See Beach Boys Reflect on ‘Sunflower’ in First ‘Feel Flows’ Featurette

The Beach Boys will explore the fertile era that yielded Sunflower and Surf’s Up in a new series of featurettes tied to the release of Feel Flows – The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions box set.

The first in the series of three videos premiered Thursday, with “Feel Flows Chapter 1: I See Love” focusing on 1970’s Sunflower. The video features rare and unreleased photos and video of the Beach Boys, including performance clips, studio footage, and archival interviews with Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, Carl Wilson, and Al Jardine.

“The Sunflower album came out on Warner Bros.,” Johnston says in an archival interview. “We just had a great experience, except in sales. That’s probably the biggest failure of any Beach Boys album, and my favorite.”

Brian Wilson adds in an unearthed interview, “Well, I wanted to have a home environment trip where we could record in my house, so we had an engineer build a studio in our den, convert it into a studio, so we could function easier, because we were at home in our house. So the guys knew the house, so they knew the studio, so they could function good.”

Feel Flows – The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971 arrives on August 27th. Check out Rob Sheffield’s exclusive guide to the box set, which features five CDs packed with previously unheard gems from the era.