As well as the obvious albums by the band, almost all of the Beach Boys have been involved in outside projects. This guide entry is intended to summarise the important projects.

This entry is part of a series of entries on the Beach Boys' work, which so far also include The Early Years and Recordings 1975-present

There are a few projects that are either of no importance to the band's 'canon' (for want of a better word), or are impossible to track down. These have been dealt with only briefly. This entry also doesn't mention some minor things like guest appearances as backing vocalists, and certain minor projects

Please note that the following, while mentioned in the text, are currently out of print - Looking Back With Love,Pacific Ocean Blue,NASCAR, Carl Wilson and Youngblood. And obviously any unreleased recordings mentioned are also unavailable.

Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson

Brian's first true solo outing was the 1988 album Brian Wilson.The album was at the time overshadowed by the Beach Boys' number 1 hit Kokomo, released contemporaneously and which Brian had no involvement in. In retrospect, even the most minor track on this album is a thousand time more worthy than that particular brainless pop confection, but at the time the buying public was unconvinced.

The songwriting on the album is uniformly superb, although some of the lyrics are dodgy , but the production suffers from a slight case of too many cooks. The production credits include Brian Wilson, Andy Paley, Lenny Waronker, Russ Titelman, Jeff Lynne and Eugene Landy. I can't help but think the album would have been even better with just Brian at the helm.

This album is shortly to be reissued by Rhino, with bonus tracks (contemporaneous non-album B-sides and singles, demo versions etc) and is an essential for anyone interested in popular music.

Sweet Insanity (Unreleased)

This album, the unreleased follow-up to Brian Wilson is unreleased for a reason. By this time Eugene Landy had total control over Brian's creative output, to its enormous detriment.

The album includes such horrors as Smart Girls - a rap song about intelligent women, sampling old Beach Boys tunes, with such lines as 'Wouldn't It Be Nice if PhDs/were stroking me with hypotheses'. The album isn't entirely worthless, and Don't Let Her Know She's An Angel , for one, ranks with the very best of Brian's work, but on the whole it's third-rate at best.

I Just Wasn't Made For these Times

This 1995 album is produced by Don Was, and is the soundtrack to his documentary of the same name. In much the same style as the UNPLUGGED albums, it showcases Brian in an intimate setting performing several of his best works, from throughout his career (although concentrating on 1966-72). Not essential, but a good introduction to the work of a great artist

Orange Crate Art

Not really a Brian Wilson album, this is Brian singing the lead vocals on a Van Dyke Parks album. Fans of Parks' unique take on America's musical heritage will love this gentle, beautiful album, but at this point in his life Brian's singing is probably his least notable talent, and while it's great to see these two geniuses working together again, I can't help but feel it would have been better as a purely Parks album. Released in 1995, at the same time as IJWMFTT.

'The Paley Sessions' (Unreleased)

Recorded in the mid-90s these collaborations with Andy Paley (and in two cases featuring the Beach Boys) attained semi-legendary status among the fan community before they became widely-bootlegged, at which point it became obvious that, much like Brian's work since 1977, released or otherwise, the material is a mixture of the wondrous and the decidedly average.

The production style on this material is far closer to Brian's best than the material that has been released. Brian has recently talked about re-recording the best of this material with his current touring band. Let's hope so.

The Wilsons

Brian features on three tracks on this album by his daughters (formerly of Wilson Philips). The album is average at best, but it's worth picking up for Everything I Need, Brian's first collaboration in 30 years with Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher.

Imagination

Brian's most recent studio album, from 1998 , this divided, and still divides, fans. Co-produced by Joe Thomas (who also co-produced the Beach Boys' album of country collaborations Stars & Stripes Vol 1 the soft-rock cliches of the backing tracks don't sit well with the songs.

Having said that, Brian's vocals on She Says That She Needs Me (a remake of a legendary unreleased Beach Boys track) are the best he's done since 1965, Your Imagination is the best pop song he's done in decades, Sunshine has an incredibly beautiful tag (supposedly written by Thomas) and Happy Days is the best song he's written since 1971, if not earlier.

Imagination takes some time to get into, but is very rewarding.

Live At The Roxy

Fans were astonished when, to promote Imagination, Brian Wilson announced he was to do a short tour. Other than a brief period in the late 70s-early 80s, Brian had not appeared on stage regularly since 1964, and it was not thought likely that he ever would do. What was even more astonishing was the quality of the shows.

Brian can no longer hit his old falsetto notes, and is uncomfortable on stage, so it was thought that at best the shows would be mediocre. In fact they were anything but. The backing band, including powerpop band The Wondermints, and led by Jeff Foskett ( a former Beach Boys sideman and a great powerpop musician in his own right ) had such love of and reverence for the music that many have said these shows are better than any the Beach Boys ever performed.

Brian has continued touring, and this double CD set is a record of two shows from Spring 2000 (albeit with more than a little re-recording of Brian's vocals according to some sources) and lives up to every report. The backing band are truly spectacular, Brian's singing is better than it has been in years, Jeff Foskett manages to cover the falsetto parts that in past years both Brian and Carl would have covered, and the song selection is impeccable.

Most important to the fans will be the 'new' material. Two 'new' tracks are covers - Be My Baby is a cover version of Brian's all time favourite record, while Brian Wilson is a cover of part of Canadian band Barenaked Ladies' tribute to the great man, both funny and touching in context. Of the other two, This Isn't Love is a reasonable Bacharach-type song which had previously appeared on a compilation called Songs Without Words as a piano instrumental, but appears here with lyrics by Tony Asher (the song also features in the new Flintstones film) and The First Time is a song dating from 1983 which appears here legally for the first time.

