The Smiley Smile Message Board

A lot of good stuff here...

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/the-issue/

Great Brooth interview!

Under Dave's story.

'In the meantime, Al split. He got a job at an aircraft company.'


Haven't heard that one before.

The Brian/Mike/Al interview is definitely one of the better interviews I've read from any of those guys.

Thanks for sharing!

The interviews with Boyd, Linette and Wolfe are terrific. Revealing. Hope one or two of them drop by here again soon!

"RCM: As archivists and keepers of the flame, what are the Beach Boys’ holy grails for you?

Alan Boyd: Well, there’s a half inch reel of SMiLE masters that we’d love to get a hold of if it wasn’t destroyed or left behind at Capitol back in ’68."

 :o

edit - nvm. Seems he's talking about the masters for songs like "Wonderful" and "Cabinessence". Would be a huge revelation, but I assumed he was talking about some final mixes.  ;D

If that's really Brian answering interview questions (and I don't doubt it is) then I think we're going to get a real good autobiography when it comes out. He still seems to have a good detailed memory about his collaborators and specific songs etc.  

But.......here's even one more account of the events surrounding the writing of Warmth of the Sun. Among others, I've read that it was written in a corner of the room at the El Dorado Hotel in Sacramento the night of the assassination, and I've read that it was written in Brian's office in Hollywood the day after the assassination, and now this version by Mike:

"Brian had moved out of his home in Hawthorne to a rented house in Hawthorne and I spent the night at his place, mattresses on the floors and all that. Brian came up with the beautiful haunting melody and the harmonies and I came up with the lyrics. The melody and mood of The Warmth of the Sun was so melancholy. It was written the preceding day, words and music, and we got up to the news that President Kennedy had been taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and that he was dead. It was shocking. We didn’t change the lyric to conform to the event. Within days of that event we went into the studio and recorded it. That session was even more charged with emotion".

This from wiki but still fits.

The song was commenced by Brian Wilson and Mike Love in the early hours of the morning before John F. Kennedy's assassination. After learning of the news, the song was completed by Brian and Mike later that day in a hotel room, inspired by the emotional shock felt by its authors over the death of President John F. Kennedy.


"The Warmth of the Sun" was started in the early morning hours of the same morning that President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. The melody was so haunting, sad, melancholy, that the only thing that I could think of lyrically was the loss of love, when interest slips and feelings aren't reciprocated... though I wanted to have a silver lining on that cumulus nimbus cloud so I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of, 'Yes, things have changed and love is no longer there, but the memory of it lingers like the warmth of the sun.' I think it's really impactful and memorable... one of my favorite songs from an emotional and personal point of view." Mike Love, 2007


Brians version doesn't work really.

Brian says he wrote "Darlin'" for Carl's voice. Danny Hutton would disagree!  :o

Brian's version is:

"I wrote this in honor of President John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 and that night, Mike and I got together at my office in Hollywood and wrote the song." In the liners for the Shut Down Volume 2 CD, Brian wrote: "The day after President Kennedy was assassinated, Mike and I went to my office in Hollywood and wrote 'The Warmth of the Sun' at my piano. We knew that we had a spiritual song on our hands and we recorded it with that kind of attitude." In the liner notes for the same CD, noted Beach Boys Historian David Leaf writes: "The song was written on November 23, 1963, only hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Brian had just broken up with his first serious girlfriend. This melancholy ballad and beautiful lyric perfectly capture that feeling of loss. He clearly feels the pain but he is at peace."

The circumstances as described by both Mike and Brian don’t hold water when you consider the fact that The Beach Boys were out on the road at the time … and, in fact, played a concert performance in Marysville, California on the evening of the assassination!

http://forgottenhits.com/the_story_behind_the_warmth_of_the_sun

Fred Vail's account:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1437

My take:

It would make sense that they started the song in Brian's apartment in L.A. the night before or very early morning hours of the 22nd and finished it (or nearly finished it in the hotel room 400 miles North on Novemner 22. Then maybe Brian made some adjustments to it in his office the following day.

"I did not like the Friends album because I thought it was wimpy. I don’t think we were doing anything where Brian was at full strength. We had to do some of the Friends stuff on the road and it just used to make me wince because it was wimpy."
-Bruce

This coming from the guy who wrote "Tears In The Morning"?

Really enjoyed the Dave Marks interview.

Would be great to read that letter to his folks! :lol

Is the magazine sold in stores or just online?

Holy crap.  I really love Al, but in this photo there, he looks exactly like Hoggle from Labyrinth!

