Hours before an early 1970s Beach Boys concert, the band?s musical director Jim Guercio remembers drummer Dennis Wilson fooling around on the piano during soundcheck. "I heard these amazing changes and I said, 'Dennis, is that one of Brian's songs?' " Guercio says. "He said, 'No, It's one of mine.' "

By 1977 — just six years before he died — the Beach Boys' drummer had released Pacific Ocean Blue, a stunning, painful solo album that's widely considered the best Beach Boys project of the Seventies. Despite its acclaim, the disc has been out of print for a quarter century. Now it's back in a deluxe edition on Sony — with a bonus disc of songs originally intended for Bambu, POB's shelved follow-up. "Dennis spent all those years with Brian as his teacher," says Gregg Jacobson, who co-wrote most of the songs on Pacific Ocean Blue. "He had the same gene-pool talent as his brothers. He just sat on his until it finally bubbled over."

Brian Wilson based much of much of the mythology of the Beach Boys around his younger brother Dennis, the group's only surfer. He sang lead on a handful of early hits, such as 1965's "Do You Wanna Dance," but he was mostly content to let his brothers steer the ship — until mental problems sidelined Brian and forced the other members to step up their contributions. "By the 1970s being a Beach Boy wasn't as stimulating or gratifying as it once was for him," says Jacobson. "Dennis had more and more things to say and there was always opposition from the other guys. A solo album was the natural way to go, it was the path of least resistance."

Dennis entered the Beach Boys' studio in 1975 and found it the ideal refuge from his increasingly volatile outside world — where he had to deal with a growing alcohol problem, the dissolution of his marriage and constant battles with his cousin and bandmate Mike Love. Dennis poured the pain of his life into every lyric and note of music. "I'm sorry, I miss you," he groans on the heart-wrenching "Thoughts of You," before belting out "Look what we've done!" in a voice of unmistakable agony. "He was baring his soul," says longtime Beach Boys keyboardist Billy Hinsche, who plays on POB. "It's almost uncomfortable to listen to — like what John Lennon did on 'Mother.' "