The Smiley Smile Message Board

Okay, I've pretty much run out of music, videos, live performances, and documentaries to watch and unless we get another reunion, there's not much to talk about. Well, I've kinda been fixated on the mid-80s BB videos lately and noticed something interesting. It seems like the boys were in the best physical shape of their lives in their late 40s.

Brian, thanks to Landy, looked absolutely ripped. We've all seen the picture of him in a Speedo, unfortunately. In the early days of the BB he was always healthy but even by the Sullivan performance you could tell he was a little flabby. Brian has looked horrible, physically, for a good 10 years now. If only Landy wasn't a scumbag POS, I'm sure he'd be around today keeping tabs on Brian's health.

Carl always had battles with the buldge but in the Kokomo video he looked very good, thin upper body and looked SLIM. Way better than he did in the 60s. By the Crocodile Rock video, he was clearly overweight again and unfortunately probably getting sick as well.

Finally, Mike ... he was always scrawny and looked like he could blow away in a strong wind. Mike, in the Kokomo video looks JACKED. I saw Mike in 2011 and he was built like a football player, looked to be a healthy 220. Not sure how he looks now cause I've only seen videos but he seems to have slowed down a LOT.

Al and Bruce, well ... they always look the same no matter what decade we are in.

I know this is a weird topic but it fascinates me because men, usually by their mid 30s gain weight due to slowing metabolism and never recover but these guys either had good trainers or a great regimen. Most men who had the BB lifestyle of the 60s and 70s don't make it into their current age, especially the way they continue the grind of touring so perhaps their lifestyle change in the 80s helped prolong their careers and thankfully, their lives.

(https://image.ibb.co/dbbVH6/Screenshot_20171220_074612.png) (https://imgbb.com/)

I remember during a C50-era interview where Mike does an extended handstand, which astonished me.

I do wonder if Landy's team had Brian on meds that increased his metabolism because he became more fit at an age when most people start to put on weight.

They had him working his ass off with weights and running - that will do it, too.

Right, plus proper diet. But as I get older, I do find it harder to keep the metabolism in check.

Setting aside whether it's too morbid to speculate as to when Carl may have been ill prior to his diagnosis, I'm not so sure Carl would have already been suffering from lung cancer all the way back in 1991 during the "Crocodile Rock" era. He would have then had to go 5-6 years with untreated lung cancer. Not impossible, and many if not most cancer diagnoses would entail some length of disease prior to diagnosis.

But apart from whatever minor weight issues, Carl was still looking fine and healthy outwardly into 1993-1994, etc. It was more in the 1995-1996 timeframe ("Stars and Stripes" and the Status Quo single) where Carl started looking more run down beyond simply aging and weight gain.

And certainly, on that 1997 tour, Carl's weight gain was due to the steroids that accompany treatment.

As for the guys in a more general sense, it's no coincidence that they're all pretty wealthy. With wealth comes a much easier avenue to personal trainers, eating out at healthy restaurants, prepping healthy foods. I'm not saying one can't exercise and eat healthy without financial stability. But wealth makes it much easier. Their wealth has also afforded them top of the line health care as well.

Beyond all of that, genetics surely play a role as well. Al for instance, other than maybe putting on a bit of weight in the late 70s/early 80s (take a look at the not-very-flattering jogging suit at the July 4th, 1980 DC gig), have always been rather slight and slim. Mike too. Again, he maybe got a tiny bit heavier in the late 70s-ish, and if you look at pics post-1998 his weight fluctuates a bit. But he's never had a problem. Nor did Bruce or Dennis much.

Don't have the book handy right now, but remember reading in The Wilson Project Brian telling Gary Usher how tired he was all the time.

Although Brian’s health may not be great, I do wonder if 50 years of meditation, vegetarian diet and the drug free lifestyle Mike leads has made that much of a difference. His voice is pretty weak and cracked when he speaks, he to carry’s some weight, plus a story a few years back said he has a limp. Both he and Brian look their age.

Take that hat off myKe's head and stop the weekly botox injections and he'll be the new image for Father Time. Remember the picture at the baseball game?  :lol

Botox?   :banana  I thought it was 'socks'.   :quote

Brian's back issues make it difficult for him to get enough exercise,  I'd imagine.

