20/20 is the 15th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on February 10, 1969. The LP was named for being their 20th overall album release. Much of it consists of outtakes from earlier albums. It reached number 3 on UK record charts and number 68 in the US. Brian Wilson was absent during most of the album's recording after admitting himself into a psychiatric hospital, requiring brothers Carl and Dennis to retrieve several outtakes he had recorded years earlier. While Brian does not appear on the front cover, the inner gatefold of the original vinyl release features him alone, behind an eye examination chart.
The singles "Do It Again" and "Bluebirds over the Mountain" preceded the album's release by several months. The former was the band's first attempt at revisiting the surf sound they had abandoned since All Summer Long, topping UK and Australian charts, and the latter contained a B-side co-written by Charles Manson: "Never Learn Not to Love". 20/20 was the last studio album released on Capitol Records that would contain new material for the next 17 years. The following singles "I Can Hear Music", "Break Away", and "Cotton Fields" concluded their contract.
Video 20/20 (The Beach Boys album)
Background
On June 24, 1968, the Beach Boys released the album Friends, which peaked at number 126 and remained on the Billboard Top LPs chart for 10 weeks. It became the group's worst-selling album to date, with record sales in the US estimated at 18,000 units. Brian Wilson said that prior to the album's release, the group begun losing thousands of dollars "on stupid things ... cars, houses ... bad investments ... a heck of a lot of corporation money on Brother Records, our own company, and in boosting other artists who just didn't make it, and didn't have a single hit." One of these artists was an ex-convict named Charles Manson, who was then seeking a career as a singer-songwriter. Dennis Wilson befriended Manson and was interested in signing him to Brother Records. Brian and Carl Wilson (not Dennis as is sometimes suggested) proceeded to co-produce several tracks for Manson at the home studio. These recordings remain unheard to the public; music historian Andrew Doe stated that the tapes exist, but that they have "not a hope in hell" of being released.
Over the summer of 1968, Brian attempted to record an arrangement of the 1927 show tune "Ol' Man River". According to music writer Brian Chidester, the session tapes "reveal Wilson conducting the Beach Boys to such extreme perfectionism that both he and the band seem at the end of their rope with one another". Friend and Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton recalled that Brian expressed suicidal wishes at the time, and that it was "when [Brian's] real decline started". Afterward, Brian admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital, where he was prescribed Thorazine for severe anxiety disorder. Brian's issues were not disclosed to the public. Once discharged, he rarely finished any tracks for the band, leaving much of his subsequent Beach Boys output for Carl Wilson to complete. Dennis said that the group were forced "to find things that Brian worked on and try and piece it together. That's when [he started having] no involvement at all."
Maps 20/20 (The Beach Boys album)
Songs
Release
20/20 was released on February 10, 1969. It sold better than Friends, peaking at number 3 in the UK and reaching number 68 in the US. Rolling Stone reviewer Arthur Schmidt said the album was "good, [but] flawed mainly by a lack of direction (a sense of direction being last evident in Wild Honey, more a collection than a whole." A reviewer for the underground paper Rat Subterranean News wrote that "It's against all my carefully established principles to like The Beach Boys. 'The Beach Boys?!' a friend wrote back after I'd told him about digging the album. ... [But, most] of side one is weak."
Retrospective reviews
Music critic Richie Unterberger wrote that 20/20 was "one of their better post-Pet Sounds records ... The highlights, however, were a couple of Smile-session-era tunes ... as hard as they were trying to establish their identity as an integrated band in the late '60s, their new recordings were overshadowed by the bits and pieces of Smile that emerged at the time." Biographer David Leaf called it "one of the most artistically interesting releases of their career and certainly one of the stronger later LPs."
In 1976, Dennis called 20/20 "the only letdown of the Beach Boys' career that embarrassed me through and through".
Track listing
- Charles Manson's contributions to "Never Learn Not to Love" remain uncredited.
Chart positions
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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