Stamos accused…

[southbay]

I have no doubt whatsoever that John Stamos is a lovely guy. What he did for the guy in the wheelchair, and Ethan, proves that to me. I just wish he wasn't up there, trying too hard to be Dennis.

Can't that be placed squarely on the shoulders of Mike Love?

[Andrew G. Doe]

Was Dennis ever as considerate of special needs fans as John Stamos is?

If you knew anything about Dennis, you wouldn't ask that question. He was a longtime supporter of the Special Olympics, as it was then called.

[Cam Mott]

The Boys rep and legacy was sealed in honor as America's Band long ago and through today and into the foreseeable future and not even decades of public drunkenness, in-fighting, bizarre and illegal behavior on stage and in public, and assorted unsavory crap that the Boys did themselves have changed that.

I don't think the occasional cheerleaders and Stamos are going to suddenly bring it all down or even lower it a notch after it survived the Boys own legacy killing behaviors and choices. Let's get real. (finger snaps in Z formation)

[Mikie]

That's called good will.

Of course! Good will toward the guy who's running the primary Beach Boys fanzine in the world and promoting their careers. It's no wonder you and your son got the red carpet treatment.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Uncalled for, Mikey.

[ESQ Editor]

"The entire group treated Ethan like one of the gang.  You could argue that is because I do ESQ…and that's probably true.  So what?  Is there something wrong with like-minded people being good to one another?  No."

Mikie only reiterated my previous statement.  Maybe, because he said it he felt more enabled to make it his stance for the sake of argument.

[KittyKat]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

[southbay]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

[Mikie]

Uncalled for, Mikey.

Didn't mean anything negative about it at all. It's just a fact. If I were there, they wouldn't give me the time of day, even though I've supported the band for 44 years. They aren't dumb; they know who David is. It's good will and it probably came from their hearts. They did the right thing. David came away a very happy man, as he should be. He wrote about his great experience here and will probably write about it in ESQ too and people will read it and think how great the Beach Boys are on a personal level.

Watching that YouTube video of Stamos though. He brings the female audience in, but he's really over the top with his on-stage playing/acting. I can see where this non-Beach Boy non-backing musician would piss people off. Especially the hardcore die-hards.

[adamghost]

There's always a tension between a band's artistic life and what it has to do to pay the bills and please a large crowd.  The Beach Boys, with its differing personalities and perspectives, and the wildly divergent approaches and output that those manifest, illustrate this more starkly than most bands.  You got your "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" and you got your "Kokomo" and those are going to resonate with two completely different sets of people.

The ideas that Stamos hurts the brand and that he brings a lot of people through the door are not mutually exclusive, even though they seem to be.  Art and commerce have both played equal roles in keeping the band's music vibrant for 50 years.  The issue will never be resolved, it's baked in the cake of the personalities of the band members and the differing ways the band's music resonates with different personalities.  It's what makes the band's history so frustrating, but also so fascinating.

[the captain]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

Isn't 29 nearly 30?

[bgas]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

Isn't 29 nearly 30?

Oh please; is your math really that of a 5 year old?

[the captain]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

Isn't 29 nearly 30?

Oh please; is your math really that of a 5 year old?

Apparently, because I wouldn't think to correct someone's "nearly 30" with "29." Seems synonymous to me.

[bgas]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

Isn't 29 nearly 30?

Oh please; is your math really that of a 5 year old?

Apparently, because I wouldn't think to correct someone's "nearly 30" with "29." Seems synonymous to me.

Really now. Is a baby less than ome month old nearly one?
 

[the captain]

John Stamos has been playing with the Beach Boys for nearly thirty years. Longer than some of the fans here have been fans of the band, and before some were even born yet. It's not like most of the people complaining are the ones buying tickets to see Mike and Bruce, so I don't know what the problem is.

29. First appearance July 4, 1985  in Philadelphia. But I get your point

Isn't 29 nearly 30?

Oh please; is your math really that of a 5 year old?

Apparently, because I wouldn't think to correct someone's "nearly 30" with "29." Seems synonymous to me.

Really now. Is a baby less than ome month old nearly one?
 

No, but it's a matter of scale, too. a baby less than one month old is approximately 1/12th of a 1-year-old, or .08 as much. 29 is 29/30ths, or .97 as much. It isn't just a matter of the span lacking between the two numbers, but the relationship between them in the bigger picture. (In geological time, a thousand years--hell, a million!--is nothing, and we could say "almost.") I think when we're talking about multiple decades, 11 months would certainly be small enough to round up to a "nearly" [bigger number].

Sorry for being off topic. Kind of. Not really, though.

[JK]

Time for a musical interlude...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_2D4Sganhg

[Wirestone]

No single appearance by John Stamos will kill the group's career. And no one is saying that.

But a group's reputation and legacy is defined by the choices that the group makes. And the choice to welcome Stamos as an honorary member has reaped a bitter harvest for the band.

It's certainly not their only regrettable decision, or even their main one. Mike has made a bunch of terrible choices over the last few decades, often with Brian's active participation or benign neglect. The cheerleaders being one of them, releases like SIP being another, relentless touring of shoddy venues for no real purpose being yet another.

For me, I would gladly trade any popularity of recognition the group acquired through the likes of Stamos (and Home Improvement, etc.) for a wider understanding of the great work they did -- and continued to do when no one was looking.

