section_path: 1978–1998: Continued recording and Brian's estrangement/Lawsuits, Summer in Paradise, and Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1
section_name: Lawsuits, Summer in Paradise, and Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1
paragraph_text: Lawsuits, Summer in Paradise, and Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1
  
  Carlin summarized: "Once surfin' pin-ups, they remade themselves as avant-garde pop artists, then psychedelic oracles. After that they were down-home hippies, then retro-hip icons. Eventually they devolved into none of the above: a kind of perpetual-motion nostalgia machine." Music journalist Erik Davis wrote in 1990: "the Beach Boys are either dead, deranged, or dinosaurs; their records are Eurocentric, square, unsampled; they've made too much money to merit hip revisionism". In 1992, critic Jim Miller wrote: "They have become a figment of their own past, prisoners of their unflagging popularity—incongruous emblems of a sunny myth of eternal youth belied by much of their own best music.... The group is still largely identified with its hits from the early Sixties."
  
  Love filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian due to how he was presented in Brian's 1992 memoir Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. Its publisher HarperCollins settled the suit for $1.5 million. He said that the suit allowed his lawyer "to gain access to the transcripts of Brian's interviews with his collaborator, Todd Gold. Those interviews affirmed—according to Brian—that I had been the inspiration of the group and that I had written many of the songs that in dispute." Other defamation lawsuits were filed by Carl, Brother Records, and the Wilsons' mother Audree. With Love and Brian unable to determine exactly what Love was properly owed in royalties and songwriting credits, Love sued Brian in 1992, awarding him $5 million and a share of future royalties from Wilson. Thirty-five of the group's songs were then amended to credit Love. He later called it "almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history".
  
  After dissolving his relationship with Landy, Brian phoned Sire Records staff producer Andy Paley to collaborate on new material tentatively for the Beach Boys. After losing the songwriting credits lawsuit with Love, Brian told MOJO in February 1995: "Mike and I are just cool. There's a lot of shit Andy and I got written for him. I just had to get through that goddamn trial!" In April, it was unclear whether the project would turn into a Wilson solo album, a Beach Boys album, or a combination of the two. The project ultimately disintegrated. Instead, Brian and his bandmates recorded Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, an album of country music stars covering Beach Boys songs, with co-production helmed by River North Records owner Joe Thomas. Afterward, the group discussed finishing the album Smile, but Carl rejected the idea, fearing that it would cause Brian another nervous breakdown.
  
  The 1990s saw the release of the critically acclaimed multi-CD box sets Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys (1993) and The Pet Sounds Sessions (1997), both featuring unreleased archive recordings, as well as two single-CD archival sets, Ultimate Christmas and Endless Harmony Soundtrack (both 1998), with the latter a companion to the official career-spanning documentary Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story, which first aired on VH1 and was later issued on VHS and DVD.
  
  Carlin summarized: "Once surfin' pin-ups, they remade themselves as avant-garde pop artists, then psychedelic oracles. After that they were down-home hippies, then retro-hip icons. Eventually they devolved into none of the above: a kind of perpetual-motion nostalgia machine." Music journalist Erik Davis wrote in 1990: "the Beach Boys are either dead, deranged, or dinosaurs; their records are Eurocentric, square, unsampled; they've made too much money to merit hip revisionism". In 1992, critic Jim Miller wrote: "They have become a figment of their own past, prisoners of their unflagging popularity—incongruous emblems of a sunny myth of eternal youth belied by much of their own best music.... The group is still largely identified with its hits from the early Sixties."
  
  Love filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian due to how he was presented in Brian's 1992 memoir Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. Its publisher HarperCollins settled the suit for $1.5 million. He said that the suit allowed his lawyer "to gain access to the transcripts of Brian's interviews with his collaborator, Todd Gold. Those interviews affirmed—according to Brian—that I had been the inspiration of the group and that I had written many of the songs that in dispute." Other defamation lawsuits were filed by Carl, Brother Records, and the Wilsons' mother Audree. With Love and Brian unable to determine exactly what Love was properly owed in royalties and songwriting credits, Love sued Brian in 1992, awarding him $5 million and a share of future royalties from Wilson. Thirty-five of the group's songs were then amended to credit Love. He later called it "almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history".
  
  After dissolving his relationship with Landy, Brian phoned Sire Records staff producer Andy Paley to collaborate on new material tentatively for the Beach Boys. After losing the songwriting credits lawsuit with Love, Brian told MOJO in February 1995: "Mike and I are just cool. There's a lot of shit Andy and I got written for him. I just had to get through that goddamn trial!" In April, it was unclear whether the project would turn into a Wilson solo album, a Beach Boys album, or a combination of the two. The project ultimately disintegrated. Instead, Brian and his bandmates recorded Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, an album of country music stars covering Beach Boys songs, with co-production helmed by River North Records owner Joe Thomas. Afterward, the group discussed finishing the album Smile, but Carl rejected the idea, fearing that it would cause Brian another nervous breakdown.
  
  The 1990s saw the release of the critically acclaimed multi-CD box sets Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys (1993) and The Pet Sounds Sessions (1997), both featuring unreleased archive recordings, as well as two single-CD archival sets, Ultimate Christmas and Endless Harmony Soundtrack (both 1998), with the latter a companion to the official career-spanning documentary Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story, which first aired on VH1 and was later issued on VHS and DVD.