Documentary!

[bossaroo]

the director also used Kokomo as a tribute to Jimmy Buffett who was one of his best friends. the words 'For Jimmy' appear just as the opening lyric plays: "Off the Florida Keys..."

[HeyJude]

If they included Kokomo - as mentioned a song with absolutely no historical connection to the timeline nor subject matter covered by the film - but couldn't include 'Til I Die or Surf's Up which are key to the years covered in the film on the soundtrack...there's a major problem here.

I'd also like to hear the backstory of how Kokomo got hammered into the film's content, and which parties may have pushed for it. Any guesses? (sarcasm, there, btw).

Huh?

No historical connection?  As Rocker mentions it's their last number one hit and one of their most recognizable songs like it or not.

The fact that the song was just thrown in during the credits should actually dismantle that this was some scheme by Mike the villan which you're insinuating here.   The song and its story would have been part of the actual documentary---as it should be. 

I'm not saying Mike suggested it be included. But the song being laid over the credits doesn't make me think that scenario is any less likely.

I could easily see a scenario where a bunch of bad decisions and politics led to the project kind of floundering, leading to the decision to cut the doc off early in the late 60s/early 70s, and any number of people (including possibly Mike) pointing out that this time frame would negate the inclusion of "Kokomo", and then someone saying "oh yeah, okay, we'll put it over the credits."

I think the inclusion or exclusion of this song or that song in this doc is semi-moot, because it has more fundamental problems than that. Indeed, the doc barely slows down to play much of any extended piece of music. It often seems to be incapable of stopping and playing more than 5 or 10 seconds of any given song.

A doc would not even live or die by including "Kokomo" and not including "Surf's Up" or "'Til I Die", but that certainly is a *symptom* of a larger issue with this documentary.

[HeyJude]

the director also used Kokomo as a tribute to Jimmy Buffett who was one of his best friends. the words 'For Jimmy' appear just as the opening lyric plays: "Off the Florida Keys..."

Maybe someday Frank Marshall will pay apt tribute to the Beach Boys. If only there were a project where he could have been given a shot to do just that....

[rab2591]

I think the inclusion or exclusion of this song or that song in this doc is semi-moot, because it has more fundamental problems than that. Indeed, the doc barely slows down to play much of any extended piece of music. It often seems to be incapable of stopping and playing more than 5 or 10 seconds of any given song.

A doc would not even live or die by including "Kokomo" and not including "Surf's Up" or "'Til I Die", but that certainly is a *symptom* of a larger issue with this documentary.

One thing I loved about the Brian Wilson Songwriter documentary was that it picked a song or two from each album/era and truly examined it (both musically and culturally). I realize that Disney probably didn't have the budget to make a documentary on par with that one (yes sarcasm), but goodness, 5-10 seconds on any given song? AND IT'S FOR A STREAMING SERVICE! They didn't need to trim the time down for a large-release-theater viewing. They didn't need to trim time down because of blu-ray production costs. It's them slapping this up on a server and letting the world see it. I realize these documentaries take time & money to create, but it's Disney. Last year, Disney made a gross profit of $29,679,000,000. You can push a little more funds into a movie about America's Band, right?

Aside from Kokomo did they play any song entirely through during the doc?

I really just need to get it over with and watch this thing already. *grabs bottle* sigh

[HeyJude]

I'd love for the phrase "this documentary wasn't made for us!" concerning this film to be retired. Saying this in defense of this film, you'd have to be pretty unfamiliar with the documentary film genre.

COUNTLESS documentary films (and series) have been made for wide/general audiences about a ZILLION topics (music, bands, wars, random events or people, competitive Scrabble, the list is endless) that manage to do the job well.

The problem with this new doc is not that it doesn't have enough footage or audio or information that hardcore fans aren't familiar with. The problem isn't any sort of nit-picking fandom pedantry.

It does a poor job of telling the story. Yes, detailed knowledge of the band's history informs some of that knowledge of what this film gets wrong. But again, this isn't nitpicky stuff. This isn't someone complaining that Hal Blaine's hairdo is off in "Love & Mercy."

This film tells an incomplete and regressive, oversimplified story. Even some novice non-fans have in many cases realized this. Reviews from rogerebert.com and Rolling Stone have noticed the incomplete nature of the film. I watched the film with a non-fan, and they noticed how rushed it felt after about 1967, noticed that it cut off in the early 70s, and then weirdly shows a clip from 1980, and that's it. They asked "Didn't they do a reunion like ten years ago?"

This film falls flat on its face even trying to tell the most simplified, streamlined version of some of these events. It even f**ked up telling the story of "Pet Sounds" and "Smile."

