This ain’t your Great Granddaddy’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra rising out of the ashes of 1946 war torn England with Sir Thomas Beecham at the helm. Nor is it your Granddaddy’s Brian Wilson era California sun drenched Beach Boys basking in the glow of their early to mid 60’s success some twenty years later. Not even close. Since the unexpected overwhelming success of the RPO’s take on Elvis Presley in 2015 with If I Can Dream (#1 in the UK) and once again the following year with The Wonder Of You, the production team of Nick Patrick and Don Reedman has been responsible for three other similarly themed orchestral records. Roy Orbison’s A Love So Beautiful, the seasonal Christmas With Elvis And The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and last year’s A Brand New Me by Aretha Franklin all were to follow. Their latest The Beach Boys With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is the most blatant cash grab yet.
Initially the concept of mashing isolated Brian Wilson produced Beach Boys vocal arrangements over a full orchestral treatment sounds tantalizing enough, unfortunately a criminally uninspired execution leaves The Beach Boys With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra album dead in the water. The original arrangements, what publicist Derek Taylor once called Brain Wilson’s “pocket symphonies” have more orchestral scope and symphonic range than any one of the 17 newly recorded pieces here. At worst, this record is sheer caricature, a vulgar imitation. At best, it reduces the mad genius of twentysomething enfant terrible Brian Wilson to mere muzak, Easy Listening adult contemporary schlock. What is particularly abhorrent are the non-orchestral rhythm tracks Patrick and Reedman opted to re-record over the originals. Practically every track on The Beach Boys With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra “features” newly recorded drum, bass and piano tracks (sadly even guitar on “Fun Fun Fun”). The ghastly re-recording of Wilson’s once perfectly sublime intro to “God Only Know” is particularly unforgivable. Sequencing is also a problem, bookending lightweight “Kokomo” between the brilliance of “In My Room” and “The Warmth Of The Sun”. That said, this travesty of an album is not completely without merit. After all these years it’s nice to see the studio musicians on many of the original sessions finally get credit here, notably Carol Kaye (bass) Hal Blaine (drums/percussion) Leon Russell (piano) and Glen Campbell (guitar) to name but a few. Regrettably, the initial promise of the exquisite but all too short opening track “California Suite” is ultimately unfulfilled, “Disney Girls” and “Heroes And Villains” notwithstanding. Fortunately, the Wilson brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis along with Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and Mike Love have left behind a diverse catalogue of 29 studio albums spanning 50 years between 1962 and 2012, any one of them far more deserving than this artless cash driven debacle.
Rating: 5/10
Star Rating: 2/5
2018 Song Of The Day Club Album Review 24/52