The Beach Boys on CD Volume 3 - 1985-2015

by Andrew Hickey

Between 1983 and 2017 the Beach Boys released dozens of albums, together and apart, including some of the best music ever recorded - and some not so good. In this book, Andrew Hickey looks at this music track by track, analysing every song that Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike, Al, Bruce and David recorded and released during that time period. From 1980s hits like Kokomo to Brian Wilson's solo rerecording of Smile, in this book you'll learn how they were recorded, why they work the way they do, and which albums to buy if you want to hear a great band at their best.

Genres: Music

286 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2017

About the author

I had a biography here but it was very out of date. Currently my main work is my podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The New Yorker compared that to the Bible, Oxford English Dictionary, and the works of Gibbon and Pepys, and said it "will eclipse every literary project in history". So that's nice.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant]

Andrew Hickey is the hardcore Beach Boy fan all other hardcore Beach Boy fans would want to be stuck in a lift with for five hours. I am not Andrew Hickey, but I could have been. I took a wrong path somewhere.


But Andrew, what's up with that cover? It's not.... good!

[Mark]

Well-written yet again!

This is another superior piece of work from Mr. Hickey; he has quite an ear for The Beach Boys' sound, even if I don't always agree with his opinions.

[Rog Harrison]

This is a book for fans of not only the Beach Boys but also Brian Wilson as it gives track by track reviews of all the CDs released from 1985 to 2015 from "The Beach Boys" in 1985 to "Live in Chicago 1965" in 2015. So this book mainly covers Brian Wilson's solo albums as not many Beach Boys albums were released in this period. For the compilation albums such as "Hawthorne CA", "Endless Harmony" and "Made in California" the author only reviews previously unreleased songs on the basis that the released songs would already have been reviewed in the first two volumes. I own most of the albums though I was surprised how many albums of which I was not aware. I had not realised Al Jardine had released a solo album. I don't agree with some of the author's opinions but I was interested to read them.

[Alex Stephenson]

Andrew Hickey's trio of Beach Boys books were the first real critical writing I read on the band when I was getting into them. In the wake of Brian Wilson's passing, it was fun getting to re-read these again.

Hickey himself has somewhat disowned these books, and not everything about them is perfect - the editing isn't flawless, there are factual errors at points, and I don't think the music theory analysis is especially well-handled - but he's an entertaining writer even in these relatively early works, and his work with A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs only sees the quality improve.

Volume 3 is the best of the lot, but there's no point reading any of them out of order. Fun reads for novices and aficionados alike.

[J.J. Lair]

I read the first two in the series back to back because those were the prime years. When I got to this, I learned there was more story to go. I liked The Beach Boys 1985 album, but it is dated. All these years later I learned the melody of Getcha Back should be familiar. A lot of The Beach Boys is very studio magic and shallow. Then they get back to real bands and players. Big shout out to Jim Cowsill. The music gets interesting again. I finished the book and went back and looked up some of the albums and songs. Runaway Dancer is a new favorite going on my play list.

[Jesse Jackson]

Good to read a nice discussion of the group’s recent contributions. I agree that it is a mixed bag of material. There are a few highlights on the CD’s to enjoy.