The Smiley Smile Message Board

So very much has been written about Brian and Dennis that I feel content in what I know about them.  No so much with Carl, and he is and always has been my favorite beach boy.  From everything I've read, he was a wonderful person who people can't say enough nice things about.   Not only did his voice sound 'other worldly', but the descriptions of him seem the same. 

I have a couple of questions:   Why did he and Annie divorce?  Were the couple of imperfect moments he had in Australia before or after his split from her.  (By the way, what rock person ever apologizes for their bad behavior?  Unreal!)  He wrote a song for her (Angel Come Home) and she wrote a very loving message about him after his passing -- clearly they still had love and respect for each other.   How was their relationship post split?  He seemed very happy with Gina -- why did it take him so long to marry her? 

Another point I'd like to make - a bit off topic of Carl, but I think it is really cool how extended the Beach Boy/Wilson Family is.  It seems all the ex-wives still attend Beach Boy events, speak kindly of their ex's, and all the cousins are actually friends.  I think it's a legacy to be proud of. 

I was thinking just recently, while he was in this rock band, WHY did he never 'show off' as a kickass guitar player?
he was good at 16, as his solo's were and playing on the early albums. 
Yet, as they rocked things up in the 70's, he never had many dominating guitar solo's.
He is not really thought of as a great picker, just the 'bandleader' etc or the 'glue' of the band.
wasted opportunity to show off those guitar chops he no doubt must have had.
Man! imagine at one point during these later shows, Carl rocking out with a fuzz toned 'misirlou'!
I'd love to see more of his stuff, his most 'rock' playin seems to be on knebworth 1980 on 'keepin the summer alive'.
I just don't want any of Carl's solo's to end.

I recently posted something saying I wondered if Carl ever regretted not being able to really rock out, which is all I think he set out to do initially.  Mr. Desper responded that he never sensed any regret or anything negative from Carl.   Still......I think if he had had his choice, it might have been a different kind of music for him.

Just my humble opinion: I think, in later years, Carl thought of himself more as a singer than a guitar player. Even on his solo tours, he handed over the lead guitar duties to another guy.

Carl is my favorite Beach Boy, too. I mean, what is there not to like about him as a man and musician? It's interesting that, even after the divorce, Carl wanted Billy Hinsche to be in his band; and to this day, Billy has nothing but kind things to say about him. His dvd about Carl is very good for a look at the personal side of Carl. Billy's liner notes for the 2 solo cd's are also well written, very informative. No one's ever said - to my knowledge - why the marriage fell apart.

Well, consider that fact that I believe Carl was 19 and Annie was 16 when they were married.  I would think very few couples would survive a marriage that early in life.  That doesn't mean people don't still care for each other, just that life happens, particularly when people are that young.  Details beyond that are probably irrelevant and probably nobody's business unless those involved care to share them.  I didn't say that to be reproachful.  I'm just saying it because I suspect it's a closed subject.  As far as the Australia event, that was a long time after the split. 

Another mystery : why did Carl step back from the leadership position post-Holland? It was 7 years before he recorded another self-penned song, and when he did begin to write again his songs and arrangements seemed to have lost their adventurous edge.

He also handed off the main production duties to Al, Bruce, and sundry others, even when Brian was not interested or capable. Did Carl, like Brian before him, just grow tired of being the main guy in the studio?

I could easily see Carl finding it difficult to emotionally deeply invest in being the band's producer after having the reins pulled out from under him post-Holland and given back to Brian (and I say that as a fan of 15BO and Love You). Carl and Jack were onto something really deep before the Brian is Back albums.

Even if Carl wasn't necessarily consciously resentful of losing his position as a primary producer of the band's studio recordings, it's probably a case of what Brian himself felt after SMiLE: It's mighty hard for an artist (especially a sensitive Wilson) to emotionally invest themselves at the top level of which they are capable of, if their work isn't going to be appreciated or gets rejected in some way, even if that rejection is just due to circumstance, and not due to people not liking their work.

That, and the fact that Carl had to juggle being the rational brother who felt responsibility to keep his other brothers from going over the edge, never more so than as the '70s dragged on post-Holland. I can't imagine how that gigantic distraction, coupled with his own personal and drug problems, wouldn't impact his songwriting/producing game.

Carl definitely had more than the lion's share of responsibility with the band and with the family.  He not only had to lead the band from the time Brian left, but he also became the leader in the family - supporting Brian's vision for the music, keeping an eye on Dennis and encouraging his talent, and taking care of his mom. I think he also stepped in with Brian and Dennis' children when they weren't able.  I read something Carnie said about him teaching her how to drive and Scott wrote about needing money so he called Uncle Carl, who wrote him a check for $10,000.   Some people in life are givers.  Carl was definitely a giver.

