The Smiley Smile Message Board

How do you think Brian would sound now if he hadn't ruined his voice in the 70's? Would he still have his amazing falsetto fully intact? If he had stayed Landy-free, I assume his phrasing would be a whole lot better. Would he be still able to hit those highs? Would his voice resemble latterday Carl? Would Foskett be currently unemployed?

McCartney and some others have their classic voice still going strong, but then again Macca's trademark voice was not falsetto/head voice. Hmm. Are there any kick-ass falsetto guys around who still can deliver when in their 70's?

Fun question, impossible to answer. Fact: Brian has not been a fan of his falsetto for a long long time.

Better.  ::)

I think they might have the lower the key on songs, but he'd sound like Brian.  i think the beach boys would have maintained a lil more popularity over the years too

That's subjective

listen to Four Freshmen recordings/performances from the 80s. Probably, he'd sound like Bob Flanigan does there (he was born in 1926 I think). By the way, Flanigan was a smoker and had to reach for those high notes right from the start.

Wouldn't he sound like Carl did in the 1990s because of their vocal similarities?

Gibb, probably.
Valli lip-synchs.

I don't think Brian would sound much different than he does now.

Oh, Bruce Johnston can sing falsetto at 69!

I think Brian had a better voice than Carl and one of the better voices of the 60s.  Just looking at his peers, i think he'd sound pretty close to his old self.

That's a tough comparison to make, Brian's almost 70, Carl was in his 40s in the 90s.

Lou Christie is fairly good at recapturing some of his falsetto parts.

Jay Siegal (The Tokens) can sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" perfectly, like he did in 1961 - he does it in the original key, too! I've seen him live twice.

The question was asked and I answered it.  I could do without his occasional awkward phrasing and those moments where he ends tersely because he doesn't seem to have the breath.  Brian's range was far greater in the past and he wouldn't need Jeff to cover, even if he couldn't hit the high notes as sweet as he could. How does Al sound now, for example?

I think in the last few years Brian has really recaptured the sweetness of his voice, and that we're not far off from what he would have sounded like were it not for the 70's/80's. Personally I don't hear any of 60's Brian in 80's/90's Brian, at all: it could be a totally different singer. I felt in moments of LOS and particularly the Disney album that you could hear his classic tone come through, and that most people would recognise it as the same guy who sang on the classic recordings.

He would sound exactly like this

http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/rs-live/beach-boys-play-their-classics-legends-perform-in-rolling-stone-studio-20120606#ooid=Q3bHZ4NDo_1-xNPNYqIWzJPgrMy8T2-1,VtNnZ4NDrWk7FW04DgN3T7jIiNBY9Fsx

Check out Surfer Girl's bridge.

I think on the "Imagination" album, his voice was the sweetest I'd ever heard up to that point and especially the verses of "Keep an Eye on Summer" his voice sounded just like his young self from the 60's-just a lower key.  His classic falsetto was all over the single "Getcha Back" in 1985 and was a dead ringer for the young Brian.

The 70s just damaged his vocal cords, but the 80s damaged his ability to sing well.  Today I think you hear a lot more 80s in his voice than 70s.  He probably has a wider range and an overall smoother quality to his singing today than he did at his worst in '76-'81, but he also has the post-1982 problems with tonality & pitch and slurriness.  In other words if it was just about the damage from cigarettes and whatever else in the 70s that originally cost him his falsetto, he would, and did, recover from that.

Wow, good point. Up until 1980 (?) his speaking voice still sounded pretty close to young Brian.

The Don't Worry Baby clip from 1981 shows signs of the slurring, IIRC.

Wow, I loved that tender bridge. It's funny, but it used to be that Brian shouted to reach certain notes. Now, it seems that he goes "tender" or mellow to reach the notes. Obviously, the latter way sounds much better.

On both the Gershwin and the Disney albums, to my ears, his phrasing and timbre sounds like 60's Brian grown old. Plus, as was linked above, his performance on the Rolling Stone link really bring this point home.

He would have sounded pretty darn close to young Brian up until a few years ago, at which point he might have lost a little bit.

He wouldn't sound like Carl... Brian's tenor voice was mature by the time of Smile/Pet Sounds (and certainly by the time "Good Time" was recorded).  We got to hear Carl's voice develop over the years.

Brian doesn't sing with the same kind of soul, either.  Maybe he would have developed that had he been differently mentally.  Obviously, if Brian would have been out singing for 50 years on the road and constantly refining his technique he might sound different now.

Jay Siegel still has his falsetto at 80 or so, as people have mentioned.  A lot of it is just good technique and taking care of your voice.  Generally you're going to lose some power/range as you age and maybe some pitch if your hearing goes.  Macca's finally lost a little bit over the last few years but he sounded perfect still up until that point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqyHz3hhfvU

At the show I saw Brian sounded a lot like his sixties self but only the lower end of his range. Still never thought I would hear him perform so well.

Actually, Barry Gibb can't usually hit the falsetto anymore - once he started having back troubles in the mid-90's, it became a lot more difficult.

But honestly..... what does it matter now?

Honestly, I don't think he'd sound much different.  I think the bigger difference would be made if you took away the damage Landy did during his second tenure.  The slurring has a big impact on the overall sound of his voice, but the sweet tone is still there, especially in the last few years.