Here's both pictures for you to compare!

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2013/09/04/beach-boys-collaborators-stephen-kalinich-andy-paley-interview/

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Hoggle

I like Bruce, but jeez...calling Friends wimpy when he wrote wimpy tunes is sort of the pot calling the kettle black.....

The Mike, Al and Brian interview is great cant wait for the other 2 parts.

That bums me out to hear Bruce talk bad about Friends but that's pretty typical of him, he just really doesn't seem to care for it.

Exactly.  The "wimpiest" songs on Friends can't hold a candle to Bruce's rockin' "Diedre", "Tears In The Morning", "Disney Girls", "She Believes In Love Again", and "I Write The Songs".*


* I didn't include Endless Harmony/Ten Years Of Harmony 'cause I've always loved that one.

Tears In the Morning
Deidre
Disney Girls (1957)
I Write The Songs
Endless Harmony

Yeah, Bruce calling anything wimpy isn't just ironic, it's asinine.

C'mon guys, have you heard his meaty cover of Pipeline?  And those threads… rockin'!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJZIQmiQETM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJZIQmiQETM)

btw, this Rock Cellar material seems to be the source of the feature in Record Collector but I think some of the text – the answers given by band members – differs.

There's a song in the lyrics quiz that isn't a Beach Boys song...  :police:

Totally psyched to read this special edition. Loved all the interviews.

Some impressions:

Brian continues to back away from the "genius" label. I don't blame him. That's a lot of pressure to live up to.

Bruce is a bit prickly, ain't he?

David seems fairly charitable to Murry.  I know a lot of people just put his abusive behavior down to his being a product of his time. Parenting must have changed when I grew up in the 60's then, because, while spanking was OK, beating never was.

Alan Boyd has a great job, doesn't he?

I was gonna come on here and trash Bruce for the "wimpy" thing as well, but you know what? Yeah, he wrote wimpy stuff, which I'm sure he will admit. But I think what he liked from Brian was his more dynamic stuff. And dynamic doesn't necessarily mean uptempo. It could mean anything from "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to "Surf's Up" to "Surfin' U.S.A." to "Caroline No" to whatever. And to be honest, Friends really isn't that dynamic. So I can see what he's saying. Honestly, for all the their albums from Pet Sounds through Holland, I'd say that Friends is my least favorite. The vibe is okay, but I kinda do agree that the songs themselves aren't really there, which I don't think I would say about Brian's work on any of the other albums around this time period. Honestly, I think he did the whole Friends type sound better on "I Went To Sleep" from 20/20.

Also, what a great interview from him. I feel like you really get a better vibe for the background of each album from Bruce's interviews then you do from Brian or Mike.

I'd love to hear the original version of "Keepin The Summer Alive". Wonder if an early Brucified mix exists.

I fail to see the difference between spanking and beating. I grew up in the 60's too, and a spanking was a beating. A smack in the puss wasn't off limits either, though rarely done. That was the parenting style back then, as mentioned by Dave in the article. I had a few friends who used to get a belt whipping, but my mother used to absolutely forbid it in my house, having gone through that with her father, as a kid. My father would threaten it by taking the belt off and snapping it. That was quite enough to get our full and undivided attention. ;)

Page 92...The Lost Beach Boy book

Don't forget Bruce is a rock hard Republican capitalist.

I see links to my upload of YLTLF [Boot] and The single Version of CS/C. I love things like that.

Does Bruce even remember Friends??

Shouldn't this quote just about clear up countless reams of threads?

Brian Wilson: Well, Mike had music ideas besides lyrics. So he helped me out with the music and his lyrics were really really creative. Some of my favorite Mike lyrics are California Girls, Good Vibrations and Do it Again was another great one that we wrote. I also like Warmth of the Sun. that was a very sweet and sorrowful song.

I don't think much of what Brian says in a given interview can clear much up, as he usually contradicts some or most of it later on, depending on a whole slew of factors.

Most interesting to me is the AB and MLinterview and discussing vault tracks, and why certain tracks didn't make the box.

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2013/09/04/made-in-california-producers-alan-boyd-dennis-wolfe-mark-linett-beach-boys-interview/2/

Oh man....I forgot that was in there!

Re-read and chuckling. :lol

It's a classic!

"About ten years later somebody at CBS decided the tapes had to get out of there and rather than go through all of the tapes, they sent somebody over there with a bandsaw and cut all the reels in half and threw them into the dumpster. Nobody cared. It’s a shame."

