The Smiley Smile Message Board

In honor of the surely soon to be forthcoming Feel Flows material, here it is.

I think you will be as surprised as I was to discover what Jerry Cole and David Cohen contributed to This Whole World.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBWTRQEKgI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBWTRQEKgI)


Jerry Cole, as you may know, was a long time regular sideman for Brian--he's gotta be up there just behind Hal, Ray, Steve, and Jay.  David Cohen only started to get work with Brian after he backed off: David Cohen's name shows up more around Friends and after, through to the early 70s.  He was not only a session ace, but also directed the educational programs at LA's Ash Grove folk music club.  His background in folk and country made him a great choice to deploy on this track, even though his contribution is pretty much completely minimized in the end as the concept of the production moved away from a country rocker and on to something a little more lush.

Hope you find it interesting!  Thanks for watching!

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Excellent work - all these videos have been enlightening.

Absolutely amazing. Thanks for doing these! I'm sharing them with some BBs friends off this board, too.  Great work!

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor!

That is incredible!

Great job again. Never knew how much of a country sound was in this song.

I've shared that Sloop John B video with at least 2 people in my real life - if I were using social media anymore I'd have shared it on my feed. These videos are so insightful - I wish I could add more than saying "thanks" - but I always look forward to reading the music aficionados posts about these videos.

Wow, JH. You've really been and gone and done it this time! The passage at 1:52 is simply breathtaking.

Beach Boys fans have such a lot to thank you for!

Simply astounding--I think we all knew there were guitars way down in the mix but the extent of it is truly mind-boggling.

Is it possible to do something like sync up these guitar parts with the a cappella vocals for TWW that came out on the MIC set? Obviously some calibration would be needed, but  I'm guessing it would be quite a trippy listen!

It's not only possible--I have done it... but, I'd be concerned about copyright implications.  I definitely do not want to upset anybody, although the way YouTube monetizes that stuff now for the publisher may make it ok.

Love it! Can't wait to hear the official backing track, hopefully with the faders up.

Very nice. There was some similar guitar play in Breakaway, but this arrangement takes that idea further. 

That's a great point.  Maybe I should do a Breakaway video!  Definitely haven't heard a good mix of that backing track though.

C-man, is there any indication who played on Breakaway?

This has been my experience. I have a roll-your-own mix of 'Til I Die' on my channel that has racked up 27,000 views...years ago, EMI made a claim on it and sent me a message that they'd be making money on my video - which is cool with me...better than them taking it down. Also, I think it's standard that you get a few chances of copyright infringement before your channel is taken down (ie, if your video gets taken down due to copyright claims but you continue to re-upload it, only then does it become an issue and you get strikes against your channel). However, the more likely scenario is that the record company would be happy to be making money off your video, so I doubt that would even be an issue.

You are so talented!  I used to have a truck and one of the speakers was out.  Whenever I played TWW in the truck, you could actually hear some of those buried guitar parts.  I remember wishing they were more prominent.

JH, I've roped c-man into this thread to up the chances that he sees your question. ;D

I myself couldn't find anything on the internet, except that Carl played guitar on it...


Wow, yes. That must be the thought on everyone's minds right now. :)

This sounds just lovely. It's really like there was an entirely different song there that could have been pursued with this guitar sound as the focus.

Thanks for the cool video!

Yep...the dueling electric lead guitars are David Cohen and Mike Anthony. There's an acoustic rhythm guitar in the background on the basic track, and that's most likely Carl. A second, more prominent acoustic rhythm guitar was overdubbed.

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I thought the only guitars on the final master were part of Jerry Cole's guitar, and Carl's overdubbed 12-string.

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To me, that little chimey part right before the bridge (at 0:31) sounds like a 12-string.

David Cohen was payed for a double, so I assume the overdubbed acoustic part was him. The electric guitars were definitely live.

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Well, there was a later guitar overdub of some type...the original session was recorded on 8-track, with Tracks 7 and 8 both designated as electric guitars. Then, there was a transfer to 16-track, with two additional instruments added (guitar on Track 10 and piano on Track 11); the other tracks were used for vocals. Presumably, Carl added that extra guitar, since that transfer to 16-track would almost certainly have been done at a later date.

