15 Big Ones is the twentieth studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on July 5, 1976, by Brother/Reprise. It includes a mix of original songs and renditions of rock 'n' roll and R&B standards. The LP was the band's first album with production credited solely to Brian Wilson since Pet Sounds (1966). As such, its release was accompanied by a controversial media campaign that declared his comeback as an active member of the Beach Boys' recording and touring group.
Following their previous album, Holland (1973), the band had focused on touring and attracting bigger concert audiences, especially after the unexpected success of their greatest hits compilation Endless Summer (1974). They attempted to record a new album at Caribou Ranch studio in late 1974, but it was soon abandoned, partly due to Wilson being unable or unwilling to participate. At the end of 1975, his bandmates and manager Stephen Love prevailed upon him to produce the group's next release, hoping that a new album bearing his production label credit would prove lucrative.
Most of 15 Big Ones was hastily recorded in early 1976 at the band's Brother Studios. The project was marred by creative disputes, time constraints, health issues among the band members, and interference from Brian's psychologist, Eugene Landy. One of the proposed titles, Group Therapy, was rejected in favor of a title that referred to both the number of tracks and the group's 15th anniversary. To support the album, Brian joined his bandmates on a major concert tour for the first time since 1964. The group also commissioned an NBC television special, titled The Beach Boys, that aired in August.
Despite mixed reviews, 15 Big Ones was the Beach Boys' best-selling album of new material since 1965, earning a gold certification from the RIAA. It peaked at number 8 in the U.S. and number 31 in the UK. Three singles were issued: a cover of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music" (number 5) and the originals "It's OK" (number 29) and "Everyone's in Love with You". The former two were their only top 30 hits in this decade. Brian later referred to 15 Big Ones and its 1977 follow-up, The Beach Boys Love You, as his favorite and most artistically representative work.
Background
In January 1973, the Beach Boys' previous album, Holland, was released amid generally favorable reviews and top 40 entries in the U.S. and UK charts. Early copies of the LP were packaged with a bonus EP, Mount Vernon and Fairway, that was produced by Brian and Carl Wilson. Brian's original concept for Mount Vernon and Fairway was to be "much more ambitious", consisting of renditions of 1950s songs like "A Casual Look". His bandmates took issue with the space it would have taken on the LP, and he subsequently lost interest, leaving Carl to finish the project.
The group maintained a touring regimen, but recorded very little in the studio for the next two years. Several months earlier, they had announced that they would complete their unfinished album Smile, but this never came to fruition, and plans for its release were once again abandoned. Following the June 1973 death of the Wilsons' father and former band manager Murry, Brian retreated into his bedroom and withdrew further into drug abuse, alcoholism, chain smoking, and overeating. He reflected, "I used my room as my little castle. Added to that, I was very depressed with the Beach Boys. I couldn't talk to them and nobody in the band could relate to me. This went on for about two and a half years. But, on and off, I'd sometimes go and record."
In October 1973, the band fired their manager, Jack Rieley. By his account, he had "pulled away" from the band due to "terribly complex, complicated and horribly distasteful situations involving aspects of their business and financial management." Rieley's position was succeeded by Mike Love's brother Steve and Chicago manager James William Guercio. Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar, who had joined the Beach Boys as official members in 1972, left the band in December 1973 and November 1974, respectively.
The Beach Boys' greatest hits compilation Endless Summer was released in June 1974 to unexpected success, becoming the band's second number-one U.S. album in October. The LP had a 155-week chart run, selling over 3 million copies, and led the group to reclaim themselves as the number-one act in the U.S. amid a new generation of fans. Guercio prevailed upon the group to swap out newer songs with older material in their concert setlists, partly to accommodate their growing audience and the demand for their early hits. Later in the year, members of the band appeared as guests on Chicago's hit "Wishing You Were Here". At the end of 1974, Rolling Stone proclaimed the Beach Boys "Band of the Year" based on the strength of their live performances.
Early recording history (1974–1975)
To capitalize on their sudden resurgence in popularity, the Beach Boys accepted Guercio's invitation to record their next Reprise album at his Caribou Ranch studio, located around the mountains of Nederland, Colorado. These November 1974 sessions marked the group's return to the studio after a 21-month period of virtual inactivity, but the proceedings were cut short after Brian had insisted on returning to his home in Los Angeles. Guercio remembered, "From the day he got here, he said, 'I want to go home.'" Contrary to popular belief, the fire that occurred at Caribou Ranch in 1985 is unlikely to have destroyed any Beach Boy tapes, as they would often take their tapes back to Brother Studio after recording at other studios. After the sessions had concluded, the band resumed touring for the remainder of the year.
