Endless Harmony

AMG Review of Endless Harmony

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

In 1998, in conjunction with the release of the the Beach Boys documentary Endless Harmony, Capitol Records issued an album called Endless Harmony Soundtrack. It wasn't a soundtrack to the film, however. Rather, it was a rarities collection containing previously unreleased Beach Boys songs, rehearsals, demos, alternate takes, and live performances. (If there had been any logic to Capitol's decision-making, the album would have been billed as the follow-up to the long-out-of-print 1983 Rarities LP.) It certainly wasn't an album for casual fans, but Beach Boys obsessives found a treasure trove of stuff to drool over, including previously unheard Brian Wilson compositions like "Soulful Old Man Sunshine" and "Sail Plane Song," as well as a demo of "Heroes and Villains" on which Wilson abruptly shifts to snatches of material intended for the never-released Smile project. The later tracks on the album were given over to contributions from the other Beach Boys, and these included Mike Love's "Brian's Back" (from 1978 sessions for a solo album he never released) and two previously unheard Dennis Wilson songs, one of which was the lovely "Barbara."

Endless Harmony Soundtrack didn't make much of an impact upon release in August 1998 -- in part, no doubt, because it appeared less than a year after another, similarly titled Beach Boys rarities album, Perfect Harmony. (Even Beach Boys fans could be forgiven for being confused.) In March 2000, coincident with the release of the Endless Harmony documentary on DVD, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing a revised version of Endless Harmony Soundtrack. When ICE Magazine contacted the label's vice president of catalog A&R, Paul Atkinson, he explained that the packaging had been lackluster and that "there were a couple of little things that the Beach Boys wanted to tweak."

The new version features what appears to be a hand-colored cover, and the booklet is printed with pages in various colors, whereas the 1998 edition was largely printed in a dull green. As to the couple of "little things" that were tweaked, there are in fact six tracks that have been drastically remixed by Mark Linett. On a 1966 medley of hits, Linett has replaced the extreme stereo mix from the 1998 album (on which the drums were hard to the right and the guitars hard to the left) with a mix that sounds more monophonic. "Surfer Girl," which had been presented in a previously released "binaural mix" that also drastically separated the tracks (with the vocals to the left and the music to the right), now has the vocals filling both tracks, with the instruments nearly inaudible, in order to emphasize the richness of the harmonies. The stereo remixes of "Kiss Me, Baby" and "California Girls" have themselves been remixed, again to pull them back from extreme stereo separation into more conventional-sounding mixes. A 1980 live version of "Darlin'" has been allowed to run a little longer and has been given a tighter, clearer mix that centers the vocals, while a demo version of "Do It Again" has been opened up to bring out the vocals and emphasize Brian Wilson's falsetto on the bridge. Also, at the end of the album, after the fade of the song "Endless Harmony," a brief reprise of "Kiss Me, Baby," emphasizing its "kiss a little, fight a little" chorus, has been added.

It would be interesting to know who in the Beach Boys wanted these alterations enough to have them done, but the Linett remixes do noticeably improve the sound of the older, unreleased tracks. ("Kiss Me, Baby" and "California Girls" are different, but not better.) In any case, the effect is to turn a version of a rarities album into a collectable rarity itself.