The Beach Boys - We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years
★★★★★
CAPITOL
For a few minutes in 1976 – America's bicentennial year and the 15th anniversary of California-sun ambassadors The Beach Boys – the hype was right: Brian Wilson was back. On November 27th, the group's resident, troubled genius was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. And he was solo, his first TV appearance without brothers Dennis and Carl, Mike Love and Al Jardine since a legendary recital of Surf's Up in the 1967 documentary Inside Pop. Brian's three SNL songs included an eerie Good Vibrations – alone and skittish at a piano in a faux-sandbox set – and Back Home, a jaunty original from the Beach Boys' latest LP, 15 Big Ones, with the SNL band even though the former were in town selling out Madison Square Garden.
Brian also performed Love Is a Woman, a new song of simple romantic advice ("Tell her she smells good tonight") in doo-wop piano triplets with a vocal that made up for the rough edges and shaky high notes with heartening mid-range force. Five months later, Love Is a Woman was the sentimental finale of 1977's The Beach Boys Love You, a hopeful sequel to the sales pitch around Brian's return as producer on 15 Big Ones, in fact a glass half-full reliant on covers of ’50s and ’60s oldies. Love You was the first Beach Boys album entirely written or co-written by Brian since 1967’s Wild Honey and effectively his first solo LP. He played most of the instruments, a one-man Wrecking Crew on keyboards and Minimoog bass, and was a committed vocal presence, often the lead. Notably, that was kept secret; the inner sleeve had no credits.
We Gotta Groove, named after a stomping Love You outtake, makes up for that with encyclopaedic liner notes and detailed studio annotation – down to the “plinks” and “meows” Brian wrings from his Minimoog in the garage-Smile teenage drama I'll Bet He's Nice – that affirm Brian's dominant energy on these 73 tracks, mostly from 1976 and ’77. Even more than the chart-wilderness years of 1970’s Sunflower, 1971’s _Surf's Up_and 1973’s Holland – now-certified classics – this was a rough era for The Beach Boys: commercially revived by the recent Capitol-’60s retrospectives Endless Summer and Spirit Of America but stuck for a road forward even with Brian at the helm again. Love You died at Number 53 in Billboard (15 Big Ones went Top Ten), and Brian's fragile command took another beating when his intended follow-up, Adult/Child – a mixed bag of new ballads, playful minimalism and lavishly orchestrated Tin Pan Alley nuggets – was rejected by the rest of the band, its label Warner Bros. or (most likely) both.
But this set – dedicated to those albums, related sessions and a remarkable cache of Brian's Love You solo demos from October, 1976 – has the edge in surprise. The best of Love You is the old glory with subtly applied modernism. Brian's single-handed rhythm section and the fluid group-vocal glow in Let Us Go On This Way recall the post-Smile comeback stride of Wild Honey and Do It Again with flashes of early synth-pop in the Minimoog-bass zoom. Harmonies aside, the innocent galactica Solar System is all Brian, his assured vocal in an eccentric texture of tack piano, tubular bells and ARP String machine.
Love You would have been even better with some of these outtakes: the hit-single clout in We Gotta Groove; the Beach Boys Party! vibe of Hey There Mama (with Jan and Dean's Dean Torrence, who was on that ’65 LP). Sherry She Needs Me was an unreleased sparkler from the recording of 1965’s Summer Days, resurrected in August 1976 with Brian's near-perfect throwback vocal. And though it’s a virtual Xerox of the Righteous Brothers’ 45, You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling is Brian at his most Phil Spector without any help, a grand hotel of overdubs with chorus vocals that reach for the ’64 majesty and damn near get there.
There is no getting around the regressive whimsy and recycled high-school confidential on Love You (Mona; the ode to talk-show host Johnny Carson; the mercifully brief Ding Dang). Brian was in and out of Eugene Landy's controlling care at the time (he'd be back), and Brian lacked the empathic challenge of former lyric partners like Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks. But We Gotta Groove's subtitle reflects the sanctuary and confidence Brian found at the Beach Boys’ Santa Monica studio, which opened in 1974. Earle Mankey – a founding member of Sparks and staff engineer at Brother who worked on most of the sessions in this collection – remembered Brian’s daily discipline for Love You, turning up in the morning and tracking into the afternoon.
