Friends is the fourteenth studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on June 24, 1968, through Capitol Records. The album is characterized by its brevity and calm atmosphere, spanning orchestral pop, waltzes, bossa nova, and lounge music, a deliberate contrast to the prevailing rock trends of the time. Five of its 12 tracks run less than two minutes long, and some of the songs were inspired by the group's recent involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation practice.
The album was recorded between February and April 1968, primarily at the band's private home studio. Despite crediting production to the group collectively, Brian Wilson actively led the entire project, later referring to it as his second unofficial solo album following Pet Sounds. It continued the lo-fi approach they had pursued since Smiley Smile while returning to the use of studio musicians, albeit in smaller configurations, and Burt Bacharach-influenced compositions. It was the band's first album to feature songs from Dennis Wilson and to be mixed and released exclusively in true stereo.
Lead single "Friends" (B-side "Little Bird") reached number 47 in the U.S. and number 25 in the UK. In May, the group aborted a national tour with the Maharishi after five shows due to low ticket sales and the Maharishi's subsequent withdrawal. Upon release, Friends received favorable reviews but sold poorly, peaking at number 126 on the Billboard charts, the group's lowest U.S. chart performance at that point, although it reached number 13 in the UK. A standalone single, "Do It Again" (B-side "Wake the World"), was released in July and reached the U.S. top twenty, became their second number-one hit in the UK, and was included in foreign pressings of the album.
In later years, fans generally came to regard Friends as one of the band's finest albums. Despite the tour's failure, the group remained supporters of the Maharishi and his teachings. In 2018, session highlights, outtakes, and alternate takes were released on the compilation Wake the World: The Friends Sessions.
Background
In September and December 1967, the Beach Boys released Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, respectively. Music fans were generally disappointed that the band twice failed to deliver on the hype surrounding their unreleased album Smile, which was advertised as the follow-up to the sophistication of Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" (both 1966). Instead, the group were making a deliberate choice to produce music that was simpler and less refined. Commenting on Wild Honey, Mike Love said the band made a conscious decision to be "completely out of the mainstream for what was going on at that time, which was all hard rock/psychedelic music. [The album] just didn’t have anything to do with what was going on."
Although Wild Honey charted higher than Smiley Smile in the US, it was ultimately the group's lowest-selling album to that point. Apart from a two-week U.S. tour in November 1967, the band was not performing live during this period, and their finances were rapidly diminishing. That same month, the group stopped wearing their longtime striped-shirt stage uniforms in favor of matching white, polyester suits that were similar to a Las Vegas show band.
Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, and Mike Love were among the many rock musicians who discovered the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi following the Beatles' public endorsement of his Transcendental Meditation technique in August 1967. In December, the touring group attended a lecture by the Maharishi at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris and were moved by the simplicity and effectiveness of his meditation process as a means to obtaining inner peace. They were invited to meet the Maharishi in his hotel room the same day, and according to Brian, "they came back and [Carl was] just floating. ... it got to me through him." He recalled that he had "already been initiated" beforehand, but "for some ridiculous reason I hadn't followed through with it, and when you don't follow through with something you can get all clogged up. ... we're all meditating together now."
In a January 1968 interview, Brian stated that the group was unsure what their next production would be, but that "it won't be very long now until I come up with a song about meditation. It shouldn't be more than a month." He also expressed an interest in "pull[ing] out of conventional sound making and get[ting] into sounds that have never been made before ever." In early February, the group performed scattered gigs in the U.S. with Buffalo Springfield. The Beach Boys attended the Maharishi's public appearances in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, after which he invited Love to join the Beatles at his training seminar in Rishikesh in northern India. Love stayed there from February 28 to March 15. In his absence, the rest of the group began recording the album that would become Friends.
Recording history
Friends was recorded primarily at the Beach Boys' private studio, located within Brian's Bel Air home, from February 29 to April 17 1968. It was written, performed, or produced mainly by the Wilson brothers with what Stebbins terms "a strong assist" from Al Jardine. Jardine remembered how he still "felt that [Brian] had a lot to offer. ... We wrote [most of the Friends music] at his house right under that beautiful stained glass Wild Honey cover window." He added: "We'd get together in the morning. A lot of activity took place in the kitchen. ... We were in there as much as in the studio. God, we ate well."
It was the first Beach Boys album not to have Brian consistently as primary composer, and the first to feature significant songwriting contributions from other group members. Asked as to the level of Wilson's input, band archivists Mark Linett and Alan Boyd said that Wilson led the entire project, even on the songs that he did not compose. In a 1976 interview, Wilson referred to Friends as his second "solo album", the first being Pet Sounds. Stephen Desper was recruited as the band's recording engineer, a role he would keep until 1972. He had been recently contacted to convert Brian's semi-portable home recording set-up to a more permanent "full-fledged recording studio with the capacity of any other". Session musicians were used more than on Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, but in smaller configurations than on the Beach Boys' records from 1962 through 1966.