Carl definitely had his hands full. I still think the weight of these responsibilities eventually contributed to his early death. And I agree that Carl's personality was more like his mother's than his father's. Brian and Dennis seemed to take after their father more - minus the physical abuse. instead, they took the abuse out on themselves.
I've seen a lot written in recent years about Carl's later songs being less adventurous than the early 70's stuff. I think part of that was, that's just where mainstream rock and pop had gone by the late 70's. A friend of mine had the honor of Carl sitting in with him as guest dj in 1977 or 78. The stuff he picked was the Rolling Stones, Chicago,  Little Feat, Bee Gees, Emmylou Harris, very mainstream for FM rock stations in the late 70's. He wasn't asking to play punk and new wave stuff. The "Youngblood" album rocks pretty good, but in a Doobie Brothers way, not a Clash way, or a AC/DC way.

Carl worked extremely hard to revive the BB's as a contemporary artistic entity, and then that was all derailed with Endless Summer, and then 15 Big Ones, which to me (and many others) represented a giant step back.  He made it clear in interviews that he wasn't happy with the direction that the band was going in.  He may have just lost motivation to write for a while as a result. 

Speaking of Carl, why did the band breakup practically immediately after his death? I know Carl was the "glue" that held them together but have any of them ever said why, according to them?

It must have been very discouraging to be hit with the realization that all their audience wanted to hear was the old stuff. When they were playing the Surf's Up/Holland era material, they were a band with a very loyal cult following; when Endless Summer hit, suddenly they were playing stadiums and filling the places up. So that presents a dilemma: do they keep on creating progressive material and hope that the audience will follow them on the journey? Or do they try to create new music in the style of the old hits? The third option being - if neither option A or B works, just tour endlessly and forget about recording. By 1980, that's what it was down to for the guys. Carl, as a solo artist, was not playing arenas and stadiums (except as opening act for the Doobies), but I think he liked the challenge it presented. When he returned to the group, it seems his attitude was 'okay, guys, even if we don't have any new stuff to play, let's at least play the old songs like we care about them'.

This is why I find it very interesting to explore the dynamics of the band in 73-75, when Jack left and there was a great deal more "bottom line" pressure coming into play. It seems that Carl found himself stymied by this development and was unable to find a path through a maze of competing interests. Carl always seems to have needed a writing partner and Jack's departure may have contributed to his inability to pump new songs of his own into what suddenly seemed to be a songwriting vacuum. (Please note that I herewith acknowledge the knee-jerk dissent about Jack's character and talent that is likely to enter these pages below in a reply from filledeplage.)

When Endless Summer hit in '74, there were several available responses to it that could have at least given the band options for creating a contemporary identity that could stand alongside the pre-Pet Sounds material. WB did make a (pretty feeble) attempt to cash in on the buzz from ES when they rereleased "Sail On Sailor" in '75, but it's rare to have lightning strike twice--what was needed, and what the band failed to supply to WB at the time, was fresh material. That didn't happen, and '75 brought more oldies-based success and a sudden crisis point in Brian's condition, which resulted in "the intervention known as Landy I" and pushed the band into the "Brian Is Back" scenario, effectively kicking the 67-73 material to the curb. Dennis' response was to get his solo LP together; Carl's was to have a series of personal setbacks--marriage, health, drugs--that bottomed out for him in the late 70s, from which he battled back with new writing partners and, a bit later, his go at a solo career.

For me the very best Carl guitar workout is the one on "Feel Flows" (I keep wanting to say feelsflow). I can't get enough of it (Charles Lloyd's flute and sax aid rather than abet what Carl is doing). Of course, the entire song is in a field of one.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this passage and Ricky's Moog outing on "Leaving This Town" are the only two extended BB workouts over a brief repeating pattern.     

Great timeline/analysis, Don. Nice post.

Perhaps too much to ask, but there was a path forwards for Carl and for the band in the late 70 s that didn't involve remaking themselves into a New Wave or avant garde act a la Rust Never Sleeps or Bowie's Berlin trilogy.

And that was the path Lindsey Buckingham took with TUSK. Mainstream rock, but with adventurous, inventive production and arrangements, an organic outgrowth from the seeds Brian had planted a dozen years previously.

DM - I think that the other two Wilsons had untapped talent and Jack did not confer talent upon them.  I think that Jack's contribution is less than the Wilson influence on him (Jack) - maybe that is poorly expressed but my take is that Jack got more from them than the other way around.  And it is a function of that 6-7 year window when the Boys had to re-invent themselves and perhaps that, is what Jack was helpful with.  

It is hard to explain that post-Vietnam era of levity, with former teens were coming of adult age and responsibility. The Beach Boys fit in better with their "down time" with the resurgence of the interest in the earlier music and the tremendous sales of Endless Summer.  How else can that dynamic going to #1 in the USA and Canada, be explained away?  Jack was "over."  (Notwithstanding his continuous tendency to be disingenuous.) I would argue that it is not knee-jerk.  A person's credentials should reflect who they are "at that moment" and not whom they wish they were.

