The Smiley Smile Message Board

Nothing new really but apparently Carl and Dennis took heroin in Perth in 78,  ‘World Tour’ mentioned on the back of the RSO album (believe it when I see it) Brian still in hospital.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/beach-boys-trouble-paradise-133402180.html

Hmm, wonder why Mike mentioned the heroin thing. Usually he says something like "one airplane was for smokers and the other for non-smokers....and it wasnt just smoking *nudge nudge*....by the way, did you know i havent done any drugs since 1968 since i started meditation? have i ever mentioned that?".

Wonder if the interviewer asked him directly about it or something.

Standard question for any Australian interviewer. ‘What about that Perth concert in 1978?’

The next morning, Carl Wilson was forced to publicly apologise for his behaviour, claiming he’d taken two Valium that day, and had consumed two Mai Tais that evening.


The Beach Boys- Carl Wilson interview in Austraia 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zVTSzP2RdM

Another hit job on the Wilson brothers.

I don't see anything about Brian in the hospital?

Well, it's a good thing Mike is around to remind us of the mind-blowing concept that doing heroin is "not a great thing for The Beach Boys to be involved with." Glad he was able to clear that up......

I'm sure, and perhaps rightly so considering the band members for decades never really gave a fully straightforward answer. Even Carl in another European interview in 1989 was asked about it and kind of hedged.

*However*, I don't think Mike has regularly specifically just blurted out in interviews what has only been detailed in a few books (Gaines, Stebbins, perhaps White?), namely specifically that some of the brothers (allegedly I guess I should still say) purchased heroin during that tour.

Not coincidentally, Mike has never, to my knowledge, mentioned the detail that promoter David Frost, when told that the band planned to can Dennis (temporarily at least) and send him home, was *adamant* that Dennis was *so popular* that he refused to finance the tour without Dennis's participation. And frankly, at least on the extant audio and footage, Dennis is the least problematic/weird of the three Wilson brothers.

Frankly, with Carl off the rails, Brian weirding out, and Mike hamming it up with such illustrious numbers as "Country Pie", the band owed a huge debt mainly to Al Jardine on that tour for holding things together (note that even in the Dennis Wilson bio by Stebbins that he points out Al should be commended for holding the thing together), and to a lesser degree Dennis for at least *appearing* to be pretty sober and doing his thing for the Australian fans.

I guess I can't fault an Australian journalist for asking about the '78 tour, but I certainly think this article was weirdly written to snatch controversy and tabloidesque scandal from the jaws of success and victory (e.g. the new symphonic album).

Mike at this stage in his career should know better than to fuel what is inevitably going to be another "let's remember the bad times" articles on the band. He did this when he was plugging his book, happily *literally* name-dropping Charles Manson in every interview to sell books.

Note that Brian nor Al (nor Dave of course) have tried to sell their ongoing projects and tours on the back of s***ting on Mike.

Also unfortunate that the article wrongly implies it's Brian's health that's impacting how much he associates these days with Mike. Whatever Brian's current health status, he hasn't (to our knowledge) been in the same room as Mike since September 28, 2012. Mike quitting the band in September of 2012, and his subsequent volunteering of how he feels about Melinda and Brian, has likely played a role in their relative estrangement, not Brian's health.

There's a video there that elaborates more than the article.

Right Amy and what a self righteous piece of work he is. No wonder this clown is so disliked.  ::) ::)

Thanks for pointing that out Amy. Totally didn't notice!

I find it incredulous that anyone would have the balls to order a Maitai in Perth. ‘Whadayaaaa....?’  ;D

I always love it when people make accusations about people who have died and can't defend themselves.  Maybe Carl bought the heroin for Dennis or Brian?  Carl denies ever doing heroin - I have no reason to disbelieve him.  He also never spoke ill of others.....dead or living -- unlike his cousin Mike.

I can only find one example of Carl being asked about the "Australia episode", and that was that 1989 European interview that someone (very graciously) translated and posted here. I think he was still trying to not really discuss it and not divulge any detail. Which is totally understandable.

Carl is a rare example of going off the deep end (whether only alcohol or alcohol and other things) but then *COMPLETELY* cleaning it up, and presumably without any major intervention (at least intervention on the Landy scale like Brian went through). Carl appeared to be drunk (and/or high) at shows as evidenced on audio and video from late 1976 or so until some time in 1978. And then, by later in 1978 or certainly by 1979, he was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT turned around and the most sober, straight-laced, straight-faced, squeaky clean guy on stage (okay, well that was maybe still Al!).

