Now most of you guys know that I have had very little good to say about the Beach Boys Love You album in the past. A couple days ago I put the CD in my boombox while preparing dinner, and something incredible and unexpected happened: I loved every minute of it. I was jumping around the kitchen singing along with the likes of "Roller Skating Child" and "Ding Dang" and "Solar System" and "Love is a Woman" like it was the Beatles or something. All of a sudden, all of the great things the Love You aficionados have been saying all along made sense. I was in a euphoric state of shock when it was all over. I need some help to determine exactly what happened to me.

What were you preparing? Hash browns?!

I've said a few times on other threads: when it came out in spring 1977, I absolutely HATED "Love You." But I gave it a chance and kept listening, and now it's one of my five favorite BB albums.

I'd say the question shouldn't be "why do you now like it" but rather, "why DIDN'T you like it before?"

For me, it was a combination of the following:

* On its surface, it sounded like nothing the group had done before. It was certainly a radical departure from the commercial, accessible FIFTEEN BIG ONES.
* The group's hoarse vocals and the somewhat thin (in spots) background vocals were jarring to someone who was concurrently discovering the group's "classic" records, which, vocally, were ANYTHING but "thin" or "weak" or "hoarse."
* Some of the lyrics made me cringe.
* Like the vocal sound, the synth-based instrumental settings were jarring.

That was what I DIDN'T like about LOVE YOU when I first heard it. But I think it's an amazing record. It takes risks, for one thing (like I said, no BB album before or since was such a radical departure from what came before in so many ways).

Musically, I think the arrangements are stunning: the voicings and the way the different instrumental voices play off of and almost "talk to" each other (best example: "I'll Bet He's Nice"); the drum parts (one of the best examples ever of how Brian couldn't be satisfied with a drummer who pounded away on two and four, but who played patterns that, again, played off and "talked to" the other percussion and instrumental voices). The use of the group's individual lead voices (again, exemplified on "I'll Bet He's Nice," where Brian has his brothers trading off the lead vocal part almost line by line). The BACKGROUND vocals, which, am I the only person who has noticed this, was the last time that the group had a new album dominated by their classic background vocal blend of Mike on bass, Carl, Al and Denny in the middle, and Brian high and sweet in top...and speaking of "Brian high and sweet on top," SCREW that awful, awful, hideous AWFUL TRACK "She's Got Rhythm" on MIU that everyone oohed and ahhhed over ("Brian's singing high again!" Yeah, but THE SONG SUCKS!!!)...Brian's falsetto lead passages on "Airplane" are not only among the prettiest singing he ever dud; they're also pretty much the last time that he sang like "the old Brian."

The sweet dumbness of the lyrics, which, the more I listened, fit the melodies and the tone of the songs and sounded just fine to me if I didn't THINK about them too much.

And the cover. I liked the cover.

And the title. In angry "rock vs. Disco" 1977, when the last best hope for rock and roll seemed to be angry new wave or angrier punk, the title THE BEACH BOYS LOVE YOU was a breath of fresh air. The Beach Boys love ME? Why, thank you!

It's just a sweet, complex, weird, quirky, beautiful album that works on so many different levels that it's easy to dismiss it...believe me, because when it came out, I dismissed it. But to me, LOVE YOU stands right there with PET SOUNDS in terms of multi-leveled sophistication, which is why the more you listen, the better it sounds... there's a lot there to hear, and the more you listen, the more you notice.

That's my take, anyway.

IMNSHO Love You would have made a simply spiffing EP...

"LUGOTW" and "Johnny Carson" on one side and "Solar System" and "I'll Bet He's Nice" on the other.


While I'm here, So Tough would have made a simply spiffing single...

"Marcella" as the A-side and "ATIT" on the flip.

I said it's a great album, though are the option about cyber mutations intrigues and made me think twice.

I wish someone would explain what the heck that's all about...

If you're trimming...

I would have taken the originals from FIFTEEN BIG ONES and used them to replace some of the tracks on LOVE YOU. Although, offhand, I can't think of what tracks I'd trim from LOVE YOU.

In my warped view of things, I see (American) Spring as where Brian's head and heart were at that time. "Had To Phone Ya" and "Good Time" sound right coming from the ladies, whereas I've always had trouble with those two (and others) in the Boys' hands, or rather mouths.

Let's be honest, The Beach Boys "Love You" album is kinda rubbish, even compared to "Summer In Paradise" that so many seem to dislike.

