The Smiley Smile Message Board

In the past year or so I've been increasingly drawn to the rough vocals of Brian and Dennis in the latter half of the '70s. Not just how drastically they changed from their pure "choir boy" '60s recordings, but how real and soulful they sound. Songs like Baby Blue, Love is a Woman, Solar System, Angel Come Home, My Diane, In the Still of the Night, Just Once in My Life and many others (especially from POB) have this excellent late '70s world-weary tone to them in the lead vocals that sometimes actually attracts me more than their "better days".

I feel when a singer spends so much of their youth training and refining their voice to near-perfection, very interesting sounds can come out as their throats become weathered and worn. The feeling in the uniquely gravelly voices on I'll Bet He's Nice and I Wanna Pick You Up is nearly just as difficult to replicate as anything they cut in 1965. I often hear people saying Love You would've been a great album if Brian and Denny's voices weren't shot, but I personally think it's one of the main attractions to the record. I'd like to see who else here finds themselves appreciating these gruff vocals just as much as the heavenly voices on the '60s slabs. Thoughts?

I don't like them post 1973-74 as much as before. Brian I think had trouble staying on pitch which bothers me more than the rasp. Something like Stevie or Matchpoint is cool where he sings on key but not cool in the way his voice was through the 1974 sessions.

Dennis made it work for him pretty well, but I always do find myself wishing he had recorded the vocals earlier. River Song is awsome as it was finished but that 1973-74 version where he does the first verse over an early finished track tells me he could have done more with it then.

I love the rough vocals. "LET'S GO mo'fos!!".

I think many of the Love You tracks would sound a bit jokey if they were sung in their angelic voices. Roughness gives the songs the emotion that keeps them being too fey. Same with arrangements, they are just right. Insane or not, Brian knew what he was doing musically.

OK that I do like.

That Brian lost his pitch after 1974 is of huge annoyance. It's almost like he's been trolling the world given that we know he can sing very well when he wants to.

Brian's heavy smoking teamed with excess weight, and the potential emphasis to deliberately make his vocals gritty is a concoction that would almost certainly result in poor breath control. For that reason, I don't think he "lost" his sense of pitch as much as it just became harder for him to "hit" a note as he wasn't used to the changes in his voice. It'd be like learning guitar on full sized instrument, but then suddenly out of nowhere, you're ordered to play a six string ukelele. His vocal takes on M.I.U and a few other cuts of this era show he can still sing on key.

The real development in Brian's pitch problems came about in '83, when Landy did whatever to him.

Brian's part on "Roller Skating Child" is so great. It sounds like Brian ate gravel, smoked eight packs of cigarettes and underwent a tonsillectomy before singing that line. 

"Rooooooooooller skaaaaaaaating chiiiiiiiiiiiiiild!"

Not to be disagreeable, but that ending Brian vocal part ruins what is almost a perfect song. "Roller Skating Child" could easily stand with Brian's earlier (1962-65) "fun" songs.

Brian and Dennis' late 70's vocals are fascinating but ultimately tragic. With the exception of Dennis' vocals on Pacific Ocean Blue, those raspy/hoarse/ sometimes unacceptable vocals keep the songs from reaching their potential. There are rare exceptions when they work, maybe "I Wanna Pick You Up" or "I'll Bet He's Nice", but, ultimately they are wince and cringe worthy.

While it seems like Brian's raspy/hoarse vocals lasted several years, if you just eliminated one year of vocals - the year 1976 - you wouldn't have any hoarse or raspy Brian vocals on record. Some flat, some off-key, and some shouty, but not the shocking, cocaine-damaged hoarseness. By 1977, that quality was mostly gone.