Oh, but Frank Marshall just HAD to make sure they got a Manson segment in there, complete with out of context picture of Dennis looking depressed as they explained how surely Dennis had to have felt guilty about the murders.

The doc can't explain how, despite their public image being what it was, they produced AMAZING music in the 1967-early 70s time period. But the doc went to great lengths to not just discuss that Dennis knew Manson, but actually told the whole story about how he met Melcher, and how the house had been the house Melcher had rented, etc, etc.

The Murry stuff was also confused and did nobody any favors. They weirdly conflate the issue of selling the catalog versus Mike not getting credit on some of the songs. Obviously, those things are not wholly unrelated, but they're two different issues. Then, after they've done their hack, surface-level examination and condemnation of Murry, they circle back around to Murry *again* near the end of the doc for no apparent reason.

Also, as I'm sure others have mentioned, the film mostly avoids discussing Brian's emotional/mental problems that pre-dated any drug use (the "Long Promised Road" doc accomplished this quickly and simply with some on-screen text), and thus feed into the regressive idea that Brian was just an eccentric druggie. They try to indicate Brian had emotional problems, but they don't do the minimum job they easily could have to explain and contextualize it.

Dennis segment? "Meh, f**k it and just play "Forever" and make sure it comes in under five minutes. Blah, blah blah."

I'll stop there for now.

[HeyJude]

Our best hope at this stage is that after they let some time pass (for everybody to save face concerning this new doc), BRI/Iconic let Boyd go back in and do an extended re-cut of "Endless Harmony." They used "Endless Harmony" footage and audio over and over on this new thing. The only thing the new doc had that an EH re-cut wouldn't have is the new interviews with Mike, Al, and Bruce, (and the ten seconds with Blondie) and I'm sure Boyd covered more than enough in his 1998 interviews.

You can even see that for this new doc they re-scanned the EH interviews in HD. It's like an HD "Endless Harmony" doc is buried in there teasing us.....

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

... Indeed, the doc barely slows down to play much of any extended piece of music. It often seems to be incapable of stopping and playing more than 5 or 10 seconds of any given song.

I'm about half an hour in (watching it in small bits each night as time allows) and this is my biggest complaint so far.

[HeyJude]

Unimportant, but because I have a photographic memory of the 7/4/80 DC show, having watched it a million times over the years, it was kind of funny that this new doc actually cut in crowd footage (not even from the same song!) for "Darlin'" that includes the guy angrily flipping the camera off:



Here's a larger, less cropped version from a YouTube clip for context:

[HeyJude]

Also, again unimportant in the grand scheme, here's a cap from the DC '80 show from YouTube, but taken from the Japanese DVD of the show. The actual DVD still looks much better than this, but even this compressed YouTube clip looks better than what they put in the Disney doc:



The clips from the Japanese DVD also sounds *much* better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt2tvNzt1CU

[Jay]

 I just watched this last night. I have many thoughts about it. I'm probably going to watch it a second time and actually take notes to do a full review. My first thoughts are that this is quite a bit better than it's reputation. Lots of details is given to the Al-David-Al again chronology, and the Brian-Al-Brian-Glenn and finally Bruce chronology. I really appreciated the archival interviews with Carl and Brian detailing the Nick Vinet battle with Murry over Brian's role as producer. These are just a few details that actually made portions of this documentary actually better than Endless Harmony for me, personally. I do agree that it kind of really fell apart in the last 15 or so minutes.

[feelintheflows]

Maybe we’ll get the proper documentary for their 70th. 😅

[wavesoflove]

The one sound bite from Paul McCartney talking about Pet Sounds (the quote was from David Leaf’s interview with McCartney for the first Pet Sounds CD) sounded particularly egregious in the AI department.

That McCartney clip sounds so bizarre.  It might be AI, but if it is, then whoever coded that AI algorithm should be fired.  It sounds almost nothing like Macca.  Dana Carvey does a better impression of Paul than that.   Does anyone remember the circumstances of Leaf's interview with Paul? Could it be a situation like Leaf recording an audio interview on some cheapo tape recorder not for broadcast but just for his own notes?  And then said lo-fi recording is later run through some digital filters to enhance it with said "enhancement" utterly massacring it?

There's a lot of talk in the reddit bb thread that it's generated ai voices, but it's clearly not that simple. 

Imo they've used a blanket setting on an ai audio 'cleanup' tool like Adobe podcast, but barely tinkered with the settings, even on the modern interviews.

I've used Adobe podcast a lot in the last year for archiving old domestic 1/4 inch tape voice recordings, and it does a pretty good job in removing hiss and hum etc, but does produce artifacts that sound like what can be heard in ai covers,
especially if the audio is poor quality.
It sounds like they've not bothered to fine tune anything though.