Ugh that killed me

"As a matter of fact, Mike was talking about how one of his dream projects would be a box set with one disc highlighting each of the group members’ strongest moments over the years, which is incidentally something that Mark (Linett) has been wanting to do for many years too."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCP85FngzE

.

Yeah, really terrific stuff from everybody. Kudos to the interviewers. Nice to see Bruce plugging Bill Yerkes' book--while we've had just a ton of great material from Jon and Ian, Mark Dillon, etc. (and we still await you, Mike Eder!!!), that photo book from the 60s tours is a really nice piece of work. Bruce's comment about Dennis writing songs to pick up chicks is pretty darned funny!

And, let's note, a lot of very solid kudos passed out to Mike for his efforts in support of MIC.

Taking all the factors into account... no. I wouldn't - couldn't - do it.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of Bruce 'Tears In The Morning' Johnston's comment, I just think his description of Friends as "wimpy" is just plain inaccurate. Friends is laid-back, it's mellow, but wimpy? Nah. (It's also incredibly creative and artistically inventive, but we're just talking vibes here so I wont go into that...)

Thank you. I do have good news in that I will be preparing a proposal in about a month. In other words it might FINALLY come out next year.

Who knew that Bruce was such a big fan of Smiley Smile? I thought it was said that he had very little to do with it, so I was surprised (and delighted) to see him singing Smiley's praises. Also had no idea that he was instrumental in getting Blondie and Ricky onboard, that normally gets attributed to Al and Carl.

WIMPY (OR NOT) - VOL 1:

Tears in the morning
Lookin' at tomorrow
When girls get together
Disney girls
Busy doin' nothin'
Matchpoint of our love
Hold on dear brother
I don't wanna know
The surfer moon
The nearest faraway place
Let's go away for a while
She's goin' bald
Everyone's in love with you
I'm so lonely
She believes in love again
Make it good
Ballad of ole Betsy

:)

The "Bruce's finest moments" disc would leave about 50 minutes of space for hidden tracks, I estimate... >:D

I do love his 'Maksha At Midnight', however. Superb edelkitsch.

smack in the puss?

Puss = Face

Yeah, I gotta agree with AGD here, I met Alan about a year ago, and it seems like he's the "Carl" of the group now, not musically (though Boyd is so underratedly musically talented), anyways, during the making of MIC, he had to be the bridge between Mike's camp and Brian's camp, which couldn't be an easy task.

Let alone, we all know what health condition Alan was in about a year ago this past summer, I wouldn't blame it on one person or situation, but you could trace what was going on in BB world and Alan's health and possibly notice a correlation.


But besides that, I know it would be fun going into the vaults for audio and film.
I think he should write a book!

Just read the Bruce interview - very interesting. I think he's dead on right about the Warmth of the Sun being Brian and Mike's best moment, and possibly the Beach Boys. As much as I love everything the Beach Boys have done, it is undeniable that their LEGACY and what will live on forever is their mid-60s output. The brilliance of Warmth of the Sun reminds me what the universal meaning of the Beach Boys is (e.g. it's not the squabbling, it's not the reunion, it's not really anything post Good Vibrations). Although it's disappointing that the post GV era is not generally appreciated, I think we can celebrate the fact that early to mid 60s work has left an indelible imprint on American culture.

ANYWAY, this struck me as pretty interesting, and would love to hear what he had intended the KTSA song to sound like:

"It would have been a great rebuilding track for the band.  Carl wrote that song with Randy Bachman. I decided this is like Jan & Dean’s Surf City meets Bachman Turner Overdrive except we’re gonna record it. I had that thing exploding; I had drums for days. It was very powerful. But Carl came in and made it gentler, unfortunately. He made it so light that I lost all the muscle of probably the only up-tempo track from that album that could have been a radio record. That would have been a great hit, Beach Boys with a Bachman Turner Overdrive groove. Man, I’m so frustrated about that!"

PS - it is annoying how he goes out of his way to basically put Brian and Mike on the same level. But whatever. It's probably true that for years Mike did not get his due for the lyrics that he did contribute.

A great comment which I agree with.

I like Friends but I can completely understand what Bruce was saying as it does sound half finished.

I agree!! Is there an early ("Bruce-ier") version of KTSA in the vaults??


It's really amazing when you think about it, we've had the PS and the Smile sessions!!
That's really awesome!!

But what about the rest, will we ever get to hear sessions, outtakes etc before we die?? ;)
Work in progress - fun, educational and inspiring!