I guess I'm alone in thinking Brian didn't permanently destroy his voice.  He did for a while, but he had a really fragile voice in the first place.  He doesn't sound like a kid anymore, but he never would have, no way that voice would have sounded like that his entire life.  I think if he wouldn't have had his 'rough' period (:) ) there for awhile, he would have ended up sounding about like how he sounds now.  A lot of the stuff like his mumbling and the way he slurs words he did on the original stuff in the 60's!  You can't tell what he's saying half the time.  The earliest videos show him singing out of the side of his mouth, it's all more of a result of his hearing than anything that happened to him or drugs he ingested.  

I think he would sound the same.  Since the mid-90s, he pretty much stopped trying to sing high and by just singing what comes naturally, he sounds like his 60s self, just older.

Little Anthony still has his falsetto intact too, maybe even better.  He's probably 70 or so. 

Nah. It isn't. 

I think he'd sound mostly the same as he does today except:

1. His phrasing would be sharper.
2. The tone might be more even.

man i don't know how anyone can think he would sound the same as he does now.  Brian currently sounds like a smoother/better version of 1977 brian.  which sounds nooothing...NOTHING like 1960s brian. 

Look at Mike, Bruce, Al, Carl at the end, Paul Mccartney, Mick Jagger...etc.  At their best, they sound exactly like they did in the 60s.  Brian's old voice has been completely gone/changed since the mid-70s.  there's no way he'd sound like he does now. 

That's true about Al/Mick/Mike whoever, but damn man nobody sounded like Brian in the 60's, and nobody would sound like him today, including Brian.  Super smooth falsetto, nobody's ever duplicated it.  The closest they ever got to making that "young Brian" falsetto was when they had Brian, Jeff, and Taylor all sing at the same time. 

No question, his voice would be much stronger. Just listen to any other remaining Beach Boy. And it's not hard to predict where Carl would've been vocally, if he were still with us.  

I think a lot of it is mental. He just doesn't attack singing the way he did prior to the bedroom years, due to the brain damage (for lack of a better term).

So while you have the tone and even emotion of old Brian coming through every once in a while, his pronunciations are almost always muffled/slurred.

I do think however, to this day, if someone were to REALLY work him in the studio, we could get some vocals that sort of resemble old Brian, moreso than what we've been hearing on his solo albums, and on the new BB's album. The trick is to get those consonants sounding sharper, which he pulls off every so often (see that new LA radio interview posted by Jon Stebbins yesterday). But knowing how artists can be, I bet it's hard to get him to do anything more than a few times in the studio. I also base that off the fact that his studio vocals sound very very similar to his live vocals.

On a few songs, I believe on TLOS, it sounds like they tried dubbing someone else's consonants, but that ends up sounding weird.

True shame, but it does makes the story interesting. It's almost kind of fun to try and pick out the rare spot where he sounds like his former self.

I agree that he sounds sweeter than usual on the Rolling Stone version of Surfer Girl.



 

Agreed. It sounds like two different people. I don't hear a radical change in his voice from 1977 onwards; on some albums, he sounds better than others, but they all sound like the same guy.

These days, I'd say Brian has more of his voice left over than many 70-year-old singers. And that's because he hasn't toured for most of the last 50 years. Yes, he has occasional issues with live performance, but his vocals overall are more than presentable these days. Sometimes (the Gershwin and Disney records, parts of TLOS and TWGMTR) they are simply stunning.

I have always felt as though Brian had some sort of brain damage / mini-stroke in the early 80s that changed his voice. The problem at that point wasn't the notes anymore -- it was that he seemingly forgot how to phrase songs. Over the last 20 years, he's basically had to relearn that, and has gotten to the point where the before and after voice are pretty close.

I agree 100 percent and I am very hard on Brian's worst 1975-96 vocals.

Ok, here's a thought provoking statment/opinion. With Brian's circa 1964 "classic" voice, an album like Love You wouldn't be nearly as good. Discuss.  8)

Actually me not being a Love You fan is largely down to the vocals. Good Time blows the rest of the LP away vocally and in most other ways too. I don't think the Brian of 1964 or even 1972 would have let such sloppy performances out. Just my two cents I know many love the record.

I ask because I stumbled onto an album review website last night, and the reviewer tried to argue that most of the mid 1970's Beach Boys albums would have been much better had Brian not lost his old voice. I couldn't disagree more. Yes, his voice was very hoarse, and he did seem to go flat a lot. But I think it just adds to the songs and gives them an interesting and unique quality. Take Let's Put Our Hearts Together, or Solar System, for instance. His beaten and worn out voice seems to give the songs new meaning, or more depth. The same goes for Dennis.

If Brian would have had a sweet voice still when he did Love You, he would have had Dennis sing all his leads.  If he wanted the song to sound rough, he sang it, if he wanted it to sound sweet, he had Carl or Mike sing it. 

This makes sense.

Yeah that does make a lot of sense.

Are you sure about that? Just saw this video the other day and I thought it looked & sounded like he could still do it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhIoZMCc8I0

One time I did an A/B analysis of every live version of "Oh What A Night" I could find on youtube from the past few years. It's only that short bridge part that he sings. I'm almost positive it's a pre-recorded vocal track. Knowing his voice through the years, it seems unlikely that he'd hit it with autotune-like precision every single night with the same exact pronunciation, emotion, timing, etc. But hey, who knows lol...

This - for me, when Brian sings REALLY well (as when I saw him do Gershwin live) he sounded like BW88. Not like his 60's voice.

See, I think he sounds terrible on almost all of BW88. If he'd sounded like that on Gershwin, it would have been a big flop for me.