[HeyJude]

I just watched this last night. I have many thoughts about it. I'm probably going to watch it a second time and actually take notes to do a full review. My first thoughts are that this is quite a bit better than it's reputation. Lots of details is given to the Al-David-Al again chronology, and the Brian-Al-Brian-Glenn and finally Bruce chronology. I really appreciated the archival interviews with Carl and Brian detailing the Nick Vinet battle with Murry over Brian's role as producer. These are just a few details that actually made portions of this documentary actually better than Endless Harmony for me, personally. I do agree that it kind of really fell apart in the last 15 or so minutes.

I wouldn't say it's "lots of details." They do lay out the chronology, including Brian's first break from the road. But there's not much substance or context given beyond "Brian didn't like the road." That isn't good filmmaking. It's like, "Congrats for getting a fact correct."

The "Endless Harmony" doc had a great interview clip from *Brian himself* discussing this moment. This new doc already cribbed tons of stuff from "Endless Harmony", so why not ahead and do it there too?

And they never addressed Bruce's departure (nor Blondie or Ricky's for that matter).

The new doc spends the first approx. 90 of its 106 minutes (not counting end credits) covering 61 to 67, so sure, they are able to slip a bit more detail on a few pieces of the story, including a brief interlude discussing Venet being tossed as producer.

If you have to wade through this doc to find a story here or there that isn't in "Endless Harmony", that's a pretty bad sign.

I think everybody should try this exercise: Review the new doc without mentioning any other doc. Pretend no other documentary exists on the band. Does this new doc do the job? I don't think so. Not even for the "general public." Is it a block of programming featuring BB images and music that gives them some sort of "exposure"? Sure. But this also could have been accomplished by dropping "Endless Harmony" on Disney+, or "Doin' It Again", etc.

This documentary was lazy. It isn't difficult, with cute visual aids to boot, to explain a series of personnel changes and the order in which they happened. It isn't so easy to explain "Pet Sounds" or "Smile" or Murry, or, if you're inclined to get into the Manson stuff, explain/contextualize that correctly.

There are bits and pieces of the *production values* on this doc that are fine, and I suppose if one isn't trying to really pay too close attention, this might provide a bit of a smoke screen for how bad this doc is.

[Jay]

I just watched this last night. I have many thoughts about it. I'm probably going to watch it a second time and actually take notes to do a full review. My first thoughts are that this is quite a bit better than it's reputation. Lots of details is given to the Al-David-Al again chronology, and the Brian-Al-Brian-Glenn and finally Bruce chronology. I really appreciated the archival interviews with Carl and Brian detailing the Nick Vinet battle with Murry over Brian's role as producer. These are just a few details that actually made portions of this documentary actually better than Endless Harmony for me, personally. I do agree that it kind of really fell apart in the last 15 or so minutes.

I wouldn't say it's "lots of details." They do lay out the chronology, including Brian's first break from the road. But there's not much substance or context given beyond "Brian didn't like the road." That isn't good filmmaking. It's like, "Congrats for getting a fact correct."

The "Endless Harmony" doc had a great interview clip from *Brian himself* discussing this moment. This new doc already cribbed tons of stuff from "Endless Harmony", so why not ahead and do it there too?

And they never addressed Bruce's departure (nor Blondie or Ricky's for that matter).

The new doc spends the first approx. 90 of its 106 minutes (not counting end credits) covering 61 to 67, so sure, they are able to slip a bit more detail on a few pieces of the story, including a brief interlude discussing Venet being tossed as producer.

If you have to wade through this doc to find a story here or there that isn't in "Endless Harmony", that's a pretty bad sign.

I think everybody should try this exercise: Review the new doc without mentioning any other doc. Pretend no other documentary exists on the band. Does this new doc do the job? I don't think so. Not even for the "general public." Is it a block of programming featuring BB images and music that gives them some sort of "exposure"? Sure. But this also could have been accomplished by dropping "Endless Harmony" on Disney+, or "Doin' It Again", etc.

This documentary was lazy. It isn't difficult, with cute visual aids to boot, to explain a series of personnel changes and the order in which they happened. It isn't so easy to explain "Pet Sounds" or "Smile" or Murry, or, if you're inclined to get into the Manson stuff, explain/contextual that correctly.

There are bits and pieces of the *production values* on this doc that are fine, and I suppose if one isn't trying to really pay too close attention, this might provide a bit of a smoke screen for how bad this doc is.

It went into quite a bit of detail about just how much was on Brian's plate and how it was taking a toll on him, and it went into detail about his writing and producing, so I think that's plenty of context regarding why Brian didn't want to tour. It honestly seems like some people are trying to find things to criticize....

