The Smiley Smile Message Board

The words are obviously from Hendrix. I know the Beach Boys ceased to be hip (common opinion, not mine) by sometime in 1967. I wasn't around since I am only 35. For those who were there, were the Beach Boys the poster child for everything unhip? Or were they just another unhip band? I assume that the Four Seasons and Jan and Dean had the same image problems as the Beach Boys? What about the image of Elvis, Berry, etc in the late 60s from the hippy croud?  This also brings to mind this interview between Zappa and Nesmith

http://youtu.be/y_DevsLV5Y8

I find this to be a humorous interview. At the 1 min mark they mention the Beach Boys. The phrase 'come on guys lets go kind of thing'...'sounds like the Beach Boys' made me wonder, were they making fun of themselves by bringing  up the Beach Boys? Did that phrase mean something unique at that time, in that context? The album 'Were only in it for the Money' has some surf songs and doo wop style in it. Do you think they were making fun of the Beach Boys type music? For that matter, the Beatles with the Sgt Pepper like photo?

Any other examples you can think of that use Beach Boys style or image to make fun of the past or them specifically through interviews or music can be mentioned here. Especially in the late 60s.

Also, I want to point out that I am American, so perhaps it wasn't the same in the UK or other countries. Although, didn't I read that even in Britain, they were considered uncool by many for the matching white suits in 68 or 69?

someone else can , no doubt, elaborate( or correct me if I'm in error), but the Hendrix quote was about Dick Dale who was thought to be dying at that point in time, and had nothing to do/ was not directed at the Beach Boys. 

Naw. I saw the Summer Dreams film. Hendrix said "Surf music is dead!" on stage at Monterey, which was shown on TV while Brian was lying in bed listening to Sgt. Pepper on headphones.

yeh, that was that one time the whole group was sitting around watching Monterey Pop on TV.

yeh, they were considered 'square' by a lot of people. but they had their hip fans. and they were too weird for the teenybopper crowd post-GV. kind of lost for awhile in terms of public image. but that was the best time for their music, so maybe it was for the best. these days, i'm sure more hip people are into the Beach Boys than Hendrix, who is more in the vein of 'dad rock' or whatever they call it.

Frank was a big fan of surf and doo wop music. The whole In It For The Money album was a piss take on the hippie generation whom Frank despised.

Both Zappa and the Monkees would make fun of anything. That said, the only Zappa track that actually makes fun of the Beach Boys' music was Let Me Take You To The Beach, from the mid-70s, a very different time. Zappa actually said that Little Deuce Coupe was "the most exciting piece of 'white person' music" he'd ever heard, because of one particular unexpected chord change.

But as to the surf sounds and doo-wop -- Zappa got his start working with Paul Buff (the producer of tracks like Wipe Out and Pipeline) at PAL/Studio Z in the early 60s, and much of his early stuff was generic surf instrumentals like Grunion Run, and that's the music the Mothers originally played. The original Mothers' rhythm guitarist, Elliot Ingber, was actually on Moon Dawg (which the Beach Boys covered early on, and which had Bruce Johnston on keyboards). He no doubt thought that music was cheesy, but for Zappa that wasn't necessarily the same as bad.

As for doo-wop -- Zappa was a doo-wop obsessive. Actually both Zappa and the Beach Boys (at least Carl, and I think Mike) used to listen to Johnny Otis' R&B radio show in the 50s, and picked up a lot of the same influences from that.

Zappa slathered everything he did in layers of irony, but any similarities in his work to the Beach Boys' music are not because he's parodying it, but because he was closer to them in terms of influences than many people would think.

That chord change must have been at "there's one more thing..."

Zappa was quoted by Tom Nolan in 1966 as saying his listeners had "been fed all this garbage for so long.  The Beach Boys, Be True to Your School, and all that.  They don't wanna be true to their school, they want the truth!"    ("The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music," Los Angeles Times WEST Magazine, 11/27/66, emphasis original.)  

I've often thought that Zappa's song "Status Back Baby" was a direct pastiche of that early Beach Boys high-school-status ethos, but I also think the BB's had already satirized that ethos themselves with greater subtlety in "Pom Pom Play Girl."

