The Smiley Smile Message Board

In the story about CSNY 1974(current issue) they say the following, "Nostalgia for the recent past swept the nation. Happy Days and Grease presented a rose-colored view of the 1950's. Even the Beach Boys, reduced to a theater act a couple of years before, were suddenly playing to enormous crowds hungry to sing along to Good Vibrations once again."
Really?
1972 was in the heart of the period of their best live performances, and 1974 was even deeper. I'll let the subscription run out again.

I was thinking the same thing when I read that.

Rolling stone is a bloated, ponytailed half dead corpse still hopelessly clinging to those bygone days when the record biz was a billion dollar racket and payola was king! The only purpose they serve is to prop up the remaining few "big label names" and to pretend that they still matter ...... All we get now (aside from the great Matt Tambi articles) are endless Jack White fellating write ups to fascinating insights into how Dave Matthews comes up with a set-list .... A big "rock n roll moment" for them is when the drummer from Weezer catches a frisbee mid-song!

Good riddance.

Rolling Stone has always been garbage.

Yeah, I usually hate Rolling Stone.

At one time, someone gifted me a subscription, which it worked out great because the cover stories seemed to luckily coincide with whatever band I was obsessing over at the point.
However, I can't even remember the last time they had a cover story I was interested in. I'll probably just let the subscription run out and we will go our separate ways.

Allthetime I hate Rolling Stone.

Yeah, but in this case the writer is correct. He refers to the release of "Endless Summer" in 1974 and the enormous wave of nostalgia  driven, sold out stadium tours that followed. I don't take it as an insult to the BBs creative output in the early 70s.

There's a picture from that tour of Neil Young watching The Beach Boys perform. He has the hugest smile on his face. it's a great picture. I looked for it, but no luck.

Neil does love him some Beach Boys. Many don't know Neil has been surfing for eons.

I think Rolling Stone is not that offensive with that line, IMO. The Beach Boys new releases in the '70s didn't sell all that well. Their big comeback with "Endless Summer" was built on the wave of '50s and pre-Beatles' '60s nostalgia.  The Beach Boys can thank George Lucas for giving them props in "American Graffiti." There were also retro style bands like Sha Na Na and Flash Cadillac around in the early '70s and late '60s. Sha Na Na played at Woodstock, if I remember correctly, and they were apparently on the bill at places such as the Fillmores West and East. Guys like Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, and Chuck Berry were also playing those places. Due to that nostalgia for the old school rock among the hippies, it wound up being logical for the Beach Boys to play with the Grateful Dead. The comeback of Elvis as a live performer also helped build a demand for old school rock acts, though his was a slightly different audience than the crowds that went to the Fillmores.  I'm sure "Endless Summer" sold to a lot of the hippies still around in the '70s as well as their teeny bopper little brothers and sisters, and quite a few of the type of  people who were going to see Elvis in Las Vegas.  Yet only a select few, comparatively speaking, were buying the new Beach Boys music.

All good points! It's just fun to bash RS for any reason :)

Absolutely this. Look up their unfairly negative reviews of classic albums then hilarious back-tracking when time proves them wrong. Look up their white-washing of RnR history claiming Elvis invented everything. Look up their embarrassing Top 500 albums list that gives the Beatles something like 6 of the top 10 spots, essentially because thdyre the Beatles.

Rolling Stone is, has been and always will be fit for toilet paper and nothing else.

That's B.S.

Rolling Stone may not be what it use to be, but generally calling it garbage is ridiculous. They did some great pieces over the years on the Beatles and Stones and The Who and Creedence and Led Zep and whoever else various bands, and I enjoyed reading them very much. I disagreed with some of what Jann Weiner said in articles/interviews, and before many of the good writers left in a mass exodus, it was very good. Then it got to be too commercial. The two-parter in 1971 about The Boys and the one in 1976 about Brian and The Boys were great and so was photographer Annie Leibovitz. So many good, informative issues. I subscribed for awhile in the 70's until around the early to mid-80's and looked forward to a new one every time. But now I don't even bother pick it up off the rack at the grocery store to look at it.

P.S. Dave in KC, all you have to do is what I do. Send the writer an e-mail and tell him he's full of sh*t and back up your comments with the facts, that's all.

