Wild Honey (album)

, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Dennis Wilson. The Beach Boys' previous LP Smiley Smile, released in September 1967, peaked at number 41 on US Billboard charts for what was their worst performing album to date. A controversy involving whether the band was to be taken as a serious rock group had critics and fans divided, as journalist Gene Sculatti wrote at the time, "the California sextet is simultaneously hailed as genius incarnate and derided as the archetypical pop music copouts." However, Carl Wilson later said that Wild Honey was partly conceived as a response to criticisms against the band for "sounding like choir boys". He recalled, "there was one review that said Brian actually sounded like Mickey Mouse. That really tore him up." Upon their return to Los Angeles, in September, the group decided that the recordings were not suitable for release and attempted to redo the project as a live-in-the-studio album. After this, the band recorded the material that formed Wild Honey. Meanwhile, two days after the release of Smiley Smile, Carl had produced some recordings for the songwriter Stephen Kalinich, who later became a collaborator for the group, and the songwriter's partner Mark Buckingham. All of the tracks remain unreleased. In October, Murry Wilson, the band's original manager, made his recording debut with the album The Many Moods of Murry Wilson, with one track composed by Al Jardine and produced by an uncredited Brian. ==Style and production==

Wild Honey is a soul album that mixes pop and R&B styles. According to Mike Love, the band made a conscious decision to be "completely out of the mainstream for what was going on at that time, which was all hard rock/psychedelic music. [The album] just didn't have anything to do with what was going on." Brian said, "we decided to make a rhythm'n'blues record. We consciously made a simpler album. It was just a little R'n'B and soul. It certainly wasn't like a regular Beach Boys record." The recording sessions lasted only several weeks, compared to the several months required for their 1966 hit "Good Vibrations". Lenny Kaye, writing for Wondering Sound, felt that its "R&B leanings" may be attributed to Mike Love and Carl Wilson's vocal roles on the album. Carl said that his R&B side had "always wanted to come out. I have this massive collection of R&B records. When we were doing Pet Sounds, I'd go home and put on my Stax and Aretha stuff. It's always been a big part of my life." Wild Honey contains very little group singing compared to previous albums, and mainly features Brian singing at his piano. Brian stated that his brother "really got into [...] the production side of things" starting with Wild Honey. He is credited as composer or co-composer for 9 of 11 tracks, compared to Smiley Smile in which he held a songwriting credit for every track. It was the Beach Boys' last album to be mixed in mono. ==Songs==

Side one "Wild Honey" was co-written by Mike Love from the perspective of Stevie Wonder singing it. A popular misconception is that Carl sings the phrase "son of a bitch" on this track. "Country Air" describes the scene of the sun rising over rural America. The group repeatedly harmonizes in the chorus, "Get a breath of that country air / breathe the beauty of it everywhere"." It was cited by Brian as his "favorite cut on the record." There is a technical anomaly with the master tape that caused the track to have a buzzing noise throughout. Inexplicably, when the alternate "Mama Says" version of "Vegetables" was released, Van Dyke Parks' songwriting credit was not honored, and instead Love was listed as the song's only co-writer. Leftover Outtakes from the Wild Honey sessions include the originals "Can't Wait Too Long", "Time to Get Alone", "Cool, Cool Water", "Honey Get Home", and "Lonely Days"."Can't Wait Too Long" was released on the 1990/2001 two-fer reissue, while "Time to Get Alone" and "Cool, Cool Water" were released on subsequent albums 20/20 and Sunflower respectively. A solo recording of Brian performing the Smile song "Surf's Up" was lost and rediscovered several decades later at the end of the multi-track reel for "Country Air". Archivist Mark Linett stated: "No explanation for why he did that and it was never taken any farther. Although I don't think the intention was to take it any farther because it's just him singing live and playing piano." This recording would see release on the 2011 compilation The Smile Sessions. The band also recorded cover versions of the Box Tops hit "The Letter" (1967), Clint Ballard Jr.'s "The Game of Love" (1965), and the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" (1967), as well as Johnston's demo for "Bluebirds over the Mountain". The New York Observers Ron Hart said that the significance of the Beach Boys covering "The Letter" as sung by Alex Chilton is "simply beyond comprehension [...] for that special kind of music nerd." On October 13, 1967, Capitol announced that the Beach Boys' next release would be Wild Honey and offered its track listing, even though some of the songs had yet to be recorded at that point. Among its differences, "How She Boogalooed It", "Country Air", and "Mama Says" were not included, while "Cool, Cool Water", "Game of Love", "The Letter" (live version from Hawaii), and "Lonely Days" were. "Honey Get Home" was also listed, but crossed out. "The Letter" was to serve as a teaser for the forthcoming live album before the plans for the record were dropped. ==Cover and title==