How can the dynamic of the emergence of disco be explained?  It is not that Carl (or Dennis) would abandon solo work (as evidenced by their solo albums) but that the times had changed again in that seven year window.  It went from 1965-66 to a serious wartime climate, to 1973-4 to a peacetime climate and they had been very successful in the commercial context, during peacetime.    ;)

I'm curious what you mean by health setbacks.  Do you just mean in the context of drugs, or where there other health problems at that time?  Just curious. 

Probably referencing Carl's back problems. He tried to lift and move a heavy television set and wound up in traction.

I would not be surprised if Carl's back problems were either partly, or perhaps even entirely psychosomatic in origin, due to stress and emotions. Not to downplay actual physical injury which of course is possible... but I speak personally as someone who overcame some debilitating pain by learning about psychosomatic pain (specifically, Dr. John Sarno's book "The Mindbody Prescription"), as well as a coworker with years of debilitating back pain who also largely cured herself via reading this same book, after I lent her my copy. Sounds crazy, and I would not have believed it had I not experienced it myself...but it's true.

Don't mean for this to sound like an infomercial, just sharing my story, and how my experiences have led me to often gravitate toward thinking that many others who have physical pain (in particular, back pain) can be a result of, or at the very least, significantly exacerbated by, emotional issues. Even if Carl had doctors diagnose him with some sort of back injury, such a diagnosis can still be incorrect, with the psychosomatic origin being the real, underlying cause.

Goodness knows Carl had a lot of emotional turmoil in his life regarding his family, way more than anyone should endure.

Not to veer off-topic, but while psychosomatic pain is undoubtedly a real thing, it's not the major factor at play when someone sustains an injury, gets various x-rays and scans, with proof of a herniation, nerves being pressed upon, etc.

I also speak from experience where a family member went to a doctor with severe back and neck pain, and was having trouble convincing the doctor to do a detailed scan, and was told his pain was due to "stress", smoking, a divorce, etc. Sure, those things certainly usually don't help pain. But eventually, he got a scan and had numerous severely herniated discs which required surgery.

If Carl sustained some sort of injury, didn't go to a doctor, and just lived with the pain, then perhaps some of it could have been a psychosomatic issue. But if he went to a doctor and had something diagnosed (which I would assume would be the case if he was in traction), and especially if injuries were indicate via x-ray or scans over the years, then I wouldn't assume anything other than it being a real injury and real, unavoidable pain.

CD - I'm not a doc.  What I do know about back pain, is that it can be structural (genetic) or caused by an "incident" such as moving a TV, or even some kind of growth, which struck a nerve (pun intended) as I did a similar dumb thing and my range of motion was affected for years, and swimming helped me to regain most of it. 

And, often when docs can't identify the cause or source of the pain, it goes to the psychosomatic pile. Having watched big brother Brian's shuffling and assisted gait, suggests to me, that there is a structural relationship that both brothers dealt with.  Some kind of commonality. Carl's predisposition was likely exacerbated by moving that heavy TV. 

Stress does not help and can tighten up the muscles in an already bad back, but when docs can't see it on an x-ray, and a lot of this was before the really sophisticated scans were developed, I'm thinking the brothers shared probably something else in common besides great hair and voices.   

Sorry if this veers off-topic, but I will bring it back to Carl...

HeyJude - While I certainly won't say that all back pain is unequivocally psychosomatic, I will just add that even despite multiple diagnoses that you mentioned (getting various x-rays and scans, with proof of a herniation, nerves being pressed upon), a person can nevertheless *still* have those things incorrectly diagnosed as being the reason for the pain. Sometimes, things that appear as abnormalities and injuries via x-ray are in fact not actually the source of the pain. Or to put it another way, a person's emotional state and longterm emotional baggage can contribute to keeping that pain acute and persistent... the subconscious mind's way of inadvertently making the pain a means of distracting a person from tough emotional matters at hand.

Those aren't my words; those are the words of the author of the book I mentioned, Dr. Sarno, as well as lots of his patients who too received multiple diagnoses (by other doctors, stating that they found a physical cause for the pain) as I'd imagine Carl did too. It may seem hard to believe, but Sarno is often quick to poopoo such diagnoses, and be proven correct. In case anyone's curious to see a 20/20 segment on the doctor and this topic (and read the comments, which don't necessarily "prove" my theory, but might lend it some possible credence):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI

I'm only such a strong believer in it because it happened to both me AND a coworker friend (who too was diagnosed with various forms of medical "proof" that she thought backed up a physical cause for her back pain)... otherwise I'd be just as doubtful. In the case you mentioned, a doctor telling a patient it is just "stress" - and simply leaving it at that - would be of no help; the method I'm speaking of actually requires specific step-by-step instructions being followed, and a serious commitment and belief by the patient, for it to be effective.

