The Beach Boys Love You, released in 1977, is both the most cultishly beloved of the band’s latter works, and the least explored, at least until recently. Undertaking that exploration reveals an entire sub-world of fandom within the cult of the Brian Wilson, where dings and dangs are abundant, and shortenin’ bread is always close at hand.

The Beach Boys Love You is so beloved by certain fans for its deceptive surface of childish naivete that it’s almost reviled by others. It’s the antithesis of Pet Sounds in production and performance, yet it was the first record of the entire decade that had featured Brian Wilson as an artist who was fully present and firing on all cylinders. If the whole thing sounds a little farty, well… better out than in!

The story of The Beach Boys Love You is a story where the drug and ego-fueled implosion of Smile is the birth of a new being, the Adult/Child, destined to be father of the man. Yet, even as father, the child is denied its own manhood, forever infantilized and restricted to the container of boyhood. Contemporary songs displaced by resurrected Smile segments became an entire pool of outtakes unto themselves that the band spent 30 years reflecting on in this spirit. This looking back and pulling forth effort would accompany every major progressive push they would ever make, never fully escaping the 60’s no matter how much they tried.

Because both Love You and Adult/Child feature tracks pulled from deep in the archives, it makes it nearly impossible to cover the making of the two albums without addressing the whole messy post-Smile sprawl of the band. Trying to tell this story becomes something like Slaughterhouse 5: “Listen: Brian Wilson has come unstuck in time.” Sometimes he drifts forwards into the future, leaving his bandmates to pick up the pieces in the present. Sometimes they summon him back only to find that he’s still stuck in the doo-wop 50’s. Somewhere in the middle there’s hours upon hours dedicated to perfecting “Shortenin’ Bread” and “Old Man River”, the latter leading to yet another nervous breakdown for poor Brian, and the former infamously leading to the breakdown and flight of any poor soul he would rope into his orbit for a quick 4 hour round.

The Beach Boys Love You is the definitive album of the “Brian’s Back!” era, after a decade of wavering commitment and wildly fluctuating mental health from the group’s often reluctant leader. It would prove to be a short-lived return, and it would come with strings attached to a Rasputin-esque puppet master who could rightly be credited with saving Wilson’s life, and then just as rightly credited with nearly destroying it.

The dark saga of Dr. Eugene Landy’s time with Brian in the late 80’s was fairly well covered by Hollywood, with John Cusack as a John Cusack-y Brian and Paul Giamatti as a tyrannical Landy. However, the initial two years they worked together, which produced both Love You and its intended followup, Adult/Child, hasn’t had the same lens placed on it. Even in the documentaries it gets glided over on the way to the nauseating, chart-topping comeback success of “Kokomo”.

The entire effort to bring Brian back into the group as their leader in the mid 70’s was inspired by the success of their new nostalgic greatest hits album, which vastly surpassed any of their recent creative efforts. The man who’d written those songs had died a thousand deaths, and come back to life in a strange, somewhat removed fashion. He wasn’t so much beside himself as trapped within a self that often couldn’t draw a line between where it ended and the void began.

To pull him back from that abyss and inspire him to re-engage with the passion he had in the 60’s would require the band to abandon nearly every stride forward they’d made as a collective in the 70’s, sacrificing personal growth and expansion for the sake of resurrecting their leader’s erstwhile ambitions, whatever they might be.

After the first fruits of Brian’s fragile comeback produced an entire album of awkward oldies and novelty tunes, he hunkered down and delivered a record that sounded like synth-punk pioneers Suicide trying to do the Bolan boogie, unleashing something both rude and joyful in the process – the closest the band ever got to being true punk rockers.

The lack of ambition is taken to a new level of post-Phil Spector brutalism, a wall of sound built on synth overdubs and minimalist percussion that collides with full-spectrum creative expression. It still remains one of the band’s most definitively unique statements, and one of the few albums that feels like Brian Wilson unleashed, rather than corralled and packaged.

In a perfect world, we would have had an equally eccentric followup, but poor Adult/Child, fully conceived and incubated, was never born as a proper release, too uniquely special to see the light of day. But there’s a gloriously stupid brilliance to the album, blasting out of the gates declaring “Life is for the living! Don’t sit around on your ass smoking grass, that stuff went out a long time ago!” and only getting more wonderfully absurd with its affirmations. It’s an existential comic strip brought to life: “The cigarette butt when you throw it in the water goes ‘tsst’.” another song begins, before declaring, “see what your life can be!” Thanks for the advice, Mr. Natural!

