The Beach Boys Beach Boys's Party! - Stack-O-Tracks (CD)

(Capitol) 30 tracks (74:31) with 24 page booklet.
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Beach Boy's Party!: One night in June of 1965, I and the other Beach Boys invited some friends to the recording studio to take part in what was to be the first and only live party album. We even had some beers for everybody. I had made up a list of songs for us to have as a guideline. The party was live and happenin'. The engineer set up the microphones so that everybody in the room was heard loud and clear. Back in high school Mike and I and two of my friends at Hawthorne High School sang 'Hully Gully- at an assembly. Now, we really did it up good with instruments too on our party album. The group blend was really good and tight. There is somethin' very special about recording live. The fact that you make little mistakes is overlooked. This is the realism of a live recording.

The way that the conversation kept gain' between songs was exciting. We were cookin'. Our friends were all smiles throughout the whole recording. The mood was up and we were on our way. As you might have noticed, we did some Beatle songs. Should've Known Better' was Carl's favorite Beatle song. We all hoped they would get a kick out of our doin' a tribute to their great songwriting. The boys and girls that we invited really enjoyed themselves. They really gave this album the excitment that it needed. On 'Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow' Mike sang gutteral sounds. This cut was tearin' it up. We never got more excited than on this one. -Devoted To You- was a ballad which really slowed down the mood for a couple of minutes. This one was an old Everly Brothers song. Now we were rockin' again with 'Alley Oop.- This one was a funny song. It was about a guy of ancient times that nobody ever fooled with. His name was Alley Oop.

 Our good friend, Dean Torrence, came by just in time to sing the lead with me on 'Barbara Ann.- He and I were screaching for those high notes. Dean always did have a handsome face. He and Jan and me used to hang out together. They were real cool guys. -There's No Other' was a Phil Spector song. I loved singin' the lead on this one. The party album was a challenge for us to try our hand at spontaneity. It worked. We all, including our friends, worked hard to bring to all of you a live recording like this one. So call some friends and sit down and join the party as you listen to this one. Have a good party.




Stack-O-Tracks literally means an album of just the instrumental tracks from 12 of my records. There are no voices on this album. Making an instrumental track is a whole experience. It starts after you have written a song. As I write a song, I write some of the instrumental piano and pluck some of the different notes for the arrangement. It's impossible to play the whole arrangement on the piano but you play
just enough to get the overall feelin' of the record. It is an art in itself.

I always get that bigger picture of my records at my piano before I record them. I go in there prepared. 'In My Room' was an indication of my simplicity with our earlier records. I used a harp on it. It added a holiness to it. The harp was played by Maureen Love, Mike's sister. -Catch A Wave- was more rhythmic. The guitars were more clean and driving as if to say that they didn't wanna' stop. The piano was played by me and it was perfectly synchronized with the guitars. The 3 different sounds combined to make one unique sound. I was ecstatic about this. 'Wild Honey' was primarily a piano type record. used my grand piano at my studio in Bel Air. 'Little Saint Nick' was in the spirit of 'Little Deuce Coupe,' with its shuffle beat rhythm. The real test is to make it sound easy. Some people find the shuffle to be just as fun to dance to as rock and roll. 'Do It Again' was a classic. It had everything a listener could want: sound bliss, rhythm, and excitement. It really rocked slowly.

'Wouldn't It Be Nice' was recorded with 2 accordions. That gave it a unique sound. This track is one of my biggest accomplishments ever. It rocked along and it even slowed down toward the end. This is called a retard. Then it went right back to the regular rhythm for the fade sequence. 'God Only Knows' was done with a strip of masking tape over the strings of my piano. This gave the piano a plucking sound. I also used the bottoms of 2 plastic orange juice containers for our percussion. This track was holy. 'Little Honda' was my biggest excitement record of the early sixties. This track was so exciting that even the best of them would agree. 'Here Today' was a work of art in my opinion. It was an assertive track with utilization of basses played up higher. The trombones gave it that masculine touch. 'You're So Good To Me' was spearheaded by a guitar sent through a Leslie organ speaker. It gave it an eerie effect.

'Let Him Run Wild- was also a very sensitive piece of music, ranging from cool vibraphones to driving, loud horns and basic instruments such as drums and basses and guitars. Making a track calls for good concentration and a heart full of musical feelings to stay up on your toes and always have the overall sound and feeling in mind. Even though these tracks are presented without my vocal arrangements and harmonies, they are my music. I am proud to share with you my music, because I believe music is god's voice.

Brian Wilson

Beach Boys

Brian Wilson (vocals, piano born June 20, 1942),
Dennis Wilson (drums born 4. 12. 1944, died 28. 12. 1983),
Carl Wilson (vocals, guitar born 21. 12. 1946, died 6. 2. 1998),
Al Jardine (vocals, guitar born 3. 9. 1942) and
Mike Love (born 15. 3. 1941)

 

The Beach Boys, formed in 1961, still extant in 1975 with no prospect of dissolution, were America's only real challenge to the Beatles and certainly the most prominent white American group of the pre-psychedelic era.