Again, I only pose this as a possibility as it could have applied to Carl. Nobody will ever know for sure. I just think that Carl happens to fit the ideal/typical mold of a person under a particularly heavy load of tremendous stress/emotional pressure, which perhaps coincidentally, but perhaps not, is very similar to how Dr. Sarno describes most people who he'd diagnose as treatable by his method.  Just keep in mind - a common part of the personality that experiences this type of pain is that of being a people-pleaser, which I think described Carl to a T.

In terms of Carl, I think it totally depends on what tests and diagnoses were involved.

I don't disagree that pain can be psychosomatic, but when someone has *zero* pain, and is involved in one specific incident (car accident, etc.), and then gets *numerous* scans showing visible (to a laid person and to the naked eye) injury such as a herniation, bulging or ruptured disc, etc., and only after the injury starts to suffer from severe pain (not to mention other things that can occur due to herniations, including numbness, inability to walk, loss of bladder control, etc.), to suggest in *that* scenario that it's psychosomatic (and/or that maybe the doctors and technicians all read numerous tests/xrays/scans incorrectly?) is something I'd find to be offensive, dismissive, patronizing, and in some cases dangerous.

I've seen people who blow out a disc in their back due simply to sneezing, and who then couldn't even walk for weeks if not months. That's not psychosomatic.

If someone just develops some severe pain for no particular obvious reason, and has a bunch of other possible factors at play (stress, etc.), then I'd be open to the possibility in that scenario.

I think addressing how the mind can affect things, and using all sorts of techniques to cope with pain, are all potentially valid. I certainly believe the mind can help heal. But the mind does not make your disc rupture and keep you from walking or using the restroom or feeling your legs. Can a broken ankle be psychosomatic too?

But yeah, I think we'd have to largely agree to disagree that any significant amount of people with serious injuries and copious amounts of specialist diagnoses are suffering predominantly from psychosomatic pain. And because pain is so subjective and personal, it's even more difficult to measure.

To bring it back to Carl, I would never leap to assume anything about his malady, because I'd be apprehensive about making such a leap even regarding someone I know and whose medical history I have some level of familiarity. I'm not one of those "we shouldn't talk about their personal lives" people. As long as we all know we're just guessing, I think the topic of Carl's pain and injuries is fine. But I think we just have too little data to even begin to guess at what Carl's deal was. The little bit of info Emdeeh provided certain sounds like a real, legit injury and subsequent treatment.

True dat. My only aside is that it is possible for someone to have pain start from a legit, actual physical issue, but the pain - that could otherwise under ideal, stress-free circumstances, go away rather quickly - is unfortunately then amplified and significantly prolonged (sometimes indefinitely) due to a psychosomatic response, and basically made much worse by external, non-physical factors. At the very least, I have little doubt that the stress that Carl was under certainly didn't *help* his physical situation on many fronts.

I liked the direction they took with LA (Light Album), one they could not repeat with KTSA, because by then, Dennis was effectively out of the picture, and Mike's influence can be felt in his attempts with Brian to do more MIU-style material - grown men singing about being in school and chasing all the hot little babes down to the Frosty Freeze.

My wife and I recently celebrated our 15th year of marriage...we started dating right after graduation 19 years ago...but have been friends for almost 27 years (I was 11, she was 10 when we first met and fell in almost immediately). So yeah, I know how rare that is, and am always being told that when people ask how long we've been together. So with that in mind... us getting *married* in our teens? Yeah, I couldn't have seen that happening as we just weren't ready. Now, throw in being not only married young but being a music industry marriage (with all that entails)? The odds were stacked against them from day one.

Carl's injury probably affected his outlook on the how the "drift" of the band was going and extended his dormant period as a songwriter. I think he always tried to do the best by the band and Brian, but found the polarizing forces that existed in the band during the 1976-80 time frame to be pretty overwhelming, leading him to eventually withdraw. Nowhere did I suggest that his frustrations led to a back injury...but once it was sustained, and became a lingering issue, it clearly had an impact on how he perceived things.

Back to Reiley for one last go-round: what's being sidestepped is the role of enabler and how it might be more important in certain cases than others. The generalization that the Wilsons all had more musical talent than Jack is clearly on the money, but it ignores specific situations where Jack's ability to inspire the work was more pivotal for Carl than for Brian and Dennis. Carl's career as the songwriter who carried the vast majority of the musical creation (as opposed to the production, which he often contributed to for Brian and Dennis in the 69-73 period) is limited exclusively to songs in which he collaborated with Jack Rieley. I think that this point should be acknowledged for what it is, and not sidestepped in order to minimize Jack's effect on the band.

As for this Vietnam watershed, it's a little too pat. Musical "decadence" and edgier material that moved away from politics to sex/alternate lifestyle/ironic detachment/self-conscious "art rock" had begun in the turnaround between the 60s and 70s and reached its "heights" in the various drug-influenced manifestoes by the early 70s incarnations of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. You have Steely Dan and Roxy Music slyly commenting on those landscapes...each of them with ironic perspectives on the burgeoning self-absorption that had become prominent in rock during this time frame--and with both eventually moving into the mainstream as they succumbed to their own rapprochement with  that self-absorption.