Of course, the Beach Boys hadn't made a new song about surfing since "Don't Back Down" in 1964, so even they (or at least Brian and Van Dyke Parks) were starting to make ironic references to it by then, as in the title of "Surf's Up."

He said (in either The Real Frank Zappa Book or the Zollo interview in Songwriters On Songwriting, can't remember which) that it was a V-ii change, as opposed to the more normal ii-V change, which he called "an important step forwards by going backwards". I'd assume that was the Eb-Bbm7 on the title line, but the change to II7 on "there's one more thing..." *is* more striking to my ears, and it's possible it was a typo or misremembering.


Oh, I've absolutely no doubt that Zappa despised everything about the lyrical ethos of the early Beach Boys hits. Of course, by not long after that the Beach Boys themselves were dismissing Be True To Your School and saying they could only play something like that as a joke, in the same interview they were praising Zappa (can't find that interview now -- it dated from the late 60s, and used to be on cabinessence.com back in the late 90s, but doesn't seem to be on surfermoon.com now).

I guess I can see how that V-ii is remarkable, but I'm so damn familiar with the song now it's impossible to hear it as if for the first time!   :lol

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What about Do it Again?

Do It Again came later.

"There's one more thing..." is a II7 dominant chord, which is also traditionally analyzed as a "V7 of V" chord, which means it borrows one note to raise the third to a major, and it leads directly to the actual V7 chord of the song's main key.

So that in itself isn't groundbreaking or different at all, it's standard in traditional music and Bach-style chorale harmonies since the time of Bach.

But Zappa's point was that Brian took the traditional ii/V progression/turnaround, which is as cliche and as commonplace in jazz and "standards" type of music as any other compositional device, and turned it on its head by reversing the supporting chord and the dominant 7th chord, which could be called a deceptive resolution since the V7 is not resolving to anything, and the weaker chord is the one leading back to the root chord.

It's the change, which Brian also repeats twice in the phrase, that happens directly under the hook of the song "she's my little deuce coupe...". So not only did Brian mess with the traditional jazz 'formula", but he also emphasized it by repeating the cadence twice and placing it at the key moment of the whole song form.

Zappa apparently thought that was a brilliant swipe at tradition and at the sometimes formula way which jazz and pop composition had been structured over 40 years.

Remember Zappa also had something he called the "Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression" which jam bands are still beating to death, and he would take conventional jazz or pop progressions and either skewer their overuse or bend and shape them into something different. So hearing Brian Wilson doing this in 1963 seems to have impressed him, but I doubt Brian deliberately did it as a commentary or swipe at jazz conventionality as much as he just liked the progression!  :)

Yeah, the more I think about it, that is pretty radical.  It doesn't grab you the way the II7 does (as you say, in quite a traditional way), but if you're following the chords, the V7-ii is like "what the hell?!?"  :smokin

I love in the American Band film when they show Hendrix saying that and it fades into the very unhip boys singing Do It Again on Ed Sullivan.  Kind of a cool transition.

As far as Elvis and Chuck Berry are concerned, there was a "back to the roots" vibe in 1968 which continued into the 70's. Chuck Berry and Elvis benefited greatly from that (with Elvis 1968 TV special being viewed as one of the greatest comebacks of all time). The Beach Boys were too recent to benefit from any of that residual goodwill...until 1974 at least.

   

Do It Again was a big hit in 1968 and a part of that roots movement, along with The Beatles' Lady Madonna.

But Wild Honey did the roots thing better, and months earlier.

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So said Peter Carlin, but think that reading is a real stretch. It was in fact directed at the BB, as I see it.

 Maybe Carlin picked  it up here:  http://oldies.about.com/od/60srockers/f/surfhendrix.htm 
or here:  http://zachweisberg.com/blog/2010/05/19/youll-never-hear-surf-music-again/ 
or here:  http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/jimi-hendrixs-comments-about-the-beach-boys.126340/ 
but wherever, it's not directed at the BBs. Hendrix never said it at Monterey( except in Summer Dreams, which is of course totally reliable as a source)
 it is part of the lyrics of "Third Stone Form the Sun" by Jimi( as mentioned above) and I think you need to go back to being a student if this is the best you've got. 

