Pacific Ocean Blue

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Brian Wilson, who did not attend the ceremony, told the Guardian in 2002 that his younger brother’s burial “seemed wrong to me”. People magazine reported that the arrangement had also upset Carl, who wanted him buried next to their father in Inglewood, near where the boys grew up. But Love insisted her late husband had wanted otherwise. “Wherever he is,” she once said, “I know he’ll be glad that we’re doing it.” On Pacific Ocean Blue, Dennis’s two sides – the boozy bon viveur and repentant child – often co-exist within the same song. Not so the songs from Bambu. The hoarse, hungover croak evokes Harry Nilsson, whose recreational habits mirrored Dennis’s own. And like Nilsson’s underrated 1972 album Nilsson Schmilsson, Bambu veers wildly between ribald, roister-doistering and achingly tender declarations of love. The reasons were simple enough here. The former songs – “School Girl”; “He’s A Bum”, “Wild Situation” – were mostly written with Gregg Jakobson (although “I Love You” is tender exception). But what really sets Bambu apart is the arrival of jazz guitarist and sometime Beach Boys sideman Carli Munoz as a writer of songs that nailed Wilson’s mile-wide romantic streak. List of Pacific Ocean Blue Accolades". Acclaimedmusic.net. Archived from the original on 2008-03-09 . Retrieved 2008-02-28. To fill the void left behind by Brian’s aborted masterwork, and to fulfill their contractual obligation to Capitol, the band cobbled together Smiley Smile. Despite being considered a great stoner album, longtime fans absolutely hated it. Imagine trying to reconcile the hallucinogenic, and sometimes comical songs on this record, with “Little Deuce Coupe”, and “Surfin’ USA”? The fans couldn’t keep up, and The Beach Boys went from juggernaut to afterthought in under a year. Their next album, Friends, another huge sales disaster, featured the first four songs Dennis would contribute to the band. Critics mostly liked the record, and wrote of him as someone worth watching. Brian’s illness, tragic though it was, opened the door for Dennis, and he seized the opportunity. Stepping through the door he began flexing his own creative muscles. Unfortunately, despite the peaceful, and harmonious songs he was producing, things were about to go off the rails in an unpredictable, and terrifying way. Colin Larkin, ed. (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rded.). Virgin Books. p.260. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6.

a b Cohen, Jonathan. "Wilson's 'Ocean' Set For Expanded Reissue". Billboard. Archived from the original on June 1, 2008 . Retrieved 2008-02-28.Mehr, Bob. "Buried Treasure". American Airlines' American Way. Archived from the original on May 26, 2009 . Retrieved 2012-05-15. Thompson, Paul. "Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue Finally Reissued". Pitchfork Media. Archived from the original on 2008-03-06 . Retrieved 2008-02-28. Friends yet to be alienated by Dennis in his final years, recall an increasingly incoherent, unstable character – who felt no need to curb the excesses that were losing him friends. In a sense that’s not surprising. The seventies had offered Dennis Wilson and his lifestyle nothing but positive reinforcement. While his brothers floundered, he did whatever he wanted to and creatively found himself in the process. Only when he lost his studio in 1978 – and, with it, the ability to record spontaneously – did that winning streak finally end. Bowen, Rebecca. "Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's Solo Album Finds Re-release". Paste Magazine. Archived from the original on 2008-03-07 . Retrieved 2008-02-28. a b c d Sclafani, Tony. "Sea of Heartbreak: Dennis Wilson's Majestic Solo Work". PopMatters. Archived from the original on January 5, 2008 . Retrieved 2008-02-28.

Letters of appreciation from the White House later commended the Coast Guard for its “outstanding performance on very short notice”. But not everyone in uniform supported Reagan’s involvement. Pacific Ocean Blue, however, is a wonderful study in Beach Boys surfer soul imbued with the expressiveness of Dennis' piano style. It's also a meditation on a complex world, one devoid of the nostalgic innocence preached by the Mike Love-fronted Beach Boys of late, and its remastered, 2xCD Legacy Recordings release-- the first CD release of the album since 1991-- is astoundingly refreshing. Dennis Wilson solo recordings". Local Gentry. Archived from the original on June 12, 2009 . Retrieved 2009-12-05. Cripes, what effort it takes Coldplay to clone Coldplay. The turnaround this time is that they don't re-enter the world stage as the defining British act of their era. Salut, Amy. Here the boys' purpose of being a bit sad, sometimes, takes them to a mystery location with a lass in the snow (seasonal!) and asks, 'If you love it, let me know.' I don't. Many will. C'est la vie. Paul Flynn Mills, Fred. "Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue Reissued w/Unreleased Bambu". Harp Magazine. Archived from the original on 2008-02-28 . Retrieved 2008-02-28.