[HeyJude]

It went into quite a bit of detail about just how much was on Brian's plate and how it was taking a toll on him, and it went into detail about his writing and producing, so I think that's plenty of context regarding why Brian didn't want to tour. It honestly seems like some people are trying to find things to criticize....

I'd say it's more the case that some people are trying to find something, *anything*, to pluck out of this new doc and try to find redeeming.

And, obviously, I'm not saying this documentary is just a front-to-back worthless trainwreck. The story, the music, all of it is too powerful to not elicit some sort of emotional reaction out of the viewer. There are moments during the new doc where it starts to feel like it's gaining some sort of footing, but then it just never gets "there."

I've written more words about this documentary than most (more to come), going into some amount of detail about specific issues with the doc. I've been pretty specific, and at some point I hope to do a more detailed, thorough rundown. But I think I've earned the right to not be labeled as someone "looking for things to criticize." I didn't make this thing, I didn't choose to make it.

Frank Marshall and Disney are the ones that slapped the word "Definitive" on this movie's poster.

I'm not going to give the film much credit for taking two extra minutes to diagram personnel changes on screen.

Some of the stuff the new doc covers is done adequately I suppose. But there's just nothing, zilch, that is remarkable about this film. It never feels like it's even attempting to be great. It's produced like a big, long EPK.  It feels lazy. Even the TITLE of the documentary is lazy.

I've also managed in the last day or so to run through large hunks of the 1998 "Endless Harmony" documentary, and it's immensely more smooth and satisfying. It offers far more pathos, via both the interviews and the editing. The main drawbacks of "Endless Harmony" are mostly just due to its age; it's 4x3, Standard Def, it has some 90s doc trappings (the sort of Dutch angles on some of the interviews, the titles/graphics, etc.).

[guitarfool2002]

If they included Kokomo - as mentioned a song with absolutely no historical connection to the timeline nor subject matter covered by the film - but couldn't include 'Til I Die or Surf's Up which are key to the years covered in the film on the soundtrack...there's a major problem here.

I'd also like to hear the backstory of how Kokomo got hammered into the film's content, and which parties may have pushed for it. Any guesses? (sarcasm, there, btw).

Huh?

No historical connection?  As Rocker mentions it's their last number one hit and one of their most recognizable songs like it or not.

The fact that the song was just thrown in during the credits should actually dismantle that this was some scheme by Mike the villan which you're insinuating here.   The song and its story would have been part of the actual documentary---as it should be. 

I said no historical connection to the timeline covered in the film. Was that unclear? If the band and their music is the subject of a documentary whose timeline stops around 1974, why put in a song that wasn't released until 15 years after the documentary ends that focus? Especially when they had many key songs important to *that specific timeline* to use and which got left out, and especially in a case where barely any songs get more than 10 seconds worth of airtime in the film!

It's simple logic, if the focus of this film is the band's history and the band's musical output from 61-74, why jump timelines and include something like Kokomo that charted in 1989, whether it was a hit or not? It doesn't fit the timeline and is an anachronistic way to end the film.

And even more frustrating for me as a fan is how they could have had a perfect, bittersweet ending to the whole thing by ending it with the surviving guys sitting with each other and singing something together for maybe the last time on film and let the whole thing fade into the sunset. But no...we end the film hearing Kokomo instead. Just my opinion, that makes no sense in the timeline or in the art of making a documentary film that draws people in emotionally to the subject matter.

[juggler]

The Murry stuff was also confused and did nobody any favors. They weirdly conflate the issue of selling the catalog versus Mike not getting credit on some of the songs. Obviously, those things are not wholly unrelated, but they're two different issues. Then, after they've done their hack, surface-level examination and condemnation of Murry, they circle back around to Murry *again* near the end of the doc for no apparent reason.

Yeah, I consider this one of the real "tells" regarding this film (i.e., "tell" in the poker sense of tipping the hand).  It goes a long way in reinforcing Al's contention that this is basically a documentary of BB history as seen by Mike Love. Because otherwise it makes near-zero sense that the intertwined "Sea of Tunes" issues are given so  much weight in this doc when so many other huge topics were ignored.

 I guess everybody is supposed to be shocked and saddened that Mike Love and Brian Wilson (and their various spouses, ex-spouses and dependents) are merely multi-multimillionaires rather than centi-millionaires or someting like that.  I can only speak for myself as a fan, but I have never lost even one minute of sleep worrying that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss got very rich off the BBs' publishing.  Seriously, who the F cares?!  Frankly, I doubt that even Brian Wilson has cried himself to sleep over this more than once either.  At this point, Sea of Tunes is a snoozer topic...  to really anyone other than Mike Love (and perhaps Marilyn and the various Wilson-Love progeny who stand to inherit mere millions rather than hundreds of millions). Boo freakin hoo.

