Summer in Paradise is the twenty-seventh studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on August 3, 1992, by Brother Records. Produced by Terry Melcher, it is their only album made without the involvement of Brian Wilson, and has been regarded as the band's critical and commercial low point, failing to chart in either the US or UK and receiving unanimously negative reviews. In North America, it was the group's first album to be released only on CD and cassette, with a rare vinyl pressing released only in South Korea. The Beach Boys did not record another album of predominantly original material until That's Why God Made the Radio in 2012. Summer in Paradise was left out of Capitol's Beach Boys CD reissue campaign of 2000 to 2001, as well as all other reissues for most of the group's discography. Both it and its predecessor, Still Cruisin, are currently out of print.

Composition

The conceptual idea behind the album's title song, co-written by Mike Love, was environmental protection, but the album was designed, in Love's words, to create, "the quintessential soundtrack of summer." With the exception of a new version of their 1970 track "Forever" and the new composition "Strange Things Happen", each song on the album deals thematically with the summer season. Of the album's twelve tracks, two songs are covers ("Hot Fun in the Summertime", originally by Sly & the Family Stone, and "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", originally by The Shangri-Las); two are new versions of older Beach Boys songs ("Surfin'" and "Forever", the latter with a vocal by John Stamos); one combines a classic song ("One Summer Night", originally by The Danleers) with a new Bruce Johnston song ("Slow Summer Dancin'"); and one takes an old song ("Under the Boardwalk," originally by The Drifters) and adds new lyrics. The rest are original songs, all containing both titular and lyrical references to summer and/or surfing, with the exception of the Transcendental Meditation-influenced "Strange Things Happen". The quasi-rap song "Summer of Love" was originally intended to be a duet with Bart Simpson for a planned Simpsons movie, but the Simpsons' producers turned down the offer. The song was instead used in an episode of Baywatch. Stamos performed the song "Forever" on several episodes of his sitcom Full House.

Production

Summer in Paradise was one of the first albums to be recorded using the Pro Tools digital audio workstation, via a Beta version on a Macintosh Quadra computer. Musically, it continued in the vein of previous albums The Beach Boys and Still Cruisin in its use of electronic instrumentation. The entire rhythm section was electronic on most songs, with all the drum parts being programmed (although not credited as such), and most of the bass parts were also synthesized. Former Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks played accordion on two tracks, and producer Terry Melcher contributed keyboard parts, with Al Jardine's son Adam singing backup vocals on the title track. Touring musician Adrian Baker sang backup but other regular members of the contemporary Beach Boys' touring band did not contribute to the album. Mike Love and Melcher were the main composers on the album, with Johnston being the only other member to contribute a new song. Jardine had allegedly been "suspended" from the band prior to the album's recording, supposedly because of a dispute about content; Stamos helped give the album further promotion during the 1993 season of his hit television show, Full House; a poster for the album and CD are frequently shown in the studio where he hosts his daily radio show. Additionally, "Summer of Love" was also released as a promotional single in the United States in 1995, to tie in with the band's appearance on Baywatch that year.

Reception

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Summer in Paradise was received very poorly commercially and critically. The album is the only Beach Boys studio album that failed to make Billboards Top Pop Albums chart; it reportedly sold fewer than 1,000 copies on its release, making it the Beach Boys album with by far the poorest commercial sales performance. The poor sales of the US release reportedly contributed to independent distributor Navarre becoming bankrupt. Navarre and EMI each only issued one print run of the album on CD. It has been out of print since its initial release and has since become a collector's item. A large number of unsold copies of the album were unloaded when the QVC network bundled them with the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys CD box set in 1993. Other copies were soon destroyed following the album's severe commercial failure.

Andrew G. Doe and John Tobler, authors of The Complete Guide to the Music of The Beach Boys, described Summer in Paradise as, "the absolute nadir of their recording career." In an online interview, Doe said he had to listen to the album three times while writing the book, "which has probably scarred me for life." William Ruhlmann of AllMusic said the band had deteriorated under Love's leadership to become "a pointless parody of themselves" by "writing bad new songs [and] recording bad covers of old songs".

The Beach Boys

  • Mike Love – vocals; executive producer
  • Carl Wilson – vocals
  • Alan Jardine – vocals
  • Bruce Johnston – vocals, keyboards

Additional personnel

  • John Stamos – vocals and production on “Forever”
  • Terry Melcher – additional backing vocals, keyboards; producer (all except "Forever")
  • Adrian Baker – additional backing vocals
  • Adam Christian Jardine – additional backing vocals
  • Keith Wechsler – keyboards, keyboard programming, drums on "Island Fever" and "Still Surfin'"; engineer (all except "Forever"), mixing
  • Craig Fall – electric and acoustic guitars, mandolins, keyboard bass
  • Sammy Merendino – drums
  • Rod Clark – bass
  • Van Dyke Parks – accordions, additional keyboards
  • Danny Kortchmar – additional electric and acoustic guitars
  • Joel Peskin – saxophones
  • John Weston – pedal steel guitar
  • Sal Marullo – congas on "Island Fever"
  • Richard Titus – keyboard programming; second engineer
  • Gary Griffin – accordion on "Forever"; production on "Forever"
  • Roger McGuinn – vocals and 12-string guitar on "Summer in Paradise" (UK version only)
  • Kevin Elson – engineer on "Forever"
  • Mike Mierua – engineer on "Forever"
  • Lanny Cordola – production on "Forever"

References

Sources

  • Summer in Paradise CD booklet notes, Mike Love
  • "The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience", Timothy White, c. 1994.