“I work the seaways, the gale-swept seaways/Past shipwrecked daughters of wicked waters”
Sail On Sailor, 1972
UNIVERSAL
AS hard as they swam against it, nostalgia always pulled The Beach Boys back. As we left them at the end-of-season cliffhanger of their last boxset, their new manager Jack Rieley had recently tried to bring the band up to date. They embraced ecological issues, politics and new technology; they grew their hair and played with the Grateful Dead. Even as it broke new ground, however, 1971’s wonderful Surf’s Up ended on familiar territory. Bruce Johnston wrote a song (“Disney Girls”) that hymned the very mom-and-pop America the band were allegedly trying to leave behind. The album concluded, meanwhile, with “Surf’s Up” itself, a song rescued from the abandoned Smile sessions of 1967 – and an image of children playing in the waves.
In this new box, we join the group in a period about which we are likely to have mixed feelings. Much of the music is still delightful, of course. But that joy is tinged with a certain sadness as we know what awaits them. Even with