The image on the front of the Wild Honey sleeve is a small section of an elaborate stained-glass window that adorned Brian's home in Bel Air. In the liner notes, friend Arnie Geller and the Wilsons' cousin Steve Korthoff wrote, "Honey, of the wild variety, on a shelf in Brian's kitchen, was not only an aide to all of the Beach Boys' health but the source of inspiration for the record, Wild Honey". Wilson recalled in a 2012 interview, "People still think this record came about because of some wild honey I'm supposed to have kept in my kitchen, but I don't remember that being true." ==Release ==

Lead single "Wild Honey" was issued on October 23, 1967, with a B-side taken from Smiley Smile, "Wind Chimes". The single peaked at number 31 in the US and number 20 in the UK. From November 17 to 26, the touring group embarked on their fifth annual Thanksgiving tour of the US, with set lists that included four songs from the upcoming album: "Wild Honey", "Darlin, "Country Air", and "How She Boogalooed It". Keyboardist Daryl Dragon and bassist Ron Brown supported the band on stage. On December 15, the band performed their only studio-televised live performance of the year at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris, for a program titled Gala Variety from Paris, which also featured several other celebrities, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Wild Honey was issued in the US on December 18, accompanied by the single "Darlin (backed with "Here Today" from Pet Sounds). It was released at a contrast to the psychedelic music that occupied the record charts, and in competition with the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request. Wild Honey became the Beach Boys' lowest-selling album at that point and remained on the charts for only 15 weeks. "Darlin peaked at number 24 in the US, as did Wild Honey. When the single was reissued in January with the B-side "Country Air", it peaked at number 11. In March, Wild Honey was released in the UK, where it peaked at number 7. ==Critical reception==

Contemporary 's favorite albums. Jazz & Pops Gene Sculatti wrote: "[the Beach Boys] have the audacity to fool around with r&b, a territory indeed alien to them. Surprisingly, Wild Honey works well. It isn't the least bit pretentious, it's honest, and convincing." In a column for Esquire, Robert Christgau wrote that the album "epitomizes Brian Wilson", including the song "I'd Love Just Once to See You", which "expresses perfectly his quiet, thoughtful, sentimental artistic personality." Billboard welcomed the band's return to form after the "avant-garde" Smiley Smile, but was critical of "How She Boogalooed It" as "far below the group's quality" and predicted that "I'd Love Just Once to See You" would not receive airplay. Disc & Music Echo awarded the album "LP of the Month" and wrote that it was the band's best since Pet Sounds. The magazine concluded that "Others who, like us, felt Brian Wilson was becoming bogged down in his complex arrangements can relax and listen to the most refreshing sounds for many months." In a 1968 Crawdaddy! article, David Anderle reported that the Doors' Jim Morrison considered Brian Wilson "his favorite musician" and Wild Honey "one of his favorite albums. [...] he really got into it." Retrospective Like Smiley Smile, Wild Honey was later reevaluated by fans and critics who highlighted the record for its simplicity and charm, particularly after the LP was reissued by Warner Bros. in 1974. In his 1971 review of ''Surf's Up, Rolling Stones Arthur Schmidt referred to Wild Honey'' as "a masterpiece", "the most underrated" of the band's "post-surfer LPs", and "the last time they truly rocked their asses off, one cut after another." In a 1976 retrospective guide to 1967 for The Village Voice, Christgau felt Wild Honey is "so slight" but "perfect and full of pleasure". He argued that, "almost without a bad second", the album conveys "the troubled innocence of the Beach Boys through a time of attractive but perilous psychedelic sturm und drang. Its method is whimsy, candor, and carefully modulated amateurishness, all of which comes through as humor." Critic Geoffrey Himes called the record "10 wonderful celebrations of everyday life and a terrific Stevie Wonder cover. Wonder, though, never sang odes to clean air and refreshing wind or made boyish jokes about seeing a naked woman or brushing one's teeth." Record producer Tony Visconti listed Wild Honey as one of his 13 favorite albums and said that "I still refer to this record as a benchmark in the same way that I do Revolver." In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the record at number 410 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Less favorably, Richie Unterberger wrote in his review for AllMusic that, apart from "Darlin, "Here Comes the Night" and the title track, most of Wild Honey was "inessential". He found the music "often quite pleasant, for the great harmonies if nothing else, but the material and arrangements were quite simply thinner than they had been for a long time." In a negative review, Pitchfork critic Spencer Owen said only "one or two" songs succeed and the majority of Wild Honey is "not pretty" because of its R&B vein as "interpreted by white surfer boys", including "a Stevie Wonder cover sung with as much faux-soul as Carl Wilson could have possibly mustered". Writing in his Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Colin Larkin pairs the album with the "scrappy" Smiley Smile as two "hastily released" works that show how the Beach Boys' music had "lost its cohesiveness", with Brian Wilson's reduced involvement. Noel Gallagher, who considers the Beach Boys to be "the most vastly overrated band in the history of popular culture", named "How She Boogalooed It" among the group's only "six good tunes". ==Influence and legacy==

