Just look at the cover, man.
A hirsute Dennis dressed in a well-filled blue tee is definitely concentrating hard on keeping himself upright, there’s a frown crinkle at the bridge of his nose, his eyes seem a little sunken and dark like he’s seen far too much, the beard is untrimmed and wispy grizzly; there’s some serious psychic mileage on the odometer here. He was 32 years old.
I came to Pacific Ocean Blue in 2013 after decades of hearing about it as a classic ‘lost’ LP* embodying all the big-bollocked hard livin’, lovin’, druggin’, drinkin’, Mansonin’, sailin’, surfin’, drownin’ lifecycle of its creator. It did not disappoint, the album acts as a buoy marking Wilson’s creative achievement in perpetuity.
As the most interesting mostly sane Beach Boy, there have been some serious gigazillions of words put out there about Dennis Wilson, only exacerbated by his Manson family connection^. I like to think I’m not one to buy into myths but it is very difficult to consider Pacific Ocean Blue separately to its creator, particularly given how personal an LP it feels.
That Pacific Ocean Blue is in thrall to the ocean, to nature, should come as no surprise, neither should the fact that nobody around the making of this record was going on a surfing safari anytime soon. The Pacific is celebrated as vast, unknowable, mystic, yearning, warmed by slaughter (of otter, as one unwieldy couplet has it**). Dennis was the B-Boy who surfed, who owned a 62-foot yacht called Harmony, he felt it – hell, he felt period – that put him a million miles away and ahead of his band mates^^.
Backed financially by Caribou Records owner, Chicago producer and Beach Boys manager Jim Guerico, Dennis Wilson with producer Gregg Jakobson set to. Using a large cast including members of the Beach Boys’ touring band, friends and numerous others, Pacific Ocean Blue somehow contrives to be a startlingly specific and personal LP. Just listen to ‘Time’, a song full of doubts and a stonking brass section, the husky vocals are brilliant, intimate.
There is something utterly classic sounding about the LP, it rocks in places, funks in others. There are moments of real loneliness and doubt, mitigated by lush strings and gospel choirs, interesting soundscapes abound amongst the odd nugget that could and should have graced FM radio. There is nothing remotely jarring or outlandish about the music here, but it really does not sound like anyone else.
My highlights are:
- Friday Night: an exciting widescreen small-town rock movie all over and done in 3:12 even with a minute of intro music. You can virtually see the nose snow.
- Thoughts Of You: Wilson inventing the Eels in 1977. Incredibly affecting singing.
- River Song: an incredible opening statement, replete with a beautiful piano intro. The choir is proof that you can gild the lily.
- Pacific Ocean Blues: real off kilter white funk at its very best.
Of course my listening to Pacific Ocean Blue is tinged by the knowledge that it was the increasingly haunted Wilson’s only finished work, that it utterly flopped caught in the undertow of his own downward spiral and that he ended up drowning in the Pacific, diving into the water to retrieve remnants of his past life and was, with presidential assistance, buried at sea in it.
Knowing all the above flavours the likes of the closing track ‘End Of The Show’, complete with dubbed on crowd noise, with a stark poignancy. It interests me how much of this is heard entirely in the song and how much we, the listeners, layer on afterwards; we project, it’s what we are wired to do as homo projectosapiens. Fact.
I find Pacific Ocean Blue to be a really moving album, the sound of someone reaching deep inside themselves, despite their own doubts, for their art and simultaneously a really well-crafted widescreen studio LP of the type that just don’t get made anymore. Maybe it actually is that seldom sighted often cited holiest-of-holies, a classic lost LP.
You have to love any LP where the picture of the artist covers both front and back covers vertically, Blonde On Blonde style. Plus I rather like the two shots of Dennis Wilson that give the cover shot a context in grassy fields sloping down to the sea – looks like North Wales to me, just below Harlech^*. True story.
996 Down.
PS: if you get on the Dennis trail there is so much interesting stuff out there, I heartily recommend this excellent article.
*remember the days when record companies used to delete albums from their catalogue? whole swathes of the recent past used to be unobtainable.
^documented ad nauseam elsewhere. Wilson refused to testify against Manson at his trial, which does him little posthumous credit and smacks to me of potentially not wanting to admit to services rendered.
**voila (trust me, it sounds much better sung):
We live on the edge of a body of water Warmed by the blood of the cold hearted slaughter, of otter Wonder how she feels, mother seal It's no wonder the Pacific Ocean is blue (Pacific Ocean Blues)
^^who had retreated into the twin shames of infantilism and hardcore Republicanism by 1976; utterly creatively bankrupt.
^*there is a very credible theory sweeping the internet, that I haven’t quite got around to making up yet, that the Beach Boys were in fact Welsh, the brothers’ surname being in fact Wilson-Jones.