The Beach Boys, We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years
Taking stock of a new box set that chronicles the "Brian Is Back!" era, one that includes the cult favorite The Beach Boys Love You and the unreleased Adult/Child.
The Beach Boys
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years [2026; 1975-1977] ★★★(★)
15 Big Ones [1976] ★★
The Beach Boys Love You [1977] ★★★★★
Adult/Child [1977] ★★★
“Brian Is Back!” blared the marketing campaign the Beach Boys launched in 1976, the year the group celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. Like so many things with the Beach Boys, the slogan was an aspirational notion, a dream they tried to make reality. Brian Wilson did indeed rejoin the band after nearly a decade on their periphery, assuming the producer’s chair for the first time since Pet Sounds on 15 Big Ones, an album rushed into the market in the summer of ‘76 to take advantage of the unexpected success of Endless Summer. That 1974 greatest hits compilation gave the Beach Boys a sorely needed hit, one that came at the expense of positioning the band as an oldies act. Brian’s re-entry into the studio wasn’t intended as a refutation to this idea. His presence signalled continuity with the past, a sign that the Beach Boys were ready to return to their sunny heyday when they sang about waves, cars and girls.
Try as they may, the Beach Boys couldn’t pick up where they left off in 1967, when Wilson went into seclusion after the implosion of Smile. The rest of the band spent nearly a decade—at that point, a full two-thirds of their career—without Brian as their guide, developing a fragile, fascinating chemistry both on record and onstage. During those years, Brian’s brothers Carl and Dennis developed a different definition of what it meant to be a Beach Boy, one that didn’t quite jibe with the ideas harbored by their cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine. By 1976, there were at least three Beach Boys concepts floating in the ether: the working rock band fronted by Dennis and Carl, the nascent good-time oldies revue led by Love, and Brian’s transmissions from a sandbox at the other end of Santa Monica. Each camp could still harmonize but contrary to the title of the new box set chronicling the band’s mid-70s revival, they could not groove.
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years
