The Smiley Smile Message Board

Does anyone know if Brian Wilson enjoyed, or disdains "Kokomo"?

He thinks it was really great.  Check out the endless harmony documentary,

In this interview, Brian plays a little bit of "Kokomo" on the piano and says he regrets not being on the track.
https://youtu.be/aL5GnkWqO1k?t=2m20s

I regret it, too.

I've always had a soft spot for "Kokomo."  And I really, really wish Brian had been on the track in some form, whether it be instrumentally, vocally or both.


Now, I'm not 'up-to-the-minute' and devotedly detail-oriented with the Beach Boys in the same manner I am with the Beatles (so I may be mis-remembering this), but I seem to recall some disagreement over the reason why Brian wasn't there (as in, Wilson claiming he was never asked, with the BB guys steadfastly saying they did everything they could to reach him).

But regardless of the reasons why, sometimes when Brian discusses the session, I get the feeling he still hurts a little over not having been there.

well soitenly!!  Had he been there, he could have  pulled a Mike Love and claimed a songwriting credit! 
Just think how much $$ that could have added to his bank account9 not to mention the added prestige)   
AND had he been a part of it, there'd be no way for the Brianistas to bicker about the song

Regardless Kokomo is bad compared to Brian's Love and Mercy. So all you Mike Lovers out there, no pun intended, think about this Mike wrote one song with a writer, Brian had a whole album completed with the help of some good and bad writers  by then and released. If Brian was on it I still would hate it, he's on the Spanish version and I don't even like that!

Kokomo is a great song. I agree with Brian's appraisal.

Just don't see how anyone that enjoys the Beach Boys can dislike Kokomo

Yeah, in that ^ interview, Brian calls it "a great record". I'm sure he was disappointed that he wasn't on "Kokomo" because it was, and still is, played a lot on the radio and Brian wanted to be on the radio. "Kokomo" was also a hit, a No. 1 single, and Brian wanted a hit. If "Kokomo" would've been just another Beach Boys' single that tanked, I wonder if it would've bothered him that he wasn't on it?

If it hadn't been a hit I doubt anybody would care what he thought about it.

Kokomo's a pretty good song. I think the reason a lot of people can't stand it is it's become thought of as a signature song for the Beach Boys by a lot and probably THE signature song to a lot of Beach Boys fans for whom Kokomo was their first real exposure to the Boys.

And, of course, because Mike loves to point out that he co-wrote it and Brian had no involvement.

Both.

Brian was still under Landy's care at the time.  If you wanted to get in touch with Brian, you had to do it through Landy, and even then Landy didn't always pass the message.

Kokomo ain't a bad song. It's a good tune.

And I'll bet that if Mike cooled it with all the gloating and appearing so glad to have done a hit without Brian, that Brian might have played it a time or two on his solo tours. But since Mike has made it a point to rub it in about the song being a hit (and specifically how it was a hit while BW88 wasn't), that may have left a bad taste in Brian's mind.

Hang on to Your Kokomego.

It's hardly like their 60s hits. It sounds more like Jimmy Buffett or something than Beach Boys. I can see how someone could dislike it and consider themselves a BBs fan.

Kokomo is ok. It's not a song I'd buy or go out of my way to hear, but when it's on, I'll listen. I just hate what it represents; Mike Loves dominion over the group and the embarrassment of the late 80s, 90s period.

Personally I like it but it's a bit too Agadoo to be truly great.

Like a lot of late period BB stuff, it sounds like what somebody else thought a BB song should sound like. I also suspect that if Mike didn't bang on about it like it was Good Vibes, there'd be a lot less opposition to it. It would just be another late period BB track but one that happened to be a hit.

Wasn't there a rumour that they asked VDP to 'push the pineapple' while Bruce 'shook the tree'? C-Man would know!

->Slo-mo kokomo? - £'s!<-

This. The melody is great, and when the chorus kicks in you're treated to hearing Al in the harmony stack with Carl sending each chorus off on a high note (no pun intended). It would've been great if Brian was involved and interesting to think if he would've had a hand in any of the vocal arranging just by being present. It's cool to listen to the Spanish version every so often to hear Brian in the chorus. Also, as it's been said many times on this board, it put the 'Boys name back out there and introduced them to a new generation. Anyone here get into the group by way of Kokomo?

I'm personally not a huge fan of Kokomo but South American and On The Island seem like Brian nods to Kokomo to me.

I'm not a big Kokomo fan, but I don't hate it. It really fit the decade it came from, it's catchy and memorable. I never saw the movie Cocktail, and I bet a lot of people haven't.. the song is more popular than the movie it came from.

That is a great find! I had never seen it. The only thing I didn't like was the angle of the camera, downward on Brian, instead of at eye level. 