Nostalgia certainly came into play, but it overlapped the end of the war and the lingering tension that remained deep into 1973 due to conflicts between the White House and Congress (the latter actually passed bills that year which limited what the White House could do regarding any escalation of the war effort...Nixon would soon be engulfed in the Watergate scandal, forcing him to let go of many things, including any further overt chicanery regarding Vietnam). American Graffiti was a hit in the summer of '73, and it was the first link back to the BB's pre-PS work ("All Summer Long" anchoring the film's closing credits)...but "oldies" had already come into vogue the previous year, and a number of groups seized upon this "nostalgia" (including the Carpenters, who had a massive hit in that same '73 summer with "Yesterday Once More"--they found short-term record sales with oldies covers in subsequent years, just as the BBs did, rather late, in '76 with "Rock and Roll Music," but both groups would see their careers ultimately founder after becoming over-invested in that approach).

The BBs had not reestablished or reinvented themselves commercially in the Vietnam era, but they had made inroads, mostly during the Reiley era. The "nostalgia" era was a trap for the band, giving them a false sense of standing that was not sustainable when the next wave of musical changes hit in 1975-76. Their response was to push oldies, and while 15BO sold, it was a pyrrhic victory. By this time, Carl's energy had waned, his songwriting was in a five-year dry spell, and he was locked in ongoing odds with Mike and his desire to take the band back to 1964.

Of course I think it is fair to surmise that Jack Reiley could not necessarily have steered the band in a more coherent, consolidating  and commercially successful direction that didn't succumb to "nostalgia" had he remained with the BBs into the mid-70s. But I do think he would have had some definite ideas about what to do, ideas which seemed to be totally lacking (or, perhaps more accurately, simply unresolvable) in his absence.

If you are implying that nostalgia rock was out by 1975-76, I would have to disagree. The Beach Boys were on top of the world in those years. Their drop in status was mainly due to their inability to "keep the hits right on comin" after 15BO.

What was New Wave but a (then) contemporary take on the pop rock of 1963-66? The Ramones, Dave Edmunds, and XTC, for instance, were deeply influenced by mid-sixties Beach Boys.

It was Carl and Dennis who were out of step with the times, not Mike. Mike had the right instinct -- that the way back to 1964 was the way forward to 1977-- he just didn't have the ability to pull it off.

Speaking of Mike's new wave instincts (or lack thereof)... What's the deal with the choruses of the song "Looking Back With Love" sounding just like the soon-to-be very popular "Somebody's Baby" by Jackson Browne? Mike apparently didn't write LBWL, but for whatever it's worth, the title track on his solo album - despite the song having some truly terrible and embarrassing detours into name checking Jan & Dean tunes - had a very, very similar sound to something popular, modern, and successful.

Does anyone think those two songs were possibly written without either song's writers having heard the other song? The choruses are so similar, it seems doubtful to me that it's pure coincidence... I also doubt that Mike is/was unaware of the similarities. If Mike ever saw the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he'd surely have heard the similarities.

Yes! I knew I wasn't crazy!

Now HERE is a good example of a song being a bit too damn close to another one ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pav2f4b-1ZE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApjaP1mfS5M

BBs had one hit in this time frame. "Rock and Roll Music." The next single "It's OK," despite two years of insanely great press and massive hype, got to #29, then sank--and, after a late-summer run-up into the Top 10, 15BO sank right with it. It was a hollow comeback that started to come apart at the seams even as it was happening, and it's unimaginable that any of the other oldies could have done better than "It's OK." You really see "Still Of The Night" or "Palisades Park" leaping up the charts?

Dave Edmunds was not "new wave." He was part of the pub-rock scene that began in 1972-74 with British "back to the roots" bands such as Brinsley Schwarz, Man, Ducks Deluxe. And he didn't do BBs-inspired stuff, he covered Spector tunes. The rest of the US "new wave" omitted in that oversimplified statement--Patti Smith, Television, Blondie, etc.--had absolutely zero to do with mid-60s music. The analogue for that is "power pop", which recycled the Beatles and Elvis (Dwight Twilley) and the Byrds (early Tom Petty) rather than the BBs. On the Brit side, XTC broke on the scene doing music that bore little resemblance to the BBs...that was a later manifestation of the band when Andy Partridige became the dominant force. The vast majority of the English new wave was punky and arty, but not in ways that quoted pre-PS BBs.

As noted before, the band needed a hit that didn't lock them into the oldies trap that only looked like a return to success. They didn't do that. The wave of nostalgia lasted long enough for them to capitalize on it, but no one sustained oldies success in 1977-80 (aka the "age of disco").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzYKMdXxlW0

It's Ok should have been the first single off 15 BO for sure.

