The Smiley Smile Message Board

The "Tears in The Morning" thread got me thinking, how well would they have done with Bruce taking control in the 70's (I know he wasn't in the band for the majority of this time, but bare with me), of all the Beach Boys (except maybe Dennis) he was the one who could probably compete with Brian's sound to a degree, he's a classically trained musician and has respect for Brian and his work (not saying that the other's don't but he seems to respect Brian on a level of artistry that most the other's didn't really until later). He also seemed to be the best commercial writer of the band in the 70's (Disney Girls having 2 covers my popular musicians, "I Write The Songs" being more than a little popular), he was also onto disco before it had started to fade, having a minor success with the track "Pipeline", although I'm not a huge fan of disco, I think had the "Here Comes The Night" remake been done for "15 Big Ones" instead of "L.A" it would have been a much bigger hit.

Although not being a family or founding member probably would have ruled this out even had he of been in the band throughout the 70's it's still a thought that I find interesting to mull over.

1974, yeah, I could see it.  He would have been in tune with pop radio at the times, and ENDLESS SUMMER would have put the band in a different marketplace environment.  At the point when he left, there was still the counterculture gap to contend with, and Bruce was out of sync with that. 

(http://www.lastplace.com/DOC/Cybpntgs/disco99.jpg)

It wouldn't have worked. Bruce doesn't have a commandeering type of personality. He could never have successfully pushed his vision on the group. In fact, Bruce was sole producer of Keepin' The Summer Alive, and look at how THAT turned out.  It has touches of Bruce, but it ends up becoming a weird hodgepodge between Bruce ideas and Beach Boys ideas.

We got "Endless Harmony" from Bruce, which is a decent song, but it has less genuine emotion than the songs he wrote earlier in his career had.

He also was the one that insisted that "When Girls Get Together" be released. I personally like that song, but most Beach Boys fans seem to hate it.

However, I do really like Bruce's work on "Santa Ana Winds", though. I can't prove it, but those strings sound like Bruce to me.

"Goin' On" is a travesty, though. He took a song about lost love and hopelessness, and gave a super saccharine sound that seems disconnected emotionally from the lyrics and main melody.

I agree with most of what you said, but I think the production of "Goin' On" works precisely because it juxtaposes the slick, 1980 pop sound with a heartbroken love song.

Then again, I have never heard the allegedly superb early version of "Goin' On."  If anyone can describe it to me in great, evocative detail almost akin to actually hearing the track, please Private Message me.

"Disney Girls" in my opinion the best Beach Boys song that Brian didn't write.  Man I love that song especially the middle eight with the acapella bit like "Sloop John B." ("Church...bingo chances and old time dances") and then the hum - Wow love it!

I'm not sure if this is the one you are talking about, but there is something called "Why Didn't I Tell You" which is an early version of "Goin' On" with cool dream breaks that aren't featured in the final song. Is that the supposed "superior" version?

"Disney Girls" is a beautiful song, and it is defiantly and aggressively square, almost the polar opposite of "Student Demonstration Time," which seems to strive to be edgy and political and falls somewhat flat.

In contrast, "Disney Girls" is so far away from the tone of most of "Surf's Up" that is paradoxically fits perfectly right in the middle of the album; it is a respite from the socio-political turmoil of the time that is discussed elsewhere on the album, and in the greater context it serves as a much more melancholy, yearning song than it might appear upon first listen.

Thanks Jim. That sounds like the one. I wasn't aware of the alternate title. Hope I get to hear it one day.

Me too.

I personally believe that KTSA could have been a lot better with Bruce not at the helm. The earlier version of Oh Darlin' for instance was so much better. Carl may have had a better voice than Brian at that point, but Brian's vocal IMHO had more soul. So yeah, that is something that I one day would love to hear.

This is the thing - we sort of know how the band would do under Bruce's direction from the results of Light Album and, to a greater extent since he was sole producer, Keepin' The Summer Alive.

Second-guessing any Beach Boys decision post-1976 seems futile because they often almost pathologically chose the least artistically credible and least aesthetically pleasing options when it came to track sequencing/selection, production, and arrangements. Love You is an exception to this, of course, and truly great songs would slip through the cracks here and there. About the only consistent thing that survived was the group's harmonic ability.

This in spite of the fact that the group had superbly talented people working with them. Perhaps there were too many cooks; listening to Beach Boys 1985 and looking at the songwriting credits, or the three producers on Light Album, makes me think that things may have been simplified by having the group be relatively self-sufficient, as they were on Sunflower and Surf's Up.

"Love You" is the work of an auteur, and is a very consistent album, so it stands as a delightful exception to all of the above. Design by committee can work when it is a close-knit group like The Beach Boys were in the late 60s/early 70s, but by this time the boys were dealing with myriad personal and business problems, combined with discord within the group. This is a huge reason for the quality drop and no one could save them - witness the events of the late 90s for an example.

