Even though he was in one of the most successful
bands of its time, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson never really got a break.
Just as he began to find his own voice as a songwriter in the early '70s, his
troubled genius brother Brian Wilson returned to retake the spotlight. On the
road, The Beach Boys became largely a nostalgia attraction, playing to the
good-times, great-oldies crowd while ignoring their newer material. Dennis'
solo album, 1977's Pacific Ocean Blue, sold respectably, but didn't let him escape that
shadow. Even after his 1983 drowning death, he was unlucky. Pacific Ocean
Blue
began to earn a reputation as a lost classic, but—apart from a quickly
retired 1991 CD issue—legal issues kept it out of print.
The new Pacific Ocean Blue: Legacy Edition corrects that while
confirming the rumors of the album's greatness. Building on Dennis'
contributions to Beach Boys albums like Sunflower and Holland, the album-opening "River
Song" plays like a statement of purpose, using dreamy harmonies familiar to
Beach Boys fans but taking them in a direction all Dennis' own. So it goes with
the rest of the generally melancholy album. The boogie-woogie chug of "What's
Wrong" wouldn't sound out of place on a Beach Boys disc like 15 Big Ones. But Dennis has
heartbreak on his mind through much of Pacific Ocean Blue, and he expresses it on
songs that, like George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, suggest his best ideas
were seldom allowed to surface at his day job. "Moonshine" and "Thoughts Of
You" cross the confessional tone of '70s singer-songwriters with gorgeously
ambitious arrangements, while the near-title track, "Pacific Ocean Blues,"
works up a wailing chorus to praise an ocean "warmed by the blood of the
cold-hearted slaughter of otter."
Even the sea's been drained of fun, fun, fun on an
album filled with bright futures that have fast begun to dim, a sadly
appropriate subject for Wilson's only proper solo release. Years of hard living
had begun to creep into his voice, a development even more pronounced on the
set's second disc, which contains sessions from a proposed second album called Bambu. What's there sounds
promising but unfinished. Dennis Wilson left a lot undone.