Hear Beach Boys’ Stripped-Down Bob Dylan and Beatles Covers

An upcoming, expanded edition of the Beach Boys‘ 1965 album Beach Boys’ Party! will present the group’s original unplugged, raw recordings of the album’s songs without the original LP’s canned audience cheering. The band’s covers of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and the Beatles’ “Tell Me Why,” as they were recorded, are now streaming. The group recorded Party! on all acoustic instruments, like a beach-party campfire sing-along, and the three tunes show the band members’ ability to harmonize and ad-lib while playing tambourine, bongos and acoustic guitar.

“The Party! album was a result of the pressure Capitol Records was putting on us for another album,” Mike Love said in a statement. “And we didn’t really have time to develop the type of album we wanted to develop, which Brian was working on, called Pet Sounds. … So we said, ‘Well, what can we do quickly and easily?’ And we decided to do this party album.”

“Mike was saying, why not a party album and we can act like we are [at a party], and just be ourselves on tape, you know?” Brian Wilson said. “And that’s what happened. It was a very spontaneous album.”

Best known for the hit “Barbara Ann,” Party! came out in November 1965 and went gold. The new, remastered, 81-track edition of the record — retitled Beach Boys’ Party!: Uncovered and Unplugged — strips the original 12 tunes of their faux-festivities and includes 69 more previously unreleased tracks containing songs and dialogue from the sessions. The reissue is available today as a double-disc set and digitally, and it includes photos from the sessions and essays by historians Alan Boyd and Craig Slowinski, and notes by producer Mark Linett. An LP version of the record, containing only the original 12 songs, will come out on December 11th.