Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 7: The Beach Boys, Endless Summer (1974)
A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right?
I could tell you I’ve been obsessed with The Beach Boys my whole life, and it might make a good story, but it’s not (quite) the truth. I certainly feel like I’ve been hearing the Surfin’ Safari-era stuff for a long time. But it took a while before I learned to dig deeper. And though I liked a lot of the surfing songs and it was a while before I moved on from the early hits, I’ve certainly become far more obsessed with the band — and everything after that time, and even after Pet Sounds/SMiLE (my favourites are things like Friends and 20/20 and Holland and L.A.
This compilation was released in the 70s — and it’s arguably the thing that positions the band as an oldies/revival act, which is what Mike Love wanted. He couldn’t handle the weird stuff, and he wanted to just tour the circuit and make the money and be idolised on whatever level, and make it more about the songs he had a hand in.
And all of that is unfortunate, and occasionally despicable, but you need to remember that some of that stuff is also just fucking amazing music too.
I’m going through a big Beach Boys nostalgia run currently, and I have quite a few of the albums on vinyl (though many more to go). And I’ll probably get a few more on CD (again). I used to have all of them, and foolishly now, it seems, parted with them. But Endless Summer — one of about a thousand Beach Boys compilations — is a very new acquisition for me on CD. I never had this when I collected up about 40 or 50 albums and compilations on compact disc in the early 00s.
No, this was given to me just recently, and it might be the reason for the run through all the albums again…
And though it doesn’t have Til I Die or Do It Again or Darlin’ or Sail on Sailor or so many of the late 60s/early 70s songs that I wholeheartedly adore, it does have the early bangers. And in particular it’s important that this has The Warmth of the Sun.
That’s the one.
That’s the song that made me take note, that gave me a clue that they were more than just a band of clever-harmonising surf-song dudes. It was on the soundtrack to Good Morning Vietnam, that’s where I first clocked it. And it’s the song that I always think of when I want to give Mike Love any sort of break. He wrote the words, and sang the hell out of it, and helped in arranging it. He wasn’t just a pretty face back then.
This is a smart, lovely, perfect pop song. And it was my ‘in’, the proof I needed that this band was about more than I first realised; had secrets; had depth.
From there, I was away. The legend of everything around their 60s creations, the Brian is Back campaign, the 70s reinventions, and those wilderness years for almost every member at various times. The solo albums. The bits in between.
It’s all been of fascination to me because of Warmth of the Sun. And one or two other songs too - even Lonely Surfer from way back towards the very story of their recordings is a key example of how there was something ‘more’ sitting there, hiding in plain sight.
I didn’t ever own this on CD or vinyl because I have every song on many different formats and configurations — and I do own quite a few different Greatest Hits-type comps because, usually, you can find them cheap, so why not.
But giving this one the hoon across the last few weeks and months has been more of a revelation than I might have previously imagined.
There was no one better at making emotionally damaged but perfect-sounding pop music. There was no one more influential on the music of the 90s in particular.
They paid a huge price for that mythical “endless summer”. But we can at least be grateful for the music. It’s always about that in the end anyway.
And this compilation is a perfect postcard. To another time. Another place.
