Track Listing

1. Meant for You
2. Friends
3. Wake the World
4. Be Here in the Morning
5. When a Man Needs a Woman
6. Passing By
7. Anna Lee, The Healer
8. Little Bird
9. Be Still
10. Busy Doin' Nothin'
11. Diamond Head
12. Transcendental Meditation
13. Do It Again
14. I Can Hear Music
15. Bluebirds over the Mountain
16. Be With Me
17. All I Want to Do
18. Nearest Faraway Place
19. Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)
20. I Went to Sleep
21. Time to Get Alone
22. Never Learn Not to Love
23. Our Prayer
24. Cabin Essence
25. Break Away [*]
26. Celebrate the News [*]
27. We're Together Again [Mono Version][*]
28. Walk on By [Mono Version][*]
29. Old Folks at Home/Ol' Man River [*]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34899 in Music
• Brand: Beach
• Released on: 2001-04-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.com
What happens when the goose stops laying golden eggs? That's the dilemma the Beach Boys faced when Brian Wilson underwent a self-imposed creative cooling-off period after the mysterious Smile album debacle. And after producing what averaged to better than three albums a year for the previous half-decade, who could blame him? Nevertheless, the band's failure to capitalize on the musical revolution symbolized by Sgt. Pepper saw their American fortunes plummet from world-beaters to also-rans, seemingly overnight. But ironically, as the times were a-changin', so was the Beach Boys sound, even if few in America were listening. Friends is easily the band's most tranquil album, a missive of peaceful good tidings fatefully issued amidst the assassinations and street riots of 1968. And if Brian was absent from many of the group's photos during the troubled era, he was still involved behind the scenes, as the vocal harmonies of the title track, "Be Here in the Mornin'," and others attest; his instrumental arrangements may be low-key, though ever inventive, as "Diamond Head" also confirms. Still, the blunt, confessional message of Wilson's "Busy Doin' Nothin'" is equally hard to miss.

20/20 marked the 20th--and last--album of the band's first Capitol era. The album is a collection of singles (the nostalgic "Do It Again," Carl Wilson's vibrant showcase "I Can Hear Music") and a couple of key Smile scraps (the transcendent a cappella album intro "Our Prayer" and the American gothic-tinged "Cabinessence," with obtusely punning lyrics courtesy of Van Dyke Parks) set amidst productions that are mostly divided among various band members. Perhaps most notable is the continued blossoming of Dennis Wilson's talents on "Be with Me" and "Never Learn Not to Love" (the latter reputedly originally given to Wilson by temporary housemate Charles Manson; strange days, indeed). This digitally remastered edition of the long out-of-print twofer edition includes the reminiscences of Brian Wilson and insightful liner notes by Beach Boys and the California Myth author David Leaf and features five bonus cuts: "Break Away," the band's vocally spectacular, if woefully underappreciated, last Capitol single; the B-side "Celebrate the News," sung and produced by Dennis; the beautiful '68 outtake, "We're Together Again"; a snippet of Brian's soaring falsetto paying tribute to Bacharach's "Walk on By"; and a medley of "Old Folks at Home"/"Ol' Man River" that underscores the band's distinctly American historical and artistic heritage. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Now that we all can see 20/20, let's be FRIENDS!
What happened to the Beach Boys after the ill-fated SMILE project went bust is common knowledge to any music fan, so I won't recount too much of it here. But when SMILE refused to appear, and it had been more than a year since the Beach Boys' last hit song "Good Vibrations" (already a tough act to follow), what had once been the biggest pop group in the world had now been reduced to just another band. With pop music more and more based on experimentation, the Beach Boys' approach to recording was looked at as quaint and out of step with the times. Even if it was good music after all, it wasn't risk-taking enough to truly win over even their longtime fans. As a result albums like FRIENDS (1968) & 20/20 (1969) remain cult classics in the Beach Boys' recorded history, and only now have been rediscovered and looked at for what they have been all along: just more great music from an even greater band.