Even if the Beach Boys had come out with a top notch contemporary sounding album in 1976-77, it probably would not have connected with the fans of Endless Summer and Spirit of America. That's all that fan base wanted out of the group - surf, cars, girls, fun. Warners comp "Good Vibrations - Best of the Beach Boys" had as many legit hits as SOA, yet only sold half as much. The cult audience they had built up with Surf's Up/Holland was not large enough to get them a top 10 hit. I do think, though, that if the retro sounding tracks the guys came up with in 1976-78 were of the same quality of those 63-65 hits, they could have topped the charts again. But even the best of the retro tracks - It's OK being one - were not as good as the old stuff. It would have been better if they had forgotten about trying to appeal to that crowd, and just turned out quality works like LA - and even that was marred by the attempt to win the disco crowd.

Though Dave Edmunds had roots in pub rock (as did Joe Strummer, btw), Rockpile was definitely New Wave. And how can you say he didn't do BB- inspired stuff? He made a record with Gary Usher, Terry Melcher, Curt Boecher, and Bruce Johnston!

Equally bizarre is your contention that Blondie had nothing to do with mid-sixties music. They were hugely influenced by the Brill Building girl groups. Television, Patti Smith? Inspired by mid-sixties garage rock. Lenny Kaye, Patti's guitarist, compiled Nuggets, for Christ sake. She covered Them!

New Wave flourished into the 80's, and in the 80's XTC did take on a notable Beach Boys influence.

Back to the original post, I was hoping to get more about Carl from the book that came out recently. I think it did a good job concerning Carl's influence on the music, but didn't go as deep into his life as John Stebbon's books on Dennis and Dave. In fact Dave's book probably revealed as much about Carl's life as Long Promised Road did!

You're conflating so many styles together that it's meaningless to state "mid-60s" when these are separate influences. If anything, LOVE YOU moves in a direction that would become popular later--synth-based pop. But would I try to say that BW's "farting synts" were the "inspiration" for all that 80s music? No. I would be making the same overly generalized, meaningless comparisons that you are. Patti Smith's hit ("Gloria") is Them, sure, but just how is Them part of the garage rock in America? Answer: it ain't. And Welshman art-rocker John Cale produced Patti's first LP, Lenny was just the guitarist.

Dave Edmunds' name-checking of the BBs in that song is great...except that the song was written in 1994. Rockpile was an extension of what he'd been doing for several years after debuting as a flashy instrumentalist. Sure, Edmunds and Nick Lowe (an original member of Brinsley Shwarz, the first pub-rock band, first LP in 1971...) glommed onto "new wave"--who didn't in 1977-79? Even Bill Nelson broke up Be-Bop Deluxe and went "new wave" for an LP.

"Garage-rock" ain't the BBs, and "new wave" didn't even dominate the airwaves in the USA in the time frame. Face it, the BBs tried nostalgia, milked it for a hit, but the LP was mostly a steaming pile and that cost them a great deal with the record-buying public. A lot of buyer's remorse with that record--and yes, I was there and I was one of them! Something that bridged the gap, songs that broke new ground while still keeping a significant flavor of the vocal blend, was what they needed in the long in-between from Holland to 15BO. They didn't deliver it, they became slaves to their past, and the factions in the band became permanent and insurmountable--except when there's big enough bucks in it (50th anniversary) for them to get back together and "do it again."

According to your logic, the BBs should have released "Sea Cruise" in early 1977. I would love to go back in time and wager some big bucks with you on whether that track would have gone even Top 40 if they'd done so. It certainly was a better overall record than any of the oldies they put out on 15BO. "R&R Music" made it because the pump had been primed for any BB product in the summer of '76 and the clever strategy of covering Chuck Berry got them a lot of airplay--until people eventually came to their senses and realized what an clunky track it was. The backlash was pronounced that even through the most of the critics praised LOVE YOU, fans were confused, leery and weren't ready to embrace "teenage Brian Wilson."

If their attempts at being retro had contained the same magic as the original 60's hits, they would have been HUGE hits. Nostalgia was still big in 76-80, but there was not a large audience for lame remakes like School Days and Peggy Sue.

And there's the rub. The point is that they wrote their own material back in the day. Essentially they followed the Carpenters, who went "oldies" in '73 ("Yesterday Once More" and an entire side of oldies on "Now and Then")  and had a #1 hit with "Please Mr. Postman" in late '74, then followed up "There's A Kind of Hush" (Herman's Hermits) in '76, which went to #12. But, as I keep saying, things changed rapidly in '77 and nostalgia from established bands fell off a cliff. The Carpenters had no production or performance issues in this time frame the way that the BBs did, and they could not buy another hit with an oldie in this time frame--and it wasn't for a lack of trying. Nostalgia ebbed in the '77 but got a new lease on life when disco collapsed at the end of '80, and the BBs had a bit of chart success with Al's "Come Go With Me," which really is the only one of these tracks that's any good and if it had been available for release in '77 would have had a shot...but it wasn't, so it didn't.