Vocally,  as much as he has declined...his voice is much stronger than others his age and younger (Elton John, McCartney,  Rod Stewart ...and if you REALLY want to get into a voice being gone,  listen to Bryan Ferry these days)

I don't really agree, 13thBB.  During the Landy years Brian might have been thin, but thin doesn't equal healthy.  According to a number of sources, Brian was essentially being starved during that time, and to me it shows.  I believe that people generally have a "set weight" that their body naturally reverts to, and Brian's set weight wasn't ever skinny.  When I see videos of Brian during the Landy years I tend to cringe because to me he looks way too thin.  Given all he's been through, I would say that he looks pretty good now (with the obvious exception that he is very unsteady on his feet).  Appearance-wise, he looks healthy for a 75 year old man. 

I would argue that Carl never looked better than in 1980.  Take a look at some of the tv appearances they did at that time....phew, he looks GOOD.  Slim but healthy. 

Mike seems to be in good shape, but I would say he has aged quite a bit over the last couple of years.  He just doesn't seem as limber, and moves more slowly, than he did during C50.  Which is not unusual given his age. 

And Al appears immune to the effects of time. 

When it comes to Brian's "Landy years", that's a wide range of time. Late 1982 to 1992-ish.

The first few years, I think Brian looked fine. He took off all the weight very fast, so fast that few "interim" photos exist between these two extremes between 1982 and late 1983:

(http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BEAC5P/brian-wilson-of-the-beach-boys-about-1980-BEAC5P.jpg)

(https://cbswcbsfm.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ap8311100260-copy.jpg?w=600&h=1&crop=1)

The only sort of interim photos (apart from maybe a few things in the 1991 fake bio) are of the few early 1983 gigs Brian did, including the one in Hawaii after he had only been in "treatment" for a few months:

(http://dellydel.com/brianwilson/1983.jpg)

It was around 1988-ish that Brian started to have that sort of "scary" bug-eyed look, which I figure is a mixture of more (maybe finally too much) weight loss, the continued over-medication by Landy, and possibly also the rumored/alleged plastic surgery.

(http://www.rockdelux.com/files/article/2611/disco-brianwilson_47-1.jpg)

When did his upper set of teeth change? Cause in the "lost" Good Vibrations video unearthed a few years back, one of his two, front teeth was way ahead of the other as far as placement. It was incredibly distracting but not in a negative way.

(https://preview.ibb.co/juMfKm/giphy.gif) (https://imgbb.com/)

Judging by the first photo you posted, they were shot to hell and stained by early 80s. I always wondered if dentures of caps is the reason for Brian's way of singing being dramatically different by the mid 80s. It's really hard to get into any of his solo work. He just sings so different and I don't mean from the lack of a high falsetto.

I've always wondered how it was possible for Denny to remain so relatively lean-looking, even in the last years of his life, considering how much he drank.

I guess it's just the luck of the genetic draw, but I'd always tend to assume that heavy drinkers on that level would get beer bellies. Denny somehow avoided that. Did he just not eat all that much? Interesting how one of the Wilson brothers was seemingly not super food-oriented, in contrast to both of the others.

I wonder if Landy made Brian throw away all of his old clothes as soon as he started dropping weight. Brian must have had to replace his entire wardrobe.

Brian maybe didn't have *that* much to throw away. It appears as if he wore that one same exact shirt at many if not most shows (and off stage as well) in 1981/1982:

(http://78.media.tumblr.com/1548e66c8a91dff5ea266cfa8ac8c4a1/tumblr_o8xemzQRMa1sszfb1o1_400.jpg)

(http://www.charlesapple.com/uploads/2012/07/120703BeachBoys1981a.jpg)

(http://www.rocknpics.com/rockpix/Beach%20Boys/BB0066.jpg)

(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5b/b8/3d/5bb83d262752669fa310f570f4559901--brian-wilson-the-beach-boys.jpg)

Other shots from 1981/82 show a small rotation of plaid button shirts like the one in the '82 shot in the post above.

I've never delved deeply into Brian's dental goings-on, but he clearly got some serious upgrades (dentures, or something) around 2003/2004-ish at the time of the "Smile" tour. It was around that time that he all of a sudden had big giant pearly white teeth.

I have a friend who worked with The BBs around that era, and he too said that he recalls Brian wearing that white w/tan accents western-style shirt too. I wouldn't be surprised if Brian just didn't buy many clothes because he felt uncomfortable in his own skin at that weight, and perhaps hoped that he'd go down in size at some point. Or, maybe more likely, he might have stopped giving any f*ck about his wardrobe and just bought the bare minimum needed as to not walk around naked.

