The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've been wondering this the past couple days, where would have become of each member if the Beach Boys never happened?  Al obviously would have ended up being dentist.  Maybe Brian would have finished his degree in psychology and become a therapist?  The real mystery is would have become of Mike, Dennis, and Carl? 

Mike had great career potential in the gasoline industry.....pumping it. He also was a sheet metal worker at the family business I believe. He did rather well for himself. More power to him, he has lived more than the American Dream.

Brian would have become a behind-the-scenes writer/ arranger /producer. Carl and David would have formed a surf instrumental band. Mike become a small business owner, Dennis a bartender.

If I recall correctly Mike was fired from his fathers sheet metal business after the whole fiasco with him knocking up his girlfriend. 

I've been listening to the Smile Sessions and when I hear Brian directing the musicians it reminds me a lot of my high school band teacher.  Brian probably could have made a great music teacher.

When I think about Dennis never being a Beach Boy, the words "reform school" somehow spring to mind...  :)

lol, me thinks you are correct with that assessment.

myKe luHv's future would have been mostly behind a broom or quite possibly a grease monkey for a quick lube joint. I can also see him doing jail time for beating women now and then or not making child support payments or both. Perhaps a future with Barnum and Bailey would have been a natural career path.  >:D

I could envision Brian running his own deli.

I forget the source (the Tom Snyder interview maybe), but Carl once said he might have become an architect, when asked that question.

I think Clack is on the money.

Given Mike's work ethic he would likely have been very successful in any number of endeavours. Perhaps real estate/property.

Mike - R&B promoter, later a movie producer
Brian - (as per Uncle Jesse) music teacher, later a Professor in Music at UOC
Carl - session muso
Dennis - AGD called it with reform school student, but in later years a born again youth minister
Al - Horse breeder
Dave - Mechanic
Bruce - Vice President of the USA

In imagining what might have been, I'm leaving professional music out of the discussion, since the band was the only reason the boys were involved in the music industry. Prior to that, none of them were really going in that direction, individually. So, I doubt, without The Beach Boys, any of them would have gone on to be big players in  popular music.

So, no Beach Boys to shape their direction and finances…

Al was going to college. He probably would have finished that and settled into an upper middle class life as a local dentist.

Dennis probably would have worked a series of jobs that he got fired from, and eventually wound up in jail.

Mike does have business drive. Given the right opportunity, he could have made a successful small businessman.

Carl is hardest to predict because he was young when the band formed, and probably hadn't given his future much thought. I don't think he would have been a professional musician, because it was the band that propelled him in that direction. He probably would  have gone on to college and gotten a degree in some area of interest. If he said architect,  let's suppose that.

Brian was in college, and seemed interested in both music and psychology studies. I think he would have wound up teaching music somewhere, maybe at the college level.  But without the band and the push from them and Murry, I doubt he would have followed up on getting his own music out there. One has to wonder, though… without the band, the pressures of the business and the pull of the drug scene, would he have stayed relatively healthy?

I recently read Mike gave up gas pumpimg after being held up at gunpoint. If that's true, we can safely rule gas pumping out.

Brian would have become a psychologist and treated Landy for his delusions of grandeur. ;D

You have too much free time.  Go outside.

(quote from Cyncie!)
Brian was in college, and seemed interested in both music and psychology studies. I think he would have wound up teaching music somewhere, maybe at the college level.  But without the band and the push from them and Murry, I doubt he would have followed up on getting his own music out there. One has to wonder, though… without the band, the pressures of the business and the pull of the drug scene, would he have stayed relatively healthy?
[/quote]
Interesting...Brian - Music + Psychology = Prefiguration of a field now known as "Music Therapy"...I guess that is what the BB music/musicians all ended up/doing!  :lol



 

I think a healthy Brian would have wound up scoring movies.

Andrew - how many movies already have BB music as part of the score?  A great unintended consequence...

Last night I caught some old retro stuff on Netflix...Troop Beverly Hills! Make it Big with Carl so prominent in the vocals!  Remember seeing it with my kids when they were little.

