Holland is the nineteenth studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released January 8, 1973, on Brother/Reprise. It is their first album recorded without Bruce Johnston since 1965, their second with Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar, and their final studio album created under the de facto leadership of Carl Wilson and manager Jack Rieley. The LP was originally packaged with a bonus EP, Mount Vernon and Fairway, which consisted of a 12-minute fairy tale written and produced by Brian and Carl Wilson.
Per its title, Holland was recorded over the summer of 1972 at a barn in Baambrugge, near Amsterdam, where the band members and their entourage had decamped for several months in the pursuit of creative inspiration. Recording the album was an unprecedented and extremely costly venture, as the group had commissioned their engineers to renovate the barn, which had housed an existing studio, using components from the band's studio in Los Angeles that were dismantled, shipped to the Netherlands in crates, and then reassembled. Ultimately, only the album's basic tracks were recorded in the Netherlands, with the band finishing off the record in late 1972 at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. Total expenses were estimated at $250,000 (equivalent to $ in ).
Holland received generally favorable reviews. It peaked at number 36 in the US and number 20 in the UK, and it produced two singles: "Sail On, Sailor" and "California Saga/California". Subsequently, the band recorded little in the studio for the next two years. Instead, they released the live album The Beach Boys in Concert (1973), and did not follow up with another studio album until 15 Big Ones (1976). In 2022, an expanded version of Holland was packaged within the compilation Sail On Sailor – 1972.
Background
In late December 1970, the Beach Boys played three concert dates in Rotterdam and Amsterdam as part of a short European tour. On the first date, which had been scheduled to begin at 12:30 a.m., the band arrived four hours late due to a missed flight, and were surprised to find that the concert hall venue, the De Doelen, Rotterdam, was still packed with attendees. Furthermore, the audience shouted for the group to perform their new songs, rather than their past hits. Carl Wilson told a local magazine, "I love this audience. Our last albums [20/20 and Sunflower] sold poorly in the US, our financial situation is disastrous – and here we have success. I like this country."
Reports from this period suggested that the group were planning to move from Los Angeles to Britain once their recording commitments were finished. In one report, manager Jack Rieley said they were "definitely leaving Los Angeles because of the smog." Later, Rieley told Rolling Stone, "I wanted to [shift our base] and so did Carl. [Holland] seemed like an interesting place. But most importantly, I felt that The Beach Boys had to do a record outside of California, to get away from that whole scene, find a new scene, and create in that new scene."
During the recording of Carl and the Passions – "So Tough", in late February 1972, the band returned to the Netherlands to film a promotional clip for their forthcoming single, "Marcella", and play a televised concert at the RAI Congrescentrum. There, the group decided on the Netherlands as the venue for their next recording project, and where they would set up headquarters for the next several months. A few days later, the band announced drummer Ricky Fataar and guitarist Blondie Chaplin as new additions to their official line-up. Bruce Johnston, who had joined in 1965, resigned from the group in April 1972.
The band had expected to record their Netherlands-based album at a local studio, however, the country's few studios were already overbooked. To get around this, the group commissioned their engineer, Steve Moffit, to design and construct a portable mixing desk – something which had never been done before – and have it shipped to their Netherlands base. This meant dismantling the band's private studio located in Brian Wilson's home. Later, at the end of May, Moffit discovered a barn in Baambrugge, within 10 miles of Amsterdam, that housed an existing recording studio, which he then converted for the band's own purposes. The group also tasked their publicist, Bill DeSimone, with finding eleven houses for the Beach Boys' entourage, unaware that the Netherlands had suffered from a chronic housing shortage. After two weeks, he successfully secured four houses for the group. From May 5 to June 3, the group toured Europe and the UK while using their new homes and offices around Amsterdam as a base.
Members of the group and their entourage – which included several wives, girlfriends, and relatives; Rieley and his dog; engineers Moffitt, Gordon Rudd, and Jon Parks; assistant Russ Mackie, and secretary Carol Hess and her husband – took residence at various locations within a 30-mile radius of central Amsterdam. Carl and Chaplin lived in Hilversum; Fataar lived in Vreeland; and Mike Love and Al Jardine lived in Bloemendaal. Brian, who had long resisted making the trip, ultimately settled in Laren with his wife Marilyn, their two children Carnie and Wendy, Marilyn's sister Diane Rovell, and a housekeeper. It took three attempts for Brian to successfully get on the flight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam.