My two cents: there is no way the Boys could have recaptured the "magic of the '60 hits", not even if Brian had still been 100% functional. Life simply doesn't work that way. The pristine magic of being young artists just starting to know the world can't be recaptured, only imitated and often badly. Magic has to be reinvented and rebuilt, every time, and that requires growing (really growing, not just getting older) and not living in the past.
In any case, there is no way they could have returned to "hit machine" status, but if they, as a band, had accepted to grow instead of becoming a pure nostalgia act, they would have avoided the post-1977 artistic suicide. And who knows, Dennis and Carl might even be alive now.

I think it's hard to figure out why the public rejected or embraced what the BBs did. Sometimes it makes sense ("Peggy Sue" is a pretty limp cover), other times not so much. In 1981, they pulled a three-year-old recording of "Come Go With Me" and turned it into a relative hit single (Top 20). Certainly, that recording was a bit more sharp and slick than something like "Peggy Sue" or even "School Days", but the track record prior to that 1981 single didn't suggest releasing *another* 50s oldie cover version, and certainly one from a then three-year-old bomb of an album, would be successful.

We're talking at cross purposes.

In 1977, the future of rock lay not in the white boy funk, blues, and r&b of Little Feat or Bambu, but in the New Wave reprise (with a contemporary edge) of the catchy, bright, melodic pop of the mid-sixties. Nothing to do with a 50's song like 'Sea Cruise'.

Now, that was a road down which the Beach Boys would never pull off (though I'd argue that LOVE YOU was an accidental, Modern Lovers-type New Wave record). I'm not saying that the band should have pursued making New Wave records, no more than Paul McCartney, say,  should have. It would have been forced and embarrassing.

What I am saying is that commercial/critical salvation would have not laid in giving Carl and Dennis carte blanche to follow their "progressive" muses. Progressive rock, or whatever you want to call it, was dead in the water by the end of the 70's.

You are right. Cross-purposes. Because the claim I'm making is that a transition to a new type of popularity where two factions of BB fans could have co-existed was something that could have occurred in 1974-75, well before this weird mashup of "New Wave" you are describing was a gleam in anyone's eye.

The main problem with your analysis is that the bands/artists you namecheck, with only a scant number of exceptions, were never more than cult presences in the commercial mainstream. You are now getting a little closer to actually suggesting what the BBs should have released in '77, but remember that the band had chosen (in some cases via some kicking and screaming) to toss in with "Brian is back" and the hoary reality of the tracks that emerged from all that. LOVE YOU was a cult record all the way, with some great songs that might have had a chance to do decently as 45s if they'd been recorded 4-5 years earlier with more traditional BB production. The marketplace needed to be further primed for a change in direction from the BBs, which is why they should have tried to pave the way in 74-75, particularly as the crest of their revivified popularity was underway.

If they'd achieved that, there might well have been better balance in the band's subsequent output and a basis for mixing together a more accessible set of "Beach Boy genres" that could have spoken to all of the fandom. Instead, we got creaky oldies, a few interesting leftovers, and "teenage Brian the synth master." This came across to the general public as finger food that had been left out in the sun too long. Brianistas (even though they didn't exist until they were coined at this here board...) loved LOVE YOU, but not even they heard a single in the midst of that strange wonderment.

This is all relevant to this thread because we (or at least I) want to know what Carl was facing (and what he was trying to do about it) during this time as his ideas for what the band should do simply just evaporated over that time frame.

Well, this is a stretch, but what if the Beach Boys had recorded some of the material Carl did on his solo albums? "Heaven" might have been a bigger hit with the group name attached to it. As it was, it made the top 20 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, but only bubbled under the Hot 100. A couple years later, "What You Do to Me" (not written by Carl) fared similarly. Both of those songs were played by the group in their shows 1983-onward. I can't quite imagine the group doing some of the harder rockers off those albums, though. "What More Can I Say", "She's Mine", "Too Early to Tell", "The Right Lane"...there was a time when the band could do an occasional heavier rocker, but those days seemed to be gone by the 80's.

Here is my (possibly oversimplified) take on things.  The three brothers had some insecurities due to their father's emotional/verbal/physical abuse.  When faced with pressure or conflict, all three reacted in very different ways.  Brian retreated into himself, Dennis fought back, and Carl tried to be a people pleaser and avoid conflict.  How on earth could Carl and Dennis drag the rest of the band kicking and screaming in a different direction musically?  Brian did it and was met with great skepticism.   That was not Carl's way of doing things.  He was a compromiser.  In fact, I feel like he compromised a LOT in his life for the sake of others and in order to avoid conflict.   Could it be that Carl just put 'family' above music?  His Beach Boys family and his Wilson family?

Absolutely.

