The Beach Boys ( B36 )

 

L.A. (Light Album) and Keepin' the Summer Alive

I think a lot of critics punish the band for not going beyond "Good Vibrations" ... they love the band so much that they get crazy because we don't top ourselves. ... [but] growth in this business is tough.

— Bruce Johnston, 1982

The group's first two albums for CBS, 1979's L.A. (Light Album) and 1980's Keepin' the Summer Alive, both charted low in the U.S. The recording of these albums saw Bruce Johnston return to the band as a full-time member. In an April 1980 interview, Carl reflected that "the last two years have been the most important and difficult time of our career. We were at the ultimate crossroads. We had to decide whether what we had been involved in since we were teenagers had lost its meaning. We asked ourselves and each other the difficult questions we'd often avoided in the past." By the next year, he left the touring group because of unhappiness with the band's nostalgia format and lackluster live performances, subsequently pursuing a solo career. He stated: "I haven't quit the Beach Boys but I do not plan on touring with them until they decide that 1981 means as much to them as 1961." Carl returned in May 1982, after approximately 14 months of being away, on the condition that the group reconsider their rehearsal and touring policies and refrain from "Las Vegas-type" engagements.

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