[HeyJude]

The Murry stuff was also confused and did nobody any favors. They weirdly conflate the issue of selling the catalog versus Mike not getting credit on some of the songs. Obviously, those things are not wholly unrelated, but they're two different issues. Then, after they've done their hack, surface-level examination and condemnation of Murry, they circle back around to Murry *again* near the end of the doc for no apparent reason.

Yeah, I consider this one of the real "tells" regarding this film (i.e., "tell" in the poker sense of tipping the hand).  It goes a long way in reinforcing Al's contention that this is basically a documentary of BB history as seen by Mike Love. Because otherwise it makes near-zero sense that the intertwined "Sea of Tunes" issues are given so  much weight in this doc when so many other huge topics were ignored.

 I guess everybody is supposed to be shocked and saddened that Mike Love and Brian Wilson (and their various spouses, ex-spouses and dependents) are merely multi-multimillionaires rather than centi-millionaires or someting like that.  I can only speak for myself as a fan, but I have never lost even one minute of sleep worrying that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss got very rich off the BBs' publishing.  Seriously, who the F cares?!  Frankly, I doubt that even Brian Wilson has cried himself to sleep over this more than once either.  At this point, Sea of Tunes is a snoozer topic...  to really anyone other than Mike Love (and perhaps Marilyn and the various Wilson-Love progeny who stand to inherit mere millions rather than hundreds of millions). Boo freakin hoo.

The whole songwriting credits fiasco is very fascinating, and a documentary and director with proper skills could traverse the subject effectively. It is part of the story, and obviously *whether* to dig into it, and *how much* to dig into it, depends on the the scope of the documentary. But if there was ever a time to dig in, it would be for this documentary.

Mike, as the years have gone by, at a point now where more time has passed since he *won* his lawsuit than had passed between writing the songs and the lawsuit being filed, is still as ticked off about it, perhaps even more so. And how these guys feel is how they feel; it's part of the story. As was put in a recent podcast interview, Mike really views this songwriting thing as a sort of "original sin" sort of situation. A good documentary with enough running time could dig into this *in detail*, while still keeping the documentary entertaining for the "masses". It could probe how it happened, how it was about a vindictive, gate-keeping Murry, a passive, cowed Brian, *and* also get into how Mike let it slide for 25-30 years, and how his inaction is part of the story too. Mike was passive for many years as well.

Murry selling the catalog is much more about Murry, and while I don't begrudge a documentary the juicy, if brief, story of how Murry sold the catalog for ten dollars while it's worth 100 zillion dollars now (other docs have done it, I believe the A&E Brian biography for one), that story is simpler on one level (Murry's shortsightedness and greed, and fallout from having involved Murry in the first place) , with a very deep subtext of cruelty and vindictiveness.

What this new Disney doc does is relate a lot of the well-known stories in the same way that they're rattled off quickly in random interviews the guys (mainly Mike) have given over the years. When the doc gets to the songwriting issue, it's just "Murry screwed Mike", and possibly, if Mike is feeling more empathetic, a quick note that *maybe* it's not Brian's fault because he was afraid of his Dad. When it gets to Murry selling the catalog, it's just "Murry was greedy and didn't believe in their music". When it gets to Manson, it doesn't get much past "Hey, did you know that the clean-cut, all-American Beach Boys knew Charles Manson?"

This doc is missing an empathetic narrative voice, which needs to come from the director. Frank Marshall is making an EPK with this thing, not a documentary film with empathy and pathos and a feeling that the person guiding you through this story actually GETS IT.

There are other hallmarks that this thing kind of entered a dispassionate assembly-line approach at some point. Small things that are just symptoms, like multiple reversed photos (whoa, they're all left-handed now), poorly-sourced footage, poor sound mixing (at certain points they're trying to like comp live and studio versions together, and it sounds weird), the weird-sounding audio interview snippets (hrmm, is it possible the people making this don't the guys' voices that well, and don't hear how "off" a lot of the clips sound?). As mentioned before, even the title is lazy.

Something nobody has mentioned is how awful titling the doc "The Beach Boys" is for search engine optimization alone.

[Angela Jones]

I've just been given this link to a UK Telegraph article which is about the documentary but covers a lot more than just that. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/the-beach-boys-brian-wilson-mental-health-drugs/  Some of the information comes from Nick Kent. I've read The Dark Stuff ages ago but I'm a bit distrustful of how much can be taken as the truth.

