Sunflower (Beach Boys album)

The Beach Boys were at their lowest popularity in the late 1960s, and their cultural standing was especially worsened by their public image, which remained incongruous with the "heavier" music of their peers.[6] The group's album 20/20 (1969) sold better than their previous, Friends (1968), peaking at number 3 in the UK and number 68 in the US.[7] They started work on what became Sunflower shortly after returning from a December 1968 tour of the United Kingdom.[8] By the next year, Brian Wilson had begun using cocaine[9] and was increasingly known for his reclusiveness and eccentric behavior, which affected his reputation within the music industry.[10]

On April 12, 1969, the Beach Boys filed suit against Capitol Records for unpaid royalties and production duties in the amount of $2 million (equivalent to $13.9 million in 2019).[11] Manager Nick Grillo struggled to find another major label interested in signing the group, as he remembered, "Brian was notorious at that point" and label executives found the band too risky to sign. Since the Beach Boys' remained highly popular in the UK, Grillo attempted to secure a foreign, worldwide contract with a European company.[11] In May, Brian told the music press that the group's funds were depleted to the point that they were considering filing for bankruptcy at the end of the year, which Disc & Music Echo called "stunning news" and a "tremendous shock on the American pop scene".[12] His remarks in the press ultimately thwarted long-simmering contract negotiations with Deutsche Grammophon.[13]

Brian hoped that the success of a forthcoming single, "Break Away", would mend their financial issues.[12] He wrote the song with his father and ex-band manager Murry Wilson. It was released on June 16 with the B-side "Celebrate the News", a Dennis song, and peaked at number 63 in the US and number 6 in the UK.[14] After the April sessions for "Break Away", Brian was rarely in a studio until August, when he produced a spoken-word album with poet Stephen Kalinich, A World of Peace Must Come. It was not released until 2008.[15] During that summer, Wilson co-founded the Radiant Radish, a health food store in West Hollywood.[16][nb 1]

The group's Capitol contract expired on June 30 with one more album still due,[17] after which the label deleted the Beach Boys' catalog from print, effectively cutting off their royalty flow.[11][nb 2] In November, Murry sold the Sea of Tunes publishing company (including the rights to the majority of Brian's songs) to A&M Records' publishing division for $700,000 ($4.88 million in 2019).[19] That same month, Charles Manson and his cult of followers were apprehended by police for the August Tate–LaBianca murders, and his former connections with Dennis Wilson and the Beach Boys became the subject of media attention. Manson was later convicted for the murders.[20]

After preliminary talks with Columbia Records and MGM Records, Warner Bros. executive Mo Ostin agreed to sign the band to Reprise Records in November of 1969.[21] This deal was brokered by Van Dyke Parks, a former collaborator of Brian's who was then employed as a multimedia executive at Warner Music Group. The contract dealt by Reprise stipulated Brian's proactive involvement with the band in all albums.[22] Another part of the deal was to revive the Beach Boys' Brother Records imprint,[21] initially founded during the Smile era and used only for the Smiley Smile album, and the "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry" singles before becoming dormant.[23]

In chronological order, the working titles for the new album were Reverberation, Sun Flower, and then Add Some Music before finally reverting to the name Sunflower.[23] Over this period, the Beach Boys worked on about four dozen studio tracks. By late 1969, the Beach Boys accumulated enough material for a new studio album, initially entitled Sun Flower, and assembled a provisional 14-song acetate shortly before signing their record contract with Reprise.[23] Its track listing follows:

This collection was rejected by Warners.[21] Warner Bros. executive Dave Berson remembered: "It seemed like an amazing thing to do, to say to the Beach Boys, 'This is not the kind of an album we want to pay for.' Contractually, we didn't have any right to reject albums."[24] The project was then renamed Add Some Music with the subheading An Album Offering From The Beach Boys.[23] In early 1970, before leaving for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, they assembled Add Some Music and submitted the album to Reprise, which the label rejected. The track listing was as follows:

Around this time, the band assembled an album for Capitol with some tracks that would later be placed on Sunflower. It had working titles of Reverberation and The Fading Rock Group Revival.[25] Although a master tape (dated June 19, 1970) of songs was put together, this album was never released.[25][26] Instead, they fulfilled their contract with the May 1970 album Live in London.[25] Capitol had such little faith in the album that they chose to release it only where the Beach Boys' records were still selling respectably well—the UK.[nb 3]

