The Smiley Smile Message Board

How has the tempo (BPM) of live BB song performances throughout the years varied? Many bands often will speed up songs the more the songs are played (and the more comfortable the performers get with the material), and I know the 1964 Concert album has many (if not all?) songs played at a faster tempo compared to the studio versions of the same songs.

I'm sure with the variations of different drummers throughout the years, songs have probably sped up, slowed down, and sped up again at various eras. Does anyone have any further insight or observations?

Some of the songs seemed to slow down noticeably in the 90s. I remember seeing some shows in the 90s where stuff like "Catch a Wave" seemed to really plod and drag.

Brian's band seems to stick pretty closely to the original recording tempos, but for some reason "Dance Dance Dance" often seems to lag. Not sure if it just makes it easier to sing all the lead vocal lines or what.

When Carl called the shots...he handled the tempo.  W/O him it was a problem.  Scott has likely fixed that with Mike's group.  John knows what he's doing back there too.  Brian has Darian and Paul to keep his performance honest.  I think both units handle it well in this era.

It ain't always the drummer by the way.  Sometimes drummers just can't hold the beat back from racing ahead.  Carl used to count them in.  THAT was how it was supposed to roll.  As a former bass drummer with a pipe band I can tell you...the pipers were hard to keep on tempo...especially when we weren't marching/just standing and practicing.  Musicians have this tendency to 'pick it up' WAY too often.

As previously mentioned though the Carl-led band played things at a noticeably slower pace in the 90s.  There was discussion about this on another thread several months ago.

The songs all sound faster to me on the 1968 London live recordings. The tempos sound more like the recorded versions on the 1973 live album.

Circa 1994. Stamos is on drums, which may affect things a little more, but this "Catch a Wave" is pretty slow:

https://youtu.be/RQHFYuNNisM

In present day, well 2015, Mike and Bruce had solid tempos...Brian's band drags the early stuff big time...probably so he can get the words out, it would seem.

I love how the cameraman zooms in on Bruce's hands during the organ solo without realizing that he isn't the one actually playing it!

(Can we really blame him though, there were four people playing keyboards on this for some reason...)

The tempos slowed down after Dennis died.   He could really push those songs sometimes.

M and B still drag Catch A Wave, California Girls, LDC, and Dance Dance Dance.  Brian's band does too to some extend.

Al's live Cd actually has some of the best tempos.

Yeah, I feel like Denny really drove Surfin' USA and Shut Down live.

Was playing everything slow in the 90's intentional?

Forgetting live performances for the moment, isn't Surfin Safary and 409 sped up a bit?

The 90s tempos were definitely much slower. I've read some accounts that Carl wanted it this way, and that this was the groove or feel that he thought was best. This continued in the late 90s after Carl passed.

Tempos began to speed up again in the early 2000s. And the Newcastle 2004 show was probably the fastest I've heard them play. Everything was sped up, from ballads to car songs. I remember Little Honda being particularly fast. I think this added energy to the show.

Upon taking over musical director duties later in the decade, Scott worked very hard to get songs back to their original tempos, which showed musical integrity without sacrificing energy.

Some songs benefit from being sped up. "It's ok" is a prime example. As a part of the opening set in the mid to late 2000s, and also in the 70s, it sounded great! Performed in its original tempo during the C50 shows, it fell pretty flat.

a side note to tempo but can we discuss arrangement as well?  I have always been curious and wondered why over the years
with 'help me rhonda', those signature guitar fills never really were used or stood out like the record. (both the melodic bass and lead guitar intro parts).
after seeing Brian recently, I noticed the lead guitar clearly 'back in'.  
It's something that's always missing during many of the live shows, yet such a signature intro of the song.
also on topic, little deuce coupe I don't think I've heard liv3e using that 'shuffle' beat on the record or at its original tempo. 
It is a VERY short song tho.

Hah, that was great! Look at Mike's face, he looks like he's about to snap, that "I can barely control my rage" -expression.

Carl dressed like a true gentleman, in contrast with his mates, wearing possibly their most cringeworthy threads ever (and that's saying something) is truly bizarre.

Yeah... But still, I really enjoyed this performance, sluggish tempo and all. Hey, it's the Beach Boys, classic frontline rocking like only they can!

