Friends (The Beach Boys album)

Friends
An abstract, psychedelic illustration of the band members surrounded by clouds and bushes.
Studio album by the Beach Boys
Released June 24, 1968 (1968-06-24)
Recorded February 29 – April 13, 1968
Studio Beach Boys Studio and ID Sound, Los Angeles
Genre
Length 25:32
Label Capitol
Producer The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys chronology
Wild Honey
(1967)		 Friends
(1968)		 The Best of the Beach Boys Vol. 3
(1968)
Singles from Friends
  1. "Friends" / "Little Bird"
    Released: April 8, 1968

Friends is the 14th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on June 24, 1968 through Capitol Records. The album is characterized for its calm and peaceful atmosphere, which contrasted the prevailing music trends of the time, and for its brevity, with five of its 12 tracks running less than two minutes long. It sold poorly, peaking at number 126 on the US Billboard charts, the group's lowest US chart performance to date, although it reached number 13 in the UK. Fans generally came to regard the album as one of the band's finest.

As with their two previous albums, Friends was recorded primarily at Brian Wilson's home studio with a lo-fi production style. The album's sessions lasted from February to April 1968 at a time when the band's finances were rapidly diminishing. It was written, performed, or produced mainly by brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson with Al Jardine. Some of the songs were inspired by the group's recent involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation practice. It was the third consecutive album to credit "the Beach Boys" as producer instead of Brian, and the first to feature songs from Dennis.

One single was issued from the album: "Friends", a waltz that reached number 47 in the US and number 25 in the UK. Its B-side was the Dennis co-write "Little Bird". In May, the group scheduled a national tour with the Maharishi, but it was canceled after five shows due to low ticket sales and the Maharishi's subsequent withdrawal. To recuperate from the album's poor sales, the band quickly released the standalone single "Do It Again". The song was a self-conscious throwback to the group's early surf songs, and the first time they had embraced the subject matter since 1964. It reached the US top twenty and became their second number one hit in the UK.

Friends was the last LP in which Brian was credited on most of the tracks until 1977's The Beach Boys Love You. According to a Mojo retrospective, the group's remaining fanbase reacted to Friends with the abandonment of "any hope that Brian Wilson would deliver a true successor to his 1966 masterwork", Pet Sounds.[3] Despite the failure of a collaborative tour with the Maharishi, the band remained supporters of him and his teachings. Dennis contributed more songs on later Beach Boys albums, eventually culminating in a solo record, 1977's Pacific Ocean Blue.

Background

In September and December 1967, the Beach Boys released Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, respectively. Music fans were generally disappointed that the band twice failed to deliver on the hype surrounding their unreleased album Smile, which was advertised as the follow-up to the sophistication of Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" (both 1966). Instead, the group were making a deliberate choice to produce music that was simpler and less refined.[4] Commenting on Wild Honey, Mike Love said the band made a conscious decision to be "completely out of the mainstream for what was going on at that time, which was all hard rock/psychedelic music. [The album] just didn’t have anything to do with what was going on."[5]

... it is here that the "Brian-is-the-Beach-Boys" era comes to a close. ... After Wild Honey, the Beach Boys were no longer Brian's creative vehicle, in spite of what the band might have preferred that their fans, the press, or their successive record companies, to believe.

—Biographer Christian Matijas-Mecca[6]

Wild Honey saw reduced involvement from the group's producer and principal songwriter, Brian Wilson.[6] Brother Carl Wilson summed up the album as "music for Brian to cool out by. He was still very spaced."[7] Although Wild Honey charted higher than Smiley Smile in the US, it was ultimately the group's lowest-selling album to that point.[4] Apart from a two-week US tour in November 1967,[8] the band was not performing live during this period, and their finances were rapidly diminishing.[9] That same month, the group stopped wearing their longtime striped-shirt stage uniforms in favor of matching white, polyester suits that were similar to a Las Vegas show band. From 1968 onward, Brian's songwriting output declined substantially, but the public narrative of "Brian-as-leader" continued.[10]