Mark

Of course, all that I stated last weekend was strictly tongue-in-cheek and meant for fun, but the incident actually took place and I am wondering if my next playing of this album will reveal my experience to have been an aberration (and Love You is actually as Scooby stated).

Brianmargo, your comments are well-stated and nearly perfectly in line with my own feelings about this album (particularly the part about the 'sweet dumbness').

Well oh my oh gosh oh gee....

what were you drinking? For how long? And has this happened more than once?

There is help out there. Please do not give up.

Could
not
disagree
more.

SUMMER IN PARADISE, I think, can't even be considered a legitimate Beach Boys album. LOVE YOU, though, was the last great thing that that they did under Brian's guidance.

I'm tellin' ya... I felt exactly the same way when it came out... but I kept giving it a chance and then the light came on and I realized what was going on there, which is all the stuff I wrote above.

Bruce, I must ask you this question. When you were listening to Johnny Carson were you dancing around the room shouting "yes, yes, more more" or did you throw the disc out of the nearest window?

"It's that kind of track on that kind of album."*

It's heartwarming to see someone's voted for Bruce's option of urgently requiring a pat-pat-pat on his butt-butt...

* To avoid ruffled feathers, these quotes are from BW and the BB: the Complete Guide to their Music (Doe & Tobler)

Sorry Holly, didn't mean to blow off your question...

Me and "Johnny Carson" have an interesting relationship... In very early listenings I was very strongly tempted to follow your second suggestion. I have never gotten to the place where I listen to the song and shout "yes, yes, more, more"; I don't think that day will ever come. Sometimes when I listen I smile and wonder if Brian Wilson was pulling everyone's leg and seeing how atrociously bad a song he could write and have taken seriously by bandmates and record company executives. I will never go on record and call "Johnny Carson" a good song (or "Solar System", either). I sometimes play it for friends with the idea of "how's this for goofy?".

Here's a page with contemporary reviews of LOVE YOU from ROLLING STONE, BILLBOARD, and the VILLAGE VOICE.

http://www.superseventies.com/spbeachboys.html

Cyber mutations got me.

It's alright. I'm certainly not shouting out "yes, yes, more more" either when I listen to it. When I first listened to Johnny Carson, I was so close to tossing the disc out the nearest window then I got to thinking, what on earth was going on in Brian's mind when he wrote it.

Well, for that matter, what was in his mind when he wrote "Anna Lee, The Healer"... or "Salt Lake City"... or "A Day In The Life Of A Tree"... or "H.E.L.P. is on the Way"... or "Vegetables"... or... or... or...

I don't get it. Why is "Johnny Carson" a less valid lyrical topic than, say, root beer ("Chug A Lug") or Craig Breedlove ("Spirit of America")?

It's supposed to be a funny song, people.

Aside from it just being a tongue-in-cheek hoot, am I the only one here who kinda likes how sophisticated the backing track (instrumental and vocal) is?

You all seriously need to give LOVE YOU another listen or six. I'm just saying that because, like I said, when it came out, I hated it too. But eventually, after repeated listenings...

I`m sort of new the the later Beach Boys stuff so I have not heard this album.
From the comments I have to wonder if I`m missing something--or not.
Tried to find this stuff on Youtube, but can`t get anything worth looking at or
listening to. I`d like to be able to judge the album for myself--either way.

I shouldn't really be doing this but...

THE BEACH BOYS LOVE YOU (1977)

01. "Let Us Go On This Way"
02. "Roller Skating Child"
03. "Mona"
04. "Johnny Carson"
05. "Good Time"
06. "Honkin' Down The Highway"
07. "Ding Dang"
08. "Solar System"
09. "The Night Was So Young"
10. "I'll Bet He's Nice"
11. "Let's Put Our Hearts Together"
12. "I Wanna Pick You Up"
13. "Airplane"
14. "Love Is A Woman"

The "Johnny Carson" visuals are slightly strange. The others have some great images...

Enjoy!

In all its rawness, Love You has echoes at times of the 1970 album John Lennon/The Plastic Ono Band. This struck me only yesterday while organizing the above links.

Not that I would dream of mentioning Arthur Janov and Eugene Landy in the same sentence.

What are you trying to do? Scare everyone? It`s not quite Samhain yet!

