The popular theory is that Brian Wilson was the creative drive behind The Beach Boys and it’s true; Brian is the face of the band and his story is the one that most people regard as the definitive one for the rise and fall of the band that popularized the surf pop sound. What most people don’t realize is that Brian wasn’t the only Wilson to make music outside of The Beach Boys. In fact, he wasn’t even the first Wilson brother to release a solo album; drummer/keyboardist Dennis was and, not only that, it’s better than anything Brian has done on his own.
Released in 1977, Pacific Ocean Blue was the first album to come out of any Beach Boy following the first implosion of the band. Even then, Brian was regarded as the ‘lost genius’ of The Beach Boys and so, while it did come out on a major label, it wasn’t a priority promotion release; nobody was expecting much out of Dennis including (according to the liner notes of this reissue) Dennis himself. While critically well-received, Pacific Ocean Blue was deleted from the label’s catalogue shortly after its release.
That deletion was CBS’ folly—the truth is that Pacific Ocean Blue now fits the definition of a lost classic because of it. Instantly noticeable about the record is the fact that it doesn`t fall into the very inviting trap of trying to make Beach Boys records without the rest of the band. While there is a reflective moment of Beach Boys harmony to open the album with “River Song,” Wilson falls immediately thereafter into Jim Croce-styled honky tonk with “What’s Wrong” and never returns to the sunny shores of California again for the duration on the record. Instead, he largely prefers to stick close to the shores of the Mississippi in “Moonshine,” Sea Of Tranquility rock (“Friday Night”) and fragile Milky Way balladry (“Thoughts Of You”). As the descriptors suggest, Pacific Ocean Blue often rockets off into space and tries out some Pink Floyd-ian mind expansion but, unlike Floyd who perpetually felt isolated and alienated by such distances, Dennis Wilson feels nothing but joy in the sensory deprivation that working free of any boundaries provides. By the time he falls back to Earth on “Pacific Ocean Blues,” the singer is still elated because the entire exercise has left him refreshed rather than exhausted.
The most interesting song here is, without a doubt, the bass harmonica-graced “Dreamer.” In this context (or even removed from it), the sawing jaw harp is so alien and unusual that it commands attention and it just happens to work out that it’s a great song to boot; had he continued on, this would have been a great direction in which to tread.
As the record progresses, it gradually recedes through the gentle and yearning piano ache of “End Of The Show” before digging into the lost sessions Wilson discarded at the time. “Tug Of Love” is the closest to a Beach Boys song (and Pet Sounds–era at that) to appear, while the wrenching ballad “Only With You” adds another level of sweetness to the proceedings that earlier tracks like “Thoughts Of You” and “You And I” don’t quite manage. The one song that was never finished, “Holy Man,” appears here as an instrumental that shows the need for the absent vocals. On disc two it gets precisely what it needs.
When Dennis Wilson died in 1983, he was in the process of working on another album entitled Bambu, which has gone without release until now. Disc two collects the sessions for Bambu (along with a couple of other extras) to show listeners that Wilson was embracing the L.A. singer/songwriter movement happening at the time (of which Billy Vera, Don Henley and Rickie Lee Jones were members) with some strong R&B vibes. This is about as far from Beach Boys sun as you can get; dominated by songs about love—both requited and otherwise—and longing, tracks like “Under The Moonlight,” “It’s Not Too Late,” “Love Remember Me” and “Love Surround Me” are saccharine-crusted ballads that could have easily and ably rivalled those dominating the air waves at the time.
Elsewhere, the album gets boozy with “He’s A Bum,” “Cocktails,” “Constant Companion” and “Time For Bed,” which illustrates that the record was still under construction at the time of Wilson’s passing. The going only gets softer as disc two progresses, but fans that have been screaming for a proper CD release from Dennis Wilson will be more than assuaged by this offering.
In order to add a sense of finality to the proceedings, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins drops in to give a vocal performance on “Holy Man”—thus ending the mystery of whether a lyric sheet was ever completed for the track. To his credit, Hawkins does the song justice as his voice is all but identical to Wilson’s here, and the fact that it is the last song in the set feels appropriate; what one could not finish, another drummer does with a tasteful unaffected performance.
It might not be fashionable in the realm of new rock to give high praise to a release like this. In a lot of ways, Pacific Ocean Blue is an anachronism; Dennis Wilson was a member of The Beach Boys, a group that—with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones—designed the fabric of modern rock (some would argue that The Beach Boys have more to do with what we hear now on the radio than either The Beatles or The Stones in fact). However, in spite of the fact that Dennis Wilson was a member of The Beach Boys, Pacific Ocean Blue owes little to that band. Rather, this album is the work of a musician deliberately trying to live outside the shadow of his other group, Dennis Wilson simply ignored that the shadow was even there and went his own way without apologies. It’s a breed apart and, for both fans and those uninitiated to the legacy of The Beach Boys, worth picking up.
Artist:
www.danaddington.com/denny
www.pacificoceanblue.net
Album:
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue is out now. Buy it on Amazon.