The Beach Boys basically WERE a theater act in the early 70s. Jon Stebbins's excellent concert book bears that out. They were well received overseas, but stateside the then-current material didn't always go over that well. What the article neglects to mention is the fact that began to change in 1973, before ES, and  RS themselves named them the best live band in 1974.

Well, you seem to know more about it then me so I'll defer to your judgement on this one, I suppose. Personally, the only worthwhile thing I've read from them is the article that was published in the aftermath of Altamont.

Mikie's right.  Although Wiener and RS had  a lot to do with the BBs low hipness cred in the late 60s, the major articles on the group in the 70s were enormous in their revival, and there was a ton of focus on Pet Sounds, Smile, Surf's Up, Holland, Love You etc.  Also the magazine was very important at the time in the political realm -- and they essentially gave us Hunter S. Thompson.

I'm not denying the douche quotient, but as much as we like to paint with broad strokes, saying RS always sucked just isn't the case.

Forgot about Hunter S. Thompson, Aum.  Excellent author and journalist in the 60's and 70's. Really enjoyed his writings in RS and his book about the Hell's Angels. Always wrote in the first person and his stories were both humorous and bizarre.

I loved the movie and novel of Fear and Loathing. I confess I haven't read anything else by him yet.

I'll confess, I was thinking primarily of their ratings and unfair dismissals of certain bands and/or LPs that were contemporaries of the big acts like, say, the Beach Boys and Beatles.

Even in the present, I feel they simplify history by over-emphasizing the well known. But you and Mikie have a point, I'm overlooking the years in between my personal "zones of interests" and ignoring the years in between (the 70s apparently) as well as the impact outside the pages of the actual magazine.

I've long given up defending/standing up/ making a case for the Beach Boys. I ain't writin' no letters to the editor. Where's their representative when he's needed. If this is OK with all the camps then so be it. It's probably too late anyway.  You had to be there, as I was, to dig it.

In fact, wasn't that 74 tour something of a back-step for them, as far as them opening for someone else when they were perfectly capable of headlining high end gigs?

Further proof:

http://m.rollingstone.com/music/news/weekend-rock-question-whats-the-best-phish-song-20140627

That's crazy. The article is spot-on. The truth is that the group's albums sputtered commercially and its concerts played to increasingly more selective audiences in more and more intimate venues and less gate receipts. Capitol, from which the Boys fled to the potentially greener pastures of WB, found gold in the moldy oldies of the 60s, and the group began living in the past, on a gradual basis. First, it pulled out a medley of the old stuff as an encore of the less successful live new material, to let its hardy fans leave on a high note. Seeing how well that played, it gradually took over, and the shows became celebrations of the past, a healthy antidote to the more cerebral and often progressive fare of the day. In a word, they captured fun and made a lot of money in the process, which they liked. RS was correct.

No. Just no.

Rolling Stone has been glorified toilet paper since about 1988.

I couldn't have said it better.

I was there. And I dug it too.

1974. 40 years ago yesterday, Capitol Records released the "Endless Summer" double-LP, introducing the Beach Boys to a new generation of fans. The album quickly rocketed to #1, selling more than 3 million copies, spending 155 weeks on the charts.

Two points:

1.)  I don't see any substantial inaccuracies in the article the OP cites.  Hell, I (and a number of people I know) didn't even know who the Beach Boys were until Endless Summer was released and the songs were all over the radio.  So I wouldn't judge RS based on this particular writing.

2.)  There are so many other things to judge RS on!  The last time I even looked at an issue was sometime back in the '90s when someone had left a few current issues in the lunchroom at work.  After browsing thru them and reading a few of the articles, I thought What a blankety-blank waste of time!

I think part of the problem with this RS entry is the attitude it projects, pairing the resurgence of Beach Boys popularity with that of Happy Days and Grease, when people think of Grease they think of the John Travolta/Olivia Newton John film which of course was much later (1978), even Happy Days didn't hit it's popularity peak until 75-77. Of course the Beach Boys part in the nostalgia wave was ahead of the trend, not behind it... it kind of drafted them as it's emissaries, even though they'd been resisting it for years. By '74 it was inevitable, really American Graffiti in '73 is what initiated and catapulted the pop-culture BB's/Oldies association towards the mainstream. But technically this RS entry is correct (sorry I know it hurts), Happy Days premiered in Jan '74 on the heels of American Graffiti, and of course Grease had been a Broadway success since '71, so even though those associations are uncomfortable, they are technically or chronologically correct. And yes the Beach Boys were a "theater" level act in '72...they just started growing out of the theaters and halls toward arenas in '73, and by '74 had established themselves as a hot and in demand attraction that could even fill stadiums. Nostalgia played the major role in that audience growth spurt.

