Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Hits U Missed #4: Unreleased Beach Boys: "We Got Love"

After Surf's Up, the Beach Boys were back on the road quite a bit. I even managed to interview the late, great Carl Wilson when they played at SUNY Fredonia in 1972.

By that time, Bruce Johnston was gone and Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar were in the band. During those shows, they regularly performed an unfamiliar song called "We Got Love," though it only showed up on the terrific 1973 live album. What I didn't know was that it had been intended for Holland and was replaced by "Sail On Sailor," which was somewhat hastily completed and recorded, then added to the album and issued as a single.

From Wikipedia:
Holland was rejected by Reprise Records for not having a potential hit single. It was decided to add an old unfinished Brian Wilson song, "Sail On, Sailor", which he had co-written with Van Dyke Parks. After some re-working, Brian delivered what would become Holland's most famous track. "Sail On, Sailor" was one of two songs recorded at home (the other was Ricky Fataar's and Chaplin's soulful and moog-tinged "Leaving This Town") and added at the last minute to a re-sequenced and re-submitted Holland. One of the casualties of this tracklist reshuffling proved to be another Fataar/Chaplin tune, written with Mike Love, called "We Got Love", which would resurface later in 1973 in a live context.
Early test pressings of Holland, made in the USA and in the UK feature the album in its original group-intended running order. Side one kicks off with "Steamboat", then the three-part Saga, followed by "We Got Love". The German distributor for Reprise records failed to implement the changed side-one line up correctly and mistakenly pressed 300-400 copies with the earlier running order. Early French and Canadian pressings of Holland still mention "We Got Love" on the sleeve, although the song is not on those albums.

Here's the "original" studio version of "We Got Love," still surprisingly unreleased, except for bootlegs, of course.

1 comment:

Howard Cohen said...

Sounds like early Elton John of that period. Not surprising, given that Elton is and was a big Beach Boys fan of this era.