Along with Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine, Mike Love was one of the many rock musicians who discovered the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi following the Beatles' public endorsement of his Transcendental Meditation technique in August 1967. In December that year, Love and his bandmates attended a lecture by the Maharishi at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris,[11] and were moved by the simplicity and effectiveness of his meditation process as a means to obtaining inner peace.[12] In January 1968, the Beach Boys attended the Maharishi's public appearances in New York[13] and Cambridge, Massachusetts, after which he invited Love to join the Beatles at his training seminar in Rishikesh in northern India.[14] Love stayed there from February 28 to March 15.[13] In his absence, the remaining Beach Boys began recording the album that would become Friends.[15] For its 1990 CD liner notes, Brian recalled that he "had a good thing rollin' in my head. The bad things that had happened to me had taken their toll and I was free to find out just how much I had grown through the emotional pain that had come my way. ... I think that the Beach Boys’ sound was evolving right along."[16]

Production and style

Bel Air, Los Angeles, where Brian Wilson resided in 1968

Friends was recorded primarily at Brian Wilson's home studio in Bel Air from late February to early April 1968.[17] In author Jon Stebbins' description, the album "reflects the peaceful and quietly centered aura" that the band had gained from their introduction to Transcendental Meditation.[18] Bruce Johnston described the album as a conscious attempt to make something "really subtle ... that wasn't concerned with radio".[3] Retrospectively, the album may be viewed as the final installment in a consecutive three-part series of lo-fi Beach Boys albums.[2] Columnist Joel Goldenburg believes the lightly produced album was the closest the group ever came to sunshine pop, a genre they had influenced but never fully embraced.[19] It was the first Beach Boys album not to consistently have Brian as primary composer,[6] the first to feature significant songwriting contributions from other group members,[16] and the first released in true stereo.[6]

The album was written, performed, or produced mainly by the Wilson brothers with what Stebbins terms "a strong assist" from Al Jardine.[18] Jardine remembered how he still "felt that [Brian] had a lot to offer. ... We wrote [most of the Friends music] at his house right under that beautiful stained glass Wild Honey cover window."[20] The few tracks where Brian served as primary author contained his usual composing trademarks, such as unexpected harmonic changes, descending stepwise progressions, and unusually structured musical phrases.[21] The LP has a relatively short length; only two of its 12 tracks last longer than three minutes, and five run short of two minutes.[21] Session musicians were used more than on Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, but in smaller configurations than on the Beach Boys' records from 1962 through 1966.[22] Stephen Desper was recruited as the band's recording engineer, a role he would keep until 1972.[21] He was recently contacted to convert Brian's semi-portable home recording set-up to a more permanent "full-fledged recording studio with the capacity of any other".[23]

Subject matter ranges from Transcendental Meditation to bearing children and "doin' nothin'".[24] Rolling Stone's Jim Miller characterized Friends as a "return to Smiley's dryness, minus the weirdness". Musicologist Daniel Harrison said Miller's observation was only true of "Meant for You", and that the remaining songs "have few of the formal or harmonic quirks of the earlier album, though there is no lack of clever and interesting effects, such as the bass harmonica line in 'Passing By' or the repetitive monophonic organ line in the break of 'Be Here in the Morning.'"[25] The group's influences, according to rock critic Gene Sculatti, seemed to derive "primarily from Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and little else. The characteristic innocence and somewhat childlike visions imparted to their music are applied directly to the theme of the album: friendships. As usual, the lyrics tend to be basic, yet as expressive as they need to be; words, like individual voices or instruments, are all part of the larger whole of music".[26] Johnston was unhappy with this direction, recalling the songs as "wimpy" and " [nothing] where Brian was at full strength" except for the title track.[27]

From February 29 to March 13, the band tracked "Little Bird", "Be Here in the Mornin'", and "Friends". After Love returned from his retreat, they began recording "When a Man Needs a Woman", "Passing By", "Busy Doin' Nothin'", "Wake the World", "Meant for You", "Anna Lee, the Healer", and "Be Still". Sessions concluded with "Transcendental Meditation" on April 13. Leftover tracks from the sessions include "Untitled #1", "Our Happy Home", "New Song" (unofficially known as "Spanish Guitar"), "You're As Cool As Can Be", a cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "My Little Red Book" and an early version of "All I Wanna Do".[28] "Our Happy Home" was described by music journalist Brian Chidester as "a short, bouncy riff that maintains the gentle air of the Friends sessions". "New Song" contains a melody that was recycled for "Transcendental Meditation". "You're As Cool As Can Be" is an instrumental of unknown authorship that features an upbeat piano melody played by Brian. "All I Wanna Do" was later reworked for their 1970 album Sunflower.[2]