Just a little reminder of how much BB music became integrated into all levels of the music industry... :thewilsons

Sad to say but I'm not sure Brian or Dennis would have been very healthy in this parallel universe.

There are many Beach Boys songs on movie soundtracks but movie scores are something different.

CSM - you can argue that.  The theme of this PG movie is girls "making it big" and being ambitious coming out of their too comfortable Bev. Hills mode.  I'm not sure I see Brian as a Henry Mancini or John Williams...and the impact is more wide-sweeping the way it worked out as filtration of BB culture into virtually every generation.   ;)

I'm not sure I see it either, though perhaps something along the lines of Randy Newman's film score work may have been a possibility...

However, I think a more likely scenario may have been for Brian to make a few local minor hit songs, maybe one of which would have appeared on the Where The Action Is box set (though it's hard to imagine that box set existing without The Beach Boys happening) then maybe he would have been employed by a record company or a radio station or something. But unfortunately I see his mental illness wreaking havoc one way or another eventually.

Maybe in that context...but given the challenges, and the reported "windows" of creativity, Brian seemed to work very well in "themes" that I would distinguish as "operettas" instead of "operas" - or a short story writer rather than a novel.  But, rather than writing specifically commercially, I suppose I could see him writing in ways that would confer benefits on others, more for social good than in a completely commercial context and would use Pet Sounds as an example, sharing his analysis of life.       ;)

I think the real question with Brian is to what extent his mental illness would have manifested apart from the pressures of the band.  That would have a big bearing on his success or failure in another endeavor.  But it's hard to see him not getting into music somehow.  But he could have made an awesome psychologist, really.  I can totally see that.

The thing about the other guys going into music - none of them were that "hooked in" to the music industry or to the entertainment world (except Bruce, whose career probably would have gone about the same as it did during the time he wasn't with the band) - and without that a career as more than a hobbyist isn't going to happen.  So I doubt Carl would have been a session guy unless he had made some connections outside the family, and that depends a lot on his own drive and desire to do it.

Interesting question.  I guess there's so many random crossroads forming our lives, it's impossible to say just what would have happened.  I think reform school for Dennis is a pretty solid guess, though.

Mike was pumping gas but I think he would have made an excellent traveling salesman. Kinda like what he does now but without the Hawaiian shirts.
Bruce without music would have been a successful florist, owning a chain of flower shops.
Carl, a high school history teacher.
Dennis would work in the tool business.
Of course Al would be a dentist.
David an addiction counselor.

I think considering how much Murry and Audree surrounded their children with music, I can believe Brian and Carl heading towards a career in this field.
I can imagine Brian taking the music teacher route whilst Carl hooks up with David and forms a short-lived surf band. Dennis fleets between jobs, girlfriends and the beach whilst Mike becomes a salesman of some kind.

This carries on until February 16th 1964-The Beatles on Ed Sullivan

Is this the jolt to start a band? Brian maybe wants a change of career, Carl and David have had a couple of local singles out and have a contact to record a demo. The surf craze has been and gone so what do they write about? Would Mike join them considering, and this wouldn't surprise me, that he is now fairly successful and wouldn't want to give up the income, especially with a wife and child(ren)? Dennis wants an escape from low paid jobs so joins in an instant.

Worth considering:

I've always had the feeling Murry would have pushed Brian into music, whether it was writing for others or shipping his demos to labels. Maybe Murry would have wanted Brian to succeed where he had failed

Without those informative early years learning from Jan Berry and Phil Spector, how would Brian have managed in the studio? Without the hits to give him confidence, how would he have acted around The Wrecking Crew and vice versa?

I can see Carl becoming a session musician turned star in his own right a la Glen Campbell. It's not often you get those guitar skills and that voice coming from the same person

It's an interesting question but after typing this out, I'm just very grateful how things turned out and what we have. Imagine never seeing Dennis pounding the drums and shaking his hair or never seeing Carl Wilson sing? And who knows, Mike could be a property tycoon running for president and Al.....well, Al could have become the West Coast Dylan with a cult following who asks his old football mate Brian if he wants to play piano on some demos!