The decline of Dennis' voice is incredibly sad. I think he improved as a singer as he bloomed creatively and he had an incredibly powerful and soulful voice. His vocal ability improved as the seventies progressed whilst his range, tone and clarity seemed to decline. I think the group needed Dennis' lead vocals to add credibility to their work after Holland, whilst Mike's increasingly nasal tone can be almost embarrassing. I feel the same about his work in general in this era, they needed him more than they realized and failed to capitalize on an a fantastic opportunity to move forward creatively without Brian. As a good example of this, the rest of the boys contributed some appalling songs to the aborted Christmas album, whilst Dennis had the incredibly beautiful 'Morning Christmas', which could have been a Christmas classic in other circumstances.

Dennis became a fantastic singer in his own right during the seventies, with great power and feeling in his delivery. I enjoy his gritty mid-late 70's voice as much as the earlier softer vocal work. His voice became drier and raspier as the seventies wore on, but the warmth and light still shone through. At some point, that warmth and light began to fade away and almost disappears into the 80's leaving only the rasp behind. I'm only judging that on the limited footage available but there's not much to suggest otherwise. I wish the group had used his voice more on lead duties through the late 70's.

I would say that the because Carl retained such a strong and clear voice through this period that the Wilson trio sound fantastic together on record.

I feel a bit different about Brian's voice, given that he was an outstanding singer from the very beginning of the Beach Boys. As his voice changed in the seventies, I do miss the range, clarity and accuracy but still enjoy his vocals. His 70's voice had great soul and a lovely vibrato at times, but he did have pitch issues and some of the vocal work is lazy, in a way that Dennis' rarely is. I think Brian's vocal work would have been far better with his newer voice if his quality control had been higher. Some of the final vocals on 15 Big Ones are crying out for another take. Maybe Brian couldn't do better, but maybe he didn't care enough to improve them. I believe that Brian put a huge amount of effort into developing his vocals in his younger days and if he'd done the same in the 70's, he might have had more control over his 70's voice. With Dennis, I think the major improvements in his singing came later, yet his increasingly damaged voice brought an early end to his promising vocal work. With Brian, there's more of a loss as his voice changed but still some positive changes on the back of it.

I'm more saddened by the changes to Brian's voice that came later. It's strange that his voice changed so much between different eras. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'd identify different eras as the same singer, but then there'd be the odd line where you can hear a Brian from a different era. It's probably for a different thread, but Mike's late 70's vocals also took a turn for the worse in my opinion. Where did the 'Big Sur' voice go? His TWGMTR vocals are better than some of his late 70's work.

Agreed.

For me, Brian's voice didn't really go downhill to the extent that I really disliked it until the mid-90s, but it quickly recovered on Imagination to the present. Dennis always had a really cool voice, before and after the change.

The mid/late 70s vocals from both of these guys are great. Brian's vocals on 15 Big Ones and Love You are really unique and have a ton of personality, and I'm not hearing that much in the way of loss of control over pitch compared to before.

I'm going to go out on a limb with the minority vote here, but I think Dennis actually became a better singer after his voice changed. There are some songs, like It's Trying To Say, that could have benefited from a few more takes, but for the most part I feel that Dennis's "new voice" added a depth to the songs that made them what they were. Songs like It's Not To Late might not have sounded as good if Dennis had his sweet "clean voice". His worn out and broken voice gave it that extra edge. Roger Daltrey is always talking about how it doesn't really matter if you can hit the note, as long as the passion and hard work is there. "Give me a bum note and a bead of sweat any day".

Re: Dennis, I love his late-60s voice as much as anyone (especially on "Slip on Through", which is absolutely spectacular!) and still I think he did some of his most soulful singing on the Light Album.

I think Brian's and Dennis's 1976-77 vocals fall in the "a voice only a mother - and a Beach Boys' diehard - could love" category. Let's face it, most of us love everything the guys did, even the questionable performances. We also have an emotional attachment because we know the behind the scenes stuff. We know the story and I think that affects our perspective.

I don't think the average fan is as open-minded or loyal or understanding. I am sure a large majority who heard the 15 Big Ones, Love You, and L.A. Light Album went "WTF. Is this the Beach Boys?"

I'm going to catch hell, but...