'If you happen to be one of the people keenly anticipating the arrival of the documentary film The Beach Boys, available now on Disney+, please be advised that this remarkable account fails to occupy a single moment of its near two-hour running time. Never mind that in marrying wild acclaim – from Leonard Bernstein, of all people, not some stoned hack from Creem or Hit Parader – with crushing insecurity, the story handily typifies the triumphs and terrors running wild behind the group’s sun-kissed exterior. For the life of me, I cannot account for such an obvious omission. ...While it wouldn’t be quite fair to accuse Beach Boys of entirely overlooking definitive and sometimes grisly details, it is right to accuse the film of seeking to place a positive spin on even the ugliest moments. Worse still, it seeks to imply that talent of the group’s members was, to some degree at least, evenly spread. But it really wasn’t.'

I could carry on quoting but I wouldn't know where to stop. Well worth a read.

[guitarfool2002]

I've just been given this link to a UK Telegraph article which is about the documentary but covers a lot more than just that. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/the-beach-boys-brian-wilson-mental-health-drugs/  Some of the information comes from Nick Kent. I've read The Dark Stuff ages ago but I'm a bit distrustful of how much can be taken as the truth.

'If you happen to be one of the people keenly anticipating the arrival of the documentary film The Beach Boys, available now on Disney+, please be advised that this remarkable account fails to occupy a single moment of its near two-hour running time. Never mind that in marrying wild acclaim – from Leonard Bernstein, of all people, not some stoned hack from Creem or Hit Parader – with crushing insecurity, the story handily typifies the triumphs and terrors running wild behind the group’s sun-kissed exterior. For the life of me, I cannot account for such an obvious omission. ...While it wouldn’t be quite fair to accuse Beach Boys of entirely overlooking definitive and sometimes grisly details, it is right to accuse the film of seeking to place a positive spin on even the ugliest moments. Worse still, it seeks to imply that talent of the group’s members was, to some degree at least, evenly spread. But it really wasn’t.'

I could carry on quoting but I wouldn't know where to stop. Well worth a read.

Unfortunately the article is behind a paid subscription firewall at that link, is there another link?

[Angela Jones]

I've just been given this link to a UK Telegraph article which is about the documentary but covers a lot more than just that. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/the-beach-boys-brian-wilson-mental-health-drugs/  Some of the information comes from Nick Kent. I've read The Dark Stuff ages ago but I'm a bit distrustful of how much can be taken as the truth.

'If you happen to be one of the people keenly anticipating the arrival of the documentary film The Beach Boys, available now on Disney+, please be advised that this remarkable account fails to occupy a single moment of its near two-hour running time. Never mind that in marrying wild acclaim – from Leonard Bernstein, of all people, not some stoned hack from Creem or Hit Parader – with crushing insecurity, the story handily typifies the triumphs and terrors running wild behind the group’s sun-kissed exterior. For the life of me, I cannot account for such an obvious omission. ...While it wouldn’t be quite fair to accuse Beach Boys of entirely overlooking definitive and sometimes grisly details, it is right to accuse the film of seeking to place a positive spin on even the ugliest moments. Worse still, it seeks to imply that talent of the group’s members was, to some degree at least, evenly spread. But it really wasn’t.'

I could carry on quoting but I wouldn't know where to stop. Well worth a read.

Unfortunately the article is behind a paid subscription firewall at that link, is there another link?

Haven't found one yet - if I do, I'll post of course.

[rn57]

Text of the UK Telegraph article, by Ian Winwood

What Disney’s Beach Boys film doesn’t tell you about Brian Wilson’s broken brain
The pop genius’s many horrific battles with mental health began in the 1960s and continue to this today… Then why gloss over them?

In November 1969, the American network television channel CBS set up their cameras and microphones for the filming of a Beach Boys special introduced by none other than Leonard Bernstein. The timing was less than optimal: the group as a whole were in desperate straits, while their principal songwriter, Brian Wilson, was in the foothills of the kind of mental disrepair that would imperil his wellbeing for decades to come. Even so, when Wilson played an unaccompanied version of the unreleased Surf’s Up on a grand piano, Bernstein described it as being nothing less than “the most brilliant piece of contemporary music [he’d] ever heard”.


This resonant endorsement from America’s most prominent composer blew minds, and not in a good way. According to an 81-page essay in the book The Dark Stuff, by the music writer Nick Kent, “Brian Wilson broke down there and then. Freaked right out and ended up phoning his astrologer, a woman named Genevlyn, who told him to beware hostile vibrations. So he stayed in bed for five days, eating candy bars, smoking pot and brooding to the sound of wind chimes.”

If you happen to be one of the people keenly anticipating the arrival of the documentary film The Beach Boys, available now on Disney+, please be advised that this remarkable account fails to occupy a single moment of its near two-hour running time. Never mind that in marrying wild acclaim – from Leonard Bernstein, of all people, not some stoned hack from Creem or Hit Parader – with crushing insecurity, the story handily typifies the triumphs and terrors running wild behind the group’s sun-kissed exterior. For the life of me, I cannot account for such an obvious omission.