Thanks, bb4ever, for trying to get this thread back on track.  A thread entitled "Re: Carl Wilson - The Man - The Mystery" could and should offer the opportunity for a meaningful discussion on what, exactly, Carl Wilson was about; his likes and dislikes, his relationships with bandmates and family, what motivated him musically and personally, etc.  But as is almost always the case, a potentially great thread quickly devolves into a wee-weeing contest between a handful of posters who are determined to prove they know more than anyone else about some obscure fact or trend that has little or nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Sorry; rant over.

Agree 110%    Carl is the least known of the Wilson Bros.   Just trying to gather some information about him.  I got very excited when Long Promised Road came out; however, it fell short of being a biography of Carl. It did give me a greater appreciation of him as a musician, but still interested in the man himself.

Carl has been gone for more than 18 years, and those of us who still love and admire the man continue to feel like his story has not yet been told.  Long-time Beach Boys fans (53 years, in my case) are still hopeful that we'll live long enough to read the definitive account of Carl's life.

As I stated in another thread, Carl has a saintly image and his many friends and colleagues are not going to talk out of turn about him.  For a public figure he lived a very private life and you will not get anyone to break that wall of privacy too much. So I don't think a biography of Carl can present much more than that. The billy hinsche DVD is probably as intimate as it gets about him

A biography doesn't have to dig out the dirt to be detailed and factual. LPR did a good job at exploring Carl's contributions to the band in the 60's, and to some degree, the early 70's. There really should have been more about the later years. Most of the book just read like another BB's bio. His problems with drugs in 77-78 has already been talked about; no need to sensationalize it. He got clean and never relapsed. He made the gutsy move of not only releasing a solo album that sounded nothing like the Beach Boys, he toured behind it playing almost exclusively his own material. When the group didn't show any interest in recording, he went ahead with a second solo album. How did the rest of the band feel when Carl went solo? Did they support him, or did they think he was being foolish? How did Carl feel about records like Summer In Paradise? Did he sing on them just to keep the peace with band members, or did he fully support Mike's ideas? Was he depressed when the 1985 album failed to be a big seller? That album, more than any other, seemed to be Carl's baby. I wonder if he felt like "I'm not wasting my songs on these guys anymore"? Did he bitch slap Mike after that speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988?

Hey, no argument from me. But that is why it's important to know what went down in the time frame when the BBs were suddenly a big deal again--but without a way to tie it to their 69-73 work (the period, BTW, when Carl took over a lot of the production reins from Brian).

The quote about Brian-Dennis-Carl is well-known, probably published several dozen times. And I'm sure that Carl did do a lot of what is intimated in that quote (compensatory compromise). But when you listen to the SOT sessions for Beach Boys Party you hear a not-quite-19-year old guy who was very sharp and was already all business in the studio. Stephen Desper's testimony makes it clear that Carl showed a great deal of affinity for production and took on a more encompassing role in the process. And, yes, we know a good bit about that as well.

The mystery, at least as I see it, is why that seemed to come to a stop in 1974. People say Carl and Dennis couldn't take the band in a new direction. Sorry, but they had already done that. Of course there was still a desire to keep Brian in the mix--after all, no one else had a hit or wrote anything like GV so the band needed his aura if nothing else. But Carl was the prime mover behind many changes in 1970-72 (Reiley, bringing in Blondie and Ricky, etc.) and he was acknowledged as the leader in this time frame. What happened to all that? This is a good part of what we need to know in order to "solve the mystery."

Thanks, Lonely Summer.  Those – and others – are exactly the types of things all Carl Wilson fans yearn to learn more about.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to dig up dirt on Carl, though I suppose there is a market for that sort of thing.  But surely his sons, one of the two women who shared parts of their lives with him, or his one surviving sibling could and should be willing to share some of their experiences and memories of the man they loved.

I know that Carl's private life was important to him and I understand the family's need to honor that aspect of his life.  But I also have to believe that perhaps they may not fully comprehend the depth of admiration and respect that true Carl Wilson fans had and will continue to have for him.  Surely those closest to Carl have fond memories of their husband, father, brother or bandmate that would honor his life and legacy if they would share them with the rest of us who loved him too.

I, too, am not interested in a smidgen (because that's all you could even find) of dirt on Carl.  I just want to know about him.  What made him tick?  What did he think of his band family?   What kind of parent was he?  What motivated him?  etc., etc.  I'm quite certain that Jerry Schilling, Billy Hinsche, Ron Swallow, or Marilyn Wilson could write an honest and respectful book about Carl.  Why does a person have to suffer from mental instability or drug addiction to warrant a book?

That's a good question. I guess it may be down to publishers; they always want some dirt to sell the book on. If there's not enough there, they they make stuff up. There could be plenty of drama, though, if they need it: his years long battle against the draft board, the drug addiction in the mid 70's, and in the end, the cancer that killed him. It's not as if his life was dull.