Even though the interviewer was seated and Brian is always sitting tall, at his ivories, it made me uneasy.  It does seem in the time line that Brian was being held back by that person masquerading as a doctor, with only Brian in mind. 

But there is footage of Brian singing Kokomo during C50.  It probably isn't the best one, but towards the end, Al is next to Brian singing with him.

Hope it copies! Here goes... ;)

http://youtu.be/3KeeEtXgsJ4

South American? Now that is awful.

Kokomo's okay. Not groundbreaking by any means, but a nice, fun summer song. I remember hearing it when it first came out and was excited that The Boys were back on the radio.

Before "Kokomo" came out, the Beach Boys were about as popular as a mosquito up your nose.  I remember just about everyone and their mother loving this damn song when it came out, including myself.  "Kokomo" may not be a masterpiece, but it revived the Beach Boys popularity... even if it was for a short period of time.  Hell, they even recorded a Spanish version of it, which Brian was present for.

Yet Brian sang on the Spanish version. It has been a futile effort here on my part to find out how Landy allowed his participation on that version if he blocked Brian's involvement the English-sung recording.

wasn't KOKOMO produced by Terry Melcher?  Maybe therein lies the reason, at least in part, Brian didn't participate (certainly didn't seek it out).  Even if Brian & Terry were, or at least had been friends years earlier.  Landy's statement (if implied) "Brian Wilson produces Beach Boys records"

And nobody makes similar complaints Brian ain't on I CAN HEAR MUSIC - which was produced by his own brother and recorded in his own home studio

The Beach Boys weren't exactly missing from the pop landscape before Kokomo; Getcha Back had been a medium size hit, California Dreamin' did well on the AC charts, and they always seemed to be on tv in the 80's - DC concerts, sitcoms, ET, hard to miss them.

True, they had commanded the oldies circuit, but no one was expecting another #1 from them. 

Brian's a fan of the song no doubt. As it's been stated already seen in interview, he was gutted he didn't attend the recording.

I get a feeling that Landy saw the Beach Boys as a dead entity at the time and was trying to keep Brian away from them as much as possible, thinking he could more easily make Brian an established star on his own.  Once "Kokomo" became a hit, Landy probably realized he made a big mistake, hence Brian's more active involvement with the group in 1989.

Plus "Wipieout" with The Fat Boys was a big radio/MTV hit the previous summer. Now THAT was great - maybe not the rap parts, but hearing Brian's multi-tracked vocals singing what had to be his own arrangement all over the airwaves!

Brian has to be the only Beach Boy on that recording. I don't hear anyone else (besides the Fat Boys, of course).

Yup - the  Beach Boys were far from dead pre-Kokomo, even if a lot of the die hards were not thrilled with their direction at the time. It was still exciting to hear a new BB's track on the radio, whether it was Rock 'N' Roll to the Rescue, Getcha Back, It's Gettin' Late, Wipe Out, whatever. Oh, to experience that again. The only place I hear recent songs by the guys now is in the grocery aisle.

Brian was clearly singing along with it onstage at the C50 show in Sydney...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

When I first heard "Kokomo" on one of a pair of 1989 cassette tape comps (now a single CD: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Hits-Album-89/master/238177) it just made me feel old. ("So they're still around!")

Maybe it didn't help that the tape was wowing somewhat. It's all fallen into place since then (and i do mean all!) and I`m quite comfortable with it now.

Indeed, I'm always glad to hear "Kokomo" in the "grocery aisle"----particularly when Carl kicks in. ;=)

The one time I played the near infinite wave II version on the 12", I thought I could hear Bruce coming through in the mix - but that could have been a side affect of real time damage to my cerebral cortex. 

Not really. Tom Cruise was a huge star in the 80s & the BBs song clip features scenes from that movie. Not without reason. Kokomo is liked by many but I think I read that the movie was a big success meaning lots of people had seen it, the 80s youth & whatnot. Even here in Russia, it gets several re-runs a year on TV. In the U.S. it may be showing too.

Cocktail was a huge success at the time, but I'm not sure how well the movie has aged. 

It does still air on basic cable from time to time, but you don't see it nearly as often as other movies from that time period. 

Other than the Mission Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise's star has fallen a lot in the US over the past decade. 

The song didn't age well either. It sounds very dated. Cool vocs but so what?

It happens with many actors. Every actor has a film-2 that made them name in a big way so that people identify them with. For Tom, it's Mission Impossible.

It might have been a hit at the box office, but it was completely panned by critics. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1004420-cocktail/

It doesn't matter what critics said. We are talking success here. The hit factor.

Tom Cruise was a big name long before Mission: Impossible. Risky Business and Top Gun made him huge.