:lol

Here's to Pinder!  :beer

Even if people don't agree...I find your expression gifted.  A little levity!  :lol

Wonder if that was my photo - I've got a great one of Neil sipping a can of beer while watching The Boys.

Haven't read this entire thread, but I don't see where it mentions The Beach Boys opening for CSNY that very summer; (I'm sure it must be mentioned in this thread.  Excuse my old person moment, ok?)  I traveled all over Texas with The Boys, enough that we had t-shirts that read TEXAS Tour '74 with all the artists & dates on the back.  I remember the 'official' tour shirt was a Joni Mitchell painting of CSNY, and she was also on a lot of the bills.  I also remember The Boys opening for them in Giant Stadium & Oakland, if I'm not mistaken.  I know the old adage is "if you remember the sixties, you weren't there", but it kind of overlapped into the seventies for me...  Thanks heavens I have the photographs to remind me of these times.

Come to think of it, I guess all of these dates must be in Ian & Jon's book!

I caught that tour in Denver, and it was a great show. The show was held in Mile High Stadium, and there were 80,000 rabid music fans there. The Beach Boys were outstanding musically, with their show being a mix of 60s and 70s music. CSNY were also at their best that evening, and the nuttiness that is documented about their drug use  was abated in Denver. What RS says is true, as the previous show The Beach Boys played was at a much smaller venue in Colorado Springs, in a hall that seated roughly 3000 people. That show was 6 months prior to the Denver show with CSNY.

Rolling Stone ? I used to say i wouldn't wipe my arse with it.
Changed my mind though. Nowadays i WOULD wipe my arse with it..........

I was there.....

1973

Winterland, San Francisco: Beach Boys, Three Man Army (November 18, 1973).
Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento: Beach Boys, Three Man Army (November 21, 1973) Still have my concert poster for this.

1974

Day On The Green #1, Oakland: Grateful Dead, The Beach Boys, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (June 8, 1974). Still have my concert booklet for this.

Day On The Green #2 & 3, Oakland: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Band, Joe Walsh, Jesse Colin Young (July 13 & 14, 1974) (Still have my big yellow poster for this). Think they were at Ontario Motor speedway with The Boys around this time - bought some drinking glasses with the BB logo on them commemorating the event.

National Exhibition Hall, Sacramento: Beach Boys, Dec. 21, 1974

1975

Day On The Green #1, Oakland: Chicago, The Beach Boys, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Bob Seger (May 24, 1975). (Still have my poster and concert booklet for this). One of my all time favorites.

1976

Day On The Green #5, Oakland: The Beach Boys, America, Elvin Bishop, John Sebastian, Eureka. (July 2, 1976) Brian's back. Still have my concert booklet for this.

1977

Cow Palace, San Francisco: The Beach Boys, (December 28, 1977)

1978

Day On The Green #1: The Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Elvin Bishop, Norton Buffalo (May 28, 1978) Still have my concert booklet for this.

Did you miss December 15, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena? Great show. You must have been there, i still have my ticket stub, I think it's on the back cover of the BB's FAQ book.

Day on the Green '76 was the peak IMO. DOTG '78 was pretty much a train wreck.

Jon, I don't remember for sure. Maybe I wasn't at the Cow Palace show after all and I think I mighta been at the December '76 show instead. I remember Brian standing up there in a bathrobe singing Surfer Girl. Was that the December '76 show? I think it was.

I liked the '76 Day On The Green show, but I think the Beachago concert in '75 edged that one out. That was a great memory for me.

Yeah man...Brian in the black velvet bathrobe was Dec. 76, playing bass and looking good. You were there.

I don't think RS ever "got" The Beach Boys, though they tried a few times I think and maybe verged on it.    I don't care much for Jann Wenner, but the publication itself had its moments of earned glory.  
Their position (valid or not) as the "word as Gospel" on all things rock and roll, gave them the clout to play favorites and stuff some of their ignorant opinions down the readerships throat - kind of like the rock and roll hall of fame does.

