The Smiley Smile Message Board

This is new to me, although I don't know how credible it is, hence this topic.


I was checking the Wikipedia entry for Scott Matthews (main drummer for KTSA), and, under a "The Beach Boys" entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mathews#The_Beach_Boys, it says -besides him beign considered as a possible band member, as a replacement for Dennis, something previously hinted- that in 1983 he started champinoning his proposal for a Pet Sounds tour, using Brian's original charts (do they exist? Or existed in 1983?) , but...

The tour never took flight due to one band member having creative difficulties in adjusting to changing the tour formula, even for such a special event and the much needed credibility the band would gain. When an unacceptable offer from the 'swing voter' was finally proposed in 1991, Mathews officially passed on pursuing the Pet Sounds performance project as he preferred to protect his relationship with one of his closest friends, Carl Wilson who had told him at the beginning; "You have to carry this project all on your own - I have my hands full just keeping the band together." In appreciation for Mathews' concept, support and attempt to see it through, the Wilson brothers and The Beach Boys' manager had RIAA white matte gold and platinum records sent to Mathews upon settling their decades long law suit with Capitol Records (who had previously refused to acknowledge the album's sales numbers). Aside from the principle members of the band and management, Mathews is the only person to receive these official awards.

Two things. 1- It's easy to assume that the "swing voter" is Mike 2- Can't see how the 1983 Brian would be fit in any way for a project like this.

Most of the sources for this section are dead links, and anyway I don't think they would say anything more about this.

Anybody knows something else???

Very, very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I agree with your point, how would 1983 Brian do it? Of course, Carl/Al could have covered most of the vocals though. This would have been a period in which the band would have been especially refreshed by critical acclaim.

Just another reason to despise Mike Love. It's eternally unfortunate that this guy gained such an iron-glad grip over the band's leadership in the late 70s and beyond. He should have written a car song about how he drove the band's would-be impeccable legacy off a cliff. But hey, at least he had fun, fun, fun while flooring that gas pedal. I just wish someone was there to take the T-Bird away.

Just another confirmation that Mike was a dick. Or had no clue what the Beach Boys could or should be. Either way, what a joke this man has lived. Think if just someone else with more sense than him had filled his shoes...?

Classy.

Mike's father lived into his 90s I'm sorry to tell you.

I think he meant that Mike's life is a joke, not that it's a joke that he's alive.

Ah, if English isn't his first language then I can see how that maybe possible.

Yeah Mike has lived a joke of a life...as a multi-millionaire rock star in one of the most celebrated bands of all time. :)

I screwed up my grammar while being distracted.
Native speaker here.

I meant something more along the lines that looking at Mike's decision making throughout his career one does feel a slight cringe in the spine. So many times I have asked myself 'why did he do that?'. Ofc Mike has not had an easy time with such a dysfunctional family, but he has made many moves the majority of people would question. Boycotting a PS tour is a perfect example of this.

I also think if Brian had a slightly less daft cousin the Beach Boys could've had a stronger legacy in music besides their surf and PS output. It seems Mike has commited himself to enforcing popular knowledge and discouraging other aspects of the band, which should be a focus of pride imo rather than a dark chapter to hide from history.

The bottom line is that Mike cares most about money. He's been through many divorces and is the type of personality who wants to look as if he is incredibly successful, even if he has to go millions of dollars in debt to do so. His artistic sensibility is almost non-existent, and his main goal is to be famous and make money. Musical integrity has never been on his agenda.

He's done a lot of good, of course. His unique voice helped make the Beach Boys an amazing vocal blend. I personally love his voice and don't think anyone else could have adequately replicated his performance with certain vocals. He wrote some good lyrics for certain songs ("Good Vibrations" for example). But he has done a lot, I repeat, A LOT to tarnish the legacy of the Beach Boys. Their reputation among critics and the mainstream public (yes, Mike, the mainstream record-buying public) would be a lot of better if not for his numerous boneheaded decisions.

Not sure of your logic on that one.