Basses on "Break Away" were Ray Pohlman and Jimmy Bond (same as on the song's flip side, "Celebrate The News"). Definitely one upright, and what sounds to me like a 6-string Dano bass (same with "Celebrate The News") - it has that bouncy, slightly grungy sound. A standard Fender bass can sound grungy if played with a pick ("Don't Worry Baby", "Please Let Me Wonder", "Sloop John B."), but I've never really heard that "bounce" except on the lighter-gauge strings of a Dano (or Fender VI).

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I keep trying to write something that adequately expressed the incredibly deep emotions I feel about studio musicians, in this context especially.  But it's not possible.

I love that Ray and Jimmy still played bass for Brian into the 70s.  I feel like Ray Pohlman is my friend, even though he's so long dead (may he rest in peace.)

The two bass thing was definitely something Brian liked that his fellow Band mates didn't quite get the hang of or understand when they produced their own stuff.  And of course, Brian was possibly the most creative user of multiple bass instruments in non-classical music, of all time.  This Whole World or Breakaway are not the best examples of this because it's just doubling.  But when he had two or even three basses or bass instruments weaving among each other, it's truly like nothing else in pop music, or really, any music.

The great bassists and composer, Red Callender, co-wrote, and played on,  PRIMROSE LANE, the giant hit for Jerry Wallace in 1959. There are two basses on that track, standup and electric. Great bass part, btw. In addition to the bass parts, there are other elements in that song that might have been appealing to Brian -  the jazz tinged chord progression, the laid back 'feel,' the harpsichord, Plas Johnson's lovely sax work, and even the background vocals. Listen to the the bg vocals at about :20. The part is simple but it just happens to be the bgv part for This Car Of Mine.
Brian knows this record.

Here you go. Lovely song (another new one on me). And some heart-warming posts. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qyry6tT0QU

Thank you for that!
That is amazing. I love the riffs. What a great sound. I would love to hear that song with that riff more prominent in the mix.

Thanks for posting the link.
The 12 string on Primrose Lane is "The Animal," the guitar Phil Spector used on Then He Kissed Me.
Another interesting thing: The little descending harmonic event Brian uses in the bridge of When I Grow Up To Be A Man (at about 1:00) feels related to the bridge in Primrose Lane where Jerry sings,"and I want to walk with you..." and the "oooohs" descend underneath.
And, then, there's the harpsichord. ;)

It really was such a fertile time for arrangement and orchestration, before the “rock band” line-up sidelined more creative arranging to more niche genres.

Brian was very much a part of that, despite his origins in a rock band.

Did Red ever play on a BW production?  He was a fine bassist but never seems to have shed to record for The Beach Boys. Was probably just too far down the list. 

Red Callender did record Murry Wilson's  tune TABOR-INN (aka Tabarin) for Hollywood Records. It was released in '51. It's a post war small combo Rhythm 'n' Blues ballad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8gCnl5eSME

Since we're talking session musicians, don't know if anyone's mentioned but percussionist Emil Richards died recently. He played cimbalom on one of the Good Vibrations sessions: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/emil-richards-dead-legendary-percussionist-la-session-player-was-87-1263412

Yeah, another great session legend gone.  It's very sad.  I was reviewing some session credits the other day, as I do most days, and it hit me that everybody there other than Brian has died.  I wish I could have met some of them, because, as I said, I feel as though they are my friends.  And, of course, there's so much information they could pass along that Brian, whose recollections are frankly no more germane to the questions at hand than a random lemur's screams, simply cannot.

That is so cool.  What a strange small world it was out there.

Wow, lately I've really been getting into live recordings from George Harrison's late 1974 North American tour, for which Emil Richards was the percussionist. I've really been digging his chimes playing, for instance a neat solo on "For You Blue".

:lol

This has made my day. What a great shame it's true (thinking of a certain Q&A)...

Seriously though, it is most certainly sad to see another Brian collaborator go and realize that so much information has been lost to us this way.

I'm a fan. He did some way out stuff. Emil's  NEW SOUND ELEMENT "STONES" came out in '67.

Here's Garnet (January)from that album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRbeKbsmxA