The band were pioneering a post-psychedelic music while the Summer Of Love was still in full swing

swing. And wouldn’t you know it, The Beatles’ “Lady Madonna” would get the credit.

Whereas history tends to tell us that Brian, having lost his race to let the world hear Smile before Sgt Pepper, was reduced to a traumatised shell as a result, the outtakes and session highlights of Wild Honey – about 40 minutes of them – simply shatter that falsehood to smithereens. He sounds every bit his usual self: alert, goodhumoured and completely in control. He wants the music to sound rustic; it’s not going in a minimalist direction due to any deficiencies in his production skills. The warm interaction between Brian and his bandmates on these recordings really does cast a muchmisunderstood period of The Beach Boys’ career in a new light. Brian even hopped on a plane to Hawaii in August and joined them onstage for two concerts in Honolulu, his first with the band since 1964 Sadly, the gigs they recorded in Hawaii weren’t impressive at all, and it’s a surprise that the surviving bandmembers have greenlighted the official release of some of the Lei’d In Hawaii tapes five decades later. With Bruce Johnston on bass and a general air of uncertainty prevailing, The Beach Boys sound like a garage band that formed in Hawthorne three weeks earlier. Dennis’ drumming is wobbly, and Carl’s guitar solos – in an era of Hendrix and Garcia – are a hamfisted embarrassment. “Thank you very much for your sympathy,” quips Mike Love, the driest of emcees. The Beach Boys were right. Exposing this paper-thin act at Monterey would have been catastrophic.

Back in Bel Air, though, they found their feet once again at Brian’s place, singing infectious tunes about honey bees and the joys of fresh air (note: all three Wilson brothers lived in a constant fug of hashish) and distilling the essence of those golden voices, even at a time of great paranoia, into sweet soul music. Thus do young men, who appear to be going mad, do their utmost to stay sane.