All of Mike's decision make perfect sense if you consider him behaving like a CEO of a corporation ... which is kind of what he is in a sense. The Beach Boys are a business, and Mike has run it like one, and it has been successful.

How many of you, when you go to work, would take a (potentially drastic) pay cut because your company wanted to be experimental and try something different that would be expensive and potentially lose money, for the sake of art?

First of all, we don't KNOW it was Mike and if it was Mike, he has/had the right to his opinion/vote, like it or not..... The set list they were touring in 1983 was very very good and, to be honest, Pet Sounds in it's entirety would have put people to sleep in 1983. Wasn't the album not even in print at that time?.... Nah, Pet Sounds was better off being re-discovered by geeks like us and it's legend getting bigger and bigger ala SMILE. The Beach Boys, especially Brian have done damn well using missed opportunities to later advantage.

One interesting thing about these quotes is the line, 'When an unacceptable offer from the 'swing voter' was finally proposed in 1991, Mathews officially passed on pursuing the Pet Sounds performance project as he preferred to protect his relationship with one of his closest friends.'

This article is just odd in my opinion whether it is accurate or not.

IIRC, Carl opposed to a Pet Sounds tour in the mid 90s favored by Mike, Al and Bruce, because he thought Brain wasn't able to cut it. That fits with protect his relationship with one of his closest friends, Carl Wilson ... because,  in 1991, Carl and the rest of Brian's family were suing to get Brian removed from Landy, so, it wasn't a good time either for such project.

I'd really like to know about those "original charts"...

The article also says that Matthews "chose to sit out the C50 tour but provided consultation during rehearsals"was he asked to be a part of the C50 band?

The only way it couldn't be a car crash in 1983 is if Carl and Al did the heavy lifting instead of BW. And even then that's up in the air, given the general decrepitude of The Beach Boys at that point. Carl's 'I have a hard enough time keeping the band together!' is striking - obviously getting them to play music competently was out of his powers. That's a real shame.

In the 1995 instance, it's different - Obviously Brian's voice had changed drastically in tone but he had a lot of his upper register back, and more importantly had his confidence restored. Sadly, Carl seemed pretty artistically beat at that point, probably because of his illness.

The article is written in a strange way (even by Wikipedia standards). The tone of it suggests that he has probably played a much larger role in certain events than is likely.

Sure looks like he wrote his own wiki entry to toot his horn bigtime to me. There's no cites for any of the C50 stuff.

I mean, cmon:

" it was Mathews that urged the band (through Jardine) to get out and play some intimate shows with a live audience to see how the band reacted. The results were great and the tour went well with sold out shows all over the world."

Oh, I get it. It was his doing. What a great idea, Matthews! What a good idea to have The Beach Boys play live shows. It probably wouldn't have occurred to any of them otherwise. Certainly not with the Capitol deal in place and albums to promote. Especially not starting with intimate venues like Verizon Ampitheatre, Anselmo Valencia Ampitheater, and at the New Orleans Jazzfest. Joe Thomas probably just overheard Matthews talking from the hallway, rushed in, and took credit for everything.

I'm not sure about that. There are quotes from Brian saying how much he hated playing shows at that time and people have commented about how he still suffered from serious stage fright in the late 90s.

Indeed. Plus:

'Mathews and Jardine began performing together for fun and Mathews helped Jardine finish his debut solo record that had been off and on since the '80's. Mathews introduced Steve Miller who recorded a track with Jardine and before it was over, Neil Young, Glen Campbell, America, Flea, Stephen Stills, David Crosby and many all contributed to "A Postcard From California.'

So it was entirely down to him that all of these people appeared...

I was thinking more in the 'spent most of the time post Landy trying to make great news Beach Boys music and getting married and just generally being creative/happier' but absolutely.

Turns out Matthews has a (supposedly) personal e-mail account on his web site. I've just written him, hoping he checks it, asking about this.