While it wouldn’t be quite fair to accuse Beach Boys of entirely overlooking definitive and sometimes grisly details, it is right to accuse the film of seeking to place a positive spin on even the ugliest moments. Worse still, it seeks to imply that talent of the group’s members was, to some degree at least, evenly spread. But it really wasn’t.



Without wishing to discard notable moments from younger brothers Carl and Dennis, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to note that it was Brian Wilson who shaped their scene. By dragging rock and roll from the American South to the West Coast, he even defined the modern image of California as a sun-kissed idyll ideated the world over. Beat that.

With its devious sleights of hand, though, Beach Boys is practically a magic show. It’s only in the credits, for example, that viewers who have just emerged from comas lasting half a century are informed that Carl and Dennis Wilson are long dead. There’s certainly no mention of the recent conservatorship request filed in a Los Angeles court by family members who described the now 81-year-old Brian Wilson as an “easily distracted” man who is “unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter”. Not a word is said about the other times the courts have been asked to rule on who controls his life and estate, either.


Of course, any serious attempt to tell the full story of the life of Brian Wilson would require Beach Boys to clock up more episodes than Coronation Street. Sad to say, though, that the cutting of corners seems to be about more than merely saving time. In one particularly startling omission, the name Eugene Landy, the American psychologist who glommed onto his life, off and on, for three decades of coercive and sometimes brutal treatment, merits not a single mention.



Eventually disbarred from practising in the state of California, Landy charged up to $430,000 a year for his services, as well as a cut of publishing rights. At times, the dominance was total; he reportedly had a minion stood over Wilson with a baseball bat as he tried to write songs. His stricken patient once described the shrink as “my master”, before adding, ominously, that “a good dog always waits for his master”.  

“I want to go places, but I can’t because of the doctor [Landy],” Wilson once stated in a revealing interview in Oui magazine. “I feel like a prisoner and I don’t know where it’s going to end… he would put the police on me and he’d put me in the funny farm.” Eugene Landy even ghost-wrote Wouldn’t It Be Nice, an autobiography from the early 1990s credited to Brian Wilson himself. In a fiercely contested field, it remains the most dishonest and depressing music book I’ve ever read.

 
The most generous interpretation regarding the chaos of the Beach Boys and their stricken artistic engine is that no one really knew what to do for the best. In the entertainment game, people rarely do. A more reputable psychologist than Landy once told me that “the creative mind is a vulnerable mind”, an evaluation which suggests that, for some, talent and instability are inseparable. The music industry doesn’t require people to go mad, but it will certainly tolerate those who do so. Family life, meanwhile, is often less forgiving. In the midst of terrifying drug benders in 1970s, Brian Wilson’s wife insisted he live in the small changing room of their swimming pool so as to avoid contact with their children.



Possibly he was doomed from the start. Raised in the LA suburb of Hawthorne, his childhood home was a place of danger, oppression and alcoholism. Patriarch Murry Wilson was a frustrated but talentless songwriter whose blows to Brian’s head were so frequent as to be creditably identified as the reason he went deaf in one ear at the age of two. The father saw his son’s genius as a means of swapping his lot in the machining business for a hop with the rock biz jet set. When his tyrannical tenure as the Beach Boys’ road manager came to an end after a beating at the hands of singer Mike Love, in 1964, he retained control of the songs. The decision to sell the group’s publishing for a relative pittance saw his eldest son once more retreat to his bed in shattered dismay.



“You go through your childhood and you have a mean father that brutalises you and terrorises you – and Dennis and Carl – [and] he knocked the hell of out of us,” Wilson once said. “In fact, I asked myself, ‘What in the hell was that all about?’ A mean father who turned us into egomaniacs, ‘cos we felt so insecure our egos just jumped up. It was such a scary feeling.”

 
With the seeds of madness germinating early, he was certainly never in any kind of shape to deal with the demands of life on the road. The Beach Boys documentary mentions a nervous breakdown en route to a concert in Houston, in 1964, but fails to acknowledge several other acute episodes in its immediate aftermath.

Brian Wilson never enjoyed playing live; the studio was where he felt most alive. But when bandmates and executives from Capitol Records first heard the songs that would grace the Pet Sounds album, both parties were unconvinced. Despite being a masterpiece, the LP duly underperformed in the US charts.