Some useful glosses on the legend, especially DD's own recounting.  I must have defensively fetishized what I thought he said at M-pop. We are all perpetual students, and I am also happy to learn such detail. Thank you Bgas.

And also worth clarifying since the quotes often get mentioned together is the Hendrix quote about a "psychedelic barbershop quartet", which some still think was a dig at the Beach Boys as a band but was in reality his reaction to hearing the record "Heroes And Villains". Hendrix didn't dig the record, that's fine, but it doesn't mean he had something against the band in general. Not that it matters, but it's another Hendrix/Beach Boys thing that got blown out of proportion.

Umm....ok, I thought  SufferingFools was talking about Surfs Up 71. Perhaps meant 67, since it was heard on tv.

I do recall reading that the Doors were very fond of Wild Honey. Does anyone know if it was the album or just the song?

My impression is that true artists respected Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. But the people that were more about the 'hip' culture then the art thought of them as surfing Dorris Days (apologies to Bruce).

The album, and it was Morrison, not The Doors in general.

In an uncommercial way. Do It Again is a vital, radio-ready track that jumps out of the speakers. It has a certain spark that is lacking on the more mellow and idiosyncratic Wild Honey.

And of course, Hendrix was fairly spot-on with that comment, as the vocals he was referring to were called "barbershop" by the band.

I have to disagree with that. "Do It Again" is hardly a roots song. It was a hit because it was a catchy feel-good summery song and what the general public expected and wanted from The Beach Boys. "Lady Madonna" was a Fats Domino pastiche that harkened back to 1957 or so. The Wild Honey album, on the other hand, could be classified as a "back to the roots" record (well...half of it anyway) since it was the group rediscovering R'n'B in the same stripped down way that the Beatles dropped the studio trickery from the previous year for "Lady Madonna" (...although the it's b-side could've easily fit on 1967's Sgt. Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour) or how Dylan went old-timey country on John Wesley Harding or how the Monkees went out on the road backed by Sam and The Goodnighters and presented an old fashioned soul rave up, etc.
The LA surf scene was not part of the roots movement of 1968, probably because it had just happened. "Do It Again" is certainly a celebration of The Beach Boys' own roots but I doubt when listeners were revelling in the 50's blues/rockabilly/R'n'B revival that they were also thinking of hits from only 4 years ago.     

I completely and totally disagree. You're judging the 1960's like it was any other decade. The world, the artistic landscape, was entirely different with every passing year. You think that The Beach Boys' early hits were not already thought of as oldies by 1968? Even before The Beatles came along, the music of the 50's was looked upon that way. Check out Little Caesar & The Romans' Those Oldies But Goodies, released in 1961!!!
Do It Again "hardly" a roots song? By that measure, neither is a song such as Elvis's Burning Love, which sounds like 70's radio country-rock. The movement was NOT about one particular "stripped-down" sound, it was about the longing for a simpler age, the roots of the progressive 60's musical flower. The Beach Boys were part and parcel of that, and have remained so ever since, for better or worse.

Actually, I'm not. I'm judging the 60's as it's own entity. We'll agree to disagree. You bring up the "roots of the progressive 60's musical flower". The Beach Boys were NOT thought of that way in 1968/69. If anything "Do It Again" was a freak hit that found favor with same AM Top 40 radio crowd that enjoyed Bobby Goldsboro and the Lemon Pipers (who also had poppy big hits that year). Unjustly, the groups critical cache was so low that if they had pulled a Sweetheart Of The Rodeo out of their back pocket I doubt it would've been even noticed. Outside of "Do It Again", there was NO mainstream revival of the early surf sound in 1968. The Beatles may have aped the Beach Boys on "Back In The USSR" (a parody of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" but it was done moreso with irony rather than a loving tribute. The roots movement was primarily folk/country/blues based (and in fact, still is!). There's a reason why Bobby Vee didn't get the respect Fats Domino did. What you're talking about came later in the early 70's.
This brings up another topic actually. The 60's music scene changed so fast so often that it can make your head spin. Think about it...From "I Get Around" through Pet Sounds, Smile and up to "Do It Again" all happened while kids went from their freshman to senior years in high school. That's practically a blink of the eye. We tend to think of the Beach Boys' career in the 60's as having this long storyline with twists and turns. It seems like there's an eternity between All Summer Long and Wild Honey but there isn't. It's nothing. Just 4 measly years!

