The Beach Boys - Friends + 20/20 (HDCD, Upgrade 2001)

Utterly ignored at the time of their release, the Beach Boys' final two albums for Capitol Records, 1968's FRIENDS and 1969's 20/20, are now recognized as minor masterpieces. FRIENDS is, in modern terms, the Beach Boys' chill-out album, their first release with none of the R&B-laced rockers preferred by Mike Love. The 12 brief tracks (nearly half of them don't even hit the two-minute mark) are deeply influenced by the group's newfound interest in spirituality, with Dennis Wilson's "Little Bird" and "Be Still" among the peaceful highlights. The two key tracks are "Busy Doin' Nothin'", a peculiar bossa nova with some of Brian Wilson's oddest lyrics, and "Diamond Head", a temporary return to the pictorial soundscapes of SMILE. The more varied 20/20 goes FRIENDS one better by ending with the spine-tingling wordless a cappella exercise "Our Prayer" and the glorious "Cabinessence", two re-recordings of SMILE outtakes. Of the new material, the hit single "Do It Again", the glorious "I Can Hear Music", and Bruce Johnston's instrumental homage to Brian "The Nearest Faraway Place" are the best, and the genuinely spooky "Never Learn Not To Love", Dennis' slightly rewritten cover of "Cease To Exist" by his soon-to-be-infamous buddy Charles Manson, is the most notorious.

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This 29-track CD represents the final phase of the Beach Boys' first go-around with Capitol Records, as well as the tail end of their 1960s output. The two albums contained on it present vastly different ambience from the same decade. The Friends album wasn't thought much of by most listeners or reviewers in 1968 -- in an era when most bands were adding layer-upon-layer of instrumentation, throwing on extended guitar or keyboard solos at the drop of a hat, pumping up the volume overall, and trying to describe the psychedelic experience from within, the Beach Boys put out an album of music that could've been played by five guys on mostly acoustic instruments, all of it written from what seemed like a pretty satisfied and peaceful place in the universe. Some of this reflected Brian Wilson's increasingly isolated approach to life, but he provided only part of the songwriting here, and the others seem pretty content to float along in good spirits as well. One of the most upbeat and genial albums ever released by this most musically good-natured of bands, it was ignored in 1968 but today seems like a beautiful, oasis-like corner of paradise in an era of discontent and strife -- it wasn't profound, but it is gorgeous. 20/20 was a pastiche of singles and leftover fragments of past projects (including the Smile album) that, understandably, seems a little disorganized -- radiant psychedelia like "Cabinessence" is juxtaposed with elements of '50s rock & roll ("Bluebirds Over the Mountain"), folk songs adapted to the group's style ("Cotton Fields"), and a brush up against the dark side of the '60s, in the form of "Never Learn Not to Love", a byproduct of Dennis Wilson's brief contact with Charles Manson and company. Somewhere in there is a veritable soundtrack for the 1960s, but at the time only "Do It Again", a retro-sounding piece of beach music that charted, was a selling point. This CD was originally issued in 1990 with five bonus tracks in addition to the two LPs' contents, the most important of which was the killer single "Breakway", a deeply personal yet catchy and memorable song done in the most accessible group style, which failed to find an audience; also present is a lost cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "Walk On By", and the 1968 outtake "We're Together Again", an achingly beautiful song that was somehow forgotten in 1968. In 2001, a remastered edition was released that featured significantly improved sound, and that is the preferred edition of this disc. ~ Bruce Eder, all media guide

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Tracklist:

01. Meant For You
02. Friends
03. Wake The World
04. Be Here In The Mornin'
05. When A Man Needs A Woman
06. Passing By
07. Anna Lee, The Healer
08. Little Bird
09. 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. The Nearest Faraway Place
19. Cotton Fields
20. I Went To Sleep
21. Time To Get Alone
22. Never Learn Not To Love
23. Our Prayer
24. Cabinessence
25. Break Away [Bonus track]
26. Celebrate The News [Bonus track]
27. We're Together Again [Bonus track]
28. Walk On By [Bonus track]
29. Old Folks At Home + Old Man River [Bonus track]

Reissue produced & coordinated by Mark Linett
Digitally Remastered by Joe Gastwirt at Oceanview Digital Mastering, Los Angeles, CA (2000)

Original Release Date: June 1968 | February 1969
Re-Release Date: April 10, 2001 (1990)
Format: Digitally remastered using HDCD technology
Label: Capitol Records
Catalog No.: 31638-2