After consideration of Add Some Music and the failed Reprise single, "Add Some Music to Your Day", Mo Ostin suggested that the group offer a few stronger tracks or their days at Reprise Records would be short-lived. The returned to the studio one last time. During February 1970, they started to assemble what would subsequently be known as Sunflower and finished its last two songs in July 1970: "Cool, Cool Water" and "It's About Time".[23]

Two singles were issued before the album's release: "Add Some Music to Your Day" (B-side "Susie Cincinnati") and "Slip On Through" (B-side "This Whole World"). Reprise was so excited about "Add Some Music to Your Day" that they convinced retailers to carry more copies of it than they ever had for any other Reprise single, but disc jockeys refused to play it on the radio.[31] "Add Some Music to Your Day" peaked at No. 64 during a five-week stay, while "Slip On Through" failed to chart.[23]

On August 31, 1970, Sunflower was released by Reprise[23] and became the Beach Boys' worst-selling album to date.[37] It reached number 151 on US record charts during a four-week stay.[23]

Due to the Beach Boys re-signing with EMI for international releases, Sunflower was released with the hit single version of "Cotton Fields" (aka "Cottonfields") added as the first track to side 1. In addition, side one was slightly altered with "Deirdre"' and "Got To Know The Woman" switching positions in the track list. The foreign release of the album occurred in November of 1970. Although re-signed to EMI, this and the following release, Surf's Up, were issued on the Stateside label.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[38]
Blender	[39]
Christgau's Record Guide	A–[40]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[41]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[42]
MusicHound Rock	3.5/5[43]
Pitchfork (Sunflower/Surf's Up reissue)	8.9/10[29]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[44]
Sputnikmusic	5/5[45]

Despite its poor sales, the album received considerable critical acclaim in the US and the UK.[31] In his review for Rolling Stone, Jim Miller praised that Sunflower was "without doubt the best Beach Boys album in recent memory, a stylistically coherent tour de force", but mused: "It makes one wonder though whether anyone still listens to their music, or could give a shit about it."[1] The Village Voice's Robert Christgau said that as a coming-of-age record from the Beach Boys, Sunflower is "far more satisfying, I suspect, than Smile ever would have been". He added that the "same medium-honest sensibility" and Southern California ethos of their 1960s music remains, "only now they sing about broken marriages and the pleasure of life. Still a lot of fun too."[46] In the English music press, the album was widely compared as the Beach Boys' equivalent to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[16]

Retrospectively, Wilson biographer Christian Matijas-Mecca stated that the album was the band's best effort since Pet Sounds. He added that Sunflower "demonstrated, more than any other Beach Boys album before or since, that the six-members could work and democratically and deliver songs of real depth."[47] Similarly, Pitchfork's Hefner Macauley deemed it "perhaps the strongest album they released post-Pet Sounds",[48] while Chris Holmes of Popdose declared that "it stands as the definitive post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys album".[49] Keith Phipps from The A.V. Club said "the album features one of The Beach Boys' most coherent and lovely selections of music."[50]

The A.V. Club's Noel Murray believed: "Sunflower is like the band’s answer to the wave of 'sunshine pop' and 'bubblegum' acts that had emerged over the previous couple of years, showing that no one could write and record slick, melodic, harmony-drenched songs quite like The Beach Boys."[51] Paste's Brian Chidester wrote that the album "was, in many respects, their Abbey Road—a lush production that signaled an end to the 1960s, the decade that gave them creative flight. ... Dennis Wilson contributed four stellar new compositions [and] Brian Wilson also wrote a number of new tracks at the time, many of which embody the 'Bedroom' aesthetic at its most pure—sweet melodies set to intimate lyrics and tender falsetto vocals."[30]

"Deirdre" was sampled in the 1995 video game EarthBound.[52]

"All I Wanna Do" has been referenced as one of the earliest manifestations of chillwave, a microgenre that developed in the 2000s.[4][5]

The Beach Boys[23]

• Al Jardine
• Bruce Johnston
• Mike Love
• Brian Wilson
• Carl Wilson
• Dennis Wilson

Additional production staff[23]

• Michel Colombier – arranger for "Tears In The Morning", "Deirdre", and "Our Sweet Love"
• Stephen Desper – chief engineer and mixer
• Ricci Martin – cover photo
• Ed Thrasher – original art direction and innerspread photography

Album

Singles

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Griifth, JT. "Landlocked". AllMusic. Retrieved 3 July 2013.