| length =
| label = *Brother
- Reprise
| producer = The Beach Boys
| chronology = The Beach Boys
| prev_title = Live in London
| prev_year = 1970
| next_title = Surf's Up
| next_year = 1971
| misc =
Sunflower is the sixteenth studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys. It was released by Reprise Records (the band's first for the label) on August 31, 1970, and received favorable reviews but sold poorly, reaching number 151 on the US record charts during a four-week stay and becoming the lowest-charting Beach Boys album to that point. "Add Some Music to Your Day" was the only single from the album to chart in the US, peaking at number 64. In the UK, the album peaked at number 29.
Working titles for the album included Reverberation, Add Some Music, and The Fading Rock Group Revival. The recording sessions began in January 1969, and, after a year-long search for a new record contract, completed in July 1970. In contrast to 20/20, the record featured a strong group presence with significant writing contributions from all band members. About four dozen songs were written for the album, and the label rejected numerous revisions of its track listing before the band presented enough formidable material deemed satisfactory for release. It includes "This Whole World", one of Brian Wilson's most complex songs, "Forever", regarded as among Dennis Wilson's finest, and "Cool, Cool Water", a song that originated from the band's Smile sessions.
Fans generally consider Sunflower to be among the Beach Boys' finest post-Pet Sounds albums. It has appeared in several critics' and listeners' polls for the best albums of all time, including Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The track "All I Wanna Do" was later cited as one of the earliest examples of dream pop. Many Sunflower outtakes and leftover songs later appeared on subsequent Beach Boys releases, including the follow-up Surf's Up (1971) and the compilation Feel Flows (2021).
Background and recording
January – May 1969
The Beach Boys were at their lowest popularity in the late 1960s, and their cultural standing was especially worsened by their public image, which remained incongruous with the "heavier" music of their peers. Released by Capitol Records in February 1969, the band's newest album 20/20 sold better than their previous, Friends (1968). However, they remained encumbered by an enormous debt that had been partly the result of two disastrous tours in 1968. Recording sessions for their next album began in January 1969 and were produced by the Beach Boys collectively and by Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson, Bruce Johnston, Al Jardine, and Dennis Wilson individually. Throughout the year, they recorded about four dozen studio tracks, with working titles for the new album including Reverberation, Sun Flower, and Add Some Music.
On April 12, the Beach Boys filed suit against Capitol for unpaid royalties and production duties for $2 million (equivalent to $ in ). In a press statement for this news, they also announced that they would be reviving their Brother Records imprint.
"All I Wanna Do" is a reverb-heavy B. Wilson–Love song that was originally attempted during the sessions for Friends. Discussing the song in 1995, Brian expressed: "That was one of those songs that had a nice chord pattern, but I think it was a boring song, and I thought it wasn't done right. I thought it should have been softer, with boxed guitars."
"Forever"
"Forever" was written by Dennis and his friend Gregg Jakobson. Brian commented: "I wrote that for Carl. After I wrote it I said, 'Hey, he could sing this good' so I gave it to Carl." In 2013, "Where Is She" was released on the box set Made In California. "Take a Load Off Your Feet (Pete)", written by Brian and Jardine with schoolfriend Gary Winfrey, was included on the band's next album Surf's Up (1971). "Loop de Loop", written by Brian, Carl, and Jardine, was the latter's rearrangement of "Sail Plane Song", a 20/20 Brian/Carl outtake. In 1998, Jardine completed the song for the Endless Harmony Soundtrack with the original 1969 mix seeing release on the 2021 box set Feel Flows. In 1977, the original Sunflower version of "Good Time" was placed on The Beach Boys Love You. In 1981, "San Miguel", a collaboration between Dennis and Gregg Jakobson, was released for the compilation Ten Years of Harmony. Jardine's "Susie Cincinnati" was released as the B-side of the "Add Some Music to Your Day" single and as a track on the 1976 album 15 Big Ones.
"I Just Got My Pay" is a song that contains a reworked melody from the 1964 outtake "All Dressed Up for School", with both songs being released on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys. "I'm Going Your Way" is a Dennis song about picking up hitchhikers and the sexual intercourse that might follow while "Carnival" (aka "Over the Waves") In the English music press, the album was favorably compared by many critics to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Retrospective assessments and legacy
Fans generally regard Sunflower as the Beach Boys' finest post-Pet Sounds album. Pitchforks Hefner Macauley deemed Sunflower "perhaps the strongest album they released post-Pet Sounds", while Chris Holmes of Popdose declared that "it stands as the definitive post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys album". Pastes Brian Chidester wrote that the album "was, in many respects, their Abbey Road—a lush production that signaled an end to the 1960s, the decade that gave them creative flight." Music theorist Daniel Harrison referred to Sunflower as the end of an experimental songwriting and production epoch for the group, one that had begun with 1967's Smiley Smile.
In his 2016 memoir, Love acknowledged that Sunflower was "damn good ... I also know that we have fans who cherish that album like none other." Wilson biographer Christian Matijas-Mecca stated that the album was the band's best effort since Pet Sounds and said that it "demonstrated, more than any other Beach Boys album before or since, that the six members could work democratically and deliver songs of real depth." Writing in The Beach Boys and the California Myth (1978), David Leaf summarized the work as "the first album that could come close to Pet Sounds on a production level, partly the result of studio engineer Steve Desper's fine work. The Beach Boys' harmonies were present in a way they hadn't been since Summer Days... and it was probably the truest group effort ever in that it was a showcase for all the individuals in the band." Peter Ames Carlin summarized:
Sunflower was voted number 380 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (2003), number 66 in The Guardians "100 Best Albums Ever" (1997), and number 449 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). In his review of the album's 2000 remaster, Keith Phipps from The A.V. Club said that Sunflower "features one of The Beach Boys' most coherent and lovely selections of music", with the best songs penned by Brian. The A.V. Clubs Noel Murray wrote that the album could be interpreted as the band's response to "the wave of 'sunshine pop' and 'bubblegum' acts that had emerged over the previous couple of years, showing that no one could write and record slick, melodic, harmony-drenched songs quite like The Beach Boys."