You're right.  Cruise was a huge name in the 80s.  But in the last decade or so, the only movies he's in that seem to be successful are the MI movies. 

I did say it too that Tom Cruise was huge in the 80s. And again, it is usual thing for actors to fade away with each decade going by. Like, every other actor that's been in a movie business for several decades is mostly known for their early work. Hence making sequels of MI & it being successful.

We covered the numbers behind the Cocktail soundtrack and the film itself in another thread recently. It was a huge summer-into-fall cash-cow of a film, and did great at the box office. The soundtrack itself by the end of 1988 had spun off two #1 singles, "Dont Worry Be Happy" and "Kokomo", and was the first soundtrack to spin off two #1's since Prince's "Purple Rain". I think the box office by the end of 1988 was around 80 million, and the sales of the soundtrack were multiple-platinum. It was a commercial success, as a film and with the soundtrack.

One point not to forget about Tom Cruise was that he was also coming off of both critical and commercial success with the film "The Color Of Money", the "sequel" to "The Hustler" that had Paul Newman returning to the screen as Fast Eddie Felson for the first time in three decades. That film was both a critical and commercial success too and helped put Cruise's stock even higher in the market as a "serious" actor after Top Gun.

I've read that discussion, the points about Kokomo clip featuring the scenes with Tom Cruise are taken from there. I agree with those who say that success of the song is driven by the movie. In the same thread, smb said that John Phillips' version of it is worse in compare to the BBs. Not really sure how it related to the BBs hit v. hit film soundtrack debates.

(http://honormusicawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/beachbiyskokomoPR45cassFHF-1.jpg)

I'm amazed sometimes at how many might disagree about the film driving the song, maybe it's a bad memory thing or something because if you go back and look at every release of the song Kokomo from the time the movie was in the theaters, the sleeve or cover art has Tom Cruise as the bartender character from the film. And it's on Elektra, which the Beach Boys were not signed to but who released the soundtrack. Every release from the records to the tapes to the CD-singles to the official sheet music had Tom Cruise on the cover.

Have the BBs and The Cruiser ever hung out? Were they ever buddies?

IMO, Cruise never was better than as TJ Mackey in PT Anderson's Magnolia - just one film after Boogie Nights which featured God Only Knows.

And let's not forget Good Vibrations was heavily featured in 2001's Vanilla Sky.

Sings Little Deuce Coupe in War of the Worlds too. He's still a sh*t actor though. If you like Vanilla Sky, the original's better. He ruins Rain Man and The Colour of Money. I'll give him Magnolia, because he's not in it that much. Born on the Fourth of July? Mmm. Better, I suppose.

I thought he was pretty good in Jerry Maguire and A Few Good Men too.  I don't think he can really pull off a complex role but he's charismatic enough, I don't think he's a bad actor at all.  He was pretty funny in Tropic Thunder too.

I'm not claiming the movie had nothing to do with the success of the song (I was 4 when the movie came out and can't speak to it at all), but in 2015 I don't think many people even think about the film when they hear the song. They probably know it's the Beach Boys though. I think the song is probably more remembered than the movie.

Contrast that with Power of Love from Back to the Future. When you hear that, most people immediately think of the film. They might know it's Huey Lewis.

Anyway, at least Kokomo is better than Problem Child.

Quite. It's very strange to say the least that the people don't want to accept this cold fact. It doesn't diminish the BBs' performance. They got popular again after all those years. Casual fans enjoy it anyway. Doesn't hurt if your song is included in the soundtrack of the box office hit film. It's a strong cred.

I'm surprised the band (as far as I know?) never did any mining of their lone (at the time) other song in the Kokomo style, that being 1980's "Sunshine" back in the Kokomo era. Seems like a perfect tune for them to have either done live in the late 80s in the same set as Kokomo, or for it to be released again in some fashion as a b-side or something. I guess maybe the band didn't like the song much. "Sunshine" grew on me over the years; even though it's not great, it has some cool harmonies and chord progressions.

The BB's totally blew the momentum they had with "Kokomo". By the time "Still Cruisin" finally appeared, "Kokomo" had been out over a year, and off the charts for at least 6 months. But the group and Capitol knew exactly what the fans needed - another compilation!

Cocktail has yet to reach Stainforth. We don't have a movie theatre though a mobile cinema occasionally comes to the village hall in the neighbouring village. As such, I hadn't known Tom Cruise was an actor… I'd understood him to be a religious leader who briefly had a raised public profile because he was once married to a famous actress.





Sorry… my take: film drove the single, but song outlived the movie.

Lucky bugger.

Anyone know what the 1988 viewership was for MTV and other outlets for the BBs' video?