I have listened to all of the above cuts from the Love You album, so now I can give it a fair review.
Al sings great on Honkin` Down the Highway. I`ll let you know when I stop squirming.
Had potential. Just not sure what. Maybe I`ll have to give it a second listen. Some day. Thank you.

I knew I should have made that exclamation mark after "Enjoy" a question mark...

Some day. I like that. I haven't played Love You in months, maybe years. Which is a pity really, for if you weed out the embarrassing stuff (notably the abysmal though mercifully brief "Ding Dang" - really, McGuinn!!! - and tracks 11-14) there are some gems in there, uncut gems perhaps but gems all the same: "I Bet He's Nice" and "Johnny Carson" come to mind, and maybe "Solar System" and "LUGOTW" (pity about the middle eight in both cases ). Spring do "Good Time" better IMO (not least because they're ladies!). The rest I can take or leave (including, regrettably, "Highway" )...

So I understand your reticence regarding that second listen...

And for goodness' sake stop squirming!

I did. I went and listened to some Gary Numan.

BTW, I didn`t say I liked Honkin` Down the Highway I just said I liked Al`s singing.

You did. I myself have trouble with aspects of that song - more specifically, the lyrics.

Al did the best he could. Sometimes it is the song, not the singer.
According to Wikipedia Brian composed the song, both lyrics, as silly as they are, and music.

I don't mind the merely goofy lyrics as in "Johnny Carson". What bugs me is the adolescent stuff (these guys were in their thirties!). "Honkin'" is a prime example...

The whole album smacks of the Landy school of lyric-writing. Eat your heart out, Van Dyke!

I half-differ with you on tracks 11-14. "Airplane" is one of my favorite tracks on the album, and "I Wanna Pick You Up" would be a horror if not for a totally charming vocal by Denny. (Contrast that with the smarmy and creepy "Hey Little Tomboy.") "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" and "Love Is A Woman," though, I would have axed.

Which brings me to "Honkin' Down The Highway," which is my third-least-favorite song on the album, and which was, inexplicably, THE SINGLE from this album. I still wonder HOW Reprise could have picked this dud over "Good Time" or "Roller Skating Child."

This is one of my favorite threads.

And Holly, I hope you don't think I was calling you out.

I haven't cued in this segment since day one, thanks to "LPOHT", so maybe I am missing out on something...

It's okay. No hard feelings.

My favorite tracks from Love You are I'll Bet He's Nice and The Night Was So Young.

Good Time and Roller Skating Child are probably the two tracks that stood
out for me. Like I said I need to give this one a second listen.

Funny thing is, John, I've actually sat down and tried to whomp up an alternative lyric to replace "Gosh-darn". The best I could do was...

Honking, honking down the real fast highway...
Honking, honking down the interstate highway...
Honking, honking down the four-lane highway...

All things considered, the "Gosh-darn" highway is about as good as this can get.

"Gosh-darn" is the least of Al's vocal worries. It's the line preceding "Until we're feeling fine now" that I find particularly hard to take.

Ouch. I see your point. Never noticed that choice little Robert Plant moment before. eeewwww

Love You is a really great album, it had alot of unexplored potential, but, it was, very good, and, when i introduce a friend to the Beach Boys, i usually start with Let Us Go On This Way, although, i would have loved to have been in the studio when Brian brought the tapes in, the last time he was left alone to make backing tracks, there were all the beautiful Pet Sounds/SMiLE strings, and woodwinds, and, all of a sudden, here they were with drum machenes and synths, yeah, there were much better Beach Boys albums, but, there were also much worse.

That's certainly true. Most of the much worse ones were still to come...


I was thinking about the lyrics of "Honkin' Down The Highway". When I lived in England, "honking" was a colloquialism for throwing up - maybe it still is. The good old technicolor yawn. Now let's examine the first two lines in the light of this new interpretation:

"Honkin', honkin' down the gosh darn highway
Tryin', tryin' to get past them cars"

Our narrator is with drink taken, and is trying to pick his way past the cars parked along the side of the road ("tryin' to get past them cars" - only someone whose state of consciousness is seriously altered would use such bad grammar), barfing as he goes.

To quote De La Soul, what does it all mean?* It means we can treat the rest of the lyrics as drunken ramblings which the narrator will certainly not be remembering the following morning...

I'll shut up now and do something useful.

* From "The Magic Number"

One could always try ignoring the lyrics, if this is the case, and just listen to the musical aspects and vocals, both lead and background.
Then again there is the possibility I don`t have a clue as to what I am talking about.