Among the band members, Bruce Johnston later named Sunflower his favorite Beach Boys album. In the 1970s, he considered it to be the last true Beach Boys album because it was the last to feature Brian's input and active involvement. He nonetheless regretted the inclusion of his two songs, saying that "Tears in the Morning" was "too pop" and that "I wish I hadn't recorded ['Deirdre'] with the group." Conversely, Brian said that "Deirdre" was "one of my very favorites" and that "Tears in the Morning" was "lovely". For the album's 2000 liner notes, it was written that he "attributes the staying power of Sunflower ... to the 'spiritual love' of the music".
- "Slip On Through" and "Got to Know the Woman" were originally credited to Dennis Wilson alone. Following a consultation with Wilson's estate and publishing, credits to Gregg Jakobson were officially added in 2021.
Reverberation
Midway through the recording of Sunflower, the band assembled an album for Capitol with some tracks that were later placed on Sunflower. It had the working title of Reverberation. Although a master tape (dated June 19, 1970) of songs was put together, this album was never released.
| title1 = Cottonfields
| note1 = single version
| title2 = Loop de Loop
| title3 = All I Wanna Do
| title4 = Got to Know the Woman
| note4 = mono mix
| title5 = When Girls Get Together
| note5 = instrumental
| title6 = Break Away
| title7 = San Miguel
| title8 = Celebrate the News
| title9 = Deirdre
| title10 = The Lord's Prayer
| note10 = duophonic remix
| title11 = Forever
Feel Flows
In 2021, expanded editions of Sunflower and Surf's Up were packaged within Feel Flows, a box set that includes session highlights, outtakes, and alternate mixes drawn from the two albums.
Personnel
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Sourced from Craig Slowinski.
The Beach Boys
- Al Jardine – second tenor/baritone vocals, guitar, finger snaps
- Bruce Johnston – second tenor/first tenor vocals, bass, Rocksichord, piano, finger snaps
- Mike Love – bass vocals; finger snaps
- Brian Wilson – first tenor vocals, piano, Rocksichord, toy piano, organ, Moog synthesizer, finger snaps
- Carl Wilson – second tenor vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Chamberlin, bass, Rocksichord, electric sitar, clavinet, finger snaps, additional percussion
- Dennis Wilson – baritone/bass vocals, piano, guitar, drums, bongos, finger snaps, cowbell (uncertain credit), tambourine
Touring musicians
- Ed Carter – guitar
- Daryl Dragon – organ, vibraphone, tack piano, electric harpsichord, tubular bells, chimes, bass guitar
- Dennis Dragon – drums, congas, cowbells, timbales
Guest
- Carnie Wilson – background voice on “At My Window”
Additional session musicians
- Julia Tillman – backing vocals
- Carolyn Willis – backing vocals
- Edna Wright – backing vocals
- Al Casey, David Cohen, Jerry Cole – guitar
- Ronald Benson – guitar, mandolin
- Mike Anthony – electric guitar
- James Burton – acoustic guitar
- Jack Conrad – guitar, bass guitar
- Ray Pohlman – six-string bass, bass
- Jimmy Bond – double bass, electric bass
- Mort Klanfer, Joe Osborn, Lyle Ritz – bass guitar
- Larry Knechtel, Mike Melvoin – piano
- Gene Estes – drums, chimes, glockenspiel, shaker
- Hal Blaine, John Guerin, Earl Palmer – drums
- Frank Capp – tambourine, tympani
- Stan Levey – bass drum, cowbell
- John Audino – trumpet
- Tony Terran – trumpet
- Carl Fortina – French concertina
- Igor Horoshevsky – cello
- Red Rhodes – pedal steel guitar
- Paul Beaver, Bernard Krause – Moog synthesizer
- Jay Migliori – flute
- David Sherr – flute
- Anatol Kaminsky – violin
- Sam Freed – violin
- Marvin Limonick – violin
- David Frisina – violin
- George Kast – violin
- Nathan Kaproff – violin
- Alexander Murray – violin
- Dorothy Wade – violin
- Spiro Stamos – violin
- Roy Tanabe – violin
- Shari Zippert – violin
- Jay Rosen – violin
- Virginia Majewski – viola
- Robert Ostrowsky – viola
- Alvin Dinkin – viola
- Allan Harstian – viola
- Edgar Lustgarten – cello
- Abe Luboff – arco double bass
Technical and production staff
- Stephen Desper – chief engineer and mixer, Moog synthesizer, wave effects, additional vocals (uncertain credit)
- Bill Lazarus – additional engineer (“Got to Know the Woman”)
- Doc Siegel – additional engineer (“Deirdre”, “All I Wanna Do”, “Forever”)
- Jim Lockert – additional engineer (“Cool, Cool Water”)
- Bill Halverson – additional engineer (“Cool, Cool Water”)
- Ricci Martin – cover photo
- Ed Thrasher – original art direction, innerspread photography
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|+ Weekly chart performance for Sunflower
! Chart (1970–1971)
! Peak<br />position
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+ Year-end chart performance for Sunflower
! scope="col" | Chart (1971)
! scope="col" | Position
|-
! scope="row" | Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)
| 73
|}