Beyond its surface positivity, Adult/Child is an album contemplating endings and beginnings, often together. Despite the pain of sacrificing his very heart to his lost beloved, Brian declares, “Still I dream of it, of that happy day when I can say I’ve fallen in love, and it haunts me so, like a dream that’s somehow linked to all the stars above.”

Recently a major redress has been made to the cosmic fabric with the official release of the tracks recorded for the Adult/Child album on the new box set, We Gotta Groove. Picking up from where the off-the-cuff whimsy and overgrown teenage psychodrama of Love You left off, the proto-synthpop cuts are now interspersed with freshly recorded big band crooner tunes as well as old novelty numbers recorded nearly a decade prior. The whole effect is something like The Beach Boys Prime Time Variety Show Special! Next to Smile, no other album quite sums up the cult of Brian Wilson so definitively; that it does so by defying post-Smile expectations at every turn only reinforces this feeling.

The perfectly conceived universe, with its formulas and expectations never diverging, had to be destroyed to birth the inconceivable paradox of the infinite unknown. In a reflection of the fundamental cosmic trauma, Smile’s implosion and subsequent big bang birthed the beautiful imperfection of Love You and the cosmic paradox of the immature but profound Adult/Child.

Furthermore, with the waves of psychobabble Landy unleashed in his time with Brian, we inevitably have to turn a psychobabbling lens onto the entire band if we want to understand how we arrived at this slippery point in time. I intend to examine the Wilson brothers as three different products of the same abusive environment, and how they carried that abuse forward with them, in their relationships with each other, their families, friends, and themselves. In doing so, I’ll reckon with how one tells the psychological story underlying The Beach Boys Love You. What does it even mean when a group of people as seemingly toxic as The Beach Boys declare they love you? Is that a good thing? And what kind of people love The Beach Boys? We’ll reach out to fandom for some answers…

Finally, we have to question: what it means to become “America’s Band”? Was it something that was ever truly aspired towards by the Beach Boys? Or were they representing both the spirit and the karma of California first and foremost? That in itself was easily enough to destroy them. Dennis was already drowning with that weight when Ronald Reagan declared them national heroes. Following his death the band would be permanently fractured, with Brian becoming more of an occasional satellite member, and leadership falling more into Mike’s hands than Carl’s. The Brian-free “Kokomo” would be the ultimate result.

There was a time, however brief, when The Beach Boys Love You was a message from the band to Brian Wilson, and from Brian to everyone in return. What that love meant, in all its complications, is what this series sets out to explore.

My intention is to look at The Beach Boys Love You through the lens of illness, addiction and recovery, and how the latter is never a straight line. The pathway to healing inevitably leads through the valleys of the deepest traumas held by the addict; ultimately it is the trauma itself the addict must seek to recover from.

Love You and Adult/Child present the artist in both his most deeply vulnerable and deeply whimsical states, blurring the line to such a degree that it becomes impossible to differentiate the two. For this reason they stand as definitive autobiographical works, deeply complicated, deeply revealing, and deeply, deeply silly. Brian’s love is sophisticatedly childish, like a boy singing Frank Sinatra while “smoking” a bubblegum cigarette.

Where the market is flooded with Pet Sound Musings and Chicken Soup for the SMILE!, the record is far sparser in regards to The Beach Boys Love You.  By focusing on this era, no one is forced to read a whole new Good, Bad and Ugly Vibrations biography to pick up the part of the tale that is missed by the Hollywood flick and the Disney documentary of the band. The redundancy is minimal for all involved.

The unique, challenging process of unpacking trauma, particularly through creation, is the central pillar I intend to explore. The Beach Boys Love You proves that the only way out of Hell is through, refusing to be judged against what came before while being intrinsically related to the entire journey. 

By asking how a sensitive male artist expresses vulnerability in a world centered on dominance and submission, this series investigates the masculine sacrifice required for Brian Wilson to reach his most empathic truths, framing Love You as the ultimate expression of that gender-fluid exploration. Out of the wrestling of yin and yang emerges a new character to embody the Adult/Child: Thump! No longer must the listener struggle to reconcile the angelic falsetto of young Brian with his 30-something, Randy Newman-aping croak. Instead, just accept the full transformation into a new bearded being!