I think some of the weird touring BB arrangements evolved from doing *very different* arrangements back in the 70s, and then when they brought the songs back around closer to the original arrangement and/or key, they still never attempted to literally replicate the studio recording front-to-back.

And there are some vintage "touring band" arrangements I really dig most. I love their circa 1980 take on "Darlin'"; it almost comes across as a different song. Call it blasphemy, but while I don't like it *more* than the studio arrangement, I actually kind of liked how the touring BBs replaced the staccato lead-in to the bridge on "God Only Knows" (almost surely because they didn't want to bother playing that intricate bit back in 1966) with basically an extended, ascending version of the part as heard in the first portion of the song. They did a really good job there crafting an obviously simpler part, but one that still fit perfectly moving into a different key. In the early/mid-90s, the touring BBs *finally* went back and did it like the original recording, and I kind of missed the old version.

Carl's vocal delivery on the 1980 Darlin' also totally blows the original out of the water, by miles.

I was at Brian's show in December (on Dennis's birthday, in fact).  I didn't notice anything sounding slower, at least not enough to suck the energy out of the performance.

I'd never seen Blondie perform live before, and his version of "Wild Honey" is, well, wild.  *Very* energetic!  He took two guitar solos, walking all over the stage during each, with a tenor sax solo between Blondie's solos.
 
At the same concert, when Brian sang "Girl Don't Tell Me," Nicky Wonder (as he was introduced) played the opening lick from "Ticket to Ride" behind Darian's vibes.  He played it subtly and it fit beautifully.

"Dance, Dance, Dance" has some fast-moving lead vocal parts which dictate how fast it can be played live.

I saw Mike and Bruce in the early/mid 2000s and the first half of the show had a punk-like intensity. Same when I saw them again, this time with David too, in 2008. And Mike's vocals were a lot better than I'd heard on boots from the 80s and 90s. It was only late in the second ha;f when he reverted to being horribly nasal.

I really hate what they did to California Girls at that time. The intro seems at least twice as fast as the original and the rest of the song sounds like a totally differen tune because it's so slow.

The intro to CG is funny, because there were times when they played it *slower* than the original (circa 1980 I believe), and then later on it ended up way too *fast.*

That's a lot of keyboard playing for Bruce, I'm impressed.

That HAT!! Isn't that the one that the gramma wore on The Beverly Hillbillies?

Wow. That "Catch a Wave" was horrendously slow. It almost seemed so slow that maybe it was the tape and not necessarily the arrangement.

But regardless of how heinous that was, I'm pretty sure the group's outfits are about 30 times more embarrassing. I know it's stupid, but the reputation of The Beach Boys was done no favors by what major douches they looked like. Carl and Brian usually managed to not look that bad (with some exceptions) but Mike and Bruce, wow. And Al with that ponytail, awww man.

I don't find anything wrong with the tempo there, doesn't seem much slower than the record. Those clothes, though....where on earth did Al get that hideous hat? And sorry guys, I don't want to see you in shorts...leave that to Taylor Swift...or Taylor Mills! Carl looks cool, though, much slimmer there than he was in the S&S videos.

the Carl in the S&S video's was a very sick Carl Wilson.  We should be lucky and proud of the fact he was even there at that time.

'Catch A Wave' a few months earlier was much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bImg2cKkHHg


Got to blame the drummer I'm afraid. ;)

When it comes to the Beach Boys one can be advised on forgetting the 80's or 90's ever happened.

CRINGE performance and CRINGE outfits.

The Al hat seems to be an anomaly; while everything else they're wearing seems par for the course for that era (remember, we're not only dealing with 90s fashion, now over 20 years later, we're dealing with what guys in their *fifties* were doing with 90s fashion back then), I think the Al hat must be a gimmick, like someone gave him the hat before the show.

But yeah, overall they looked a trainwreck fashion-wise even back then. Kinda like how in the late 80s about the only thing they were all missing on stage was literally wearing a fannypack and wearing neon shades.

Thank God for whoever dressed them on the C50! ;D

Little known fact, the BBs of the 80s were actually doppelgangers, so we can't actually blame the BB themselves. Sounds far fetched, but when you go back and look at the photos, it starts to make more sense.....