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READ MORE: The Beach Boys' 50 Greatest Songs
Brian maintained that enthusiasm for Adult Child, commissioning orchestrations from Dick Reynolds (a veteran of the Beach Boys’ 1964 Christmas Album) yet hedging that bet with a miscellany of covers and Love You-style vehicles for Carl (the pop-gospel charmer Everybody's Got to Live) and Dennis (It's Trying To Say, actually about baseball). The lack of direction was enough to doom the project. But there are moments of genius, in excelsis. It's Over Now is a humbled goodbye in Pet Sounds grandeur with a prophetic guest vocal by Brian's wife Marilyn (they would soon divorce). And while Brian wrote Still I Dream Of It for Frank Sinatra (he never responded), the composer owns it amidst the strings and in the intimate ‘76 demo that closes this set, damaged but unbowed in a winding, plaintive melody that suggests Surfer Girl headed for Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky.
What makes this combined reckoning of Brian's last, fully-engaged studio albums for The Beach Boys, with all of their peaks and flaws, such an enlightening, unexpected pleasure is the chance to hear the earnest dedication and breadth of inspiration in this brief window of renewal, long obscured by false promo and Brian's ongoing trials. The liner notes point out that The Beach Boys Love You was originally titled Brian Loves You – which was much closer to the truth.
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years is out February 13 on Capitol.
Tracklisting:
Disc 1
Love You Album (1977 Mix)
LP1 Side A
1. Let Us Go On This Way
2. Roller Skating Child
3. Mona
4. Johnny Carson
5. Good Time
6. Honkin’ Down The Highway
7. Ding Dang
LP1 Side B
8. Solar System
9. The Night Was So Young
10. I’ll Bet He’s Nice
11. Let’s Put Our Hearts Together
12. I Wanna Pick You Up
13. Airplane
14. Love Is A Woman
Love You Outtakes (CD Only)
15. Ruby Baby
16. Marilyn Rovell
17. Sherry She Needs Me
18. Lazy Lizzie
19. We Gotta Groove (2025 Mix)
20. Hey There Mama (2025 Mix)
21. Clangin’ (2025 Mix)
22. Love Is A Woman (Al Jardine Vocal)
23. Johnny Carson (Alternate Mix With Intro)
24. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling
Disc 2
Adult/Child Sessions
LP2 Side A
1. Life Is For The Living
2. Deep Purple
3. It’s Over Now
4. Still I Dream Of It
5. Everybody Wants To Live
6. Lines
7. It’s Trying To Say
LP2 Side B
8. Shortenin’ Bread
9. New England Waltz
10. Life Is For The Living (Backing Track)
11. Deep Purple (2025 Backing Track Mix)
12. It’s Over Now (2025 Backing Track Mix)
13. Still I Dream Of It (2025 Backing Track Mix)
1974-1977 Select Outtakes (CD Only)
14. Holy Man (2025 Mix Carl Wilson Vocal)
15. Carl's Song 1 (It Could Be Anything) (2025 Mix)
16. Carl's Song 2 (Angel Come Home) (2025 Mix)
17. String Bass Song (Rainbows) (2025 Mix)
18. 10,000 Years Ago
19. Gimme Some Lovin’ (2025 Mix)
20. Honeycomb (Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford Vocal)
21. In The Back Of My Mind (1975 Alternate Take 2025 Mix)
Disc 3
15 Big Ones Outtakes and Alternate Mixes
LP3 Side A
1. Just Once In My Life (2025 Mix)
2. Mony, Mony (2025 Mix)
3. Running Bear (2025 Mix)
4. Shake, Rattle And Roll
5. On Broadway (2025 Mix)
6. Sea Cruise (2025 Mix)
LP3 Side B
7. Chapel Of Love (2025 Mix)
8. Short Skirts (2025 Mix)
9. TM Song (2025 Backing Track Mix)
10. Rock And Roll Music (2025 Backing Track Mix)
11. Had To Phone Ya (2025 Deconstructed Mix)
12. Just Once In My Life (2025 Backing Track Mix)
Love You Alternate Mixes (CD Only)
13. Let Us Go On This Way (Alternate Mix)
14. Mona (2025 Deconstructed Mix)
15. Honkin’ Down The Highway (Billy Hinsche Vocal)
16. Ding Dang (Session Highlights and Unedited 2025 Mix)
17. Solar System (2025 Backing Track Mix)
18. The Night Was So Young (2025 Vocals Only Mix)
19. Let’s Put Our Hearts Together (2025 Coda Mix)
Love You Brian Cassette Demos (CD Only)
20. That Special Feeling (Demo)
21. It’s Over Now (Demo)
22. They’re Marching Along (Demo)
23. Love Is A Woman (Demo)
24. Mona (Demo)
25. Airplane (Demo)
26. Let’s Put Our Hearts Together (Demo)
27. I’ll Bet He’s Nice (Demo)
28. Still I Dream Of It (Demo)