Beach Boys 8: Christmas Album

Like any red-blooded American boy, Brian Wilson loved Christmas. Likely influenced by Phil Spector’s album as well as their own “Little Saint Nick” from the year before (think a thematic cross between a little Deuce Coupe and a certain sleigh), The Beach Boys' Christmas Album was released a month after their live album, Capitol having zero qualms about loading up the shelves with their artists.

Five of the songs are Brian Wilson originals, played (most likely) by the band themselves. “Little Saint Nick” is still the best meld of the holiday spirit and the band’s brand. “The Man With All The Toys” has a jarring hiccup of a supporting part, “Santa’s Beard” and “Merry Christmas Baby” present Mike at his most nasal, while Al is credited with lead on “Christmas Day”. Outside of the occasional quote in a guitar solo, these are pop tunes with specific lyrics. Based on these it’s just as well that Brian didn’t try to write a whole album of Christmas songs, else his nervous breakdown might’ve been sooner or more severe.

To complete the album, the rest of the program consists of holiday favorites given lush, Four Freshman-style arrangements, much more typical of Johnny Mathis. Brian sings a couple of the prettier ones alone, but they all come together for the likes of “Frosty The Snowman” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”, the latter with an unfortunate “circus” motif in between verses. They give their best blend to “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”, and bury some harmonic gymnastics under brother Dennis’s “special” spoken message over “Auld Lang Syne”.

Despite the promise of side one, this is not a rockin’ Christmas album, yet it does provide an interesting transition to the more advanced music Brian would create in 1965. The album never really went out of print, and even appeared on CD a few times, once with bonus tracks, including the single version of “Little Saint Nick”, an odd alternate of the same but sung over the backing track for “Drive-In”, and an a cappella mix of “Auld Lang Syne”.

At the end of the ‘90s, Ultimate Christmas more than doubled the original lineup with further extras, most notably an interview with Brian from a 1964 promo, the clumsy “Child Of Winter” standalone single from 1974, and selections from the band’s aborted 1977 Christmas album. These are just plain odd, as many of them were either holiday-tinged remakes of unfinished tracks. For one, “Santa’s Got An Airplane” updated the mode of travel with help of the unfinished late-‘60s track “Loop De Loop”, while “Melekalikimaka” and “Bells Of Christmas” would be reworked for the M.I.U. Album. Al Jardine’s kids narrate “(I Saw Santa) Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”, which rips off two separate songs, but “Winter Symphony” is a promising Brian tune that could stand to be slower and not as busy. There’s even a rare Dennis Wilson recording, the moving “Morning Christmas”, for that cult base. As with most Beach Boys music post-Endless Summer, these later tracks are simply not as strong as the prime material from the original era. (This too went out of print, superseded by 2004’s Christmas With The Beach Boys, which repackaged the tracks but left out “Christmas Time Is Here Again”, which was basically “Peggy Sue” with new words. Five years later, Christmas Harmonies offered a very strange 15-song distillation of the music. Meanwhile, their a cappella rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer”, the B-side to “Little Saint Nick”, hasn’t been included on any of these CDs since 1991, but has turned up elsewhere.)

The Beach Boys The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (1964)—3
1991 CD reissue: same as 1964, plus 4 extra tracks
The Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas (1998)—2