We All Are Born Without Sight
Dennis Wilson - Sound of Free.
Dennis Wilson - Baby Blue Eyes.
It's way more rewarding to explore Dennis Wilson's solo work than one would think. The peer-to-peer era has made it so much easier to explore unreleased bootlegs that you could previously only read about. Lots of praise gets heaped on poor Dennis Wilson, the only real surfer boy in the whole Beach Boys clan. Some of that praise is warranted, and sometimes not. But either way, he produced two exceedingly listenable solo albums in the 70s -- one released and one unreleased.
However, previous to that, he dropped the single "Sound of Free" in 1970. This thing was actually co-written by Mike Love, which probably explains why it doesn't sound anything like what the Beach Boys were doing at the time (it sounds more like an "oldie" than Pet Sounds). But I love that guitar line, and the way it just explodes into a full band after just a few seconds. I wish I had a better recording for you, without the hiss on the vocals, but there aren't many copies of this around. This song is pretty amazing though, and just stinks of the early 70s wtih the rolling drums, hazy guitars and theatrical vocals. I love it.
For the second entry here, we've got a track from the unreleased Bamboo record. Basically, even though he started it before Pacific Ocean Blue, he just never got around to finishing it. But damn was this a promising record. I mean, it's not SMiLE, but it would've been good, and better than Pacific Ocean Blue, which was already a good record.
Baby Blue Eyes is beautiful. It might as well be a Beach Boys song, and fits in with their late-period material (some of which Dennis was writing anyway, since Brian wasn't participating). Again, I wish I had a better version here, as this version is hissy and obviously suffers from too many tape transfers. But to me that speaks of its quality -- it woudn't have passed through so many hands it if wasn't worth it. Dennis had really grown into a great songwriter by the end.
And with the chilly, gray mornings here in Los Angeles, I'm reminded of Dennis, and his hoarse, booze-soaked voice fits in well with the fall season here. Perhaps someday someone will finally piece together an official Bamboo release, or at least re-release Pacific Ocean Blue, but until then we'll have to put up with the pops and hiss of these barely finished takes.