FRIENDS is simply one of the most soothing, evocative albums ever released in pop music, and I can certainly understand why it was a failure when it was first released. With America in turmoil both politically and socially at the time, FRIENDS really was an inappropriate album for the moment. Good as it was, it just didn't fit in with the "bombs-bursting-in-air" mentality that the U.S. was adopting at the time. The failure was un-called for, but still very much understood. Now that time has passed, and the world is pretty much at peace, a soft album like FRIENDS deserves to be re-examined. After the complicated plans that the Beach Boys (mainly Brian Wilson) had for SMILE, the back-to-basics sound of FRIENDS was quite refreshing, for it also meant that the other Boys were again active contributors to their music, and not just leaving it up to Brian and some crack studio musicians. The album only lasts a paltry 25 minutes, but there's not a second wasted. Even the 40-second intro "Meant For You" will stick in your mind after it ends. The title track "Friends" is finally being considered as one of the Beach Boys' all-time best songs, for it certainly is one of the prettiest waltzes ever composed (eat your heart out, Strauss!). Also, the fact that it missed the top 40 for the first time since the Beach Boys' early days shows once again how far they had fallen on the totem pole of pop music. But without making concessions to the popular taste, the Beach Boys could simply create music as they pleased, and FRIENDS is certainly pleasing to this reviewer's ears. Songs like "Wake The World" and "Be Here In The Mornin'" are short ditties that, in spite of their length, simply do their intended job and then fade out. But their impression left lasts longer than the original song itself. At first I thought "When A Man Needs A Woman" was the Beach Boys' rewrite of the soul classic "When A Man LOVES A Woman". But once again, it's something different entirely. By 1968, all of the Boys were married and starting families, so this song was an appropriate one for the time. And true to Brian Wilson's ever-so-childlike personality, the simple words of the song are easily understood by children and adults alike. "Passing By" is reminiscent of the instrumental "Let's Go Away For Awhile" on PET SOUNDS, only a lot simpler, and even more soothing. With the relaxing mood of the times, Beach Boy Mike Love was probably the biggest convert to the whole meditation thing, and his song "Anna Lee, The Healer" a tribute to a masseuse sounds natural coming from him. Of all the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson took the longest to gain his own creative voice, and FRIENDS found him discover it for the first time. Songs like "Little Bird" and "Be Still" are well-crafted songs that would hint at more impressive things to come. While the Beach Boys may have been taking back their band from Brian Wilson and the studio musicians, that didn't mean Brian was totally out of the picture. As mentally scarred as he had become at the time, he was still an active contributor to the music. Sure enough, songs like "Busy Doin' Nothin'" (I can't tell how you many days I've had like that) and another grandiose instrumental "Diamond Head" prove that Brian's genius was still very much intact, and the genius is (at least in "Busy") its relative simplicity. The relaxing feel of the album is brought to a loud, raucous end by the rocking closer "Transcendental Meditiation". This is also a tribute to Brian Wilson's warped sense of humor by making a tribute to one of the most soothing activities sound positively wild. The free atmosphere would certainly make free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman proud.

For an album that was rejected by virtually everyone, FRIENDS certainly had a lot of things to offer the listener who did take the time to buy it. And thanks to the 2-for-1 deal that Capitol Records cooked up, we have another overlooked masterpiece to go along with it, 20/20. More on that later...