But the best thing of all is that this album appears on Brian's own label, and has the credit 'produced by Brian Wilson' for the first time in 23 years. He finally seems to have creative control and the backing band to handle his demands, and as great as this album is (and it's by far his best solo product) it's nothing compared to the hope it holds out for the future.

Brian has just also released a new Christmas song, available in real audio from his website.

Mike Love

Mike Love is, perhaps unfairly, maligned by the majority of Beach Boys fans, but one thing that is certain is that his solo career deserves everything that can be thrown at it. Two albums by a side-project, Celebration, while not really covered by this topic, are OK, but the rest stinks to high heaven.

Two albums, First Love and Country Love remain, rightly, unreleased, but one managed to escape. Looking Back With Love is, simply, the worst record in the history of the universe, and was, until the release of the film Battlefield Earth quite possibly the worst cultural product by any civilisation ever. It's that bad. It has not one redeeming feature. The songs are awful, the production terrible, and Love's voice so nasal it would be easy to believe the whole thing was an elaborate joke, except that no-one has that sick a mind. Avoid at all costs.

Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and David Marks Salute NASCAR is an album made by members of the band then touring as 'The Beach Boys', for sale at petrol stations in the USA to promote Union 76 gasoline. It consists of remakes of Beach Boys car songs ranging from the dreadful (the remake of Don't Worry Baby is truly painful to listen to) to the really quite good (Ballad of Ole Betsy is actually better than the original), plus a version of Jan & Dean's The Little Old Lady From Pasadena featuring Dean Torrence, and a really rather good version of Little GTO by Ronnie & The Regents. Hunt it down if you like hunting for out-of-print budget albums of dodgy remakes of classsic hits, otherwise don't.

Having said this, Mike Love has made some important contributions to the Beach Boys music. To get a view from 'the other side' visit mikelovefanclub.com

Dennis Wilson

Dennis' solo career started in the early 70s with an out of print 45 Sound Of Free b/w Lady, under the name 'Dennis Wilson and Rumbo' (Rumbo was Darryl Dragon, then keyboard player for the Beach Boys and Dennis' principal collaborator at the time, later to go on to success as the Captain in Captain And Tenneille) but in fact featuring other members of the Beach Boys. Heavily influenced by Tim Hardin, it's a shame Dennis didn't release more solo material at this time.

Pacific Ocean Blue, Dennis' 1977 solo album, is considered by many the finest Beach Boy solo project. Very different and far rockier than any Beach Boys release, this atmospheric release is defined by Dennis' gruff vocals, which resemble those of mid-80s Tom Waits or mid-70s Harry Nilsson.

Before his death, Dennis worked on one more, unreleased and unfinished, solo album, Bamboo, featuring guest appearances by his brother Carl and by Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. While it remains unreleased, the best tracks have turned up on Beach Boys releases over the years, Baby Blue and Love Surrounds Me on LA (Light Album), Morning Christmas on Ultimate Christmas and All Alone on Endless Harmony. Much of the rest of the album is incomplete or comparatively poor.

For more information on Dennis Wilson, visit cabinessence.com/dennis

Carl Wilson

Carl released two solo albums in the early 80s, Carl Wilson and Youngblood. These suffered from many of the production problems that also affect Brian's solo work, but without the compensating moments of songwriting genius. Between the two albums, there are enough good tracks to make one very good album, and Carl's beautiful voice makes everything at least listenable, but given what he was capable of, these albums are a minor disappointment.

The posthumously released Like A Brother, his collaboration with Gerry Beckley of America and Robert Lamm of Chicago, is best forgotten, being more reminiscent of the songs on the Pokemon cartoons than of anything resembling real music. Were it not for Carl's untimely death, I doubt this would have found a release, but as these are his last recordings, there's enough interest among fans to sell even this poor material

There are no fan sites I know of for Carl Wilson, but there is a site set up by his sons for their charity, the Carl Wilson Foundation, which organises events for cancer research. Their site is at carlwilsonfoundation.org

Bruce Johnston

Much of Bruce's solo work, being done while he was not in the band, falls outside the scope of this article, but a couple of things deserve noting. The first is his work with Terry Melcher, which produced (as the Rip-Chords) the top 5 hit Hey Little Cobra and which is collected on The Best Of Bruce & Terry. The second is his mid-70s album Goin' Public, recorded during his temporary absence from the band. A saccharine collection of ballads, it contains remakes of his Beach Boys songs Deirdre and Disney Girls, both of which are inferior to the originals, plus his own version of his I Write The Songs, Barry Manilow's version of which was a huge hit and won Johnston a Grammy (the only time any of the Beach Boys has ever won the award). The album is really very bad, and not worth buying. This also goes for Symphonic Sounds, a collection of Beach Boys songs performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, produced by Johnston, with various guest appearances from members of the Beach Boys touring band, along with Johnston and Love.

Other Members

Alan Jardine has apparently recorded an album with his sons, and various members of the classic Beach Boys touring backing band, as The Jardines. The album has not yet been released though. The only solo Jardine material to have seen release is a duet with his son Matt, billed as 'Alan and Matt Jardine of the Beach Boys' on 'Papa loves Mama' on a Garth Brooks tribute CD. A live album by Jardine's project The Beach Boys Family And Friends is apparently due for release soon.

Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar recorded several albums with their band The Flame before joining the Beach Boys, including one produced by Carl Wilson. Blondie Chaplin also recorded a solo album, and has toured with the Byrds and the Rolling Stones, while Ricky Fataar went on to play Stig O'Hara in Beatles parody The Rutles, and appeared on the soundtrack album. Blondie is apparently working on a new solo album, which may feature Ricky.

David Marks, who was rhythm guitarist in the band during Al's temporary absence in 1962-3 and rejoined briefly in 1997-99 to cover the parts played by Carl Wilson, also has a solo CD out.

And Glenn Campbell apparently made one or two records as well...