Where's the progression in today's music? Where's the "saga"? Why does a Foo Fighters record from 1995 sound pretty much like a Foo Fighters record from 2005? Music changes at a snail's pace these days. ???    

Exactly. That's the entire point.
And I can assure you I need no lessons on musical history or to be told by you that my comprehension of the facts is mistaken. I've been writing about music for over 20 years. Save that language for the teenagers present here, thanks.
What is it about the fact that the early "roots" movement did not have one specific sound and approach do you not understand? Everyone thinks of The Band as one of the proponents of the movement, but their first album has psychedelic keyboard sounds, Leslie guitar effects and a sound clearly influenced by Procol Harum. The "roots" thing, in terms of the T-Bone Burnett-style genre approach, wasn't codified until long after that. Ever hear a record by The Everly Brothers, entitled Roots? It encompasses everything up to baroque sunshine pop. Things were much, much more freer then.
The reason Do It Again was a hit was because a popular band, The Beach Boys, were going back to the roots of their sound, and the roots of 60's culture, and singing about it, in the guise of a perfect radio song. It does not mean jack sh*t on a shingle that no one else revived the surf sound on a manstream level. The Beach Boys REPRESENTED IT. The reason people accepted John Wesley Harding was because it resonated with people's memories of the early acoustic Dylan. And, it is another roots record.
The last two paragraphs of your post, I agree with.

First of all, why the heck are you so angry? Your responses to me are filled with the exact same kind of information and music curios that I'm responding with, and I'm not freaking out and accusing you of lecturing me.

I still disagree with your points and the fact that you've written about music for 20 years doesn't sway me. I didn't just pop out of the womb 10 minutes ago with no knowledge of the era. I'm thinking of the back to the roots vibe of 68 in particular, that hangover from psychedelia overload, and how that movement was perceived at the time. If I'm going by accounts, interviews and articles from the era, The Beach Boys and "Do It Again" are never mentioned in the same breath as Dylan, "Lady Madonna" in fact, The Beach Boys are barely mentioned at all. I can only point to Paul Williams in Crawdaddy as someone who did that, but he seems to be more the exception than the rule. But hey...maybe I've just been reading the wrong stuff all these years.       

Do It Again was without a doubt a back to roots, nostalgic, play it simpler like the old days single, and went to #1 in the UK and top 20 US because of that.

I'm not debating whether it was a return to their early sound/lyrical concepts or even the band's intention (which it obviously was). The question asked by Magic Tranistor Radio was about the image of the band during that time period and why the hippie crowd accepted Elvis and Chuck Berry but not The Beach Boys. My point was that while the Beach Boys themselves may have tried to get bak to their roots with Wild Honey and "Do It Again", they were not recognized at the time as being part of that movement and I disagree that "Do It Again" was popular because of the zeitgeist of the time. I always think of The Beach Boys as being on the outside looking in from mid-67 up through the Surf's Up album. As if the rock world carried on chasing after the zeitgeist of the times and whatever the Beach Boys did was seen as inconsequential or they were dismissed as has-beens or even worse! While Elvis, Fats Domino, 50's rock and rollers, etc were getting heaps of praise, The Beach Boys were left out in the cold by the rock world....probably because their height of popularity was fairly recent and they weren't part of that first wave of Rock'n'Roll that was being celebrated at the time (and it didn't help that they became the whipping boys of the rock elite). My argument was that while "Do It Again" was a hit, I feel it was a hit because it was a catchy single and (right or wrong) it was what the mainstream expected and wanted from the group, not because it was part and parcel of that stripped down roots movement associated with Rock with a capital "R" in the late 60's, if you catch my drift.

Maybe I. Spaceman thinks I'm slamming the song, as if having a popular AM Top 40 radio hit is somehow lesser than being accepted as part of the "rock scene" at that time (it's not..the late 60's rock elite..Jann Wenner and the like..can go screw), but despite "Darlin" and "Do It Again", the Beach Boys at that time were nearly being relegated to  "whatever happened to..?" status.
 