Four years ago, when Brian Wilson finally finished work on the daddy of all lost masterpieces, Smile, he did Beach Boys fans a huge favour, but also solved one of the band’s most enduring and enticing mysteries. What would people do with no need to search for that holy grail: The Great Lost Beach Boys album? When Pacific Ocean Blue came out in ’77, it was met with critical praise but only modest commercial success. Then, over time, it became something of a lost cult classic. It was out of print for years and Wilson was dead: Between those factors, it seemed a piece of ephemera left decades behind. Upon its reissue in 2008, its stature rose to some extent. But, like the Beach Boys themselves, Pacific Ocean Blue still feels outside of the main narratives we remember and apply to its era. Six months later, Wilson was dead. At 39, drug and alcohol addiction had consumed him; both were reported in his system when he drowned three days after Christmas. “It was just a few days before he was supposed to get involved with some serious rehabilitation,” says Gregg Jakobson, Wilson’s co-writer and producer. “And he never made it.” While Pacific Ocean Blue now stands as a curious outlier in Beach Boys history and a one-off for its author, all of these depleted qualities actually do make it belong somewhere. The graveled sound of it, the strung-out character of it, the fact that it unfolds like one last, desperate gasp—all of these distinctions make it a perfect document of the late ‘70s, of the ‘60s greats and the promise of their decade running to ground. It’s the sound of the long hangover, of excess and its tolls exhaled into a disenchanted atmosphere. It came out the same year as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, but it has more in common with their 1979 release Tusk in that way. These are the big, blown-out end games of stories that began 10 or 15 years before, the idealistic dream of the counterculture giving way to all of the sex and drugs and subsequent comedown. Legacy Recordings released a special 30th anniversary, 2-disc edition of Pacific Ocean Blue on June 17, 2008. [36] It includes material from the Bambu sessions. [37] [38] A limited edition 180-gram vinyl multi- LP box set was also released on the Sundazed label. [34] [39]

Dennis' Magnum Opus On the night Dennis Wilson died, just before the 1984 New Year (and apparently before one last ditch effort by his brother Carl to stage an intervention on his drinking), he believed himself to have largely been a failure. His voice, ruined thanks to addiction and surgeries to remove tumors on his vocal chords. His personal life, in shambles. Homeless and seemingly unable to care for himself. He loathed this album, feeling that he hadn't quite created a masterpiece (he said his next album, "Bambu" would blow this one away. It was never finished). Fornatale, Pete (November 3, 1976). "Interview with Brian Wilson" (MP3). NY Radio Archive. WNEW-FM 102.7. At the time of its initial release, the album didn't do well commercially: Despite a significant promotional campaign, the album peaked at No. 96 during a short 12-week Billboard chart run. [27] [28] The disappointing performance of the record, combined with Wilson's increasingly unreliable professional behavior, led his record label to pull support for a modest West Coast tour that had been scheduled to promote the album. [29] Nearly 25 years after Dennis’s death, we’ll never know if this version of Bambu corresponds to the album that he confidently predicted would surpass Pacific Ocean Blue – especially bearing in mind the fact that this was an album that had been left abandoned by Dennis himself a full four years before he died in 1983.

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Here’s the funny thing about the album: It’s actually reminiscent of the Beach Boys mythos, in its weird way. Written by the guy who actually lived a (wild) version of the life the band depicted, it’s naturally an album that feels influenced by life on the coast, life on the water. Whether in “River Song”—where Wilson sings, “It breaks my heart/ To see the city”—or on “Pacific Ocean Blues,” there’s an ecological bent to plenty of his songs and lyrics. But like everything about him as a figure and about the album, there’s a more haunted undertone, hearing his paeans to this life with the knowledge that it would eventually be the sea that would take him away. In the early 1960’s, The Beach Boys filled auditoriums with screaming kids. Oftentimes, audiences wouldn’t leave until forcing the band to play multiple encores. Dennis would spend these night’s sweating out 25 songs behind his drums, then towel off, find some girls, some booze, some pot, hop into one of his hot rods, and go pull an all-nighter. He’d usually return on time to do it all over again the next night. However, his occasional tardiness, and hangovers, gave the rest of the band anxiety. The fact is, Dennis was the cool Beach Boy. With his good looks and muscle cars, the fans, especially the groupies, knew it. The water continued to be a refuge for Wilson away from the tumult of The Beach Boys, but soon his own addictions were beginning to take a toll. On the front of Pacific Ocean Blue, Wilson appears heavily bearded, years removed from his refined good looks of The Beach Boys’ heyday. I'm not quite as enamored with this one as some of my Strange Currencies colleagues, but Dennis Wilson's lone LP offers further proof that Brian wasn't the only songwriting/arrangement talent in The Beach Boys.

Recorded at roughly the same time as The Beach Boys' Love You, Pacific Ocean Blue shares that record's 'return-to-form' nature, after a few rough years in the group's camp. However, while Love You has a rejuvenatory spirit throughout, Pacific displays both more euphoric highs, and dispiriting lows. Contains a print of a handwritten comment by Dennis Wilson & an LP-format Booklet with Photographs & Texts for his first solo-album.It was very out of the ordinary,” remembers Gill Goodman, the base commanding officer in San Pedro. He inspected Point Judith, the 82ft patrol boat assigned to the burial. Goodman was direct with the vessel’s commanding officer: “Don’t screw this up.” Original album recorded at Brother Studio, Santa Monica, Calif. Mastered at L.R.S. in Burbank, Calif. Dimery, Robert. "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". Cassell Illustrated . Retrieved 2008-02-28. In 1974, Mike Love would dip into the Capitol Records archives and release the greatest hit’s collection Endless Summer. He followed it up in 1975 with Spirit of America. Those two records outsold anything the Beach Boys had done in nearly a decade. Even though they were still recording new music, and some of it was quite good, the two double records became the basis for every Beach Boys concert performed to this very day. While Love unquestionably put the Beach Boys on a path to financial success and their return to the type of prominence, which could put three-quarters of a million people on the DC Mall, The Beach Boys, despite Dennis’s forward looking music, were doomed to become a traveling oldies act selling an increasingly anachronistic California myth.