THE BEACH BOYS – WILD HONEY LP – Nr MINT JAPANESE PRESS BRIAN WILSON

The Beach Boys – Wild Honey
(Capitol Records  1977  ECS70112  STEREO  Orange Capitol Label  Japanese Press)

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

Sleeve in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
– a little wear to corners/edges
Booklet Lyric/Photo Insert in Nr MINT condition
No obi strip

The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group’s original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson; their cousin Mike Love; and their friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies and early surf songs, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. The group, led by their principal songwriter and producer Brian, pioneered novel approaches to popular music form and production, combining their affinities for jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound. He later arranged his compositions for studio orchestras and explored a variety of other styles, often incorporating classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways.

The Beach Boys began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons’ father Murry, with Brian’s increasingly sophisticated songwriting and recording abilities dominating their creative direction. Emerging at the vanguard of the “California Sound”, they performed original material that reflected a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance. After 1964, they abandoned the surfing aesthetic for more personal lyrics and multi-layered sounds. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and “Good Vibrations” single vaulted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of the group’s Smile project in 1967, Brian gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. The group’s public image subsequently faltered, and despite efforts to continue their psychedelic/avant-garde ventures and reclaim their hippie audiences, they were dismissed as an embodiment of the values and outlooks shared by early 1960s white, suburban teenagers.

The continued success of their greatest hits albums during the mid 1970s precipitated the band’s transition into an oldies act, a move that was denigrated by critics and many fans. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band’s name transpired. Dennis drowned in 1983 and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998. After Carl’s death, many live configurations of the band fronted by Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continued to tour into the 2000s while other members pursued solo projects. Even though Wilson and Jardine have not performed with Love and Johnston’s band since their one-off 2012 reunion tour, they remain a part of the Beach Boys’ corporation, Brother Records Inc.

The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time. The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time and are listed at No. 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”. The core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

Wild Honey is the 13th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released December 18, 1967 on Capitol Records. It was the group’s first foray into soul music and was heavily influenced by the R&B of Motown and Stax Records (artists such as Stevie Wonder). Lead single and opening track “Wild Honey” became a minor hit with only a short chart stay. Its follow-up “Darlin'” reached number 11. The album itself reached number 24 in the US and number seven in the UK.

The album’s sessions began immediately after the recording of Lei’d in Hawaii, a failed live album, and the release of Smiley Smile, their previous LP. Like Smiley Smile, Wild Honey‘s core instrumental combo consists of organ, honky-tonk piano, and electric bass. The Beach Boys were inspired to regroup as a self-contained rock band, partly in response to critical assertions that they were “ball-less choir boys”. They also purposely distanced themselves from the prevailing rock trends of the time (psychedelia and high-scale recording or thematic conceits). It was the second album to credit “the Beach Boys” as producer instead of Brian, who gradually withdrew from the band following the difficult sessions for the aborted Smile project. At Brian’s request, his younger brother Carl began contributing more to the recording process, a trend that continued on subsequent albums.

Wild Honey became the Beach Boys’ lowest-selling album at that point and remained on the US charts for only 15 weeks. Critics initially viewed it as another inconsequential record from the band. The album also alienated others whose expectations had been raised by Smile. After a 1974 reissue, Wild Honey was reevaluated by fans and critics who highlighted the record for its simplicity and charm. It was the last Beach Boys album to feature Brian as a primary composer until The Beach Boys Love You (1977). The track “Here Comes the Night” was redone by the group as a disco single in the late 1970s. In 2017, a complete stereo mix of Wild Honey was released for the first time on the rarities compilation 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, except where noted.

Personnel

Credits per Craig Slowinski.

The Beach Boys

• Al Jardine – vocals, rhythm guitar on “I’d Love Just Once To See You”
• Bruce Johnston – vocals, organ on “Wild Honey” and “How She Boogalooed It”, bass on “Wild Honey”
• Mike Love – vocals
• Brian Wilson – vocals, piano, organ, percussion, bass on “A Thing Or Two”
• Carl Wilson – vocals; lead and rhythm guitars; bass on “Aren’t You Glad”, “Country Air”, and “Let the Wind Blow”; tambourine on “Wild Honey”; drums on “Darlin'” (inaudible)
• Dennis Wilson – vocals, drums, bongos

Additional musicians

• Hal Blaine – drums on “Darlin'”
• Ron Brown – bass on “Darlin'”, “I Was Made to Love Her”, and “Here Comes the Night”
• Paul Tanner – Electro-Theremin on “Wild Honey”

Production and technical staff

• The Beach Boys – producers
• Jim Lockert – engineer
• Bill Halverson – second engineer
• Stephen Desper – engineer on “Mama Says” (uncredited)

It is unknown who played strings and horns on “Darlin‘“.