Content

Friends begins with the 38-second introduction "Meant for You", which Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo compared to Thelonious Monk's "Abide with Me" from the 1957 album Monk's Music.[30] The track was originally titled "You'll Find it Too",[31] was almost two minutes long, and featured additional lyrics about a pony and a puppy.[32][nb 1] The next track, "Friends" is a waltz that was first conceived in 4/4 time.[29] The song was arranged and co-written by Brian,[16] who described it as his favorite on the album.[33] "Wake the World" was the first original songwriting collaboration between Brian and Jardine. It was another song that Brian said was "my favorite cut [on the album]. It was so descriptive to how I felt about the dramatic change over from day to night."[16] The song is the first on the album that demonstrates his then-recent "a-day-in-a-life-of" songwriting habit.[34][nb 2]

"Be Here in the Mornin'", another waltz,[21] makes a passing lyrical reference to the Wilsons' cousin Steve Korthof, road manager Jon Parks, and Beach Boys manager Nick Grillo.[16] The Wilsons' father Murry contributed the low voice on the song.[36] Parks and Korthof shared a writing credit on the next track, "When a Man Needs a Woman".[20] Both songs were written about some particular comforts of Brian's daily life.[21] "Passing By" is wordless, but was originally written with the lyric "While walking down the avenue / I stopped to have a look at you / And then I saw / You’re just passing by".[16]

Side two opens with "Anna Lee, the Healer", written about a masseuse Mike Love encountered in Rishikesh.[37] Its arrangement consists only of vocals, piano, bass, and hand drumming.[38] "Little Bird" was composed by Dennis Wilson with poet Stephen Kalinich, which Brian said "blew my mind because it was so full of spiritualness. He was a late bloomer as a music maker. He lived hard and rough but his music was as sensitive as anyone's."[16] The bridge section incorporates elements of "Child Is Father of the Man", a then-unreleased song from Smile.[2] Brian received no official credit on "Little Bird".[39] "Be Still", another Dennis/Kalinich song, only features Dennis' singing[18] and Brian playing organ.[2] Biographer Peter Ames Carlin compared the song to a "Unitarian hymn" and interpreted the lyrics to be a description of "the sacred essence of life and the human potential to interact with God."[40]

The final three tracks are genre experiments[38] that break stylistically from the rest of the album.[37] "Busy Doin' Nothin'" is a flirtation with bossa nova, one of several autobiographic slice-of-life songs written by Brian during this era, and one of the only tracks on the album where he exclusively used session musicians.[16] Its lyrics contain step-by-step instructions on how to find his house, albeit without mentioning where to start: "Drive for a couple miles / You'll see a sign and turn left / For a couple blocks / Next is mine, you'll turn left on a little road / It's a bumpy one / You'll see a white fence / Move the gate and drive through on the left side ... "[41] "Diamond Head" is an instrumental exotica lounge jam[37] that echoed the use of extended forms from Smile,[42] and is the album's longest piece at 3 minutes and 39 seconds.[37] The final track "Transcendental Meditation" contrasts all that comes before it with its raucous tone.[37] When asked about the song, Dennis explained that the group "wanted to get away from anything that sounded too pompous, too religious. It would have been easy to do something peaceful, very Eastern, but we were trying to reach listeners on all levels."[43]

Maharishi tour

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1973

On April 5, 1968,[28] the band began "the Million Dollar Tour", a series of self-financed concerts across the US South.[44] These shows, which included Buffalo Springfield and Strawberry Alarm Clock as supporting acts,[28][45] were poorly attended due in part to the political mood following the assassination of Martin Luther King that April.[15] Six of the 35 dates were canceled, while two were rescheduled.[28] Mike Love arranged that the group tour the US with the Maharishi in May. According to Nick Grillo, the band hoped that touring with the Maharishi would recuperate some of their financial losses.[46] Around this time, the Beatles became disenchanted with the Maharishi and the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, which had a detrimental effect on the guru's standing among music fans. In Stebbins' description, the Maharishi became a pariah, dooming the tour to failure.[18]

