Review Summary: What does it mean?
At this point in time, The Beach Boys were more than ready to ditch Capitol Records – years of poor treatment, dwindling promotion in favor of those boys from Liverpool, and an increasing distance from frontman Brian Wilson all contributed to an unsalvageable relationship between the two parties, and yet the band
still had a few more records on their contract. The failure of
Friends enabled Capitol to press the band to create a more commercial effort to succeed the triad of albums now known as the “lo-fi trilogy”
(Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends), and with the absence of Wilson – who had been stuck in a psychiatric hospital thanks in no part to a growing cocaine addiction to pepper his festering mental instabilities, the band were most definitely in trouble without his guidance. If history is anything to go by, when all else fails:
raid the vaults. For 1969’s
20/20, we were presented the ultimate contractual obligation album to close out a decade that saw the surf rock icons transform into various personalities that culminated in a band that didn’t have a direction that seemed absolute nor commercially sound. Like a great deal of their albums,
20/20 barely cut the thirty-minute mark with several cuts of wondrously done pop music, yet in
20/20’s case, hardly any of the music was “new” and instead relied heavily on outtakes on the elder Wilson’s scrapped pet project
Smile and covers. This trend dated back to 1967’s
Smiley Smile and would continue for the next few years before ultimately drying up the well with 1971’s
Surf’s Up and the scrapped 1972 revision of
Smile that never saw the light of day.
Once you get past the fact that
20/20 is essentially the rest of the Beach Boys relying on years-old songs and covers (a fact that bothered Dennis Wilson immensely upon the album’s release), the album itself isn’t
that bad, but provides an interesting look into the identity crisis the band were experiencing. On songs such as Dennis’ “All I Want to Do” and the cover of Ersel Hickey’s “Bluebirds Over The Mountain”, the band can’t decide on whether or not they want to rock out or to play the tender-sounding harmonies card once more, an aspect of the band that worked wonders on other cuts such as Carl’s production of the Spector classic “I Can Hear Music”, Brian’s “Time to Get Alone” and the
Smile cut “Our Prayer”. The tonal shifts
20/20 suffers from is distinct for, as mentioned before, it shows us a band that doesn’t know what they want to do. On the other hand, it gives insight into the band’s growing songwriting abilities, most notably Dennis on the disturbing standout “Be With Me” and Bruce Johnston on the beautiful (and incredibly saccharine, keeping with the standard Johnston would enforce on his compositions in the future) instrumental “The Nearest Faraway Place”.
It’s here that things get tricky – we know that
20/20 featured a great deal of outside influence and a wealth of Brian Wilson compositions, but it’s the presence of one song in particular that would become infamous within the group due to its association with one Charles Manson – “Never Learn Not to Love”, originally known as “Cease to Exist” as seen on Manson’s album
Lie: The Love and Terror Cult. Manson, who had traded his rights to the song for a sum of cash and a motorcycle in return, reportedly threatened Dennis and his family upon learning of the lyrical and compositional changes he had employed into “Cease to Exist”, not to forget the fact Manson was left uncredited upon the song’s release as a single (a decision that probably saved the band a whole lot of trouble upon Manson’s trial for the murder of seven people). In comparison to Manson’s original work, “Never Learn Not to Love” eschews the sweet sounding harmonies that many associate with the Beach Boys, instead creating a desperate, eerie sounding tune that still shows Manson’s influence upon Dennis Wilson’s songwriting (as seen on “Be With Me”). In the grand scheme of things, the song itself is solid yet is overshadowed quality-wise by the Friends-era outtake “I Went to Sleep” and the heavily-layered vocal masterwork “Cabinessence”, a song that rivals “Never Learn Not to Love” in just how infamous it is in the Beach Boys fanbase thanks to vocalist Mike Love’s aggressive questioning of the lyrics penned by collaborator Van Dyke Parks (“Over and over, the crow cries, uncover the cornfield/Over and over, the thresher and hovers, the wheatfield” in particular) – said questioning of the lyrics contained in “Cabinessence” was something that ultimately contributed to the collapse of
Smile and also contributed to Love’s oft-repeated curiosity into what the lyrics meant, which also evoked the same answer from Parks:
”I don’t know.”
20/20 is an aural document of a band without direction, yet with ambition that had not reached its fruition. Songs such as the lead single “Do It Again” serve to perpetuate the stereotype that the Beach Boys only had their eye on the beach and an overbearing obsession with cars, but other selections presented on the album also prove the band were for the most part tired of that trope and wished to move on as well despite Capitol Records’ insistence they stick to the formula that brought them several hit records. The single that ended up being the final songs the band presented to the label, Brian and father Murry’s “Break Away” and Dennis’ “Celebrate the News” both showed a band that had enough of the restrictions placed upon them and were ready to progress beyond what the world thought the Beach Boys were.