Beyond the extremely poor taste Mike continually shows in bringing up the Wilson brothers and their *decades-old* problems is that he sometimes lumps Carl in with Brian and Dennis, and Brian and Dennis had much more long-term, severe, chronic problems that were evidenced *in public* (on stage and on record) for a much longer period of time than Carl. With Carl, he sounded a little "slurry" on studio recordings for a year or two, and had his year or two of being moderately to severely sloshed on stage, and by 1979 and every year through 1997 (with the exception of his 81/82 hiatus), he was the most pro, dependable, clean, dignified guy on stage (along with Al).

Regarding Brian being "in the hospital" (and the pics of he and Carnie on Father's Day), Mark London posted on Facebook some pics of Brian having his birthday cake in what appears to be the same facility, and London specifically pointed out that Brian is *not* in the "hospital", but rather a "physical therapy center."

That was certainly the public perception, and at least it seemed true onstage. That being said, I'm reasonably sure that Carl had issues with alcohol his last couple of decades. Brian's discredited (in some ways) first book touches on it, and folks who were around the scene have noted it as well. It certainly wasn't on the level of what happened in the late 70s, however.

Oh, it's quite possible that any number of weird (and not so weird) things were going on behind the scenes, but the only time Carl ever seemed to be out of sorts *on stage* (or in public in general) was that 1976-1978 timeframe.

And it's almost inescapably likely that there's more Carl stuff we don't know about than the other guys just by virtue of how private the guy was (and however the other guys in the band barring mainly Al and I guess Bruce) attracted any attention that the press did send their way in those years.

My guess is on the scale of "alcoholic rock stars", Carl couldn't have been *too* bad considering not just that he always appeared sober on stage, but he toured *constantly* for all of those years (even when he left the BB touring band he did some solo touring). But obviously I can't say anything one way or the other when it comes to much outside of his public appearances.

I will say pretty much every band member has at least a hand full of sketchy, disappointing stories that aren't published. The only members I've never really read or heard anything particularly heinous about is Carl and Al. The "dirt" stories about Al tend to be stuff like holding a grudge or just having a bad attitude in general during certain years (the Usher episode; a few little bits in Mike's book), and Carl's main apparent flaws impacting others outside of that 76-78 timeframe would tend to be things like his supposed/alleged passive complicity in letting Mike take over the band in the 90s, and things like that.

There are plenty of Brian and Dennis stories that go down a really dark path, some published, some not. Maybe somewhat less known is that this is also the case with Mike and Bruce, and probably even more so tending towards unpublished (for all the large amounts of bad publicity Mike gets, it's usually due to the same simplified/generalized "image" issues about him being a "villain", arguably being "litigious", etc. But there's some dark path stuff there too. With both of those guys. Brian pretty much ignored any of that in his book and his interviews. Mike less so, though I might just guess that Mike also left out some darker stuff in his book that perhaps "legal" could have dictated be cut.

I wouldn't give much credibility to anything about Carl in that terrible book. I will say, though, that Carl had a lot of heavy duty stuff to deal with in his later years - Brian's ongoing problems with drugs and alcohol, Dennis' troubles with same, the Landy situation, Audree's declining health... and finally, Carl's own health issues. I can't fault a guy dealing with all that if he wants to relax and enjoy a drink from time to time. We don't give him enough credit for cleaning up after the debacle in Australia. We don't give him enough credit for always giving his best on stage, cheerleaders or not; he wasn't just dialing it in, night after night. He always cared about the quality of the performance - even when some members apparently didn't.

Mike understandably fails to mention that perhaps if he hadn't thwarted the Wilson brothers' more progressive musical direction after 1975, iconoclastic as it may have been, in favor of commerciality at all costs, they wouldn't have been so frustrated and felt a need to increasingly turn to hard drugs to escape such a creatively stifling professional situation.

For most its a choice to leave a creatively stifling professional situation, or suck it up and go through the motions for the pay check. It seems that R&R has a lot in common with real life (meaning us) at times.

Slightly off-topic… I wonder if the public perception of the “Love You” album would have been different if it wasn’t among (or perhaps THE) low point in terms of Carl’s vocals.

Regardless of Brian and Denny not being in good vocal shape...if Carl's vocals had been top, top notch Carl, as they were only a couple short years later, I wonder if the people who hate on the album would ease up a bit. Yeah, people can complain about not liking other stuff about it, but I feel like Carl’s vocals, when in top form such as on BB85, are usually able to elevate material considerably in the eyes of many fans.