The shows with the Maharishi were advertised as "The Most Exciting Event of the Decade!" and comprised a set of songs by the Beach Boys followed by the Maharishi's lecture on the benefits of meditation.[47] The tour started on May 3 and ended abruptly after five shows. A performance at the Singer Bowl in Queens, New York was canceled twenty minutes before the group were scheduled to perform when only 800 people showed up to the 16,000-capacity venue.[48] Writing in New York magazine, Loraine Alterman reported on the hostile audience reaction to the Maharishi but said that the songs the band included from Friends worked well beside the group's previous hits "because they were happy and full of love". She added that, unlike the Maharishi's lecture, the song "Transcendental Meditation" "did not tax anyone's brain. It just repeated how transcendental meditation 'makes you feel grand' against a moving beat."[49]

Because of the disappointing audience numbers and the Maharishi's subsequent withdrawal to fulfill film contracts, the remaining 24 tour dates were canceled at a cost estimated at $250,000 for the band (equivalent to $1.76 million in 2017).[9] Afterward, Love and Carl told journalists that the racial violence following King's assassination was to blame for the tour's demise. Carl said: "A lot of people just would not let their children out. Nobody wants to get hurt." He added that the group's goal was to appeal mainly to young people, "but not the teeny-boppers", while Love commented that the shows were "not put together for commercial purposes".[50] In his 2016 autobiography, Love wrote: "I take responsibility for an idea that didn't work. But I don't regret it. I thought I could do some good for people who were lost, confused, or troubled, particularly those who were young and idealistic but also vulnerable, and I thought that was true for a whole bunch of us."[51][nb 3]

Release

Lead single "Friends" was issued on April 8 and reached number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100,[18] making it their lowest-charting single in six years.[3] The Friends album followed on June 24, peaking at number 126 two months later while artists such as the Doors and Cream occupied the top positions.[18] Stebbins noted that the album's "quirky gentleness in the context of political protests, race riots, and the war-torn social landscape of 1968 [made] it about as square a peg as one can imagine".[18] Friends remained on the Billboard Top LPs chart for 10 weeks and became the group's worst-selling album to date.[16] Its record sales in the US were estimated at 18,000 units.[52] In the UK, the album fared better at number 13.[16] On July 2, the group embarked on a three-week US tour, and then another throughout August, with some stops in Canada.[28] Their setlist included "Friends", "Little Bird", and "Wake the World".[53][nb 4] Bruce Johnston said performing the Friends songs caused him to "wince" and that it was difficult to maintain the "subtle" nature of the songs in a live setting.[27]

According to a Mojo retrospective, the band's remaining fanbase reacted to Friends with the abandonment of "any hope that Brian Wilson would deliver a true successor to his 1966 masterwork".[3] Johnston reflected that "the Beach Boys were just unfashionably unhip" in light of Jimi Hendrix and Cream, and compared the album's release to a "feather floating through a wall of noise".[3] Music critic Richie Unterberger commented that the group lost most of their audience by being "less experimental" with their music.[55] The LP was packaged with a cover artwork, designed by David McMacken, that depicted the band members in a psychedelic visual style.[56] Love remembered that the group lacked "savvy marketing and design", and that while in Rishikesh, Paul McCartney had urged him "to take more care of what you put on your album covers".[57] Wilson biographer Christian Matijas-Mecca said the artwork "did nothing to convince anyone that the Beach Boys were in touch with anything in particular".[17] Johnston opined that it was the "worst cover in the history of the music business," second only to the cover to Pet Sounds.[27]

Love recalled that Capitol "panic[ked]" after the album's commercial failure. He thought that while the group's democratic approach "allow[ed] the rest of us to grow musically, [we] would never replicate our past success", and to that end, he engaged Brian in co-writing a new, surf-inspired song, "Do It Again".[58] Initially titled "Rendesvous", it was the first song that the group began recording after the Maharishi tour.[28][nb 5] On July 8, the band released "Do It Again" as a standalone single backed with "Wake the World". "Do It Again" was a self-conscious throwback to the group's early surf songs, and the first time they had embraced the subject matter since 1964.[59] It reached the top twenty in the US and was a number one hit in the UK. When Friends was issued in Japan, the song was included in the album's track list.[20]