Brian's 70s vocals are my favorite. Obviously 1970-1974 is my favorite, but 75-78 is my second. For different reasons, obviously. See, the thing a lot of people don't realize is some of his vocals were put on. It was a combination of not caring, and also as a tragic case of self-immolation. 'Oh, you want me outta bed and off drugs, and won't leave me the hell alone?! Well, here, you f***ers...have THIS'.  There was damage to his voice, true, but it wasn't that bad...yet. When he put forth effort, like on 'You've lost that loving feeling', he sounded great.  On this cut, and on the later 'That Special Feeling', he sounds like his young self with a cold. If he had cleaned up, he would've sounded close to his vocals from earlier in the decade.  Late 78-early 1979 is the true point of no return.

He had traces of his later voice previously, most notably on some of his backups on the American Spring release, the intro on 'California' , and on 'He Come Down'. In each case, he was using the vocal style he would employ later on, but obviously his vocal cords were in better shape.

I'm with the Sheriff on this one.  I LOVE me some "scratchy" vocalists (Peter Criss, Bob Seger, Don Henley at his best "velvet wrapped sandpaper") but in the case of the late 70's voices of Brian and Dennis, they're not scratchy or textured or whatever other complimentary adjectives are being tossed are.  They're DAMAGED and again, as he said, I think most people here only like them because we know all the behind the scenes stuff of their trials and tribulations and who they are in general.  Which is fine but come on people.  Call a spade a spade.  I also like "I'll Bet He's Nice" and some of the others from that era but to me, those are definite exceptions.  In most cases, I feel sorry for the guys when I hear them croaking out something that used to come so easy to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS_uO7hVOn8

LET'S GO mo'fos!!

Even when I didn't know as much about the group as I do now, I still liked their '70s voices. Sometimes more than their '60s voices too. So there!

Same here! I wouldn't even disagree about their voices sounding damaged instead of just raspy but personally I don't mind, I still like them a lot, especially on Love You and the Light Album.

I tend to agree. Their voices would have become more 'male' anyway, so to speak. I hear rivers of booze and tons of coke in the later voices of Brian and Dennis. That is simply sad, not something to get very enthusiastic about because it supposedly is 'cool', which it is not IMHO.

Oh, and: Tom Waits.

I do not believe for a moment that any song on Love You, Pacific Ocean Blue, or even 15 Big Ones -- let alone the worthwhile stuff from 1978 onwards -- would be improved if they had the voices of '60s Brian and Dennis. In fact, I think they'd be worse! The "find a ride" tag of "It's OK", "I'll Bet He's Nice", "Mona", "What's Wrong", "Love Surrounds Me", "My Diane", etc.... I wouldn't trade those vocals for anything, and although it's certainly sad that the voices of these men ended up as they did by way of (in part) excessive drug use, they still knew how to use them expertly. As others here have pointed out: When Brian needed a sweeter voice -- and when he himself didn't want to bother with one, which he could still pull off (even if it may not have been as rich as even three years previous) as we also know -- he'd deploy Carl or Mike ("The Night Was So Young" or "Airplane").

"River Song" is one that I can never hear with a clear voice, for me it has to be Dennis' raspy lead or nothing, as others have mentioned, it sounded more soulful.
Not a standout by any means but I think "That Same Song" was saved by Brian's gravelly lead too.

"I Love To Pick You Up" and "Back Home" aren't that bad with the weathered vocals.  However I can't think of any other BB song from that time where I prefer that sound to their mid-60's vocals, especially Brian.  Overall the damage of Brian's voice is one of the saddest parts of the BB story, to me anyway.  The rougher sound worked far better for Dennis than it did for Brian.

Exactly. I can't remember who said it here, but someone speculated that if Brian's voice had held up, he would've just had Dennis sing the majority of Love You. Because that's the sound he wanted.

Yeah, in light of what happened its quite sad. It's the sound of their degeneration, ultimately. And that also applies to Carl's vocals from the period.

