![]() The group toured and did the requisite casino residencies, but legit success was hard to come by. Their roles were filled by former Spanky & Our Gang leader Elaine McFarlane and Phillips’ daughter Mackenzie, respectively. He and Denny Doherty were the only returning members Cass Elliot died in 1974, and Michelle Phillips divorced John in 1970. Phillips had spent the decade juggling different Mamas And Papas lineups. When he was tabbed to find a song for Cocktail, he reached out to an old friend: John Phillips of the Mamas And The Papas, whose hit “California Dreamin'” the Beach Boys had recently covered. By the mid-’80s, he was back in the Beach Boys’ orbit. He took on fewer projects, eventually signing on to produce a couple television shows for his mother, the actress and singer Doris Day. The Manson Family’s spree killings blew a hole in the psyche of America’s counterculture, and sent Melcher into something of a tailspin. But Manson’s psychotic behavior scotched his chance at a record deal incensed, he dispatched some of his followers to Melcher’s old house, where they murdered five people, including the actress Sharon Tate. The aspiring megalomaniac also aspired to be a songwriter, and both Dennis and Melcher were impressed with his embryonic sketches. In a twisted return of favor, Dennis introduced Melcher to a guy he first met trashing his house: Charlie Manson. Parks continued to provide lyrical and instrumental daubs to Beach Boys tracks in the years afterward. At one of his house parties, he re-introduced Brian Wilson to Van Dyke Parks, who tried to help Wilson through the aborted Smile sessions. Melcher moved behind the boards, becoming a major architect of the West Coast folk-rock sound. In the mid-’60s, he and future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston made surf-pop as Bruce & Terry, and then as the Rip Chords. Though Melcher had only been been producing the group for a few years, his relationship with the band was a couple decades old at that point. And so, when director Roger Donaldson sought the band to pad out the soundtrack to his film Cocktail, they turned the assignment over to their producer, Terry Melcher.ĬREDIT: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images Landy’s role as confidant, coupled with Brian’s reluctance to tour, kept him largely away from his bandmates, though they had the right to perform and record as the Beach Boys. At one point, Wilson’s family had to sell some of his publishing rights in order to afford Landy’s $430,000-a-year fee. Eugene Landy, Brian’s personal therapist, business manager, and professional ghoul. And on the label, there are three songwriting credits for E. On the back, there’s a dedication “to the memory of our beloved brother, cousin and friend” Dennis Wilson, the band’s drummer and only true surfer, had drowned in the water off Marina Del Rey in December of 1983. A couple clues to their malaise appear within the record. Their last record, 1985’s digitally crispy The Beach Boys, performed middlingly despite contributions from Culture Club, Ringo Starr, and Stevie Wonder. The state of the Beach Boys in 1988 was, in a word, shitty. Together, they formed a coastal coterie, an assemblage of connections both fortuitous and tragic. “Kokomo” was a peculiar last cultural gasp for everyone involved: not just the performers, but also their collaborators. ![]() But enough about that it’s simply a lovely little tune with the killer harmonies that the band always had.With or without their erstwhile captain Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys never came close to replicating their early success, but no matter: Every time a quizmaster asks what the seven locations are in the song’s chorus, every Gen-X hand in the bar lunges for the pen. I dare say that the song the hardcore hate so much is probably the one thing that brought them into the spotlight for Gen-Xers. It was good to hear it on the radio back in 1988, as I’d been a lifelong Beach Boys fan. It’s hated by Beach Boys fans, but I don’t care. It would be the Beach Boys’ last number one hit…and their first number one hit song to not include Brian. Cocktail was a dumb-fun movie, but “Kokomo” was something truly special. Yeah, yeah, there’s the “story” about it, and there’s the issue of the relationship between Brian and the band, but there are always two sides of the story, and just because one side elicits sympathy, doesn’t mean that the offended party is in the right, you know? Personally, I think that someone protested a bit too much after it became a hit. Search Song Of The Day: The Beach Boys, “Kokomo” (1988) By Joseph Kyle
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