(http://www.viscountentertainment.co.uk/Photos/UK%20Beach%20Boys.jpg)

Stamos certainly isn't helping. Amateur drummer. You can even hear him fumble the very beginning of the song. 100% the dude who learned just enough drums to show off and pick up women. "I'm a TV star *and* a drummer!"

What are you talking about?   :lol

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uIYFmG7HbBc/hqdefault.jpg)

I'm not big on the "Carl was above it all and never looked tacky", but certainly in this era he's dressed very plainly but nicely in black, and with the shades *does* kinda look like he's trying to enter the witness protection program to get away from Mike's pants.....

Give me this live version of "Catch A Wave" over those lame 90's versions anyday:

https://youtu.be/RzOODarjt84?t=18m18s

As bad as Mike and Bruce's outfits are in this '80s pic, some of those clothes (like the pants) might have at least been considered fashionable for a brief moment during the decade... unlike the 1994 concert footage, which has to be BAR NONE the worst those guys (including Al) have ever dressed onstage. It is approximately 1000 miles beyond embarrassing.

I'm with you 100 %

I miss this version of 'The Beach Boys'.  They sound great here. Dennis really played his heart out on those songs.  That strong backbeat drum style
that Dennis only had, really drove the energy of their songs. No one has ever replicated that 'thing that he does'

That version is a lot faster than the record, so I guess it's down to whether you prefer a live reproduction of the record, or a performance that stands on its own.

Personally, I prefer a live version of a song to have its own energy and character. Dennis really drives this performance and Carl in particular really feeds off that energy. In contrast, the nineties rendition seems rather lifeless.

I always though it a bit strange Carl wearing suits with shirts buttoned right up for outdoor shows in the heat, especially black! Or Brian wearing a designer shirt with tracksuit bottoms and white trainers.  Nothing wrong with it at all, each to their own.  But let's not make it exclusive to Mike and Bruce (although they are the worst!  ;). I guess over the years Dennis was the coolest.  What would a 90s Dennis have worn?

Clothes aside, I bet a late 80s-early 90s Denny would have rocked a crazy, hardcore mullet.

Late 80's Denny, if he'd gotten his act together, would have been Don Johnson lookalike. If he hadn't, he would have been grunge before anyone.

I like the Don Johnson image of Dennis.  Dennis would have invented the look!

No.

Well, most of us did not know at the time he was sick, but yes, I am glad he was there.

Bruce and Mike might be the most tacky and cheesiest dressed fellows which made it that far.

While I'm far from a fashion maven, I don't know if much of anything I've ever seen the BBs wear has struck me as super cool and fashionable. I think they had moments of "okay, that looks pretty cool", and usually those tend to be random shots as opposed to concert shots.

They looked uniform, obviously, in their live "uniform" era. I think in the late 60s they, or at least Carl, Al, and Dennis, tended to look pretty normal and cool. Once they hit around 1976 or so, it was all downhill. Dennis never struck me as looking well-dressed so much as pulling off the "I don't care and I just grab a t-shirt from the merch stand" vibe. I don't think the ladies terribly cared what he wore.

But Emily is right, the BBs looked ridiculous, even in 1989 and even when that neon/jagged triangles with squiggly bits pattern sort of look was popular with the young'uns. In the late 80s and early 90s they were all in their late 40s and early 50s, and arguably looked even *older* than that, and looked ridiculous when they dressed like MC Hammer's backup dancers.

But I do think even bands that were seen as "cooler" back then (and/or now) had bad fashion moments in that era. I think it's all funny in the end, especially now. Random image: Even their tour crew gear screams that era. Yep, that's pretty much precisely what 1991 looked like in terms of graphic design!

(http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzUwWDEwMDA=/z/z8QAAOSw5VFWMU-B/$_1.JPG)

Brian's not been fashionable but he had great style '65 - '73

From what I hear it seems like the tempos change from song to song year by year! Interesting hearing the tunes going by each year. Help me Rhonda sounded ALOT  different in the early 70s

That version was okay for that era and that time, when the band was trying to appeal to the hippie crowd, but I'm glad the guys went back to the classic arrangement in the 80's.