So it turns out the guy playing drums on Keeping The Summer Alive was the REAL mover and shaker behind the scenes in Beach Boys land??? Makes perfect sense, right?  >:D

 :lol

Yeah, this all reads like many other instances I've read of various associates of bands/artists who are clearly kind of building up their association. It's almost more sad when the person in question *DID* really have a real hand in something and wasn't just some guy who met them once or something.

I don't know who wrote all of this material, but Scott Matthews really played on some BB sessions and he really is buddies with at least some of them still. I believe Matthews did sit in during the encore during the Brian/Al "Pet Sounds" show (ironically) in 2007 in Oakland.

I don't discount that probably many associates over the years pitched seemingly good ideas to the band, and they rejected them. Maybe the band really gave them some consideration, maybe they didn't. I don't particularly buy that we were like just inches away from having a "Pet Sounds" tour in 1983. The band situation was so f-ed up at that time, it seems like anybody who was intimately involved with the band and their tour operation would know what an uphill battle it would have been at that moment to sell them on ditching their normal touring plans for any duration of time, slapping together a touring lineup with all the members (including Dennis and Brian at that time?) and getting out of their "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" mode to learn the entire "Pet Sounds" album?

Even if it was *proposed* in 1983, that doesn't mean it would have *happened* anywhere near 1983.  How long was the 50th tour proposed for?

Cheers,
Jon Blum

Personally I don't buy a single word of that. Matthews tried to get the project going for eight years ? Time to ask someone who would know for sure.

The C50 project was first mooted summer 2010, in tandem with The Smile Sessions.

I don't at all neccesarily think the entire thing is completely made up. I don't think it's at all unlikely that he could have mentioned to one or several BB's that it would be cool to tour "Pet Sounds." What seems more likely, however, is that it never got much beyond "oh yeah, that would be cool, we should look into that" status, as opposed to an eight-year-long intense struggle that included board meetings discussing the concept, or that it was all but a done deal were it not for one member.

I'm baffled as well with the idea that touring "PS" was a unique idea. Maybe it was less common for "classic rock" acts to dredge up old albums and peform them in full back circa 1983, but I can't believe that nobody else ever had the idea to do the full "Pet Sounds" album. I would also imagine various associates and friends of the band casually pitched various members all sorts of ideas over the years, and maybe some of them garnered responses from various members along these same lines of "yeah, we should look into that."

Yesterday I got in contact with Scott Matthews by email. Next week I'll be having answers to the PS tour questions ("I can't be brief as these specifics are not all yes/no"). He's planning to write about that in his own book.

How about was he asked to be part of the C50 band as the wiki site implies?

That entry reads that Matthews was given gold and platinum Pet Sounds discs in the early 90s. Bit tricky as those awards weren't ratified until 2000.

Any news or hard sources on this matter?

Old news (october 2013), so depressing that I was embarrased to post then.
 Previously, he had proposed me to answer my questions if I let the answers to be cut & pasted onto a "extensive interview" with him and his whole career. I agreed, thinking on the whole picture.
After radio slince from his part, I insisted and he answered saying that he was very busy and had no time for "reminisce with fans of my older work and/or relationships" unless it were for a big project, like a book, interview etc.
I answered him pasting his previous e-mail and saying that an answer (of the same lenght that his refusal) from him would be useful for several BB researchers (and I introduced myself from the start as a journalist -who interviewed people way much bigger than him, btw), but he never replied.
Weird guy.

Here is a link to where the edits on the Pet Sounds article came from (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pet_Sounds&diff=579398211&oldid=579388413) (somebody named Drbaseball95)

Which seems to have originated from the Scott Mathews page (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scott_Mathews&diff=418412659&oldid=418406054) (somebody named Tikitown)

I haven't been able to find a single mention of a 1983 Pet Sounds tour anywhere else, yet Mathew's e-mail confirmation shows that the subject clearly didn't sprout from thin air. apparently, "Tikitown" is the name of a studio owned by Mathews, and it's very obvious that most of his article was either written by Mathews himself or an associate of his (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scott_Mathews#WP:TNT_and_WP:42). taken from an observation made on the Wiki talk page:
can't wait to see what the Mathews autobiography will look like