On August 5, Capitol issued the greatest hits album Best of the Beach Boys Vol. 3. Matijas-Mecca wrote that this was a sign that the label had "given up" on the group, repeating a tactic they used after the release of Pet Sounds and again with Smiley Smile.[60] While the first two volumes were quickly certified as gold records, biographer David Leaf said that the label was "more than a little horrified to watch [the third volume] sink like a stone, unable to even outperform Friends."[16]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[55]
Blender[61]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[62]
MusicHound3/5[63]
Q[64]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[65]

At the time, a Billboard reviewer predicted that "the group should score high on the charts with [Friends]" and highlighted "Anna Lee, the Healer" and "Transcendental Meditation" as "catchy numbers".[1] Rolling Stone's Arthur Schmidt wrote in his review of the album: "Everything on the first side is great. ... Listen once and you might think this album is nowhere. But it's really just at a very special place, and after a half-dozen listenings, you can be there."[66] Jazz & Pop's Gene Sculatti reported that there were detractors of the Beach Boys who most frequently took issue with the band's "apparently excessive immersion in and identification with mass culture and 'commercialism'". In spite of such criticisms, he deemed Friends "[perhaps] their best" work yet, calling it "the culmination of the efforts and the results of their last three LPs. ... It is another showcase for what is the most original and perhaps the most consistently satisfying rock music being created today."[26]

Allen Evans of the NME commented on the brevity of several of the tracks and described "Transcendental Meditation" as "a weirdo piece" and "Passing By" as "quite delightful" in its use of "voices … as instruments". He concluded: "Varied and interesting, though maybe not their best LP."[67] Writing in the same publication's annual for 1968, Keith Altham reported that "Do It Again" "seemed like two steps backwards" but had nevertheless re-established the Beach Boys as hit-makers, while Friends received "considerable criticism from critics who complained that one entire side of the album lasted just a few minutes longer than the hit single 'MacArthur Park'".[68] In Disc & Music Echo, Penny Valentine wrote of the "Friends" single, "Whither the progressive Beach Boys? ... If The Beach Boys are as bored as they sound, they should stop bothering ... They are no longer the brilliant Beach Boys. They are grey and they are making sad little grey records."[69] Record Mirror's David Griffiths referred to "Transcendental Meditation" as "the most disappointing Beach Boys track of the year".[43]

In its 1990 liner notes, David Leaf wrote that Friends had "grown in stature to take its place as one of the Beach Boys’ finest artistic efforts."[16] In 2007, Mojo wrote that "Given distance and hindsight ... Friends is a uniquely rewarding Beach Boys album that, excepting Pet Sounds, is the group's most sonically and thematically unified."[3] AllMusic's Donald A. Guarisco described the album as a "cult favorite" among hardcore fans and highlighted the title track as "mellow", "lovely", and "a good example of the Beach Boys' late-'60s output: it is far less musically complex than 'California Girls' or 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' but possesses a homespun charm all its own."[70] Music journalist and Saint Etienne co-founder Bob Stanley called the album a "lost gem" with a "timeless quality in its simplicity, underlined by the basic instrumentation".[52] The A.V. Club contributor Noel Murray said the album was "lovely" and one of the group's "warmest and most spiritual records".[24] Brooklyn Vegan's Andrew Sacher characterized it as "the most underrated Beach Boys album", "prettier and less quirky" than Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, and lamented that it is not as widely praised as the Byrds' contemporary effort The Notorious Byrd Brothers.[38]

Jason Fine wrote in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide: "If you can get past sappy wannabe-hippie tracks such as 'Wake the World' and 'Transcendental Meditation', the album is gorgeous, with standout moments including 'Meant for You', one of Mike Love’s finest vocals, and Brian’s 'Busy Doin' Nothin'', a samba shuffle in which Wilson details his homebound life."[65] In his review for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger said that, relative to its unveiling in 1968, "Today [the album] sounds better, but it's certainly one of the group's more minor efforts", adding that the production and harmonies "remained pleasantly idiosyncratic, but there was little substance at the heart of most of the songs."[55] In 1971, Robert Christgau dismissed Friends as the band's "worstever" work.[71] Biographer Steven Gaines described the LP as "boring" and "emotionless".[72]

Legacy

Friends signified Dennis Wilson's emergence as a creative talent in the group.[16]