In a field in which image and marketability are key, inevitably, the reluctance of music executives and creative dependents to fully support Wilson’s progressive instincts dealt a terrible blow to his already fragile sense of self-worth. Tellingly, as was the case with Leonard Bernstein’s remarkable endorsement, effusive encomiums proved equally damaging. When Paul McCartney (on whose talents the principal Beach Boy obsessed) opined that he sometimes believed that God Only Knows was the perfect song, its author swan-dived into yet another plummeting funk at the prospect of being a washed-up has-been who would never write anything as good again.

It should be borne in mind that some of the stories about the eccentricities of Brian Wilson are not that far removed from other “out there” artists and public figures from the laissez-faire 1960s and 1970s. As Carol Kaye, who played session bass guitar for the Beach Boys, told the writer Jeremy Gluck, “There’s a lot of slander going around even yet, many false things that never happened. So what if he was in his robe at his big house? Hugh Hefner lives in his robe. And so what if he wanted to record in the bottom of his empty pool? [Flautist] Paul Horn went to the pyramids for the same reason – great echo.”


Also, it wasn’t as if other members of the family didn’t exhibit their own alarming tendencies. After allowing Charles Manson into the group’s orbit, the always heedless Dennis Wilson (who died in 1983 as a penniless and homeless drunk and drug addict) earned death threats following the Manson Family murders in Los Angeles in 1969. Suitably spooked by the mayhem, brother Carl moved with his own family to his parents’ home, much to the alarm of his alcoholic mother. “I don’t know why you brought them here, son,” Audree Wilson whispered through a thick fog of whisky. “Those Manson people are bound to know our address too.”



Somehow, though, Brian Wilson stood out even in this deranged ecosystem. After filling a recording studio with smoke during sessions for the long-aborted Smile album, he believed he’d “mystically” managed to start a fire in a house two doors away. He once fled a cinema in panic after believing a character onscreen was talking to him directly in the voice of Phil Spector (another musical titan, this one equally troubled, on whom he obsessed). Believing himself underserving of happiness, throughout, he filled his life with troubled parasites and lost ne’er do wells whose sole purpose, it seemed, was limiting his own already diminished circumstances.  

Then there were those who fixated from a distance. “Woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks,” noted the writer Bill Holdship in a 1995 article for Mojo magazine. “There are fans who feel it’s their role in life to protect Brian’s image. Something about the vulnerability of the finest Beach Boys music must act as a beacon for unbalanced people, fans who project their demands onto Brian in a way that’s unique among performer/fan relationships. When I did that 1991 cover story on Brian for BAM [magazine]… I actually received several death threats.”


Throughout it all, of course, whether he wanted them or not, he always had the Beach Boys. “They’re all I’ve got,” he once said. In a relationship that produced transcendental music and (often, at least) acute personal acrimony, they too were unable to wrest themselves free from the teat of Brian Wilson.



“They’re like birds with their mouths open for a worm,” he told Nick Kent. “They’re all so groovy, they’re real good at music, but they also know how to really f___ me over. Mike, Carl and Al [Jardine, the group’s rhythm guitarist] are the three guys that stomped my head in. Over the years they managed to stomp my brains out. They knew the secret formula [of] how to f___ Brian Wilson over. And they still do.”

Not that you’ll hear anything of this kind in the Beach Boys documentary, you understand. What you’ll get, instead, is Mike Love saying that “if I could, I’d probably just tell [the rest of the band] that I love them, and nothing can erase that.” The film ends with the surviving members greeting each other beneath a cloudy sky at the lip of the Pacific Ocean. As music fills the screen, one is left to wonder whether the singer took the opportunity to do even that.

[Angela Jones]

Glad someone else found it.

[HeyJude]

Ehhhhh, that's all interesting stuff to chew on, but I don't have any problem with the documentary pointing out that the other guys DID pick up the slack in the late 60s and into the 70s and contribute truly great material.

The problem with this doc isn't so much that it's dead set on portraying all the members as equally talented. It's just not a well-made documentary, and when it tries to shift from Brian being the sole leader and driving force, to Brian still being very involved while the other guys start to contribute more, and then into the era where the other guys were more prominent and Brian was still sporadically involved, it does all of that rather poorly.

I think the best way to start to dismantle and diagnose the issues with this doc is *not* to pick one particular story/fact/piece of information that was excluded and cry foul. This film has more fundamental, ground-level problems than that.

[guitarfool2002]

I think the best way to start to dismantle and diagnose the issues with this doc is *not* to pick one particular story/fact/piece of information that was excluded and cry foul. This film has more fundamental, ground-level problems than that.

That's kind of like saying if I order a California cheeseburger with fries, and it comes out missing the cheese, lettuce, and tomato, and with potato chips instead of fries, there are more fundamental problems than those. No, the missing elements are fundamental problems too! And there is every right to cry foul if they're missing.