Interestingly, when that second wave of 50's nostalgia really crested in the early 70's, it was more Doo Wop oriented than anything else. That might explain why The Beach Boys, as a vocal group, were a part of that 70's wave (although I view them as having been influenced by that music rather than being part of it). In a way, the early 70's seems to be much more a time of longing for the innocence of pre-Beatles America. The late 60's roots movement seems more preoccupied with authenticity and "soul" and "Hey man, listen to how stark and dirty this bluesy record is. This is the real deal" rather than nostalgia for poodle skirts, diners and jukeboxes, if that makes any sense (and yes, I think a preoccupation with the former borders on pretentious hipsterism).

I must admit I'm warming up to you Spaceman !


I feel like a lot of people sort of buy the 'history of rock n roll' sort of approach to this stuff, which is such hall-of-fame/rolling stone bull$hit (not saying you do, Ghosty).

The Beach Boys were completely hip and ahead of their time in actuality in the late-'60s ... personally and artistically. Smiley Smile is by far the most ballsy album ever released by a major group, period. And what was so great about it is how unpretentious it is. When Wild Honey came out, everybody was still doing Sgt Pepper.

"Do It Again" is part of a roots deal but done with more class than many of the others ... it's a conceptual thing, perfectly in tune with the times without pandering to stylistic trends.

I think somewhere in there my point has been miscommunicated. Yes, we can all look back on albums like Wild Honey and Smiley Smile and place them in the context of the times and see what The Beach Boys were doing was ballsy. Certainly nowadays those two albums have reputations have been thoroughly rehabilitated. We can now see that, yes, the Beach Boys may have been one of the hippest bands going. 

I was speaking of how the band was perceived at the time, not retroactively when we're all sitting back and taking a look at rock history. The Beach Boys themselves have spoken many times about how "unhip" they were thought of at the time. I'm talking about the opposite of the "history of rock'n'roll/Rolling Stone/Hall of Fame" mentality. I'm talking about the rock press and community at that time...which was incredibly naive for the most part (this is the same crew that likened Dylan to Che Guevara and hoped he was going to storm the White House) and very dismissive of bands they considered "bubblegum". Consider the flack the Doors were given for "Hello, I Love You", as if it they had cashed in their credibility and were poseurs to be disdainful of for all of eternity. The Beach Boys were given an even worse end of the stick from the music press at that time.

I don't think what I've been talking about is so terribly incendiary as to inspire anger in anyone, and frankly, I'm a little surprised at the reaction, considering the topic is brought up constantly on here. I'm not saying I agree with how the band was perceived at that time at all. In fact, I sort of revel in how much of an outcast The Beach Boys had become. The hipper-then-thou music press at the time and their naivete has a charming element to it, but it's all horseshit. Not quite as odious as what Rolling Stone would become (where Springsteen became an almost Christ-like figure to those jaack offss) but horseshit nonetheless.
       

Just a quick question on this...In an early Doors press release, I think put out by Elecktra Records in early 1967(?), Jim Morrison listed Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and The Beach Boys among his "favorites". However, I don't recall seeing in any book or magazine where Jim specifically mentions Wild Honey. I'm not saying he didn't mention it, just that I missed it. Does anyone know the source of that Wild Honey reference?

Same here. I don't know of any place where Morrison stated he liked "Wild Honey". I did, however, always think it was cool that he listed The Beach Boys and Love as favorite bands...giving fellow LA bands some respect. I hope it was true because he also listed his parents as deceased which wasn't the case. lol

According to I.Spaceman,  David Anderle mentioned it in an interview with Paul Williams

ha! i agree totally (hope you didn't take any offense in my post, I was just adding some thoughts on the topic)

And so I went traipsing off to find my copy of Outlaw Blues and read thru till I found the passage desired( in my copy, paperback, it's on page 157); but there's so much good stuff you really have to read the whole thing, or at the very least the Brian section of 52 pages: 

    (http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww302/bgasnow/scan0005-18_zps26b9580d.jpg)

Thanks for looking that up, bgas.

