The Smiley Smile Message Board

So you can now look at 1975 on my website beachboysgigs.com -here is the link-  https://www.beachboysgigs.com/1975-2/
You can see reviews, photos, etc-you can also, of course view 1962-1974 as well

Fascinating stuff. Thanks, Ian!

I remember that Omni show in Atlanta with Billy Joel! A fight broke out in the crowd above where we were sitting during one of the BBs' newer, slower songs.

Great work, Ian--this is one of the "high water" years for sure! 

I love those quotes about the "50 songs"--how many of those songs have actually turned up in the intervening years??

Fantastic

And already something I didn't know: They played "Hushabye" in '75  :o

It was on Spirit of America-released that year-so maybe they pulled out for that reason

Excellent stuff; as with the "In Concert" book, it's great to dig out these details that otherwise would have been lost to time.

Fascinating stuff with the backing band. Reading the last few years posted, it was interesting to read weird stuff like Ron Altbach and Carl Wilson not getting along. You'd think the nerdie, hippie-dippie Altbach and the uber-calm-soft-spoken Carl Wilson would get along just fine. Yet this is the one of the few cases where it appears Carl just didn't mix well. Obviously, as is pointed out, this was during the heady days of the meditators vs. the free lifers (or whatever we've decided to call them). So I totally understand the initial skepticism Carl had. I also wonder if this was the beginning of Carl drinking more heavily.

Still, it's pretty epic to read a random instance where a musician is like "Carl was a really sweet guy, but he was a total d*ck to me" (loosely paraphrasing of course).

They had so many players coming and going during certain eras, it's unavoidable that a few of them at least would not have been as amenable to the weird Beach Boys politics. Those Putter Smith stories were also pretty entertaining. It's always interesting to try to discern whether the musician is just axe-grinding, versus the musician accurately bringing to light the weird inner-workings of the BB organization. In that particular case it appears to be both.

I guess it makes sense; the players that lasted much longer tend to be more sympathetic and positive about their experiences.

Well…Carl has the reputation of being a saint, so anything that suggests he was an actual human being who occasionally behaved badly or lost his temper seems to shock people. He for the most part kept his emotions tightly hidden so he remains a bit of an enigma. As I stated-in the absence of Brian he became the band leader-Mike was the singer and got the crowd moving but Carl was in control of the music and therefore he was annoyed that Mike crossed into his territory and tried to impose a musician on him. Clearly there was a lot of tension in this period. As far as drinking, Carl liked a drink and dabbled with the other stuff but he seemed to be able to handle it all till the pressure of 1976-77 sent him on a downward spiral that lasted till mid 1978. As far as other musicians, almost all of them that I interviewed, with the exception of Ron A, tended to praise the Wilsons but seem less enamored of Mike. But in Mike’s defense, he had really gotten into TM and vegetarian healthy living and really did not want to be around drugs and alcohol. In the 1970s music business that was not going to make you many friends.

It was interesting to read in the book that some members seemed to feel they were purged from the band at one point for not being TM guys. It's the kind of stuff that, today, would probably result in a wave of lawsuits.