For the record, I love Love You, even with some relatively ragged Carl vocals. And a “ragged” Carl vocal only means he’s not really in top form for himself, but he still sounds decent to my ears.

Agreed wholeheartedly. While nobody forced anybody to do drugs, there's still such a thing as being a contributing factor why some people self-medicate. Yet of course Mike would in a million years never own up to it, which is ironic since I have no doubt Mike became so deeply into TM in part due to stress that he felt from the band, and to clear his head from stress he felt from a specific member or two, so the dude should be able to "get" the idea of self-medication due to someone else being a thorn in their side.

I never thought Carl's vocals were too bad on Love You, but I havent listened to it in a while tho. just curious, which songs/parts of songs would you say he sounds "ragged" on?

I've often heard people say that Carl sounds a bit drunk/tipsy in general on his leads on that one album, which is ironic and a bit of a bummer since the material on that album is IMO so damn good... and as the subsequent BBs albums became more and more turd-like, Carl began peaking as a vocalist more and more.

(Yet maybe it just had to be that way, since everything, from the musicianship, to the other Wilson brothers' vocals, are somewhat "off" anyway on Love You, so if it had confident BB85-style Carl vocals throughout, it might have been an odd contrast... although on second thought maybe not that odd, seeing as Al and Mike sound perfectly decent on their parts).

Still a slightly (or maybe more than slightly) subpar Carl vocal is better than most vocalists on a good day.

I think an example that I've seen cited would be his lead on The Night Was So Young. It does have a slightly "sloshed" quality when compared to his vocals on not-all-that-much-later songs like Good Timin' and Goin' On.

Like him or not, you have to admit that Mike is usually pretty honest and open about stuff like this. It doesn't sit well with me at all that Mike mentioned it only after Carl has passed and can't defend himself, but it was an honest statement.

Brian was already using hard drugs way before Endless Summer.

So very well said, LS.

I’m not a Mike apologist, and I hate that he badmouths dead relatives and bandmates, but blaming him for the Wilsons’ drug use is really unfair, in my opinion. 

Unfair?? You try being in a band  with a second guessing, ungrateful schmuck all those years. I guarantee you'll either quit or, in Brian's case, find something that makes putting up with that clown a lot easier while writing songs for him to sing.  ::)

And exactly how long have you worked with Mike???

Decades of fandom! ;D

I love how we blame everything that went wrong in the Beach Boys on Mike, or Murray, or Landy. Are not individuals at least partially responsible for their own behavior?

Hey! What a great question!! (psst, I like you too, J)

Mike, Murray and Landy all did quite a number on the fragile likes of Brian but let's remember, mental illness is not something that Brian is responsible for.

Why does the public continue to dwell on events that happened decades ago, especially with things that people got over and left in the past in their own lives? This isn't just "dirt," it's archeological dirt. I hate seeing the Wilson brothers' past problems constantly dredged back up, especially when both Carl and Brian moved on. Yes, those events in Australia happened, but they're only a small part of the story.

Dear members of the press, please stop asking people with known drug agendas (anti or pro) about these events. The same goes for serial killer questions regarding events 50+ years in the past. Stop pretending that gossip is newsworthy. Thank you.

I'm also sick and tired of Dennis and Carl being relegated to being the "dead guys." They meant a whole lot more to the Beach Boys and their success than just being footnotes.

Ok, rant off.

It certainly didn't help in  Brian's case, as he was less of a "party" guy and more someone who did drugs as a way to escape his turmoil.

Dennis was different, in the sense he WAS a party guy, someone who was always wanting to push things to the extremes.

Rant appreciated.

Denny was a party guy, yeah. But let's also not think that this was the only reason he abused substances as well. Plenty of turmoil is his life as well he was obviously wishing to escape (this being true for many, if not most addicts).

True; I just meant it in comparison to Brian and Carl

Yes. But consider how much of this stuff would not even be on the table for discussion and consumption if Mike didn't endlessly bring all of it up when he's plugging his live shows or projects to whatever press he's speaking with.

The old meme around these parts when things got hot was 'It's all about the music'. Someone should forward that meme to Mike's management, he didn't get the original memo I guess.

There is a difference between fans hashing it out and discussing and a band member who is acting as the flag-bearer of the band name bringing it up in public interviews. And if a reporter asks about these topics, the reply is simple: "No comment. I'm here to talk about the music." Boom, it's over before it starts.