In his book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, Gary Lachman describes Friends as "the Beach Boys TM album" and considers their public association with the Maharishi to have been a "disastrous flirtation" that, for Dennis Wilson, was soon superseded by a more damaging personal association with the Manson Family cult.[73] Despite the ignominy of the tour, the Beach Boys remained ardent supporters of the Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation.[74] They continued to record songs inspired by the Maharishi or his teachings, including both "He Come Down" and "All This Is That" on 1973's Carl and the Passions,[75] and both "Everyone's in Love with You" and "T M Song" on 1976's 15 Big Ones.[76][nb 6] Subsequent albums would also see Dennis contribute more songs, eventually culminating in a solo record, 1977's Pacific Ocean Blue.[16]

Stebbins recognizes Friends as marking "the true beginning of the Beach Boys as a group of six relatively equal creative partners".[18] It was the last Beach Boys album where Brian held most of the writing or co-writing credits until 1977's The Beach Boys Love You.[78] Friend and Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton recalled that Brian expressed suicidal wishes at the time, and that it was "when [his] real decline started".[79] Afterward, Brian admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital, where he was prescribed Thorazine for severe anxiety disorder.[80] His issues were not disclosed to the public.[81] Once discharged, he rarely finished any tracks for the band, leaving much of his subsequent Beach Boys output for Carl Wilson to complete.[80] Dennis said that the group were forced "to find things that Brian worked on and try and piece it together. That's when [he started having] no involvement at all."[82]

The group's following album, 20/20, was released in February 1969. It was the last LP they owed Capitol Records, and mostly consists of leftover singles recorded in 1968 and outtakes from earlier albums. Brian produced virtually none of 20/20, and the group were left without a record label to rebound to.[83] Labels viewed Brian as a liability, and to restore his public and industry reputation, friend Stanley Shapiro persuaded him to rewrite and rerecord a number of Beach Boys songs. After contacting fellow songwriter Tandyn Almer for support, the trio spent a month reworking cuts from Friends[84] ("Passing By", "Wake the World", "Be Still", and the album's title track).[2] As Shapiro handed demo tapes to A&M Records executives, they found the product favorable before they learned of Wilson and Almer's involvement, and refused to support the project. These recordings remain unreleased.[84] In late 1969, Brian worked with Stephen Kalinich to produce a spoken-word LP, A World of Peace Must Come, which included an extended run-through of "Be Still". The album was not released until 2008.[2]

Brian cited Friends as his favorite Beach Boys album,[85][3] and said that while Smile "had potential ... Friends has been good listening no matter what mood I'm in."[21] He rerecorded "Meant for You" for his 1995 solo album I Just Wasn't Made for These Times.[42] Among cover versions of the Friends tracks: Pizzicato Five recorded "Passing By" for their album Sister Freedom Tapes (1996),[86] and the High Llamas contributed a version of "Anna Lee, the Healer" to the tribute album Caroline Now!: The Songs of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys (2000).[87] Noel Murray remarked that without Friends, "the High Llamas probably wouldn't exist."[24][nb 7] Lo-fi musician R. Stevie Moore based his 1975 song "Wayne Wayne (Go Away)" on Friends.[90]

Track listing

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Lead vocal(s)Length
1."Meant for You"Brian Wilson, Mike LoveMike Love0:38
2."Friends"B. Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al JardineCarl Wilson with Brian Wilson2:32
3."Wake the World"B. Wilson, JardineB. Wilson with C. Wilson1:29
4."Be Here in the Mornin'"B. Wilson, C. Wilson, Love, JardineJardine and C. Wilson[91]2:17
5."When a Man Needs a Woman"B. Wilson, D. Wilson, C. Wilson, Jardine, Steve Korthof, Jon ParksB. Wilson2:07
6."Passing By"B. WilsonB. Wilson, C. Wilson, and Al Jardine2:24
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Lead vocal(s)Length
1."Anna Lee, the Healer"B. Wilson, LoveLove1:51
2."Little Bird"D. Wilson, Steve KalinichD. Wilson and B. Wilson2:02
3."Be Still"D. Wilson, KalinichD. Wilson1:24
4."Busy Doin' Nothin'"B. WilsonB. Wilson3:05
5."Diamond Head"Al Vescovo, Lyle Ritz, Jim Ackley, B. Wilsoninstrumental3:39
6."Transcendental Meditation"B. Wilson, Love, JardineB. Wilson1:51
Total length:25:32

