The Smiley Smile Message Board

I am just curious to know when the Beach Boys went on tour with the Grateful Dead, how did their fans react? Are there any Dead heads on here that became Beach Boys fans at a concert? Or perhaps later? I would like to know you initial reaction or if you have friends that were Dead Heads and what their reaction was.

they didn't go on tour together, i believe it was just that one appearance at the Fillmore wasn't it?

it's silly to think that a lot of deadheads weren't already Beach Boy fans, but i'm sure they gained a few more after that show.

i'm a deadhead and i always loved the Boys.

Really? I thought it was tour. I also thought that Dead Heads would mostly be too hippy to consider the Beach Boys. I am talking perception here.

This question could actually be about any hippy types that saw them at a festival in the early 70s. I could imagine it changed people's perception of the Beach Boys.

It was a single appearance, April 27, 1971, at the Fillmore East. 

Roughly 20 years ago I was at the home of Sandy Troy, huge Deadhead and soon to be author of a Jerry Garcia biography, "Captain Trips".  Sandy was showing me his massive reel to reel library of Grateful Dead concerts, and asked what I wanted to hear, so I suggested the BBs and the GD at the Fillmore East.  Knowing that I was a big fan of the Beach Boys his reaction was polite, but it was obvious he wasn't much of a fan of the BBs, and he didn't seem to be very impressed by the fact that the BBs had shared the stage with the Dead on that occasion.

(As a side note, in the summer of 1999 his daughters Lindsey and Anna, ages 13 and 15, recorded four never-released demo tracks, written and produced by Cindy Lee Berryhill, all with strong Brian Wilson / Beach Boys harmony influences.  A few years later, as The Troys, the girls recorded an album for Elektra, but in a different style with no BW/BB influences.  The album was not released, but a couple of singles were, shown on MTV and still available on iTunes.)

Side note on side note -- Cindy Lee Berryhill was the partner of the late great Paul Williams of Crawdaddy fame, keeper of the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys flame in their darkest days and a major architect of the Smile myth via his interviews with David Anderle first published in Crawdaddy and later reprinted in Outlaw Blues and How Deep is the Ocean?

I don't know how the Dead fans reacted exactly at the Fillmore gig, but there was a lot of buzz at the time  and played a big part in their early 70s "resurgence," particularly in making them somewhat hip -- for better or worse.  But the band pretty much killed wherever they played in that era.

On the recording you can hear Deadheads yelling "bring back The Dead"  :lol lol so i don't think it was exactly whole heartedly embraced, but I'm sure some ppl dug it. I would say they are hampered by a long set up time & tuning in between songs. Mike Love comes off as a bit cheesy (at least in the head context), and I'd say it works better when they are playing together rather than just having the BB up there playing a few tunes. Its cool though, and I'll always dig how they introduce them as "another California group" & by the cheers you can tell the crowd totally was expecting the Airplane or something like that not the Beach Boys haha. Here's the archive stream of the show in full: https://archive.org/details/gd1971-04-27.sbd.miller.114461.flac16

If the worst came to the worst, the deadheads could've put their fingers in their ears and pretended the dead were tuning up - though that would've taken longer than the whole BB segment...

My cousin (huge Dead fan) tape recorded the concert for me on a cassette like over 20 years ago.  My favorite part is when Mike says..  "Now how bout a car song?".  The crowd goes nuts.. and then "..round round get around.. ".  The crowd seemed to love it.

Other best moment is when somebody yells..  "LETS GO TRIPPIN'!".

Thanks for that. Interesting to read from Dead heads perspective.

practically no one understands the Beach Boys... very sad

Yes, not even the Beach Boys :). But seriously, I can only imagine when they performed songs like All This is That, Feel Flows or Leaving This Town live to an unknowing audience in the early 70s the kind of reaction they got. Probably something akin to the Tommy Boy scene where Farley and Spade are like "this song sucks!" Then a minute later they are both singing along in tears.

The Beach Boys didn't even play 59 minute jam sessions between extended live versions of their songs. Complete rubbish.

I don't recall "Feel Flows" being played, but the other two along with other current songs of the day received good to respectful reactions.  Of course the roof came off for the hits which paved the road for you know what.  Man those were great times to see them.