However, it was because they named Murmur by REM album of the year in '83 that i decided to go buy it and give this strange new band a try -  turned out to be one of my all time gobsmacking music experiences, so I have to thank RS for that anyway.  :)

Hey I hate Rolling Stone with a passion.  But of all the reasons to discontinue the subscription, this one seems quite trivial.

You were at most of those gigs too, weren't you Jon?

Rolling Stone has given the Beach Boys plenty of publicity and major articles over the years, including cover stories. More than any other publication that I can think of, at least in the United States. I'm not sure what the anger is about a few lines in an article that isn't even about them. Maybe the person writing the CSN&Y article is not a big fan of the Beach Boys. Not everyone likes them. I know many people with what would be considered good taste in music who are not fans. They may respect what they did, they may have given the music a chance due to its reputation (much of it established through mags such as RS), but they simply don't enjoy their sound or their songs, be they the surf material or "Smile." Therefore, that type of person isn't going to know that much about details of their history.

Please note the last word, "again." I've come and gone several times. I just happened to find an excuse to leave again. For now.

Looking through the history of Rolling Stone and the Beach Boys, I think what has been mostly a positive-leaning view of the band's music has gotten shadowed by things like the Jann Wenner piece calling the hype around Brian at that time a "promotional shuck", or whatever it was.

Don't get me wrong, I have not much love for the magazine and have posted many reasons why, nor would I defend them because I have seen more head-scratching, ridiculous pieces appear in their pages than ones I can say "man, that was a great article."

But I'd recommend especially for some of the posters in this thread to pick up a copy of the book collecting RS's record reviews from the late 60's and early 70's. For obvious reasons, the first Beach Boys album that was written about was "Wild Honey", but in my old and tattered copy there are reviews for their albums from WH through Sunflower.

And reading through them, most of it from the various writers stays positive. They're not "hit pieces", they're not pointing out all the flaws or the problems with the music while ignoring the good stuff.

Instead, if you read and re-read some of those original reviews, see if you pick up on a common thread in those pieces. The writers seem to be challenging the Beach Boys to recognize their place in the music world (already established in less than a decade of forming, mind you). This band which even in 1969-70 these writers were acknowledging had made incredible music, game-changing music in some cases, was still doing high-quality stuff, but did anyone care? One writer even asked that specifically in a review. It was a tough period, sure, but it seemed like there was enough praise where praise was due (in the context of when these albums we take for granted were new and uncharted territory), and some missteps were called out.

So to suggest RS has had a more negative slant on the BB's going back to 1967 might be challenged by reading some of the actual reviews as they appeared.

And keep in mind, one of the few issues I bought in the 90's was when they reviewed the GV box set and gave it a 5-star, glowing review, while at the same time expressing a few thoughts that i think many fans shared as they were going through each disc.

The issue of what gets published in 2014 is I think a sign that the generation of writers and reviewers who might be the newer people on the staff might have a different perspective on the bigger history of music (rock especially) based on their own formative years. So, for example, someone who thinks whatever current bands were blowing their minds in their formative listening years in the early 90's or late 80's or whatever time frame are the keystones, the benchmarks of how and when those sounds and styles came about. So they may regard 60's artists and history as too far in the past to be relevant to what they think the history of certain styles of music is or should be.

Which means you might find a younger reviewer writing about a new flavor-of-the-month rock band name-checking The Strokes or the Pixies as more familiar and convenient connections to a precedent for those sounds, when there may be any number of known records from 1966 that basically have the same sounds, attitude, and vibe...but again it's all about what kind of lens someone is viewing the history through when they're trying to relate something current to something in the past.

I guess the decision to agree or challenge that kind of thing is up to those reading the articles. But a call for some larger perspective in these writings going beyond underground music of the late 80's or 90's to make comparisons wouldn't be out of line.

Yep, for sure. I didn't get started as early as you Mikie...'75 was my first.

What does "theater act" mean? I've never heard the expression before. Then again, I don't get out much.

