Musical relationship of Brian and Dennis

[SurfRiderHawaii]

Listen past the vocals...the bass & horn lines play the melody (during the "little bird up in a tree" part).

Yeah, that's where I hear the Brian input too.

[Jon Stebbins]

Listen past the vocals...the bass & horn lines play the melody (during the "little bird up in a tree" part).

Yeah, that's where I hear the Brian input too.

Kalinich claims Brian arranged the bridge...nothing more.

[Julia]

Is there anyone else here who just doesn’t “get” the Dennis fixation? I don’t get it at all. But i would like to. I find 95% of what he wrote to be maudlin, dull, pedestrian, and overwhelmingly cheesy, which i think only worsened over his years writing. By the time of POB and Bambu, i find the music abysmal and intolerable. He’s also my least favorite voice/singer of the group, including Bruce. I get the feeling that there are Dennis apologists whose high praise of him are more so about the man than the music, and they just really, really want to validate him because a) he was Brian’s biggest supporter and defender, b) he was the “underdog,” the one who was sort of shoehorned into the group early on, and consequently received the most criticism in regards to instrumental abilities (subsequently people now like to say that Dennis was a GREAT drummer. Great? Really now?), c) he fit the charming, good looking rebel archetype; women adored him, and men looked up to him.

Thoughts? Bricks thrown at my head? What is the Dennis allure all about?!

I dont mean to belabor the point since I've beaten up on him elsewhere but this is how I feel about Carl's music. Everyone praises Feel Flows and Long Promised Road but they leave so little impression on me I couldnt even hum the melody right now and Ive heard them over a dozen times. I want to like them so every now and then I give them another spin but it's just not my cup of tea. Im glad other people dig them though.

Something about Brian, that guy just had a knack for compelling melodies. You dont even need to revisit the usual suspects to see it, even one of his worst albums 15BO has a humble little ditty like "Had to Phone Ya" that just sticks with me. That final part "come on, come on, (I hope you're home) come on and answer the phone, come on, come on (I hope you're home!)" is such a great earworm. He wasn't even trying probably, or at least he was extremely rusty, and he was still making better music than anyone else in his band at their peak. That's what makes him a "genius" or at least a natural musician.

Dennis' stuff is not as good as Brian's but I think he had a natural talent too, that the other members mostly lacked. (I think there's a good song somewhere in Tears in the Morning, can't think of any solo Mike/Al/Carl songs I particularly like and don't care for Disney Girls.) POB, parts of Bambu and Little Bird are great. I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan of 4th of July and WIBN to Live Again, but they blow everything else on the SU album out of the water. Dennis should've been the creative dynamo of the band after Brian's withdrawal, with Carl rounding out the albums with some songs and maybe throw the others a slot or two at most. Unfortunately, as so often happens with these guys, band politics got in the way of artistic triumph.

[BJL]

I dont mean to belabor the point since I've beaten up on him elsewhere but this is how I feel about Carl's music. Everyone praises Feel Flows and Long Promised Road but they leave so little impression on me I couldnt even hum the melody right now and Ive heard them over a dozen times. I want to like them so every now and then I give them another spin but it's just not my cup of tea. Im glad other people dig them though.

Something about Brian, that guy just had a knack for compelling melodies. You dont even need to revisit the usual suspects to see it, even one of his worst albums 15BO has a humble little ditty like "Had to Phone Ya" that just sticks with me. That final part "come on, come on, (I hope you're home) come on and answer the phone, come on, come on (I hope you're home!)" is such a great earworm. He wasn't even trying probably, or at least he was extremely rusty, and he was still making better music than anyone else in his band at their peak. That's what makes him a "genius" or at least a natural musician.

Dennis' stuff is not as good as Brian's but I think he had a natural talent too, that the other members mostly lacked. (I think there's a good song somewhere in Tears in the Morning, can't think of any solo Mike/Al/Carl songs I particularly like and don't care for Disney Girls.) POB, parts of Bambu and Little Bird are great. I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan of 4th of July and WIBN to Live Again, but they blow everything else on the SU album out of the water. Dennis should've been the creative dynamo of the band after Brian's withdrawal, with Carl rounding out the albums with some songs and maybe throw the others a slot or two at most. Unfortunately, as so often happens with these guys, band politics got in the way of artistic triumph.

I don't think there are that many people even in the Beach Boys fandom enamored of Carl Wilson's compositional abilities. Personally, I think The Trader and Long Promised Road are two great songs... but not like, so legendary that you can hang a whole songwriting reputation on them. Especially since they're both heavily dependent on their arrangements for their magic; as compositions there's really not a lot there, and I say that as someone who loves both. But I think those of us who admire Carl Wilson admire him primarily as a singer, and second as a bandleader. In the brief moment when he had almost full control of the band, he managed to take them in an exciting new direction that, in my view anyway, almost perfectly balanced their long-time strengths with a new and fresh approach. Of course, the fact that we only really got one truly excellent record out of that moment (Holland) before Carl lost control of the group means that it's more of another Beach Boys "what if" than anything else. But what is a Beach Boys fan if not someone enamored of the "what ifs" as much as the music?

As for Dennis, couldn't agree more that he should have been the creative dynamo of the band after 1968. But I've always sort of suspected it was his own personality (and ambivalent relationship to the whatever the hell the Beach Boys meant by that point) that were in his way as much as the attitudes of the other guys...