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| Studio = Sunset Sound Recorders, Gold Star Studios, and Brian Wilson's home studio, Hollywood | Genre = Rock〔 | Length = | Label = Brother/Reprise| | Producer = The Beach Boys | Last album = ''20/20'' (1969) | This album = ''Sunflower'' (1970) | Next album = ''Surf's Up'' (1971) | | Misc = }} ''Sunflower'' is the sixteenth studio album by American rock group The Beach Boys, released in August 1970, and their first on Reprise Records. The album was met with an enthusiastic critical reception which contrasted with unexpectedly poor sales, reaching only number 151 on US record charts during a four-week stay, and becoming the lowest charting Beach Boys album at that point. It was preceded by the similarly unsuccessful singles "Add Some Music to Your Day" and "Slip On Through"; later followed up with "Tears in the Morning" and "Forever". In the UK, the album performed better, peaking at number 29. As the fifth consecutive album to give production credit to "the Beach Boys", it continued a pattern established in ''Friends'' (1968) with major songwriting contributions split between brothers Brian and Dennis Wilson. Bandmates Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Bruce Johnston, and Mike Love also contributed to its writing. Its sessions begun in the midst of legal battles with Capitol Records in January 1969 and ended 19 months later after the group signed with Reprise, who continuously rejected several variations of the album's track listing and contents. Eventually, the group presented the label with enough formidable material deemed satisfactory for release. In 2003, ''Sunflower'' was voted 300 in ''Rolling Stone's'' "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 1997, it was voted 66 in ''The Guardians "100 Best Albums Ever". ==Background== Following their last album, ''20/20'', Brian Wilson proposed that the group change their name from "the Beach Boys" to "the Beach", reasoning for the simple fact that the band members were now grown men. Going to the effort of acquiring a contract which would declare a five-way agreement to officially rename the group, engineer Stephen Desper reported, "They all just kind of shrugged and said, 'Aw, come on, Brian, we don't wanna do that. That's how the public knows us, man. And that was it. He put the paper on the piano and it stayed there until I picked it up and took it away." Throughout 1969, the Beach Boys engaged in extended recording sessions for what would have been their final album entitled to Capitol Records. Tension between the band and label inflamed on April 12 when the Beach Boys sued the label for unpaid royalties and production duties in the amount of two million dollars ($ today). The band still issued two more singles through Capitol: "Break Away" in June 1969, a new original written by Brian and his father Murry; and "Cotton Fields" in April 1970, a rerecording of a track which appeared on ''20/20'' produced by Al Jardine. At a press conference ostensibly convened to promote "Break Away" to the European media, Wilson said "We owe everyone money. And if we don't pick ourselves off our backsides and have a hit record soon, we will be in worse trouble... I've always said, 'Be honest with your fans.' I don't see why I should lie and say that everything is rosy when it's not." These incendiary remarks ultimately thwarted long-simmering contract negotiations with Deutsche Grammophon. The band's contract with Capitol Records expired on June 30, after which Capitol deleted the Beach Boys' catalog from print, effectively cutting off their royalty flow. In November 1969, Murry Wilson sold the Sea of Tunes publishing company (including the rights to the majority of Brian's oeuvre) to A&M Records' publishing division for $700,000. Brian, who had not approved this decision, was devastated. The group's reputation had fallen sharply in the US since 1967, but Warner Bros. executive Mo Ostin agreed to sign them to Reprise Records in November 1969. This deal was brokered by Van Dyke Parks, who was then employed as a multimedia executive at Warner. The contract dealt by Reprise stipulated Brian's proactive involvement with the band in all albums in response to the minimal involvement he had with ''20/20''. Another part of the deal was to revive the Beach Boys' Brother Records imprint, initially founded during the ''Smile'' era and used only for the ''Smiley Smile'' album, and the "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry" singles before becoming dormant.〔 After returning from an April–May 1970 tour of Australia and New Zealand, the band assembled a new studio album named ''Reverberation'', comprising unused material which would finish their commitment to Capitol, but the idea was dropped, and the band instead fulfilled their contract with the May 1970 album ''Live in London''.〔 Capitol had such little faith in the album that they chose to release it only where the Beach Boys' records were still selling respectably well—the UK. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sunflower (The Beach Boys album)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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