The Smiley Smile Message Board

I just picked up 15 Big Ones/Love You albums and am mesmerized by the backing harmonies on Susie Cincinnati.  Wow, it really blew me away.  It is now my favorite BB song, but I'm sure that will change as they have so many that I love to death.  As an album 15 Big Ones is quite dreadful with some hidden gems like Susie Cincinnati.  I absolutely fell in love with the Love You album.  Fantastic from start to finish.

I like it as well. The Made in California mix is even better.

I like Susie Cincinnati too, it's probably the hardest sounding rock song Al ever wrote.

Susie Cincinnati is definitely a favorite of mine as well. That wall of harmonies during the last chorus/buildup is mind-blowing.

My favorite version being the one on the 15 Big Ones/Love You twofer. The MiC version was good, but I seemed like some of the background harmonies got buried in that mix a little.

Exactly what I was talking about.  It blew my mind.

Tis an underrated track, IMO.

We could do with a compilation disc of all the various mixes and masters, please Capitol. One of my all-time post-Concert releases but I get confused about which mix I've heard where… blame age…

The best song on 15 Big Ones was the only one not recorded during the 15 Big Ones Sessions.

So true! I was kind of thinking that actually.

"Susie Cincinnati" was the song that played through my head continually in the spring of '91 (probably b/c the first 15 Big Ones CD release had just happened). In fact, I became so obsessed with the song that I considered forming an official Susie Cincinnati Fan Club. Imagine a whole fan club devoted to one song! It might also have had only one member, but hey!

It's so good, I keep wondering how it would have fared as an A-side in 1970. Brian on bass, Al and Carl on guitars rocking like they rarely ever did. And way too rarely, this track shows they really could.


Just like "Good Time" on Love You IMHO, both being from the Sunflower era.


That's subject to opinion, I still prefer the 15BO one which is pretty close to the "Landlocked" boot mix which is the best one to me.

Had I been in the first row for the C50 concerts, I'd have kept demanding "Suzie Cincinnati" yelling it out loud! :)

Great track. Kicks ass. :)

What are the chances of M&B playing it at this summer's UK gigs I wonder?

I can't imagine they would. Especially without Al.

Didn't Al supposedly stop playing it because it mentioned nicotine? Not clean enough for Al Jardine, I guess.

Man!!(ning)  Now that you've laaid down the gauntlet, they'll just have to work up a version; Maybe they can get John to sing it

John Manning?

You're not alone. From Al Jardine's interview in Goldmine magazine, 2000:

Goldmine: I understand a famous comedian really loved your song “Susie Cincinnati.”

AJ: Yeah. John Belushi loved the song. He just worshipped that thing. He came up to me and did that “I'm not worthy” thing and said, “I just love that song.” I said, “Thank you very much. Can I sing it for you?” I think we were doing our 20th anniversary special in Big Sur, and they came up to visit the ranch and that's when he told me how much he like the song. You'd see him as this big crazy guy running around with samurai swords, but he was really a gentle guy. Peace loving guy. The song was about a girl I met on the way to a show in Cincinnati. Susie Cincinnati. Again, trying to get everybody motivated to do something at Brian's house was always a goal. So I said, “Come on, let's cut this track. I've got an idea.” So all the guys were just sitting around and waiting for something to do. It's nice to have a pool of musicians who can do that. The engineers were waiting, waiting on something to get done, so we did it. It was kind of a workshop in progress, that's really what these albums were.

Given that he wrote the music and the lyrics, I'd have to seriously doubt that.  ;D

[backs away slowly, feeling for the door handle behind me...]

If it was the nicotine mentioning, well, times have changed a lot since 1970. He may have changed his mind about the appropriateness of that lyric.

I like the song just fine but including it on 15 Big Ones made little if any sense at all. Anyway, they did it and it's still a nice song. Personally I find it interesting how the BB would draw on the Sunflower sessions up until 1980 when When Girls Get Together was included on KTSA. Seems like those sessions must've been the biggest creative explosion of their entire career, at least from Smiley Smile onwards.

One thing I really like about the song is how it's an Al Jardine original that doesn't sound derivative at all. It also feels a bit like indie rock avant la lettre.

Gee, am I that transparent??? Darn!

Stamos is on a list of materials banned for importation. - assuming you weren't suggesting i sing it myself? :o

Hey, If you can Wrangle a stage invite, get up there and sing out!  Otherwise, better leave it to the GOOD John( Cowsill)

So, ah, when did JC let you know he was joining the band in the UK? Just how close are you guys?

And hey, no one complained about my singing after last year's panto! (At least, not to my face…)




If JC does cross the pond and can belt out SC in fitting style, I'll be happy enough.





Thanks for listening Scott ;)

Don't start again this boring assumption based on nil evidence. For that matter, let's be honest, everything on music industry is derivative, there are lots of songs that use the same counter melody, riffs, the whole passages etc. If you don't hear it in regards to other musicians - well, I can't help you; one couldn't be more one-sided than now is all I can say.