Then again, maybe not.

From REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD, an excellent book about the Beatles' records, by Ian MacDonald:

Primarily a hit record, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" makes less sense considered as a song. So much of its melody line is disguised harmony that singing it without chordal support makes for comic results, while its lyrics are embarrassingly perfunctory... (T)he real reason for the group's lyrical blandness at this stage was that they didn't care what words they sang as long as they fitted the overall sound. It was the record rather than the song that interested them... McCartney and (particularly) Lennon were more devoted to spirit than form. To them, the sound and feel of a record mattered more than what it literally said; hence, the first requirement of a lyric was to not get in the way of the general effect. (p. 99-103).


I've always kind of ignored the Beach Boys' lyrics, particularly from about WILD HONEY on. Those albums had their charms, a lot of them, but the lyrics sometimes... oof!

Ian MacDonald's book is far and away the best commentary on the Beatles' songs out there (and I've read a bunch of them), and this particular assertion is very well stated. And the same idea about lyrics vs. spirit could be said about many, many Beach Boys songs.

And, by the way, who are you three guys out there who think I need a pat-pat-pat on the butt-butt?

Don't be angry, Bruce. It might be three lovely ladies.

Okay I admit it. I know I'm guilty.

I, on the other hand, admit nothing.

So you plead the 5th and temporary insanity?

From a book I'm reading entitled Questions About Music, by the composer Roger Sessions. This passage pretty much parallels how I felt when I first heard LOVE YOU and how my feelings about it changed with repeated listening:

"One can outline some of the possible phases in experiencing a new, unfamiliar, or difficult piece of music. One's first impression may be a quite negative one: the music may seem opaque, chaotic, crabbed, dissonant; one may be tempted to suspect the composer of a deliberate intent to mislead or baffle, of perversity, incompetency, pure celebration, or any number of other shortcomings... But if we keep our ears open and willing, and listen attentively, we may easily discern, here and there, moments or passages of which we feel the impact immediately, however fleeting this sensation of contact or recognition may be. One may even tell oneself: 'This at least is "striking"--or "graceful," or "amusing," even "moving," "beautiful," or simply "interesting."' This means that we have begun to recognize features in the work and to sense its character; and if we are interested or patient enough to pursue the matter further, we will find that these moments grow longer. The moments of contact are likely to spread-- I myself used to think of the process as akin to the expansion of a drop of ink on a blotter. We may become more and more aware of contexts and may also find ourselves beginning to discover additional points of contact-- eventually with the piece as a whole. When this last has occurred, and possibly even before, we presumably have opened the way to other contacts of a similar nature-- with other works of the composer in question, with works of other composers whose styles present similar problems, and eventually with any music that on first hearing seems strange or baffling to us. By this time we know there may be something worth discovering, and know how to go about the process of finding it. Eventually, if we persist, the music will become familiar to us and will present no more problems to us than does any music with which we are quite familiar.

"What has happened is that our ears have not only accustomed themselves to the sounds, but have exercised the primary and most characteristic function of the musical ear-- that of discovering, through its pursuit of its own satisfaction, patterns and relationships on an ever-widening scale...

"Let me (quote) something that was said to me after a recent performance of a new symphonic work of mine. The work was beautifully played, and was received with reactions ranging from genuine and obvious enthusiasm on the part of a few to bewildered indifference or even occasionally hostility on the part of a majority in the audience. After it was over, the conductor said to me very warmly, 'Never forget: the ear is sometimes very slow, the mind is slower, and the heart is sometimes slower still.' We composers know that and learn to live with it. But it does not deter us from addressing ourselves with all the resources that we possess to the ear, the mind and the heart."

Well said!

I second that, "Well said".

Many albums which are now favorites of mine became favorites for the very reason that at first they sounded just plain crazed . Maybe a part of that is due to a (rather narcissistic) feeling that I have allowed myself to 'open my mind' to a 'higher understanding'. Many albums which received strong negative reviews initially were, in time, recognized for being innovative or brilliant in a novel way. One of the albums in my all-time top five is Paul and Linda McCartney's Ram, which is just an amazingly euphoric, ecstatic honeymoon album that was released in 1971 to abysmal reviews, being seen as 'typical McCartney froth'. But there is no album in the world which evokes such strong feelings as that one for purely debauched, yet innocent, joy.

Guilty of being a lovely lady?