Back-to-basics trend and DIY music In the wake of Wild Honey, numerous contemporaries of the Beach Boys adopted a similar back-to-basics approach, including Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding), the Band (Music from Big Pink), the Beatles (The Beatles), and the Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet). Uncuts David Cavanaugh remarked that despite the poor critical response afforded to the album at the time of its release, Wild Honey heralded rock trends of the late 1960s and effectively pioneered "a post-psychedelic music while the Summer of Love was still in full swing. And wouldn't you know it, The Beatles' 'Lady Madonna' would get the credit." Author Mike Segretto echoed, "Ten days before Dylan got all the credit for popping the psychedelic balloon with John Wesley Harding, the Beach Boys had done it first with Wild Honey." Similarly, music journalist Tim Sommer characterized the album as boldly subverting "rock's expansion into pompous avenues of volume, psychedelia and lyrical pretension" and called it a precursor to albums such as the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society and the Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers (both 1968). 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow In 2017, a complete stereo mix of Wild Honey was released for the first time on the rarities compilation 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow. The set also includes numerous session highlights, alternate takes, and live renditions of Wild Honey tracks in addition to other unreleased material recorded during the Smiley Smile and ''Lei'd in Hawaii era. Several months later, the compilation was followed with two more digital-exclusive releases: 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow 2: The Studio Sessions and 1967 – Live Sunshine''. They include more than 100 tracks that were left off the first compilation. ==Track listing==

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, Chamberlin on "Country Air", bass on "A Thing Or Two" and "I'd Love Just Once to See You" • Carl Wilson – vocals; lead and rhythm guitars; bass on "Aren't You Glad", "Country Air", "I'd Love Just Once to See You", and "Let the Wind Blow"; tambourine on "Wild Honey"; drums on "Darlin (inaudible) • Dennis Wilson – vocals, drums, bongos Additional musicians • Arnold Belnick – violin on "Aren't You Glad" • Harold Billings trumpet on "Darlin • Hal Blaine – drums on "Darlin • Norman Botnick – viola on "Aren't You Glad" • Ron Brown – bass on "Darlin, "I Was Made to Love Her", and "Here Comes the Night" • David Burk – viola on "Aren't You Glad" • Bonnie Douglas – violin on "Aren't You Glad" • Virgil Evans trumpet on "Darlin • Billy Hinsche backing vocals on "Darlin • Lew McCreary bass trombone on "Darlin • Jay Migliori baritone saxophone on "Darlin • Ollie Mitchell trumpet on "Aren't You Glad" and "Darlin • Alexander Neiman – viola on "Aren't You Glad" • Wilbert Nuttycombe – violin on "Aren't You Glad" • Jerome Reisler – violin on "Aren't You Glad" • Paul Shure – violin on "Aren't You Glad" • Paul Tanner – Electro-Theremin on "Wild Honey" • Anthony Terran – trumpet on "Aren't You Glad" Undetermined credits • Guitar, drums, organ, and Chamberlin on "Aren't You Glad" Production and technical staff • The Beach Boys – producers • Jim Lockert – engineer • Bill Halverson – second engineer • Stephen Desper – engineer on "Mama Says" (uncredited) ==Charts==