Now that we can see 20/20, let's be FRIENDS! (part 2)
After FRIENDS (1968) failed to set the charts on fire, the Beach Boys shook off that setback and moved on to the next project. The 20/20 album (1969) was more a patchwork of hit (and non-hit) singles and some really good Beach Boys originals, but even with the slapdash atmosphere, it was still a finely-crafted album that deserved far better than the reception it first received on release. For those fans who hadn't yet moved on from the Beach Boys' classic fun-in-the-sun early days, a song like "Do It Again" was really a diamond in the rough. The Boys look back at their youthful innocence was just what the public ordered, and became the band's first top 20 hit in several years. While the Boys may have wanted to move forward as musicians, they certainly hadn't forgotten how they got started, and "Do It Again" works because, and not in spite of, its flashback approach. Unfortunately, that was the only real big hit on 20/20, but that's not to say the Boys weren't trying. With the Beach Boys now officially a band again and not guest stars on their own albums, Carl Wilson took over from his older brother Brian as a producer on the Spector classic "I Can Hear Music". The fact that this song only reached #24 certainly is not a measure of the song's overall importance, for it does indeed show that the Beach Boys were more than just "The Brian Wilson Show". In fact with Brian pretty much a supporting act on 20/20, we must look at the album from this viewpoint. Carl Wilson had probably the most beautiful of all the Beach Boys' voices, and building on his heartbreaking performance on PET SOUNDS' "God Only Knows", he contributes even more beautiful vocals on the folk standard "Bluebirds Over The Mountain" (check out that electric guitar!), "Time To Get Alone" and the SMILE outtake "Cabinessence". Not only are the vocals something to sing about, but the instrumentation a wonder to behold, especially on "Cabinessence". While the full scope of the SMILE project may never be fully realized, judging from the heavily-layered production of "Cabinessence", it must have certainly been a thing of sonic beauty. Your jaw will literally drop at the sound of the airy beauty of the vocals, the instrumentation, and the lyrical genius of SMILE lyricist Van Dyke Parks. If only Brian Wilson could have kept it together throughout SMILE! While Mike Love may have been the biggest meditation buff of the group, his vocal performances are anything but soothing on 20/20. His lead vocals on "Do It Again", "Bluebirds" and the ballsy rocker "All I Want To Do" show that meditation hadn't totally mellowed out Mr. Love. A huge folk music fan, Al Jardine had convinced Brian Wilson to record "Sloop John B" on PET SOUNDS, and his performance of another folk classic, Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields" shows that Al really does have a folkie heart, and once again the other Beach Boys' turn yet another outside song into one of their own. After discovering his own creative voice on FRIENDS, Dennis Wilson keeps the streak alive on 20/20 with the beautiful "Be With Me" and the infamous "Never Learn Not To Love" (if you don't know the story behind this song, you don't know the Beach Boys). Brian Wilson's onstage replacement after he retired from performing, Bruce Johnston, had just been made a part of the studio recordings, and his first crack at making his own music is the instrumental "The Nearest Faraway Place". It was clear that Bruce wasn't just concentrating on stage activity, for he masters the art of the studio recording quite well on this song that demonstrates his love of PET SOUNDS. With the other Beach Boys throwing their hats into the creative ring, their former guiding light Brian Wilson stood on the sidelines for the most part. But his spirit was not only with the other Boys, he did get a chance to make his own contributions to 20/20. "I Went To Sleep" is the only song on 20/20 where he's running the show, and this short little song once again compresses his lyrical and musical genius into only 1:42. Like "Busy Doin' Nothin'" off FRIENDS, "Sleep" is another song about an ordinary day in the life of post-SMILE Brian Wilson. He also contributes vocals to "Time To Get Alone" and is featured with all the other Beach Boys on the SMILE cast-off "Our Prayer". This minute-long a cappella number was intended to be the first track on the SMILE album, and it would have made a great one, for the mood is set for what might have been one of the most beautiful pop records ever recorded. With the short lengths of FRIENDS & 20/20, Capitol Records' 2-for-1 deal was a good idea, for an album lasting less than half an hour costing about 10 to 12 dollars would be highway robbery for some people. Not only that, but there's more bonus tracks to demonstrate why on earth the Beach Boys decided not to include these with the original albums. "Break Away" was another non-hit that should have been, and it proved that lyrically, the Beach Boys could sing the praises of more than just girls and cars. Too bad their fans didn't want it that way. "Celebrate The News" was another great song from Dennis Wilson, showing that his burgeoning musical talent was no fluke. "We're Together Again" once again demonstrates the "back-to-basics" approach of 20/20 with the other Beach Boys actively contributing to the music for the first time since before PET SOUNDS. While the Beach Boys would soon be typed as an oldies act, they show their ability to turn any song into their own with covers of the Burt Bacharach classic "Walk On By" and a medley of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks At Home" and SHOW BOAT's "Ol' Man River". After 20/20, the Beach Boys left Capitol Records after a tense 7-year history. They would soon sign to Warner Brothers for more great underrated albums.

Two Gems on One CD!
"Friends" and "20/20" were the two last albums the Beach Boys recorded for Capitol before moving to Brother/Reprise Records.

Casual Beach Boys listeners probably know little about these two albums that did not do very well in the charts in 1968-69. At the time the Beach Boys had lost a lot of their popularity and leader Brian Wilson played only a minor role in the group compared to the days, when their were on top of their career.

None the less, both albums contain terrific material.

"Friends" is an album with no hit single ( the title track made it to # 47), and most of the songs are very short. But there is a charm to most tracks that make you think of the best material on "Pet Sounds" and "Smile". The production and instrumentation on most songs is sparse, almost minimalistic, and the structure relatively simple; but still mostly great. The title track is probably the most complex song, with great lead vocals from Brian and Carl. "Wake the World", "Meant For You", "When a Man Needs a Woman" and "Little Bird" are other highlights. Remarkable that all members contribute first class material and lead vocals.

"20/20" is a little more uneven. This album contains some fine singles like "Do It Again", "I Can Hear Music", "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" and "Cotton Fields". Other highlights are the two "Smile" leftovers "Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence". "I Went to Sleep" was recorded during the "Friends" sessions and probably should have been included there since it's a good song and the playing time on that album is very short. Another highlight is "Time to Get Alone" with beautiful vocals from Carl and Brian.

The bonus-tracks are all great. "Break Away" is probably their strongest post "Smile" single. Some of the lesser known tracks like "Celebrate the News" and "We're Together" are also fine.