Brian’s Back (Again)
There are few artists I am truly obsessed with, and Brian Wilson is one of them. I didn’t always like the Beach Boys. When I was a kid, they just seemed like innocent teenage fun, but they didn’t really rock my boat. Pet Sounds was very slow to creep into my psyche and still reveals itself to me in bits and pieces. I am definitely one of those who considers BW to be a complete and total genius though, unparalleled by anyone else in pop music. Problem is his best work is many, many years behind him.
Still I look forward to new BW product with the unrealistic expectation that perhaps, through some miracle he regained thousands of long dead brain cells, gathered the Wrecking Crew at Gold Star, and finally completed a worthy follow-up to Pet Sounds.
Imagination does not live up to his legacy and will be forgotten as yet another misbegotten attempt to prove he’s “still got it”. That doesn’t mean the album is completely without worth or that I don’t enjoy listening to it. There is always an element to Brian’s post Pet Sounds work that resembles slowing down to observe a car wreck. This was never so apparent as with his most underappreciated masterpiece, Beach Boys Love You (1977), which stands today as the last Beach Boys album he produced.
His next production effort didn’t come until 1988, when his live-in shrink convinced him to go solo, a move he should have made back in the ‘60s (and might’ve even saved a bit of his sanity). Brian Wilson was an interesting record because you finally got to hear what he could do without the Beach Boys. The first thing that was glaringly apparent was that the vocal harmonies were all Brian’s invention from the start, and probably a lot of Beach Boys records were all Brian overdubbing the harmonies as with this record. Song-wise Brian Wilson was fairly weak, but no one could have expected much more. There were some decent tunes though and overall it was great to hear him trying again.
One unfortunate aspect of Wilson’s career has always been his inherent need to have a hit. This has been the root of many of his problems over the years, and although hopes are high within his camp for Imagination, you and I know this thing ain’t gonna do as well as Pet Sounds did when it was first released in 1966, and it did poorly compared to previous BB releases. This is another era entirely and teenage love songs sung by a 50something man/child don’t tend to go over well with the general public. When Brian Wilson’s chart position didn’t live up to Brian’s unrealistic expectations and a follow-up was rejected by his label, he slunk away and was not heard from again until a couple of years ago when his old friend and one-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks hired him to do all the vocals on Orange Crate Art. Although the songs on that album tended to be a tad too sappy, the vocals were amazing, and it became apparent that Brian may not be able to produce or write the way he used to, but his ability to arrange and execute vocal harmonies had not diminished a bit.
Imagination is his best vocal display yet. The miraculous thing about this is that 20 years ago this guy’s voice was completely shot. The beautiful, clear falsetto had given way to an unbearable cigarette rasp, and it was up to the Beach Boys to provide and execute the vocal arrangements. Ten years ago on Brian Wilson, the damage to his vocal chords was still evident. Now, except for sometimes slurred enunciation, all the colors and tones are back. Although he sings in lower keys, the falsetto is gorgeous as ever, (another Wilson quirk is his shame over his “girlish” falsetto voice) and his bass voice probably pisses Mike Love off beyond belief. More than anything else, Imagination proves that Brian does not need the Beach Boys in the studio, and probably never did.
The songs on Imagination are both promising and ultimately the albums downfall. He seems to have recaptured his ability to write pop hooks reminiscent of his heyday, and on “South American” he makes an obvious attempt to out-do the Beach Boys latter day (and all-time best selling single) mega-hit “Kokomo”, and succeeds. “South American” is a classic Wilson “place” song in a similar vain as “Salt Lake City” or “Surf City”. Other new songs like “She Says That She Needs Me” and “Where Has Love Been?” showcase the kind of serious balladry that started all this genius talk in the first place. “Cry” covers new ground for Wilson in the area of gospel/blues, and it comes off quite nicely. Wilson has never been a strong lyricist, and here he enlists the talents of his co-producer Joe Thomas and the likes of Carol Bayer Sager and J.D. Souther to better put his ideas to prose. Even though most of the new songs are impressive on first and second listen, you begin to realize that ultimately they are hopelessly dated, and aimed for a “mature” audience, of which I’d rather not associate myself with at this juncture.
A decision was made to include new updated versions of a couple of old Beach Boys songs in this collection, probably due to the modest success of I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, a Don Was produced career retrospective and TV special from a few years back. “Keep An Eye On Summer” and “Let Him Run Wild” are respectfully rendered on Imagination, but one can’t help to wonder why. I think Wilson wants to give some of his more underappreciated numbers a new life, and a ‘90s studio sheen. But if his aim is to be taken as a still vital artist, redoing one’s own material is not the way to go.
The thing that kills the whole project for me is Brian’s co-producer Joe Thomas. Thomas co-produced the countryfied Beach Boys tribute album and was instrumental in getting Brian organized enough to put another solo album together. Before I tear into the guy I will credit him with doing a hell of a job of helping Brian to capture many of the elements that made him great. For example, the use of real instrumentation (as opposed to synths which Wilson pretty much used exclusively from Beach Boys Love You through Brian Wilson), and you get the feeling that Thomas assumed the role of cheif engineer (like Chuck Britz, Gold Star’s wizard behind the boards who must be credited with a large part of Wilson’s greatest triumphs). The bad part is Imagination comes off as an overly homogenized MOR piece of fluff, ready for airplay on your local “soft hits” radio station. I find this demeaning and insulting.
Imagination has been released on Irving Azoff’s Giant Records label which is by no means an independant and is most certainly a major label, distributed by Warner Bros. Brian Wilson wants to have a hit album, so he wants to be on a major label. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if he were to sign with an independent label like Sub Pop (which released some Pet Sounds out-take material a couple of years ago) and made smaller budget records without the unrealistic “hit” expectations, and without slick co-producers whose job it is to make Brian more “palatable” to the general public. Unfortunately, I’m sure I’ll never find out.
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