I think it means that, as far as working bands go, you have "club acts" ... meaning a band like The Velvet Underground were in their time: playing places like Max's Kansas City, basically a bar band that might have it's own draw but will play places, basically bars, where people will turn up regardless of who's playing just to drink and check out some music.  Then you have "theater acts" ..... who will play larger venures or converted basketball arenas or college sports halls where all patrons will have bought tickets to see this particular act, or a specific act on the bill. Carnegie Hall is a theater. Filmour West was basically a club. The Troubadour in LA is a club that pretends it's a theater. The Wiltern is a theater. Basically, the distinction is: a theater is where people show up specifically for the music, and the place will likely have seats. Therefore, some clubs/bars straddle the line. And then you have "stadium bands" ... No confusion here. These are bands like The Rolling Stones, U2, etc: who play the most enormous places on earth.....

Thanks Pinder for your excellent explanation.

In all fairness, folks should keep in mind that the Boys were a theater act with a multi-album contract with a major record label back in 1974.

I'd say it breaks down like this...Clubs (as you said), Theaters (1000 or so seaters), Concert Halls (2000 - 5000), Arenas (10,000 and up), Stadiums (30,000 - 60k).

Yeah, that seems to be right on the money.

Funny thing is the modern "Beach Boys/Bruce Boys/Beach-Type Boys" seem to be that weird creature known as a "Festival Act" .... Mainly playing either big or small outdoor "LA County Fair" type things. Other than that, they're a definite theater act that will also play corporate parties and undefinable places like SeaWorld! .... But then again, I guess they've always been a weird hybrid.... I mean, how many other huge bands have played baseball arenas? Tons of them! But how many have done so but WITH the baseball game as part of the package??? Just our Beach Boys! God love 'em.

The "theatre act" pretty much filled these concert venues to capacity. Granted, the Days On The Green accommodated multiple acts, but the Boys sure gained additional fans when they played here. Days On The Greens were usually packed to the rafters.

1973: Winterland, S.F. - 5,400 seats plus large floor space.
1973: Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento - 3,800 seats.
1974, 1975, 1976, 1978: Oakland Coliseum (stadium) - 63,132 seats plus large outfield grass area.
1977: Cow Palace, S.F. - 12,953 seats plus floor space.
1980's, 1990's: Concord Pavilion - 12,500 seats plus lawn area.

And I remember the Beach Boys/Baseball concerts in the 80's at Candlestick. Close to capacity.

Before Brad Pitt was known as the hardest working man in show business, there was Mike Love. And whatever else one might want to say about Mike, he was instrumental in helping the band "seize the day" in '74, even if it brought an end to the "artistic democracy" that had come into play (first prominently displayed on 20/20).

As for how the BBs were handled in RS during those years (67-73), GF is mostly right. Wenner's review of Wild Honey was mostly evidence that he had little or no business actively reviewing LPs. The idea that Smiley Smile was "an abortive attempt to match the talents of Lennon & McCartney" is a product of the times, and shows a lamentable lack of understanding about the actual musical evolution of Brian Wilson.

But we were fortunate that RS became massively successful right then, because as the mag expanded Wenner kindly kicked himself upstairs and turned over almost all of the actual reviewing to people who were much more qualified to do that work. Through the luck of the draw (or good work by whomever was the music editor at the time...) people like Arthur Schmidt and Jim Miller were assigned the reviewing tasks beginning with Friends. Those guys had a much more encompassing perspective about music in general and the BBs in particular, and that resulted in a much more balanced approach to the BB's LPs.

Tom Nolan's two-part essay in 1971 was clearly the turning point in reassessing the band's importance, and gave us one of the more balanced (if not exactly accurate) looks at SMILE.

Nostalgia certainly had a lot to do with the BBs resurgence in '74-'75. Interestingly, however, American writers were loath to examine the underside of that return to the pinnacle. Examining the escalating malaise of Brian Wilson was left to the writers across the pond, who dug in with unbridled gusto (COUGH Nick Kent COUGH).

By late '75 it had become the gorilla in the room--and that's when things got REALLY strange.

That's OK. Over at the competition (Crawdaddy) writer Paul Williams was raving about Wild Honey.

That Tom Nolan article single-handedly turned me into a Beach Boys fan for life. And when "The Healing of Brother Bri" by Rolling Stone writer David Felton came out in November, 1976, I bought multiple copies for family and friends. I was really proud to see Brian Wilson on the cover of the Rolling Stone....