The Smiley Smile Message Board

I have heard this second European tour did not go over well. Of course, with EMI's release of "Then I Kissed Her" and Carl's draft problems beforehand. Besides that, how did the tour go? Did people still love them as much as the first time. I did hear their performances were not good, but I don't know how true that is. But does anyone have any further details on this tour? I have always been curious about it. Also, were any of these performances recorded? I kinda doubt but figured I'd ask anyway.

I wrote a book with Jon Stebbins called The Beach Boys in concert-you May like it. I talked a lot about this tour. I think the shows went down fine with the punters but the music critics really went after the BBs. The tour started badly because Carl had a draft hearing and had to fly out of the US so late that he missed a show in Ireland. Unfortunately this was a very important show because all the big UK music papers had sent reviewers and they all attacked the BBs non Carl performance. So this set a negative tone for the whole tour and made the BBs very defensive. To be fair to the critics-the BBs failed to prepare for the possibility that Carl might not arrive and were caught with their pants down. They hadn’t rehearsed the songs Carl usually sang and when Bruce stepped up to sing god only knows he forgot the words-which seemed amateurish for a professional band. The BBs were also hurt by the fact that the British musicians union had a lot of ridiculous rules to protect their industry. The BBs had planned on using a small orchestra but the union wouldn’t allow so many non U.K. musicians-so the BBs had to play the pet sounds material without augmentation-which allowed critics to charge that they were Studio wizard Brian’s band and without him and his production talents they couldn’t reproduce his music! IN addition the fact that Smile wasn’t ready-left them with nothing to promote at a time when if you didn’t have a new single with a new sound every three or four months you were suddenly passé

To answer your other question I am not aware of any live may 1967 recordings

The truth is that in the mid sixties the US music press was almost non existent-it was more like pin up magazine or datebook. So the BBs weren’t prepared for the more sophisticated UK music press-with writers who weren’t either 80 year old Frank Sinatra fans or 14 year old girls that thought Dennis was dreamy. The NME, Melody Maker and  Disc and Music Echo had professional rock music journalists before that was a thing in the United States

Here's a newspaper article about the show in Dublin.


300 fans demand money back – Beach Boys in Ireland – May 1967


https://brandnewretro.ie/2014/05/08/300-fans-demand-money-back-beach-boys-in-ireland-may-1967/

I think if they'd been able to use Igor and co., the shows would've been well received, even without Carl. They would've sounded closer to how they do on the '68 live in London recordings, and those performances obviously went down very well.

I 100% agree but it was a career momentum killer for sure