And I do not solely blame Mike or John, although both should have known better. Brian has allowed Mike to use the name and keep touring, and has allowed his cousin's vision of the band to predominate. Al went along for too long, and by the time he decided to fight back, he had no leverage left and had alienated the rest of the group. Carl simply surrendered at a certain point and decided to focus on keeping the backing band competent. All of these guys are to blame.

Stamos is the one guy who encapsulates how everything went terribly, terribly wrong for the group in the 1980s. And yes, that decade saw a renewed popularity for the boys -- but it was not a popularity worth having.

[KittyKat]

Yeah, John even got Brian to appear on "Full House" with the band, that's how bad it got.

[the captain]

Does John Stamos's role as a frequent guest on stage with the band detract from the legacy of the Beach Boys as a serious, artistically important American ensemble? After all, he's a great-looking guy, a celebrity, and an indisputable fan, but he's not as high-caliber a musician as most (or hopefully all) of the people who have been a part of the touring act over the past 50-something years.

No.

Whatever legacy they had through music still exists. The music can't be undone. Anything performed live is on the periphery of the body of work, especially in these decades since their real period of contemporaneous relevance. No 2014 concert undoes the studio or live work of 1964, 1967, or 1971. It's barely a footnote. It's a few minutes of fun between people who have every right to do so.

Second, is protecting the legacy of a pop band really warranted? Does the serious fan's serious concept of a serious band's serious work outweigh the casual fan's enjoyment of a pop band? I'm not sure.

Different art does different things at different times for different people, and the best art more so than the worst. As Adam said a few posts ago, these are different facets of this band: that's just reality. The depth of their brilliance isn't shallowed by the crassness of the commercials, it's just something else. A different angle, a different day, a different idea.

People all have different versions of what the Beach Boys (or any other musicians) should do to best meet their preferences and tastes. There is no shortage of suggestions on this board. But maybe it's best not to worry about it. Maybe legacies would be best not managed at all, but viewed in their natural states as they actually unfolded. That ship has long-since sailed both with this and every other major entertainer, obviously, but it's worth thinking about.

I guess I just don't care whether I like the choices the band makes. I'd rather they did everything I like, of course, but that's clearly impossible. (Besides, if I knew better than them overall, I'd just make better music than them to begin with and circumvent the issue entirely.) I don't care how the public thought about them 25 years ago, 15 years ago, today, or in 25 years. I'm pretty confident their body of work stands on its own whether Stamos sits behind the drums or straps on a guitar or cheeses "Forever" one more time. The legacy is not threatened. It just doesn't matter, aside from annoying some fragments of a very fragmented fan base.

[Cam Mott]

No single appearance by John Stamos will kill the group's career. And no one is saying that.

But a group's reputation and legacy is defined by the choices that the group makes. And the choice to welcome Stamos as an honorary member has reaped a bitter harvest for the band.

It's certainly not their only regrettable decision, or even their main one. Mike has made a bunch of terrible choices over the last few decades, often with Brian's active participation or benign neglect. The cheerleaders being one of them, releases like SIP being another, relentless touring of shoddy venues for no real purpose being yet another.

For me, I would gladly trade any popularity of recognition the group acquired through the likes of Stamos (and Home Improvement, etc.) for a wider understanding of the great work they did -- and continued to do when no one was looking.

And I do not solely blame Mike or John, although both should have known better. Brian has allowed Mike to use the name and keep touring, and has allowed his cousin's vision of the band to predominate. Al went along for too long, and by the time he decided to fight back, he had no leverage left and had alienated the rest of the group. Carl simply surrendered at a certain point and decided to focus on keeping the backing band competent. All of these guys are to blame.

Stamos is the one guy who encapsulates how everything went terribly, terribly wrong for the group in the 1980s. And yes, that decade saw a renewed popularity for the boys -- but it was not a popularity worth having.

I feel like this is not seeing the forest for the tree. If the band's legacy could be diminished in that way it was diminished by Brian, Dennis, Mike, Carl, Al, and Bruce. Roughly in that order, or some order of your choice. Anything Stamos has done or been can not even dent the legacy tempered by the Boys attempts to ruin it.

[Lowbacca]

Yeah, John even got Brian to appear on "Full House" with the band, that's how bad it got.

Exactly. He wasn't that much on it though, to be fair:

[startBBtoday]

Stamos is the one guy who encapsulates how everything went terribly, terribly wrong for the group in the 1980s. And yes, that decade saw a renewed popularity for the boys -- but it was not a popularity worth having.

The Smiley Smile message board: where John Stamos is a bigger villain than Eugene Landy.

[KittyKat]

Yeah, John even got Brian to appear on "Full House" with the band, that's how bad it got.

Exactly. He wasn't that much on it though, to be fair:

Brian had a speaking part on the show, and also appeared onstage in a concert scene, even singing along with Kokomo at one point. He was on as much as the rest of them.

[Wirestone]

Stamos is the one guy who encapsulates how everything went terribly, terribly wrong for the group in the 1980s. And yes, that decade saw a renewed popularity for the boys -- but it was not a popularity worth having.

The Smiley Smile message board: where John Stamos is a bigger villain than Eugene Landy.

Please. I write enough nonsense on my own. I don't need other people to make up new nonsense to attribute to me.

[Lowbacca]

Yeah, John even got Brian to appear on "Full House" with the band, that's how bad it got.

Exactly. He wasn't that much on it though, to be fair:

Brian had a speaking part on the show, and also appeared onstage in a concert scene, even singing along with Kokomo at one point. He was on as much as the rest of them.

I stand corrected. It really got bad, then.