Double tracking on all backing vocals?

[dcowboys107]

I've been listening to Keep an Eye on Summer - 1964 Sessions on Spotify for a few weeks now and noticed at the end of a "Don't Worry Baby" Brian says "alright, let's overdub on top of that."


That brings me to my question, how common was it for them to double track backing vocals (referring more to the pre-1967 Beach Boys)?

I listen to their songs from 1963-4 and don't hear the tell-tale double tracking clues like you can hear on most of their lead vocals .

I personally think they do because the backing vocal track is way too thick to have been sung only once.  However, I just don't hear the double-tracking "errors/anomalies" so what say you?

[Gregg]

I think double-tracking the backing vocals was pretty much standard procedure for Brian and boys back then and helped give them their distinctive lush sound. You don't notice many anomalies because they were simply really good. 

[Matt Bielewicz]

Gregg is right - on the Sea of Tunes boots, from memory, it's easier to detail the tracks where the Boys DON'T double-track the BV harmonies than the ones where they do - because there are doubled BVs on almost everything during the Brian Wilson-led 'hitsville years' to 1967.

No doubt AGD will now point out all the exceptions to this... but broadly speaking, if there are massed harmony BVs on a Beach Boys track from this period, the stack is usually doubled, as is the lead vocal. Brian sure loved to double...

[Andrew G. Doe]

I stand to be corrected, but "Surfin' USA" was pretty much the first time Brian started doubling both the lead and backing vocals, thus the Surfin' Safari album was likely the only one that had single-tracked vocals throughout.

[c-man]

I stand to be corrected, but "Surfin' USA" was pretty much the first time Brian started doubling both the lead and backing vocals, thus the Surfin' Safari album was likely the only one that had single-tracked vocals throughout.

That sounds right.

[astroray]

Is this the "secret" Jimmy Buffett gets from Brian on the "Imagination" DVD?