Track information per David Leaf.[16]

Personnel

The Beach Boys[3]

Additional staff

Charts

Chart (1968) Peak
position
UK Albums (OCC)[92] 13
US Billboard 200[93] 126

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ This version was released in 2013 for the compilation Made in California.[32][21]
  2. ↑ Preceded by "I'd Love Just Once to See You" and "Time to Get Alone" from the Wild Honey sessions.[35]
  3. ↑ Jon Stebbins lists the Maharishi tour—specifically, that the band "toured with the Maharishi after the Beatles had rejected him"—among the Beach Boys' major "artistic missteps" that also included their cancellation of the Smile album and their refusal to perform at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.[18]
  4. ↑ June 1968 recordings of "Friends" and "Little Bird", performed in Chicago, can be heard on Made in California.[54]
  5. ↑ The other track they recorded on the same day was a cover version of Bacharach and David's "Walk On By" .[28]
  6. ↑ 1978's M.I.U. Album was named so because it was recorded at the Maharishi International University in Iowa.[77]
  7. ↑ When they released their 1994 album Gideon Gaye, it was dubbed "the best Beach Boys album since 1968's Friends".[88][89]

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 "Album Reviews". Billboard. Vol. 80 no. 25. June 22, 1968. p. 85. ISSN 0006-2510.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Chidester, Brian (March 7, 2014). "Busy Doin' Somethin': Uncovering Brian Wilson's Lost Bedroom Tapes". Paste. Retrieved December 11, 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mojo 2007, p. 132.
  4. 1 2 Leaf, David (1990). Smiley Smile/Wild Honey (CD Liner). The Beach Boys. Capitol Records.
  5. ↑ Hart, Ron (July 20, 2017). "5 Treasures on the Beach Boys' New '1967—Sunshine Tomorrow'". New York Observer. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Matijas-Mecca 2017, p. 83.
  7. ↑ Leaf 1985, p. 125.
  8. ↑ Doe, Andrew G. "Sessions 1967". Bellagio 10452. Endless Summer Quarterly. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  9. 1 2 Gaines 1986, pp. 195–197.
  10. ↑ Matijas-Mecca 2017, pp. 83, 85.
  11. ↑ Love 2016, p. 176.
  12. ↑ Badman 2004, p. 208.
  13. 1 2 Badman 2004, p. 212.
  14. ↑ Shumsky 2018, p. 225.
  15. 1 2 Carlin 2006, p. 135.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Leaf, David (1990). Friends / 20/20 (CD Liner). The Beach Boys. Capitol Records.
  17. 1 2 Matijas-Mecca 2017, p. 85.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Stebbins 2011.
  19. ↑ Goldenburg, Joel (February 27, 2016). "Joel Goldenberg: Sunshine pop offered some respite from '60s strife". The Suburban. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  20. 1 2 3 Beard, David (July 2, 2008). "Cover Story: 'Friends' The Beach Boys' Feel-Good Record". Goldmine. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Matijas-Mecca 2017, p. 86.
  22. ↑ Dillon 2014, p. 164.
  23. ↑ Gaines 1986, pp. 207–208.
  24. 1 2 3 Murray, Noel (October 16, 2014). "A beginner's guide to the sweet, stinging nostalgia of The Beach Boys". The A.V. Club.
  25. ↑ Harrison 1997, p. 51.
  26. 1 2 Sculatti, Gene (September 1968). "Villains and Heroes: In Defense of the Beach Boys". Jazz & Pop. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014.
  27. 1 2 3 Sharp, Ken (September 4, 2013). "Bruce Johnston On the Beach Boys' Enduring Legacy (Interview)". Rock Cellar Magazine.
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  37. 1 2 3 4 5 Matijas-Mecca 2017, p. 87.
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  45. ↑ Mrfarmer (June 15, 2011). "On the road: Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield". strawberryalarmclock.com. Strawberry Alarm Clock. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
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  62. ↑ Larkin 2006, p. 479.
  63. ↑ Graff & Durchholz 1999, p. 83.
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  65. 1 2 Fine 2004, pp. 46, 48.
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