RangeRover, I do hear it in the work of other musicians too and still I think there are different degrees of subtlety. That said, I love most of what I personally consider Al's more "derivative" material, especially California Saga and At My Window. Lookin' at Tomorrow is great too. It's perfectly fine with me he took some of his ideas from other songs that already existed before. I'm aware of his background in folk music so it all makes perfect sense.

I think the song is decent, but nothing special.  It reminds me of Back In The USSR.  I'm not starting a fan club for it like c-man that's for sure. :-D 

Always different opinions on here (as you'd expect)... and here's another. I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of the more 'rawwk' direction the Boys went in the 70s. I like 1968-72 (ish) Dennis, the lighter, pop-rock songwriter, better than any other, later-period Dennis, and I like the poppier textures on Love You (and even the lighter bits on Adult Child, such as Lines and Baseball, rather like Steve Latshaw in the current Love You thread) more than any of the proggier or rockier gubbins on Surf's Up, CATP or Holland.

As a result, I freaking love Susie Cincinnati. It rocks, but not *too* hard. There's still a great pop song in there, and as already noted, the harmonies on the end of the song are amazing. To me, this is how I wished the Beach Boys had sounded through the early mid-70s... and less like, say, 'Funky Pretty', 'Leaving This Town', or even 'Long Promised Road' or 'Feels Flows', which I know are both generally regarded favourably, but I personally find a bit of a snoozefest.

It's no exaggeration to say that 'Suzie' is one of my favourite tracks released by the band post-1969. And like Micha, I prefer the Landlocked mix and the original mix better than the rockier MiC mix that came out last year. What some praise as 'looser' and 'rockier' just detracts from the pop excellence of the original for me...!


But there you go, we all got opinions...

What irks me is when I see the BBs being called just pop. Pop/rock I get but they were first and foremost a rockNroll band. Yeah they were vocal based but the music was/is rock! 62-77 they were solid rock, when bruce took production control in 78,9 thats when they got watered down AOR/MOR and why that era is so hit&miss/forgettable.

I think I read two different stories about Suzie over the years. One was that she was a cab driver who smoked and drove a few band members to a Beach Boys gig. Another was that she was a hooker or she hooked on the side, I don't remember.

Think of it this way...how many other rock or pop songs have a DOWNWARD modulation in the final verse? I can't think of a single one! That ALONE makes this sheer genius!

I disagree in a way. Brian is not a musician tending to rock'n'roll at all. He used the rocking style as a vehicle at first, but very little of Brian's output after SD/SN is rock'n'roll to me. Carl and Dave were the rockers, and Dennis to an extent. 1977? Love You has nothing to do with rock'n' roll IMHO. Even MIU rocks more than Love You. I agree with Bruce producing LA it resulted in being a bit... um... well, not rock'n'roll anyway.

Well, of course, these are all just labels, and labels can mean different things to different people. But certainly, in my world, to be labelled 'just' pop is absolutely not a bad thing. Good, catchy well-written pop music is insanely hard to create, and Brian did it in spades. The first time I heard 'Catch A Wave', it made me dance spontaneously around the room, and when that high final line came in, I was so excited, I thought the top of my head would come off. Same with the ending of 'Fun, Fun, Fun'. But by halfway through the solos in Feel Flows or Leaving This Town, I'm yawning and looking at my watch, wondering how much more there is of this track to go...! And something of that feeling returns on parts of Love You (the tag of Johnny Carson is catchy, warped pop genius in my opinion. Weird, short and simple, but could I get it out of my heard for days after I'd first heard it...?)

It seems to me that, sure, Brian's ealry productions have the amplified bass and something of the rhythm track of early rock and roll, but as Micha says, it soon departs from that track. Soon after 1965, you're looking at most tracks with no hi-hat and maybe a snare at most in the rhythm track, and no lead guitars. And there are hardly ever any guitar solos on Brian's stuff after 1965. Exceptions come when he was less involved, and suffer in the comparison IMHO (Bluebirds Over The Mountain, I'm looking at you!)

I don't really like Bruce's production either, but for me part of the reason is that it sounds more like generic MOR rock lite - the music loses that supremely well-crafted pop brilliance and nimble harmonic movement that Brian brought to it in the early years. Some of the stuff on Holland or 15 BO, too, seems so... *leaden* by comparison (for me, anyway).

And c-man, yeah again I hears ya - a downward modulation. That's one of the things I always liked about SC, as well. Just when you'd expect it to step up a semi-tone, it wrong-foots you and goes the other way altogether. Great songwriting.

And again - if we all agreed here, it would be boring, right?  ;)

Right! :lol

One of my favourite moments in "SC" is when the harmonica bleats in B major (long after everyone else has moved on) before the final romp home.   

Why the different production credits for that song? Brian is credited on 15 Big Ones, and Al is credited on Best of the Brother Years.

Al sat on Brian's knee during production/mixing, so no one is really sure which Beach Boy to give the credit to.

Well....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMke6GDxpU

Cab driver, real name Joellyn Lambert.

And when Dennis goes "Awww-rrrrrr-rrrrrh" during the drum fill. Priceless.

Should have guessed it was Dennis! Thanks. That part reminds me of a similar moment in The Who's "Substitute"...