In the end, I intend to emotionally encompass the story’s characters through an approach that lands halfway between a therapy session and a seance, giving the ghosts of the saga weight and presence. Alley oop!

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe:

ABC presents: the Adult/Child Beach Boys prime-time TV special

Hosted by Paul Lynde!

Paul Lynde: “Life’s a beach, they say. Eh’h.” *cringes* 

With special guests Kiss doing “Honkin’ Down the Highway/Surf Rock City” (“First I drink/then I smoke/then I catch a wave and croak!”)

Barry Manilow singing “Still I Dream of It”!

Bruce Johnston singing “I Write The Songs” and disco “Deirdre”!

Frank and Nancy Sinatra on “California Girls”!

Brian Wilson and Peggy Lee on “It’s Lonely At The Top”!

Randy Newman singing “A Day In The Life of A Tree”!

The Walker Brothers performing “Til I Die”!

Dick Dale performing “Surf’s Up”!

And Jean Stapleton and Carol O’Connor singing “Let’s Put Our Hearts Together”!

Paul Lynde: “But first, here’s those Boys we love to Beach at…”

Carl Wilson (singing) “LIIIIIIIIIIIFE IS FOR THE LIIVVVVVIIIIIINGG”

Paul Lynde: “Where’s Rhonda when I need her…” 

Al Jardine: “Help is on the way!”

The words echo from a variety of voices, like the voices echoing in Brian Wilson’s head, as the camera pans in on him, losing focus as it closes up on his eyes, then fading to a cartoon animated image of 1969 Brian Wilson standing stark naked in front of a mirror.

Brian (singing, in 1969): “Stark naked in front of a mirror, a pudgy person somehow did appear… 

Brian, back in 1977 after the song ends, rubs his chin: “Yeah it’s been a long time I’ve been trying to get my body, head, and bread in shape… speaking of bread…” 

Paul Lynde: “Ladies and, ah, gentle-boys, Danny Hutton, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Alex Chilton!”

Lynde pulls out a huge trunk of cash from backstage. Iggy sighs, then takes a deep breath and begins singing “Mama’s little baby loves….”

Meanwhile in our own universe:

r/thebeachboys

What does “The Beach Boys Love You” mean to you?

brianhildebrandland:

Not just the album, but the idea of being loved by the Beach Boys themselves. What does the Beach Boys’ love mean to you? How do you think the Beach Boys love you? How does that make you feel? How do the Beach Boys, and especially The Beach Boys Love You speak your love language? These are questions rattling around in my Ding Dang Dong head while deeply immersed in the Landy eras… trying to embrace the psychobabble rather than avoid it, to achieve true immersion in Brian’s state of existence while under the care of the doctor/fellow madman… Alley oop!

Chuntie:

It makes me feel like a sunny side egg

brianhildebrandland:

“This is your brain. This is your brain on The Beach Boys Love You. Any questions?”

fatblob1234:

I guess I just wasn’t made for these times

The Beach Boys are there for me in my darkest times even when no one else is.

brianhildebrandland:

Felt. My housemate died a month before We Got a Groove and the BBs have been a blessed lifeline through the winter…

Pure-Cress-8019:

This album feels very raw, but I think it’s also a good expression of human emotion and I think it’s a very emotionally charged album. I don’t think it’s childish. I think our emotions swing one way widely to the other and I think this album in particular encapsulates what it’s like as someone who is in their 30s perfectly. I think it’s a great album. One of my favorites of all time.

brianhildebrandland:

It’s the whole argument, is it healthier to be so “emotionally regulated” that you’re afraid to express your deepest self? Or is it “better out than in”? Love You goes way beyond just escapism and into full-spectrum emotional expression, rizz and cringe be damned.

And it does it in such a bracing but yet warm way that you can receive it without cowering or becoming defensively guarded. Adult/Child too. It’s like Brian being the father he’d wished he had to himself.

