Bedroom Tapes

For the album by Carly Simon, see The Bedroom Tapes.

Brian Wilson pictured at Brother Studios in 1976, four years after the dismantling of his home studio

The Bedroom Tapes refer to a collection of musical recordings by the Beach Boys' co-founder Brian Wilson from the late 1960s and early 1970s. After the construction of his personal home recording studio, Wilson amassed a large body of work which was left mostly unreleased. The material approximately covers the years 1968–74, beginning after his retreat from the Beach Boys and ending shortly before his admittance under Eugene Landy's twenty-four-hour therapy program.

The moniker was the invention of writer Brian Chidester, who maintains that the material which comprises the Bedroom Tapes is "superfluous" and does not refer to tracks cut by Wilson strictly at his home studio. Accordingly, "the 'Bedroom Tapes' represents the whole era and not a specific project conceived of by Wilson himself, it is important to acknowledge that cut-off lines of delineation can easily blur."

Background

Further information: Brian Wilson's home studio and Brian Wilson § 1967–75

The Beach Boys performing in the early 1970s without Brian

Throughout the early 1970s, Wilson amassed a myriad of home demo recordings which later became informally known as the "Bedroom Tapes". Bandmate Bruce Johnston remembers: "Brian went through a period where he would write songs and play them for a few people in his living room, and that's the last you'd hear of them. He would disappear back up to his bedroom and the song with him." Friend Terry Melcher similarly likened Brian to "Aesop emerging to deliver his latest fable" each time he came down from his room to present a new song.

The Beach Boys albums Smiley Smile (1967), Wild Honey (1967), and Friends (1968) were recorded partially at the home studio. Following a stay at a mental institution, Wilson rarely finished a single track, leaving much of his subsequent Beach Boys output for brother Carl Wilson to complete. Brian's unrealized side projects from the era include tracks with Redwood, productions for Charles Manson, a remake of Friends, a spoken-word album with Stephen Kalinich (A World of Peace Must Come), and a country album with Fred Vail.

The home studio was dismantled in 1972. Chidester writes that Wilson continued to write material in the same vein, even outside of his home studio exercises, though the period and tone of his music was effectively ended in 1975 by his admission into psychologist Eugene Landy's twenty-four hour therapy program.

Production and style

Most of the unreleased recordings are lo-fi; it's unclear whether this production approach was intentional or a result of Brian's disinterest in the recording process. Some of the material has been described as "schizophrenia on tape," and "intensely personal songs of gentle humanism and strange experimentation, which reflected on his then-fragile emotional state." Beach Boys archivist Alan Boyd observed: "A lot of the music that Brian was creating during this period was full of syncopated exercises and counterpoints piled on top of jittery eighth-note clusters and loping shuffle grooves. You get hints of it earlier in things like the tags to 'California Girls,' 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and all throughout Smile, but it takes on an almost manic edge in the '70s." Brian's daughters have reflected on this period, as Wendy Wilson remembers, "Where other people might take a run to release some stress, he would go to the piano and write a 5 minute song."

Release status

Further information: List of unreleased songs recorded by the Beach Boys § Bedroom Tapes

Ultimate Classic Rock observed that while the unreleased Bedroom Tapes are purported to chronicle Wilson's drug abuse lifestyle, "the songs that did make it to records back then were living in a shadow of a fading legend." Some associated tracks were released shortly after their recording and included on the Beach Boys' albums. Others, like "H.E.L.P. Is on the Way", "Games Two Can Play", "Soulful Old Man Sunshine", and "California Feelin'" would be released decades later as part of various compilations and box sets.

In 2014, Brian Chidester speculated that most of the recordings have not seen release because many of its titles have never been published, a harder process than it is to issue alternate mixes and versions of previously-released tracks. Additionally, Chidester believes the Beach Boys' holding company Brother Records "simply do[es]n't see a market for such uncommercially conceived music ... Shortsightedness also could be blamed for the band's inertia regarding Smile, which sat dormant for more than 40 years and whose high sales figures surprised both band and record label alike. Yet it remains to be seen whether the same audience would find in the 'Bedroom Tapes' a common mystique." Later in the year, he reported that many additional Brian Wilson recordings dated from the late 1960s and early 1970s were recently found.

In a June 2015 interview to promote the film Love & Mercy, director Bill Pohlad responded after being asked about the Bedroom Tapes, "I have heard a lot of stuff and been privy to a lot of things. It’s not a secret that there is a lot of great Brian Wilson music out there that is not generally available yet. Hopefully someday more of that will come out." In May 2016, Wilson was asked whether the Bedroom Tapes might ever be released, to which he replied: "Yeah, I might do that later this year."

See also

• Andy Paley sessions
• The Beach Boys bootleg recordings
• Radiant Radish

Related albums

• Smiley Smile (1967)
• Wild Honey (1967)
• Friends (1968)
• Sunflower (1970)
• Surf's Up (1971)
• Spring (1972)
• Carl and the Passions (1972)
• A World of Peace Must Come (2008)