I have mixed feelings. LALA and KTSA were actually an approvement to the MIU production. Although, I am convinced that the LA songs were produced more by Carl and Dennis then Bruce. Except for HCTN. I respect Bruce's music from 69-71, but he also released an uninspired solo album in 77. To me Bruce was an excellent musician with very little soul.

On another not, does anyone know how much Carl produced after Love You? Did he control his own songs?

Creatively the Beach Boys were done by that time anyway. LA Light and KTSA are very hit&miss, overall very weak albums compared to anything before em. Its been said before and I concur that Love You was the last great album they made. In the early 60s, and late 60s/early 70s Bruce was great but as far as producing the BBs and his '77 solo album are fuckin lame.

His production formula on "Goin' Public" is basically this:

- Take Beach Boys or other song that I have already written
- Slow down the tempo
- Record it blandly
- Profit!

I think a weakness of Bruce's is that he is not a prolific songwriter judging by his recorded output. It's a shame because he is very good at writing. He also makes a great bellhop.

(http://www.beachboysband.net/JKIDDING/JK_PHOTOS_A/JK1/BJ%20CONCIERGE%20X.jpg)

You're joking, right? LA Light Album is superb. Its not Pet Sounds, but its brilliantly produced and has great songs on it.

Even though Bruce was considered the producer, I bet that Good Timin, Goin South, Full Sail and Angel Come Home were produced by Carl, Love Surrounds Me and Baby Blue produced by Dennis, Lady Lynda by Al? and I heard Dennis helped him arrange it (according to Stebbons I believe) and Brian produced Shortnin Bread. So that leaves Here Comes the Night and Sumahama.

It's true that Bruce didn't have the most prolific songwriting, but I do enjoy his tracks a lot (with the BB, even I can't tolerate much of Goin' Public), did some GREAT pre-Beach Boy stuff too. The songs of his which are on BB lps I've found are usually amongst my favourite on their respective album, specifically "She Believes In Love Again" that should of been the lead single from that album, it had the right sound for 1985, wasn't trying to creepily sing like an 18-year old again and had that catchy middle-8, but being the 3rd single from any album is usually a fate worse than being left unreleased for a track's success, it was doomed... doomed I tell ya!

Anyway back to point, that lack of proficiency probably was something I neglected to realize when I started this thread haha. Still something to ponder anyways.

What you're doing here is "I like these songs so they weren't produced by Bruce, which means Bruce only produced the worst two songs on the album."

LALA is a lovely shimmering warm late-afternoon long shadows album. (Apart from, that is, HCTN which I actually quite like.)

I've heard L.A.'s production criticized by people whose opinions I respect, but I personally love the production on that record.  Vocally one of my very favorite BBs albums (I found out later a lot of my favorite parts are just Carl and Bruce multitracked).  The production on KTSA is pretty bad though.  The tracks themselves are not horrible, but they lack punch and the whole album sounds really thin and processed in a bad way.  It sounds like someone took the master tapes and squeezed the bejeesus out of them.  That does lend some credence to Carl's hand at the board...and let's not forget James William Guercio.

Sometimes, and especially in the Beach Boys' case, you just need someone that every player can talk to and doesn't hate.  In '79-'80, that was Bruce.

True, and in 2011 that guy seems to be Joe Thomas..


I always thought that the production is not the only reason why KTSA sounds so thin and weak.
If I'm not mistaken (I don't have it in front of me) KTSA was recorded at Mike Love's mobile studio. 
The recordings could have been of poor quality to start with and Bruce didn't have much to work with.  I find it hard to believe that in about one year Bruce would change his production style and values so radically.
Also, KTSA doesn't sound too different than "Looking Back with Love", which also (if I recall correctly) was recorded at Mike's mobile studio.

I don't have proof, just saying the Dennis and Carl songs sound like something they would do themselves. In fact Love Surrounds Me is not much different then on the Bambu cd. Although, Full Sail and Goin South I suppose could've been Bruce. As for Al's song, Jon Stebbons (I believe it was him) mentioned that Dennis helped him arrange it.

The only reason I left out Sumahama is because Mike didn't likely get into arrangements and producing as much.

If I recall, I read something about some kind of processor used on KTSA, I can't remember the technicalities but I believe it had some negative impact on the sound in the end, if anyone knows more about what I'm going on about they may be able to shed some more light on it.

Here's a thought...

Maybe Bruce SHOULD have been in charge after 1967. Just think about it: he is a classically trained but open minded musician, an easy going person and someone who's not too proud to help someone else take the spotlights... He could've been The Beach Boys' own George Martin. I think that Dennis and Carl (and maybe Al) never fully lived up to their creative potential (especially as songwriters I feel that they had more in them than what eventually came out), they probably could have used their own George Martin...