SidneyMunsinger:

I know you’re gonna love Phil Spector

It’s a good album because it symbolizes Brian’s optimism and finding the good in the bad. The band were embracing musical innovation with the synth and Brian’s quirkiness in a time when he was still struggling with his mental health. The songs are all chaotic joyful/funny representations of things Brian loved at the time. Roller skating with his family, His daughters, the solar system, Johnny Carson, the shortenin’ bread riff, and making music with his two brothers, etc. Brian was just one of a kind because he was able to see the good in all of the trauma he experienced, by making this kind of music and even seeing the good in his father, his cousin, and his doctor.

geep4sale:

The title is like a hug from the album and the music fits perfectly. It’s also like a hug from Brian where the rest of the Beach boys put their differences aside and joined in too.

JJVentress:

who ran the iron horse?

The Beach Boys make music about the magic of everyday life, finding little moments of joy in the mundane, even if everything else seems bleak. They could not help but do that. They had similar sensibilities and all their music rings this little note over and over again, and it does feel like a gift they deliberately decided to make for other people. Brian says something like that, that people can depend on his name when it comes to making music that makes people happy, and the other members have echoed similar sentiments. For Love You in particular, it feels like learning to love your own brain, the little things that draw your attention, the strange obsessions, the push and pull of wanting love and wanting to be alone. Becoming fond of yourself and your peculiarities without judgment. Puts me in the best, coziest mood.

Round_Rectangles:

I Can Hear Music

They make me happy 🙂

Michael-of:

It’s one of my favorite albums ever. It feels me with joy. There’s darkness and beauty. The perfect balance. But, it’s one of the most full of life sounding albums I’ve ever heard. One of the most unique expressions of human emotion that could only have been made by one man during one time period under very specific conditions.

brianhildebrandland:

Almost makes ya wish Landy had stuck around for the rest of the decade to keep Bri focused and not relapsing into escapism 😩

Or really… That the guy that replaced him didn’t freaking FALL OFF A CLIFF AND DIE! That could have been a turning point if they’d been able to continue working together in the land of the living…

This is all part of that full spectrum emotional soup of the album…

chrismcshaves:

what do the planets mean?

I feel appreciated by Brian for listening to it. I think of it as his original concept: Brian Wilson Loves You.

After reading the liner notes, it feels to me like the renaming of it to TBB Love You was the band saying it to Brian (with the title, not just their messages in the liner notes). I don’t think that was the intent, but it’s how it feels to me.

quicrumb:

columnated ruins domino

music is love. the beach boys love you in the biblical sense.

brianhildebrandland:

hubba hubba!

shutdownvol2:

Always felt like they were way ahead of their time with this title. I love how it can mean both “The Beach Boys love their listeners” and “The Beach Boys love Brian Wilson who came back to make this”.

JupHut:

It means they love me.

NoFanMail:

It’s nice to be loved I guess

Blend42:

Love You

Feels like Brian Loves You and the other ones are tacked on…..

brianhildebrandland:

like the band themselves are an afterthought? there is something to be said for that, especially with Landy’s influence as a master manipulator/divider…. they almost came into this project as blind as Pet Sounds…. with the idea that that album could be considered his first solo album “featuring the voices of the Beach Boys”, this could then be called solo record number 2, since Smile imploded and everything since was produced by the band rather than the artist, til 15BO-Love You-Adult/Child. So I guess that’s begs the question, if I understand your meaning correctly (or even not), could not the exact same thing be said of Pet Sounds? Or was it more consciously conceived with them in mind, where the group were an afterthought to Bri when it came to composing the Brian Loves You songs? 

BigJilmQuebec:

To me Love You makes me feel, like feel everything in general if that makes sense.

It gives me the same feeling of when I listen to Outsider music like Daniel Johnston, honestly Adult Child does too, it presents emotions in a very honest and unfiltered way that makes it come out eccentric.

It also feels like your getting a big warm hug as well.

It’s Brian at his most honest and emotional point since Pet Sounds.

brianhildebrandland:

How much space can you safely hold for the Beach Boys’ love? For as much joy, beauty… and sorrow as it contains? How much of the Beach Boys’ trauma can you allow into your love life before it overwhelms you? If Christine McVie were still here she’d be the perfect one to ask…Dennis’s quote about Adult/Child applies to both albums, I feel like, as far as defining that love… it’s the strangest love you’ve ever felt, but it’s also the best love Brian and the Boys have given in ages. Mature, but in the weirdest “Boy” way possible.

“I’m elated with the new [Adult/Child], it’s really gonna be a surprise. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s positive, again!”