Berry‘s “Rock and Roll Music” (the backing track mix is on We Gotta Groove). There was more frustration when Love You‘s follow-up, Adult/Child, was scrapped, reportedly by Wilson’s bandmates for, among other concerns, its un-Beach Boys-like big-band and orchestrated ballads arrangements.

Heard today, the long-bootlegged album is both a revealing and somewhat unsettling glimpse into Brian Wilson’s mindset after years of idleness. Musically more unruly than Love You, and lyrically a hodgepodge of fragmented thoughts and recollections, Adult/Child is nonetheless a fascinating missing piece to the puzzle and a final burst of creative energy (“It’s Over Now” and “Still I Dream of It” are as good as anything from the era) beforeWilson tailspinned intoreclusion for 10 years. As such,We Gotta Groove doesn’t rewrite the Beach Boys’ history, circa 1976-77; it presents it, flaws and all, asthe closing of a chapter. There was more music to come from the group, some of it with Wilson, but they’d never be as vital again.