It is also far different if the person or persons who have battled the addictions or dealt with the issues brings it up and talks about it, versus someone else making it a public issue or a talking point especially when the people who had the issues are no longer alive to address them directly. That's a lack of respect and class.

Guitarfool, I get what you're saying, but why waste time asking about something that happened 40 or more years in the past? Why is anyone still focusing on these events? Not just Mike, who clearly has his own anti-substance abuse agenda, but all those reporters asking him the questions.

It is a two-way street. All of this stuff sells and makes for good copy and click-bait, so a lot of the press will ask those questions hoping to generate a 30% uptick in views or clicks on the articles. It's the old "sensationalism sells" notion.

But consider how for at least 6 years specifically (and more), Mike has brought up these same issues unprompted in dozens of interviews to the point where us fans could write a parody and it would be very close to what a Mike interview snippet would actually be, on his many press junkets and interviews plugging his stuff. So the press sees an interview subject who will go there unprompted, and they go there too...whether it be drugs, Charlie Manson, whatever sensational topic they go for. And Mike of course will continue to go there to push his own agendas, whatever they are in the moment. It's been a regular thing for years now.

And sadly it could all be stopped if he would say 'No comment, I'm here to talk about the music'. The press people would get the message and not go there.

I have to admit, I hadn't thought so much about how Mike's consistent negativity about the Wilson brothers (and talking about Manson, etc.) in interviews could feed future interviews.

I honestly don't know; how many times does the local writer for the Capital City Gazette, writing a piece about Mike's band coming into town, go out and Google his past interviews of recent months/years to gauge what Mike is willing to talk about and what he *wants* to talk about and in many cases *volunteers* talking about unprompted?

Obviously just my opinion, but I think Mike *apparent* "agenda" goes well beyond simply being anti-substance abuse. His interviews often come across to me like "The Wilsons drank and did drugs; I didn't. I'm therefore better." It's the easiest issue to simultaneously take the Wilson brothers *down* a peg and also pump himself up. Once in awhile, he'll also mention that Al also didn't do drugs. (It's telling that during much of the 2000s, Mike would never even *mention* the name Al Jardine in interviews, and some of the only times you *would* see him mention Al's name is when mentioning that he (Mike) as well as Al didn't do drugs like the Wilsons did.

As with people like McCartney, Mike gets asked a ton of the same questions OVER AND OVER in interviews, and it's impossible to ascribe a specific amount of blame regarding that onto either the interviewer or interviewee. But Mike certainly hasn't *helped* this phenomenon, by retelling the same stories over and over (both positive and negative stories).

The funny thing is, as folks like Howie Edelson and others have pointed out, Mike (and the others) *will* go deep (and deep on MUSICAL subjects) if you go there. So yeah, it wouldn't hurt if interviewers got the promotional bit about Mike's show out of the way and then, instead of focusing on the band (and Mike's) infamy for being acrimonious, litigious, etc., asked instead about "Wontcha Come Out Tonight" or writing "Only With You" with Dennis, etc.

But it may well be that Mike's negative, click-baity interviews beget lazy journalists then turning to those same topics. Which of course is the fault of both parties. But as has been pointed out, it wouldn't take much for Mike to say "Those negative things are far, far behind us, so ask me about Carl and Dennis's great music and singing, etc."

Yes!  Pretty much every article written about the BB these days refers to Dennis as "the one that drowned in 1983" and Carl as the one that died of lung cancer in 98.  Like that's all that's worth mentioning about them.  How about mentioning that Carl ran the band for many years and was the lead vocalist on arguably their most famous songs? 

The BW Tour 2019 is kind of getting derailed with Carl’s problems. Can I suggest that gets continued here rather than bogging down Brian’s tour page?

I realise that people are often so up in arms about the 70s BBs... I actually enjoy them quite a bit. They were realistic and reflected their true problems like real people, and were also super creative and weirdly prolific in album and tour the whole time. People can often be so prudish about drugs and public problems (like discussed with Carl) that arise when one goes one step over the line and monacles shatter everywhere. Oh well, somebody who was under a ton of pressure made a mistake, it happens and they recover and then probably make more mistakes. I think the 80s BBs were far, far more problematic and totally monsterishly freaky. 70s BBs were just a bunch of 30-somethings that were actually good at what they did but had a bunch of fantastic missteps. (that is a super large exaggeration, and I am going to get burned because of it, but I'm not wrong) Tons of love to Carl and Brian.