For those with a copy of Look Listen Vibrate Smile, that same article is reprinted in full, all the parts, and the part in question is "Part Three", where the Morrison quote is found and also where the whole "roots" thing is discussed, including Lady Madonna.

Remember, too, these two men rapping with each other have a total and unapologetic love for Brian Wilson and his music, and wear it on their sleeves during this interview. It's their opinion, it's what they feel about this musician and his music which led to three chapters of this banter:

Williams: Uh-huh, the whole trip was...
Anderle: Yeah, right, it was a pan-patriotic thing..
Williams: Uh-huh, yeah.
Anderle: ...that Van had, and Brian, um, he just dug this trip, you know?
Williams: Uh-huh, it was new and...
Anderle: Right. Okay.
Williams: Let's talk about Mike Love.
Anderle: Yeah.

But it is a terrific firsthand account, a great period piece, and even though some would say it's too biased to pump up everything Brian was doing into something groundbreaking, or that Anderle leaves out some key points, it's a must-read.

However, to place Smiley Smile or Wild Honey in historical context based on interviews like this - where the people involved have an agenda (at that time) to push where their friend and client and artistic pied piper is getting a huge boost and his latest work is being promoted to the readers as something worth buying at the local record store (i.e. 'commerce'), the article cannot be placed into historical context as a definitive account because the subjects in fact were too close to the subject matter.

That may sound harsh, but I've come around just a bit on my thinking overall on this time period, the post-Smile-collapse period.

The notion that "Do It Again" was popular because it sounded like a great radio hit single is the one I agree with, and ultimately I think that is the single most important driving force behind the audience embracing a record. All record label shenanigans and Payola deals aside, if people like the sound and feel of a record, they embrace it.

And Do It Again, from the first 5 seconds with the awesome sonic hook of S. Desper's snare sound nailing the walking-tempo beat, sounded like a hit that made people tap their foot and nod their head to the beat. The record has about 5 solid pop radio hooks happening in a few minutes, I'd argue more than an entire side of either Smiley Smile or Wild Honey had to offer.

One thing about top 40 and record-buying habits in general in 67-68-69 is that there were no rules, no patterns, and no movements. Styles were interchangeable, you couldn't label something as a hit record based on genre.

IMO, what the Beach Boys were doing at the time, including Friends, was fantastic. Not what people were looking for at the time. However, of the two hit singles being discussed, I think that Darlin fits the roots movement better then Do It Again. At least what was considered to be such at the time. Of course, a lot of this is media hogwash.

Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends and even Love You, are all very creative and beautiful. But has an appeal akin to the likes of Syd Barrett, Daniel Johnston or the Danielson Famile. Too quirky to be understood or even fit into their own times or even in the underground indie music scenes, at least at first. While albums like Pet Sounds, SMiLE, Sgt Pepper, etc are mind blowers on first listen, SS, WH, F and LY, take a while for most to get. They first have to get passed 'this isn't cool' mind set. These albums have had just as much effect on me as Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper once I got it.

Of course, Do It Again was a hit because it was a great record. No one was saying any different. The O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack wasn't a hit BECAUSE it was a roots record. For cripes sakes, what we have here is a failure to comprehend.

You just reminded me of "Po' Lazarus" from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, absolutely incredible song.

Rather than the Four Seasons or Jan and Dean, I'd compare the hipness quotient of the '67 Beach Boys to the Mamas and the Papas, say, or the Lovin' Spoonful :  that is, groups that were fairly hip by '66 standards, but that were suddenly looking , well -- not unhip, exactly, but rather irrelevant.

The counter culture didn't think that Brian Wilson -- or Chuck Berry, for that matter -- was crap. Just that while they were both great in their day, their day had passed.

Yes, I agree: well explained. Time is the only true judge of the sublime, and the BB win at every tick of the clock. See Longinus's late classical track (tract, rather, but I left in track for obvious reasons) Περὶ ὕψους, "On the Sublime."

happened to see this Ebay listing for a Wild Honey item; don't know what it says, tho( why can't those darn dutchies print in English?): 
  http://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-BEACH-BOYS-WILD-HONEY-LP-RELEASE-FULLPAGE-DUTCH-MAG-WITHEEK-MARCH-1-68-/370736907372