How good a guitar player was Carl?

[kookadams]

Everyone that made the point of how good Carl was at such a young age is dead on! His playing on the Surfin USA album was beyond any other rock guitarist at sixteen years old, I mean c'mon. And he sure as hell blew George Harrison outta the water... The Beach Boys the phenomenal singers they were were just as good musicians as ANY band at that time and NO ONE could play and sing that well and its never been replicated except maybe with a twenty piece band like the fendertones . And as a drummer myself Dennis was the reason I picked up the sticks twelve years ago in my junior year of high school/ and he had the best taste in equipment- gretsch, camco, rogers etc. Cream of the crop .

[feelsflow]

i attended a beach boys concert in charleston, wv in, i think, october 1985. group came out and started the show. i was in the 4th row right in front of carl. i was wearing a yellow love you t-shirt i got from brother back in 1977. had the love you cover on it. carl stared at me and that t-shirt the whole show. best part was carl played all the leads. he played what jeff usually played and jeff played what carl usually did. i was in awe. and the sound rocked. had never seen carl so into playing like that. at one point he even climbed up the drum riser, leaned back in the classic guitarist stance with the guitar pointed straight up, playing away. one of the best rocking beach boys shows i ever saw. i was blown away. he was a wild man that night. he sure played the hell out of the guitar that night.

This post made me grin ear to ear.  That's the Carl I wanna hear about!  How much do we miss him?  Muchly.  Thanks for the wonderful memory Steve.

Me too.  Great post.  Carl was The Bomb.

[metal flake paint]

Carl really rocked out during the group's performance in Hawaii on the Mike Douglas show in 1980