The group's formation took place in a middle-class Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, and was centred around the teenage Wilson Brothers — Brian (born June 20, 1942); Dennis (Dec. 4, 1944); and Carl (Dec. 21, 1946) — their cousin Mike Love (March 15, 1941); and friend Alan Jardine (Sept. 3, 1942). Harmony singing had always been an important part of their family life, and when the Wilson parents took a holiday in Mexico in September 1961 it was a perfect opportunity for the kids to rent instruments and start a group in their living room. It was Dennis's addiction to the Californian sport of surf-ing that gave the group their initial identity, one which survives indelibly in the minds of today's audiences. He sug-gested that the group sing about the pastime, and a song (written by Brian and Mike) called `Surfin" was the im-mediate result.

Their father, Murray Wilson, himself a song-writer, took the boys along to his music publisher and the song was recorded in somewhat improvised conditions with Carl on guitar, Alan on acoustic bass, and Brian providing percussive support on a garbage can. The publisher procured a release for the record on the local X label and then the slightly larger Candix label, and against all the odds it stuck around the lower limits of the American Hot Hundred for six weeks — based mainly on sales to Californian surfer boys and girls, no doubt. They also began to appear in public, initially as the Pendletones (after a make of heavy plaid shirt which surfers wore and which became their early uni-form), briefly as Carl and the Passions, and ultimately as the Beach Boys, the last name being a suggestion from Can-dix's promotion man. Their concert debut under this name was in the Ritchie Valens Memorial Concert in Long Beach Municipal Auditorium on Dec. 31, 1961. Jardine left around this time to pursue his dentistry studies and was replaced by neighbour David Marks who played rhythm guitar, enabling Brian to switch to bass guitar.

Dennis played drums, while Mike Love- shared the lead vocals with Brian. When Candix, a small label, folded early in 1962, Murray Wilson took the boys along to Capitol Records and played producer Nik Venet acetates of `Surfin' Safari' and '409' — the latter a hymn in praise of the singer's car. Venet grasped the possibilities, signed the group, and `Surfin' Safari' became a national Top Twenty hit. 'Ten Little Indians', the follow-up, was a comparative flop, but the next one was big indeed : `Surfin' USA' reached No. 3 in the early summer of 1963. In addition, it laid bare the influences be-hind the growing talent of Brian Wilson, who was coming to the forefront as the group's real creative force. For `Surfin' USA' Brian had borrowed the tune and treatment from Chuck Berry's 'Sweet Little Sixteen', adding new words and a lead vocal surrounded by the beginnings of a cool, liquid harmony style strongly reminiscent of the Four Freshmen (and, by implication, the American glee-club tradition).

The next single, 'Surfer Girl', a wistful, yearning ballad emphasized the harmonies even more heavily as the voices began to twist and turn in creamy, close-packed, harmoni-cally sophisticated chorales, topped off with a gimmick adapted from East Coast vocal group records — Brian's cool, cruising falsetto, which became a major trademark. `Surfin' USA' and 'Surfer Girl' marked the complementary modes which Brian and the group explored for the next three years. The up-tempo style led to 'Fun Fun Fun', 'I Get Around' (a No. 1), 'When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)', `Dance Dance Dance', and 'Help Me Rhonda' (another No. 1) — all Top Ten hits in 1964 and 1965 — while the possibili-ties of the ballad form were explored with ever more trance-like effect in such classics as 'In My Room', 'The Lonely Sea', 'Girls On The Beach', 'Don't Worry Baby', 'The Warmth Of The Sun', 'She Knows Me Too Well', 'Kiss Me Baby', and 'Please Let Me Wonder' from the same period.

By this time, too, Jardine had returned to the fold, displacing Marks. On a wider front, the group's own influence had become widespread. Their early surfing records sparked off a com-plete genre, opening the way for performers like Jan and Dean (`Surf City'), Bruce (Johnston) and Terry (Melcher) with 'Summer Means Fun', Ronnie and the Daytonas (Teach Boy'), Jack Nitszche (`The Lonely Surfer'), Dick Dale and the Del-Tones (`Surf Beat'), and hundreds of aspiring Californian garage bands. When surfing's vogue dropped off, the Beach Boys put out an album of car songs called Little Deuce Coupe, featuring '409' alongside other beauties like 'Our Car Club', 'Cherry Cherry Coupe', `No-Go Showboat' and 'Custom Machine'. Sure enough, others responded : Jan and Dean with 'Dead Man's Curve' and `Drag City', Bruce and Terry with 'Custom Machine' and `Hot Rod USA', Ronnie and the Daytonas with 'GTO', the Rip-Chords with 'Hey Little Cobra' and 'Three Window Coupe'.

Through all this, Brian Wilson was as a journalist : absorbing and reflecting the emerging lifestyle of teenage California, a lifestyle which — luckily for him — kids from New York to London to Paris also decided they wanted to emulate. He wrote many of the early lyrics himself. In cold print they lack grace and wit, but sung by the group they are perfect expressions of teen angst in all its forms.