THE BEACH BOYS | Friends [1968] | Records We Love #19

THE BEACH BOYS | Friends [1968]
Friends is the 14th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on June 24, 1968, through Capitol Records. The album is characterized by its calm and peaceful atmosphere, which contrasted the prevailing music trends of the time, and by its brevity, with five of its 12 tracks running less than two minutes long. It sold poorly, peaking at number 126 on the Billboard charts, the group's lowest U.S. chart performance to date, although it reached number 13 in the UK. Fans generally came to regard the album as one of the band's finest.
As with their two previous albums, Friends was recorded primarily at Brian Wilson's home with a lo-fi production style. The album's sessions lasted from February to April 1968 at a time when the band's finances were rapidly diminishing. Despite crediting production to "the Beach Boys", Wilson actively led the entire project, later referring to it as his second unofficial solo album (the first being 1966's Pet Sounds). Some of the songs were inspired by the group's recent involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation practice. It was the first album to feature songs from Dennis Wilson.
One single was issued from the album: "Friends", a waltz that reached number 47 in the U.S. and number 25 in the UK. Its B-side was the Dennis co-write "Little Bird". In May, the group scheduled a national tour with the Maharishi, but it was canceled after five shows due to low ticket sales and the Maharishi's subsequent withdrawal. A standalone single, "Do It Again", was released in July. It reached the U.S. top twenty, became their second number one hit in the UK, and was included in foreign pressings of Friends.
Friends received favorable reviews in the music press, but like their records since Smiley Smile (1967), the album's simplicity divided critics and fans. Despite the failure of a collaborative tour with the Maharishi, the group remained supporters of him and his teachings. Dennis contributed more songs on later Beach Boys albums, eventually culminating in a solo record, 1977's Pacific Ocean Blue. In 2018, session highlights, outtakes, and alternate takes were released for the compilation Wake the World: The Friends Sessions.
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