From February 20 or 27 to March 15, the band tracked "Little Bird", "Be Here in the Mornin", and "Friends". After Love returned from his retreat, they began recording "When a Man Needs a Woman", "Passing By", "Busy Doin' Nothin'", "Wake the World", "Meant for You", "Anna Lee, the Healer", and "Be Still". By the spring of 1968, the Beach Boys were overdue to submit an album to Capitol, and so Brian rushed to finish the Friends album while his bandmates were on tour. Sessions concluded with "Diamond Head" on April 12. Desper mixed the album for stereo. It was the band's first album to be mixed and released exclusively in true stereo, as the band's releases since The Beach Boys Today! (1965) had only been available in mono or Duophonic.
Music and lyrics The LP has a relatively short length; only two of its 12 tracks last longer than three minutes, and five run short of two minutes. In author Jon Stebbins' description, the album "reflects the peaceful and quietly centered aura" that the band had gained from their introduction to Transcendental Meditation. Bruce Johnston described the album as a conscious attempt to make something "really subtle ... that wasn't concerned with radio". Retrospectively, the album may be viewed as the final installment in a consecutive three-part series of lo-fi Beach Boys albums. Columnist Joel Goldenburg believes that the lightly produced album was the closest the group ever came to sunshine pop, a genre they had influenced but never fully embraced.
For the album's 1990 CD liner notes, Brian recalled that he "had a good thing rollin' in my head. The bad things that had happened to me had taken their toll and I was free to find out just how much I had grown through the emotional pain that had come my way. ... I think that the Beach Boys’ sound was evolving right along." The few tracks where he served as primary author contained his usual composing trademarks, such as unexpected harmonic changes, descending stepwise progressions, and unusually structured musical phrases. As on much of his compositions of the period, there was a heavy influence drawn from Burt Bacharach.
Subject matter ranges from Transcendental Meditation to bearing children and "doin' nothin'". Rolling Stones Jim Miller characterized Friends as a "return to Smileys dryness, minus the weirdness". Musicologist Daniel Harrison said Miller's observation was only true of "Meant for You", and that the remaining songs "have few of the formal or harmonic quirks of the earlier album, though there is no lack of clever and interesting effects, such as the bass harmonica line in 'Passing By' or the repetitive monophonic organ line in the break of 'Be Here in the Morning.'" The group's influences, according to rock critic Gene Sculatti, seemed to derive "primarily from Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and little else. The characteristic innocence and somewhat childlike visions imparted to their music are applied directly to the theme of the album: friendships. As usual, the lyrics tend to be basic, yet as expressive as they need to be; words, like individual voices or instruments, are all part of the larger whole of music".
Johnston was unhappy with the group's "wimpy" songs and opined that the new material—with the sole exception of the title track—did not represent Brian "at full strength". When asked why the band did not pursue harder rock styles, Jardine responded that "for Carl and me, we were painting a canvas. Jimi [Hendrix] was one of the best in the world, but they were more of a performance phenomenon, representing an era. ... We didn't have that need, because I think it’s a need." Brian similarly felt no pressure to make "heavy" music: "We never needed to. It's already been done."
Content Side one
"Meant for You" is a 38-second introduction to the album and the shortest song in the group's catalog. It was originally conceived as "You'll Find it Too", with a longer runtime of about two minutes, and featured additional lyrics about a pony and a puppy.
"Friends" is a waltz that was originally composed in time. The song was arranged and co-written by Brian, who described it as his favorite on the album. "Wake the World" was the first original songwriting collaboration between Brian and Jardine. It was another song that Brian said was "my favorite cut [on the album]. It was so descriptive to how I felt about the dramatic change over from day to night." The song is the first on the album that demonstrates his then-recent "a-day-in-a-life-of" songwriting habit.
"Be Here in the Mornin'" and "When a Man Needs a Woman" were written about some particular comforts of Brian's daily life. The former is another waltz and features the Wilsons' father Murry contributing a bass vocal. The song makes a passing lyrical reference to the Wilsons' cousin Steve Korthof, road manager Jon Parks, and Beach Boys manager Nick Grillo. Parks and Korthof themselves shared a writing credit on "When a Man Needs a Woman". The song was inspired by Marilyn Wilson's pregnancy with her and Brian's first child Carnie, although the lyric suggests that Brian thought it would be a boy.
"Passing By" is wordless, with the melody hummed by Brian. The piece had discarded lyrics written for it: "While walking down the avenue / I stopped to have a look at you / Said "Hi" as you were just passing by".
Side two "Anna Lee, the Healer" is about a masseuse Mike Love encountered in Rishikesh. The arrangement consists only of vocals, piano, bass, and hand drumming.