Only four songs have been documented as being recorded at Caribou: "Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Good Timin", a new version of "Ding Dang" (later retitled as Rollin' Up to Heaven), and an additional unidentified backing track. Wilson had resumed his songwriting collaboration with poet Stephen Kalinich (who did not accompany the band to Colorado), resulting in such songs as "Child of Winter", "California Feelin'", "You're Riding High on the Music" (written for John Kay) and "Lucy Jones" (intended for an unrealized Wilson-produced Kalinich rock album). "You're Riding High on the Music" was never recorded. "Lucy Jones", as described by Kalinich, "was just a funky song, and Brian and I were having fun." Long believed to have been written by Wilson and Kalinch in 1974, "Grateful Are We for Little Children" dates from their earlier collaboration in the late 1960s.
In November 1974, Mike Love told Melody Maker that the band had completed "about 40 tracks" and that their next album would be completed by January 1975. Love reported, "Brian is very involved with the LP. [...] The album's a combination between Sunflower and Holland. It's got some of the feel that Holland had, but also sounds a bit like Sunflower in certain respects." The material was written by himself ("about ten" of the songs), Brian (five), Carl and Dennis ("about five" each), and Jardine ("a couple"). He described "Don't Let Me Go" as a song composed by Carl with lyrics by Love, and "Our Life, Our Love, Our Land" as a song written by Love that he described as an "ethnic thing" that resembled "The Trader" from Holland. According to Alan Boyd, neither song resides in the Beach Boy vaults and were possibly never recorded.
In reality, by the end of 1974 the group had only completed a small selection of tracks in the studio, and were mostly focused on touring. Additional songs recorded in 1974 include "River Song", "Ding Dang", "Barnyard Blues", "It's OK", and a rendition of "Honeycomb" (unrelated to the American Spring recording).
Released as a single at the end of December 1974, "Child of Winter" was the first Beach Boys record since 1966 to have displayed the label credit "Produced by Brian Wilson". The band toured for most of 1975, playing college football stadiums and basketball arenas. Meanwhile, Brian produced a cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" for California Music. Over the summer, the touring group played a co-headlining series of concert dates with Chicago, a pairing that was nicknamed "Beachago". The tour was massively successful and restored the Beach Boys' profitability to what it had been in the mid-1960s.
In a July 1975 article for NME, Nick Kent reported that Carl Wilson had cited "Rollin' Up to Heaven" (retitled from "Ding Dang"), "California Feelin", and "Good Timing" as "titles to new Brian Wilson songs recorded for the next Warner/Reprise album". Carl told Kent that the new songs demonstrated Brian's new "funky" approach. In September, the band recorded an unreleased version of the Del-Vikings' "Come Go with Me". In October, Wilson recorded a rendition of Van Dyke Parks' "Come to the Sunshine", also intended for the band's forthcoming album, but reportedly Brian could not find the master.
Although another joint tour with Chicago had been planned for the summer of 1976, the Beach Boys' association with Guercio and his Caribou Management company ended early in the year. Stephen Love subsequently took over as the band's de facto business manager.
Main production (January–May 1976) Overview
By the time 15 Big Ones was recorded, the Beach Boys had fallen three albums behind schedule in their contract with Warner Bros. In late 1975, Wilson volunteered himself into psychologist Eugene Landy's 24-hour therapy program. Encouraged by the positive results of Landy's treatment, Stephen Love and Wilson's bandmates requested that Wilson produce the album that became 15 Big Ones. He had not been credited as the sole producer on a Beach Boys LP since Pet Sounds (1966).
The principal 15 Big Ones sessions lasted from January 30 to May 15, 1976 at Brother Studios. Studio staff engineers Stephen Moffitt and Earle Mankey, the latter a former member of Sparks, were enlisted for the project. Carl and Dennis assisted Brian with the instrumental tracks, while Al Jardine and Mike Love contributed just vocals. Group meetings were supervised by Landy. Band road manager Rick Nelson acknowledged that Landy had attempted to exert unwelcome artistic control over the group. Landy remarked in a 1988 interview, "Brian and I did that [album] together."
In the assessment of biographer Peter Ames Carlin, one of the "more distressing" characteristics of the recordings is the quality of Wilson's singing. Carlin writes that Wilson's "powerful but tender falsetto" had degenerated into "a baritone croak." In his 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, it is stated that he suffered from a bout of laryngitis during the sessions, adding that his hoarse voice on the album was not his "normal voice [...] It was an assumed voice."
15 Big Ones is distinguished for its use of Moog and ARP synthesizers, played by Wilson himself, signaling a more electronic-heavy sound compared to his past productions. Mankey surmised that Wilson had employed synthesizers "to fake string parts [...] and not have to worry about anything else. He was in there to play the part and get out."
Original concept As a warm-up exercise, Brian first recorded a batch of oldies with many of the session musicians that he had worked with during the mid-1960s. Initially, Wilson was to have produced one or two albums of all-original material after finishing these oldies exercises. Crawdaddy journalist Timothy White, an observer of much of the album's recording, explained that the premise "represented a compromise at a stage when the Boys had felt stymied as a unit and reluctant to commit their own recent or stockpiled individual compositions to a communal album that didn't mainly feature Brian's work."