They did do some kind of strange things with the arrangements over the years.. I was listening to some old live stuff last week, and in the mid 60's when they used to do a medley of the surf songs, they would do Surfin' USA, for some reason they would drop 1 line of the lyrics out.  So it'd go "You'd see them wearin' their baggies... huarachi sandals too... everybody's gone surfin, Surfin' USA" they would delete the line about a "Bushy Bushy Blonde Hairdo" I guess so they didn't have to do the full chorus and could go into the solo or something.

And then for a long time in California Girls, Mike would go "They Make You Feel All Righ.  Ih.  Iht"

I'm sure they had good reasons for all that but it's always strange hearing them consistently do it different than the record...

It's fun to listen to all the different intros that they've done for Do it Again over the decades. Just during the 70s alone there were several!

some thoughts:
like a lot of bands over the years, they get tired of doin the same old 'crap' night after night, so they play with the arrangements to keep things
fresh for the performers, and also try to keep a good tune 'updated' to whatever is happening in music.
The great thing about the Beach Boys, they had a pool of great material to work with.  
interesting song arrangements done live:
help me Rhonda.  Always loved the original record, always loved Dennis singin this in the 70's to change it up a bit.  They also key changed this one over the years.  Never really got into Carl's lead vocal on this on the live recordings however.  Has too much of an Al imprint it's hard to almost hear anyone else do it but him.
good ol' Barbara Ann.  Now here is one song we all love yes? ha.  I like the song in it's original context as a party song, but as a full band live track,
it is boring as hell to me.  I would have loved for them to interpret this over the years in the  'unplugged' setting.  For a vocal group, this would have
been great to use in a small set in the show with 'their hearts', 'surfin', 'add some music' without a full band backing.  Simplify.
In a live setting, this song has been went from a 'walking bass' shuffly feel to a rock tune.  

One song I have not had much time for is 'be true to your school'.  I actually prefer the album version if I had to choose. The honeys and all that
'noise' doesn't do much for me, but however as a live track somehow, it seems to go over on a crowd somehow, even if it wasn't really a hit.

I like the song 'H&V', but always thought this song works live better than the original single mix (Sorry Brian).  This is a great ensemble of melody
and instrumentation that after hearing the 'smile' sessions stuff over the years, probably should have been a better compilation of parts.
I have seen Brian do this, the C50 tour doing this, and it is always a great performance tune.

The recorded version of 'little deuce coupe' is a cute little song, but again done live over the years, they made it into a rock feel instead of the
'shuffle' sound of the original record.  This is one that would have benefited being into the almost acoustic set.  Snare drum, bass, piano. acoustic
and electric guitar, and the vox on top.  That's all.  I know some venues have it's limitations for this setup, but would have been neat had
they approached some of their tunes like that over the years like the unplugged 92 tour.  
Some of those early songs are so dang short, that it would almost sound like a medley over a 20-25 minute set.

Yeah that's some good ideas... I like some of the rock versions, though.... that version of "Little Deuce Coupe" that's on the Hallmark CD is friekin' awesome.  It's like a wall of sound, even the way Mike counts it in, is just perfect.  He does the car song intro thing, and then you hear "a one, two, three, fou..." and then this entire wall of Beach Boys "LITTLE DEUCE COUPE......" the sound pressure is outstanding.  Zero to Hero in 1 moment, love it!

Also the drums in some of the versions of "Heroes and Villians" were just kick-ass, sometimes when the Beach Boys veered towards Hard Rock I loved it.  Such smooth voices but with the guitars and drums cranked up it really sounded great, imho.  Check out for instance the drums on the In Concert album, about 2:30 into the song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cyA7keBgvk

I know a lot of people don't like the drums on that album though, not sure why :) 


You mentioned "Barbara Ann", I've never liked that song (the off key singing even as a kid grated on me).. but for whatever reason, I really like how JEFF sings it!  The "whoooaaa BARBARA ANNNN!!!!!" just works for me, I don't know it's something about the way Jeff swoops up into it. 

Generally though I agree with you that on some of this stuff when they turn it into a rock song, it would be even more interesting if they were a little more reserved with it.