Production
The sessions in Holland lasted from June 3 to August 15, 1972, at the BBC 2 Baambrugge studio near Amsterdam. Initially, the studio was in a non-functioning state, as there was not enough time to test the equipment shipped from Los Angeles before the group were due to record. According to biographer Steven Gaines, Moffit "spent eighteen hours a day for the next four and a half weeks trying to get the equipment running. This ruined the touring schedule the Beach Boys expected to keep in Europe, severely limiting the needed income to cover the expense of living in Holland." Al Jardine remembered, "It was rough being in Holland. We were working 24/7 in a small homemade rebuilt piecemeal little studio in a garage next to a cow pasture. Yeah, it was rough. We didn't even have the correct electricity [...] so that kind of affected the sound of our equipment. It was a mixed blessing."
According to Fataar, "Everybody would come in with a piece of a song or a completed song and kind of play around with it and then figure out how we wanted to record it. It was very casual." Carl produced every track on Holland, except for the songs by Dennis Wilson, which Dennis produced himself. In the middle of recording, Dennis moved to the Canary Islands, opting to return to the studio only for certain sessions. Biographer Jon Stebbins explains that Dennis had not felt "comfortable living in Holland".
Brian did not join most of his bandmates' sessions, instead preferring to work alone on late nights. Fataar said, "I can't even remember seeing him in the studio in Holland. Everyone had their own family situation and we'd just go to work and occasionally see each other. It wasn't like a one-big-family thing." Carl recalled, "It was a very creative time for me. Brian had me working on the album very hard so he could have some time for himself. He wasn't really up for doing much, as far as going into the studio every day." Biographer Peter Ames Carlin writes,
At the end of the Holland stay, in early August, the band attended a party hosted by the Dutch record company Bovema Negram, where Rieley announced to local journalists that the Beach Boys' next release would be a double album titled Holland. However, only the album's basic tracks were recorded in Holland; the band subsequently returned to California for further recording. Rieley stayed behind, intending from this point onward to manage the group from his office in Amsterdam.
From late September through early October, the band refined the tracks at Village Recorders in Los Angeles, and a master was assembled on October 9. It was expected that the album would be released on November 5, but this motion was halted by Reprise/Warner Bros. executives who felt that the LP was a weak effort and lacked a hit single. The band were displeased; Gaines quoted one Warner Bros. executive as saying, "It was bloodshed. Everybody went wild." To satisfy the record company, the group recorded one more song, "Sail On, Sailor", after which the album was remastered and completed in late November. Production expenses for Holland totaled $250,000 (equivalent to $ in ). Rieley remarked of the exorbitant cost, "Someday accounting will face a column just titled 'Holland.'"
Songs Side one
"Sail On, Sailor" was written primarily by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson with Rieley, Tandyn Almer, and Ray Kennedy. There are several contradicting accounts of the song's origins. Carlin states that the song was essentially co-written by Wilson and Parks in 1971, with Kennedy and Almer's contributions dating from impromptu sessions at Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton's house during the epoch. Brian refused to participate on the recording.
"Steamboat" was written by Dennis and Rieley, and sung by Carl. The lyrics reference Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. Carlin described the song as "a dreamlike journey back to the mythic heart of Mark Twain's America, borne by the insistent chug of an actual steam engine, hurtling keyboard glissandos, and a wonderfully bluesy slide guitar break". Musician Scott McCaughey wrote, "the chugging, almost industrial rhythm bed sounds like a modern sampled tape loop or a latter-day Tom Waits creation."
"California Saga" is a three-part series of songs – "Big Sur", "The Beaks of Eagles", and "California" – that the members of the group produced when they had been feeling homesick. "Big Sur", an acoustic number about rural life in Northern California, is the first song in which Mike Love wrote both the words and music. It was originally recorded during the Surf's Up sessions; the version on Holland is a rerecording. "The Beaks of Eagles", composed by Jardine, is partly based on Robinson Jeffers' poem of the same name. "California" has Brian, who was otherwise barely present at the group's sessions, singing the opening line "On my way to sunny Californ-i-a".
Side two "The Trader" is a two-part composition by Carl, with lyrics by Rieley, who explained, "Carl was speaking out about the fact that it's wrong to subjugate a people, as so many have been. The Trader is really about racism; these people who got their orders from the king or queen and colonised Africa, for example. The tender part of the song asks the Africans to reply. I believe it's quite touching. I wasn't consciously trying to do something political." According to Carl, the lyrics explore "Manifest Destiny as seen through the eyes of the conquering and the conquered."
"Leaving This Town" was written primarily by Fataar, who said, "I had parts of it and Carl came in the studio and suggested other things, so we were just making it up as we went along." "Only with You" was composed by Dennis, with words by Mike Love, and sung by Carl. "Funky Pretty" was produced by Carl and Brian, and features every member of the group trading the lead vocal.
Leftover