I wonder how many times Brian has ever done his own clothes shopping as an adult. As in going to the store, browsing through the garments, trying them on, etc. Or if he's almost exclusively had assistants or his wives do it for him.

Brian also wore that same white shirt for the late 1980 infamous "Good Morning America" appearance:

(http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/the_beach_boys_good_morning_america_1980_dennis_wilson_drunk.jpg)

And looks like it's that shirt from that "Portrait of a Legend" interview:

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/e1/1a/c0e11a36b08fbf5ed2425e430250cba9.jpg)

More 1982 plaid:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqOuslXWEAA3-Pr.jpg:large)

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/o0CbLdk62OI/maxresdefault.jpg)

Maybe he had a lot of the same shirts. I'm not rich and I have 3-4 black RL polo shirts which are identical.

Just a theory. Doubt Cousin Brian just wore the same shirt all the time.  :hat

It's always possible. Still, Mike must have Brian beat in the identical garment races.

Let's be honest; the BBs rarely looked *cool* on stage. There were a few brief moments in the late 60s and early 70s.

By the late 70s they tended to look pretty goofy. Wind breaker jackets, sweat pants, sweat shirts, Hawaiian shirts with tanktops. "Knebworth 1980" was sadly a *good* day fashion-wise for them for that era.  :lol

C50 was not too bad, but sometimes even then they kinda looked like tools when like two or three of the guys were all wearing the *same* shirt:

(https://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/1.3798852.1340383440!/httpImage/image.JPG_gen/derivatives/landscape_768/image.JPG)

Carl stayed pretty cool and neutral for a while staying in mostly simple blacks:

(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/46/a2/20/46a2206a5a98f1e975a5d1331e729bf9--carl-wilson-the-beach-boys.jpg)

The suit jacket look always worked pretty well for him:

(https://therecoup.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/bbys.jpg)

When it was *all white*, it was a bit less successful but not too bad (also note a rare 1992 bearded Mike):

(https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mike-love-and-carl-wilson-during-worth-magazine-launch-party-february-picture-id109629178)

Black is slimming  ;D

Are there any historical documents of Carl Wilson WITHOUT a beard past, say ... 1990?

Other than the one time Carl shaved the beard in 1976 and made the one awards show appearance with stubble, I don't think there's a single pic of a non-bearded Carl from about 1970 through 1998.

Serious question. 

Was there some sort of endorsement deal with button down mens shirts for TWGMTR / C50.  There seemed to be a lot of stripped and paisley shirts worn during that tour.  And from the shows, videos, and pics I've seen, Brian seems to lean towards solid colored shirts when he plays. 

I wonder if Brian and Mike are wearing the more eye-catching shirts to make them stand out from the "less important" members of the group?

From what I remember reading, Mike's wife Jackie did the wardrobe for the tour. What that might have entailed, I have no idea. Did she just pick a bunch of shirts? Did she design the shirts? I have no idea.

I think it was the Rolling Stone C50 article that mentioned she had posted "recommended wardrobe" combinations/choices for particular days based on something (numerology or something?).

I could easily see that some friends of Jackie's might perhaps have donated free clothes to the Boys in exchange for free press for their line.  At least it was an attempt to look fashionable that somewhat worked. But yeah, two guys in the same band should NEVER wear the identical outfit. Hokey and embarrassing! It could only work if they were all wearing matching uniforms, but not just two of the guys.

Didn't they ever see the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel inadvertently buy the same dress? Where was Desi Jr. to tell them these things...

I'm waiting for the day for another member of Mike's band to confusingly wear a "Mike Love" hat onstage.

I love the late 70s sweat pants look.  Really.  I was watching the Largo show from 1977 on Youtube earlier this week and marvelling at Carl in his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.  NO stars would do that now (at least, not in an unironic way).  To call it unpretentious is an understatement. 

Brian's current look of dress shirts, track pants, and Nike Air Monarchs is pretty fly.... :hat

Dawned on me that you almost never see Brian wear just a regular t shirt anymore

This is all accurate (including the daily suggestions. See Love, Mike wearing the same yellow shirt and accents on each Sunday of the tour) but per the official tour program, the wardrobe was by designer Robert Graham.
Robertgraham.us

IMO, Carl always looked pretty cool. Even when the other guys had gone to Hawaiian shirts, shorts and baseball caps, Carl still wore the all white or all black suits. One dignified man among a bunch of beach bums.