00:00 Introduction
01:12 The Beach Boys on the Rise: 1964 - 1971
02:53 Going off-course: Brian Wilson's mental health struggles, and cries for help on Pet Sounds
05:37 1971's Surf's Up: lyrical themes, ecological anxiety
07:15 Analysing The Beach Boys' saddest song
10:34 The song and album's legacy today
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From the release of their 1962 debut album onwards, The Beach Boys became a byword for good times in the US of A - Californian sun, good times with good looking women, and that perennially American pastime of the young - surfing. They were a sensation from the very start. Their songs struck a chord with youth across the country who were otherwise shaken from their adolescent reverie by the creeping realities of the threat of world war, the escalation of racial tensions, and increasing ecological threat across the globe. In a difficult world, The Beach Boys gave off exactly what they promised on the tin - good vibrations.
By the mid-sixties, however, things were getting testing for the band. Brian Wilson, the group's primary songwriter and vocalist, began to suffer nervous breakdowns amidst the constant circus of photoshoots, recording sessions and sprawling world tours. That anxiety started to creep into the band's sound. On albums such as the band's 1966 magnum opus Pet Sounds, Wilson would sing about feeling completely out of step with the world around him. The problem was it was so easy to ignore Wilson's obvious cries for help - the music just sounded too good, particularly the band's buttery multi-layered vocal harmonies.
By the time it came to the band's 1971 album Surf's Up, long gone were the band's sunny image and disposition. On this record, the group confronted ecological disaster on the album opener Don't Go Near The Water, and on the track A Day In The Life of a Tree, Wilson likened himself to our arboreal friends, such was his sense that he couldn't stop what was happening to him, ready to be cut down by the man-made maelstrom. But on the album's penultimate song, 'Til I Die, Wilson would liken himself to a cork on the ocean, adrift on the open sea, rudderless and broken, at the whim of the ocean's unforgiving waves. It was the bleakest song The Beach Boys would write.
Let's investigate the making of this song and album, and look at what makes it so special. God only knows what we'd do without it.
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Note: None of the footage in this video is mine, and I do not own the rights, nor to the songs. Any copyright infringement is not intended, and this video should be considered as falling under 'fair use' classification.