Again, other than diehards, I can't think of many people listening to Brian's tag on "Had To Phone Ya", Dennis on "In The Still Of The Night", Brian's off-key singing on "Just Once In My Life", Dennis on "Mona", Brian on "Solar System", "Let's Put Our Hearts Together", and "Love Is A Woman" - and say that those are good vocals.

To some extent but not as much, and maybe it's because of the poor production, you have to be a real fan of Dennis to say his vocals on "Angel Come Home" and Love Surrounds Me" are excellent. If it was Dennis Smith instead of Dennis Wilson, would you feel the same way?

Don't enjoy Brian's singing voice on any of his vocals you mention above, but I really like Dennis' leads on In the Still of the Night, Mona, and Angel Come Home.

I think it's denying fans some credit to imply that we're being disingenuous in our enjoyment of Brian and Dennis' vocals during that era, whether it's a result of their destructive lifestyles or not. Whatever caused Brian's voice to degenerate (and we can certainly define the cause, of course, it's been sufficiently discussed) is the same thing that caused his mind to veer in certain directions that inspired his songwriting at the time. His frustrations and indulgences as he led that lifestyle were catalysts to ideas that reflected his neuroses, distresses, what have you -- ranging from quirky to tragic: "Roller Skating Child," "It's Over Now," "Lines" ... you could go on and on. If, instead of getting into drugs and excessive eating and sleeping, Brian had gotten into drinking coconut water and reading lots of books and playing tennis, he probably would've written in a much different vein and methodology. And I would probably like them, but I might not because I really wouldn't want to have anything else except the all around directness of his music during that era. But, uh... Haha, I sort of lost my point after I started imagining the kind of lyrical ideas and arrangements his songs would have if he was just into drinking coconut water and reading a variety of books and playing tennis.

Dennis' vocal on Mona is fantastic. My favorite song on Love You.

Well, somebody seemed to have some interest in tennis. Hence, we got "Matchpoint Of Our Love. I think we are lucky that Brian, Mike, or whoever it was was not MORE into tennis, ha.

Would I feel the same way about van Gogh's paintings if I didn't know he cut his own ear? It's impossible to say, really.

Overall, why is there even a perceived problem with "being a diehard" and thus being able to appreciate what other, more "casual" fans probably don't like? Personally I love BW's singing on "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" despite the very fact that the singing itself is probably sloppy and his voice does indeed sound damaged. The underlying amount of emotion is what gets me and it probably wouldn't make half as much sense if the song was written and sung by Brian Smith instead of Brian Wilson. I see that too and I think it's alright.

Ummm... I respectfully disagree. Completely, but respectfully.

Really strange, while the Wilsons' voices (including Carl) all got darker during the 70s, Mike's voice got brighter and even more nasal. The TWGMTR vocals may be better because of, ironically, a decline of his voice in the past few years which reduced the nasalness. (Or they used the new autotune denasalator software. ;D)

Yeah, Mike's Big Sur vocals are his best. I often imagine that voice singing the line "Surf's up aboard a tidal wave"...


Never heard that before. This makes me really sad. So good this wasn't the end.


Had they followed that path more, we might have had a tennis racket on the cover of the latest hits package! :-D

No perceived problem. I was just offering an opinion WHY I thought diehards were more accepting of raspy, hoarse, off-key, slurring, sharp, and flat vocals. Hey, somebody has to appreciate them. Not too many people did. That's a fact.

Again, I agree and would even go so far as to say the same applies to Love You as well, it it been written and produced by Brian Smith and HIS band. I know people will disagree (as this is a very polarizing stance) but I remember when I first heard it (without knowing the background) and it nearly put me off the band for good!  As it was I took a sabbatical to some extent but I really think if I'd "hung in there" for what followed, I definitely would have written them off (for me) before KTSA.