I mentioned a few months back on another thread about how impressive it was that 1978 Carl morphed into the trimmed down version with a solo career by 1981.
Thinking now was that possibility dangled in front of him like a carrot? ‘Clean yourself up Carl and we will promote you as a solo artist’.
Given that he was sick of all the sh!t going on in the band at the time, a solo offer would have been a very good incentive to sober up.

I don't think that's how it happened, though. I don't think Carl was thinking of having a huge, long term solo career. It simply came up as an option when the guys didn't want to record new music. Carl and Mike were the only band members who took advantage of this lull in the group's recording career to record their own albums.

His lead on The Night Was So Young lacks its usual mellifluousness, and while that goes double for Let Us Go On This Way, that's probably because the song doesn't really suit his voice (I love both songs, BTW). I think though that the worst of his vocals from the period were actually from Adult Child.

I think what you’re talking about is a case of two very different issues: The actual quality of the material they were releasing and performing (as well as their overall public image) on the one hand, versus their fundamental professionalism and interpersonal relationships as displayed in public.

The band undoubtedly released better (and certainly *more* total) material in the 70s than the 80s, and by the mid-late 80s their public image and “coolness” factor weren’t where they had been in, say, 1975.

But to the degree anyone calls attention to something like the 1978 Australia debacle, it’s not a case of judging Carl or anyone else for their flaws and problems. I think Beach Boys fans on the whole, discounting a small cadre of Mike Love-esque super judgmental, non-empathetic folks, almost *have* to be pretty sympathetic to drug and alcohol issues. But, to point out Carl’s downturn in 1977-1978 is simply to point out that, as a *live show*, on a professionalism level, it was at times a total s**t-show. Carl was *really* bad at those ’78 shows. It’s often discussed disproportionately often because of the irony; that Carl in any other time frame was the most professional, consistent person in the band (along with Al) but then also for a short period had arguably the biggest on-stage meltdown/fiasco/trainwreck in the band’s history, which is saying something considering the bad shape Dennis and Brian were in at times, especially in 1981-1983. I think any reasonable, compassionate person would feel awful for Carl and want to see him get better (which he quickly did), while at the same time it’s appropriate to point out that those shows should have been canceled at the point Carl was *severely* slurring his lead vocals to the point that he sounded like a tape deck running out of batteries, and to the point he indeed at one point apparently keeled over on stage. It was bad PR for the band, and unprofessional to make a paying audience sit through “Elmer Fudd on valium” singing “God Only Knows.”

With Dennis and Brian, it’s a more complicated, less clear-cut situation. They had substance problems over a longer period of time, with more ups and downs, with periods of solid on-stage performances and then runs where they weren’t showing up to gigs or were not doing well on stage. Indeed, for all the discussion over the years of Dennis’s problems, he was at other times in better shape on stage than one or both of his brothers. Dennis is surprisingly pretty put-together for the ’78 Austalia gigs. Even in his late era where he had problems, he actually was often pretty solid in drums when he did show up for gigs. Watch the 1981 Queen Mary gig. Brian goes off the rails vocally at one point, most of the band is clearly struggling or, at best, putting in rather rote performances, but Dennis is actually holding the band together pretty well on drums. Even into 1982 Dennis was still often solid.

Dennis' voice was wrecked by the 80's, but I agree his drumming was still solid. When I see him on the DC 1980 footage, he looks like he is playing those drums as if his life depended upon it. None of the replacements on the drum stool ever rocked like Dennis did.
I've even heard at least one show from 1981 where Brian sang a nice version of God Only Knows. Even Mike sounds impressed on the tape; but then they make the mistake of following it up with Don't Worry, Baby, and, try as he might, Brian just can't sing it in the original key.

Just out of curiosity, what is it about the 1980s Beach Boys that you find monstrous and problematic? Are you referring to the music, or their image? I'm genuinely interested in what it is that you find so problematic about them at that time period. Without wanting to make assumptions about what it is that you're referring to, I would argue that 80s pop culture on the whole can be criticized for being a touch superficial (this is the decade known for excess and materialism) so if that's what you were referring to I think the 1980s Beach Boys are kinda a product of tthe times.  But im interested to hear more about what you think.

Thanks to everyone's favorite, Elora (if she's reading this, I've been able to listen to so many cool and unexpected (like the "i" compilation) things that you've posted, thank you), we have some good quality footage of this era, for those (me) who haven't seen it that much.  Prior to "Surfer Girl" is when I was like oh God that's Carl.  Hell, Dennis seems to be fairly okay at least speaking wise, somewhat near his Knebworth speaking voice.

Partial footage from Melbourne:

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