The Beach Boys were on a roll. After some years in the wilderness post-Pet Sounds, they’d managed to rebuild their credibility both as a live act and as chart contenders, returning to the Top 30 with 1971’s Surf’s Up. But the next few years would be a bit rocky. Surf’s Up was followed by Carl and The Passions — “So Tough” in 1972, then Holland in 1973, neither of which matched Surf’s Up in chart performance or sales.
But that early ’70s period is also one of the group’s most intriguing, as The Beach Boys worked to redefine themselves. “If you look at all the stuff The Beach Boys had done before — the slickness, the harmony, the cars, the this and that — we were all foraging, looking for stuff,” says Blondie Chaplin, singer and guitarist with the South African band The Flame, who joined The Beach Boys at this time, along with Flame drummer Ricky Fataar. “People were trying to venture out of the normal Beach Boys box, you know what I mean? I know Carl [Wilson] was doing that, and I think that inspired some of the interesting work at that time.”
“We were seeking relevancy,” says longtime Beach Boy Al Jardine. “Seriously: The Beach Boys tag, that label, is hard to escape. So we were looking for identity. Trying to grow up; we were grown men that made grown-up music, you know? Good music. New music. Each one of us took production responsibilities for our own songs. And I think it turned out pretty good.”
Fifty years on, both albums are being celebrated in the box set Sail on Sailor — 1972. Along with newly remastered versions of the albums, there’s a generous bounty of bonus material, most of it previously unreleased, overseen by co-producers Alan Boyd and Mark Linett, veterans of numerous Beach Boys reissues.
The sessions for began in December 1971. It was Jardine who’d brought The Flame (aka The Flames) to the attention of The Beach Boys, after seeing them perform