I disagree about the idea of Bruce being in charge, he would have taken them in the direction of groups like Bread.

Yeah, I remember someone saying that (it may have been the Aphex Aural Exciter), and I think they have a point.

I run a small studio out of my home, and I'm consistently amazed at how many times I take my stuff into bigger studios with a lot of gear and the stuff done here with just a small amount of outboard gear sounds better.  If you don't know to use the gadgets, they can really screw up your sound.  Especially something new where no one has enough experience with it to say "dude, this sucks."

That's the one I think, the Aphex Aural Exciter.

And that's pretty much my argument on the sound quality of the Summer in Paradise album, no one had really used pro-tools before so there wasn't anything to really compare the sound against.. although that still doesn't excuse the quality of most the music on that...

There were a lot of tech specs on the notes of the KTSA album, weren't there?  Like they sync'd two 24 tracks together, and some other stuff?  Just the psychological need to put tech specs on a pop album like that, with all due respect to Steve Desper (who really was a whiz), spells trouble. 

That is a really interesting analysis...I really like "Student Demonstration Time," as I was a college student at the time of the height of the Vietnam War protests across the United States...on some level, touring the colleges in those years, the Beach Boys, particularly Mike Love, "felt our pain" and rage as against the war, and protest against other injustices, and did not have their heads in "the sand" as it were, in terms of being in real touch with the world and the positions of their fans.   The whole concept of the danger of a wild mob, the police moving in against them, were well articulated in that song.  Ultimately, protest, activism and all that great music, changed this country, for the better. 

Disney Girls, sort of provides a place to put some hope, that life will go on, after the chaos, with the concept of leisure time, and normalcy, when the country was trapped in a vortex of intensity, winter and summer and determination to bring the troops on.  It was a bright respite from the socio-political turmoil of the day but "defiant, aggressive squareness" seems a mite extreme...I like to think it may have been conceptualized with an idyllic nostalgic rear view mirror, reflecting on a much simpler time...Nothing square about that... ;)

I disagree. First of all, the band seemed quite focus and fairly united under Carl's leadership in the early 70s. Second off, Dennis wrote more songs then anyone after Brian stepped back. Especially after Holland.

What was it that caused Carl to lose focus/leadership within the band?

Yes, I think you stated it with more nuance, and more articulately than I did. In my defense, I wasn't yet alive at the time. And for the record, I do love Disney Girls!

That's a great question.  I don't know the definitive answer, but I'm going to take a stab at answering it and then step back and let others who know better pick it apart:

1.  Jack Rieley's departure as manager.  Rieley had championed Carl as leader of the group, and had backed Carl's desire to reinvent the band.
2.  The success of ENDLESS SUMMER in 1974, which basically wrecked the band's reinvention process, coupled with Carl's inability to deliver a hit record for the band (and, I'd guess, the excessive amount of tinkering he did on the IN CONCERT album in '73 causing the band to lose patience).
3.  Ricky Fataar's departure in '74.  A minor detail perhaps, but Ricky was a key in-band ally of Carl's.
4.  Steve Love's instillation as manager -- which basically set the political framework for Mike Love to take control of the band.  It was Steve Love, I believe, that really hammered through the "Brian Is Back" campaign.
5.  Once the writing was on the wall with 15 BIG ONES, Carl and Dennis both basically lost heart.  It's clear from the setlists of '76-'77 that (contrary to popular belief), there was still an attempt to respect the band's later material, but the execution and pacing of the shows were not good, which added to the general restlessness of the crowd during the new numbers, which strengthened Mike's case that the crowds really wanted to hear the oldies.  For the next couple of years it's bad times for Carl as the band's artistic direction drifts away from him, his marriage breaks up, and he flirts with heroin and alcoholism.

Carl pulled back, but never again became the dominant figure in the group, though he played a major role on L.A., KTSA and especially BB '85 -- but even then, a careful look at the credits and listen to the records reveals he did a lot of his vocal and recording work apart from the rest of the group, not to mention the period he went solo from '81-'82, which basically ended in a stalemate -- the band couldn't really function without him nor he without them.  In later years, the power dynamic seemed to be that Mike would be the one to initiate ideas (or at least the ones that were seriously considered), and they would do the ones that Carl didn't shoot down.  In later years it seems more like Carl was the guy who had veto power, and used it, but he wasn't calling the shots.

I would hope not. Just found this, I really have to wonder what in the f*ck was intended? I mean they're at an entirely different tempo/time signuture from the entire rest of the song, and not in any creative way, it seems.

I've always said that the dual jackhammer of Endless Summer and 15 Big Ones' success was a titanically large blow to the Beach Boys' creativity and public image, one that they still haven't truly recovered from, even today.

As far as I'm concerned, Carl remained a dominant figure onstage -- said in all seriousness. Carl had a whole lot of stage presence, and when he sang a lead -- wowza!