There were probably a couple of reasons why 15 Big Ones and Love You - and maybe even L.A. Light Album - turned off the casual fans, but I always thought the MAIN reason was the vocals. In 1974-75 the Beach Boys were one of, if not the most popular band around, largely due to Endless Summer and Spirit Of America. Most fans bought 15 Big Ones expecting to hear voices that sounded like, well, the Beach Boys. They didn't get that. There was a collective "Are these the same guys who sang those songs on Endless Summer?" I know because I was one of them. After more of the same vocals with Love You, even more fans bailed. And on and on....

Yes it is, I agree! I wasn't there in 1977, instead I discovered Love You as a "cult classic" in the early 2000s and to me it mostly seemed like a full-length extension of BW's contributions to albums such as Holland.
Personally, do you still mainly feel the sense of disappointment or have you learned to appreciate 15BO/LY/LA in one way or another? What about the M.I.U. Album?

To me, MIU was a pleasant surprise. I knew Love You and LA before, don't really like them, and expected a cross between them. Instead I found bright cheerfulness. There are some not-that-good songs on it, but it has the highest number of tracks I like on one album in the period between Sunflower and TWGMTR.

When I first heard 15 Big Ones, about ten or so years ago on the twofer, I was quite shocked hearing Brian's voice on Had To Phone Ya. I guess his "new voice" is kind of an acquired taste. MIU was a sur[rise for me, because his voice on that album is so "clean". It's not the Brian Wilson of the early 1960's, or even the Brian of 1970-73, but it's infinitely better than the guy who sang on 15 Big Ones. Oddly, I immediately loved Dennis's version of In The Still Of The Night, from the first time I heard it.

Good question. 15 Big Ones was the first "new" Beach Boys' album I bought, obviously Love You being the second. I loved both of them immediately, but it was more for the songs (melodies and arrangements), the production (15 Big Ones is Brian's Phil Spector album), and some of the vocals. Accepting the ragged vocals wasn't easy, and I knew that was gonna be a problem with the average music fan. I ultimately accepted the vocals, and some I grew to enjoy. But, I played those albums for several people including casual Beach Boys' fans who absolutely hated the vocals, actually made fun of them. However, like I said, I knew even before I played the albums for friends that the vocals were a detriment. And, that was frustrating. The Beach Boys were given a second chance. They were at or near the top of the music world. And, of all things, ironically, their vocals cost them big time. Again, that wasn't the only reason, but it was a major reason.

Personally, I was more accepting of the vocals because I was becoming obsessed with the Brian Wilson saga. I was a product of the "Brian Is Back" campaign, and I was fascinated (and still am) by the man and his story. To the average fan he was just another drug casualty.

I always liked MIU. I still remember the elation I felt when I dropped the needle and heard Brian's voice on "She's Got Rhythm", followed by "Wontcha Come Out Tonight", "Matchpoint", and the tag on "Winds Of Change". Unfortunately the material was weaker than Love You. And less songs. By that time the group was fading, there was a lack of publicity, more drugs, etc. But I can still put on MIU and enjoy it all the way through.

Regarding L.A. Light Album....It is for me the most disappointing Beach Boys' album of all. I liked Brian's songs on 15 Big Ones, Love You, and MIU. His voice was returning to respectability, He was looking better physically. I was expecting big things with L.A. Light Album. Other than an isolated "ooh" or "ahh", Brian isn't even on L.A. Light Album. I was perplexed, frustrated, and saddened. "What happened?", I thought. 

I absolutely agree about 15BO being Brian's Phil Spector album!

There's something about Love You that always made perfect sense to me, despite the crooked singing and ocassionally awkward lyrics. As an album I think it's deeply embedded in that particular "the man and his story" thing you mention, maybe even more so than The Smile Sessions... To me it always seemed like a man who had already gone through a lot of incredibly hard times trying to rekindle the sense of joy and innocence that some of his most successful work had always portrayed. In that sense I think it's a uniquely personal album and I perfectly understand it's not something that the more casual fans can easily relate to if they thought of BW as just another drug casualty.