The Smiley Smile Message Board

Anyone know what kind of guitars Al and Carl played on the "Wild Honey"-album? I think in the SS/WH-twofer-booklet you can see Carl with a Rickenbacher but I don't know if it's from those sessions.  And did they play all guitars or were session musicians used on some parts?


BTW what happened to "Beach Boys' gear" ( http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php?topic=258.0 (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php?topic=258.0) )? Anyone got that Carl-interview from "Guitar player"?

Those shots, I believe are from soundchecks for the Lei'd In Hawaii shows. They might have been in a Beatle mood because in some other shots from that session, Brian and Carl are both seen playing a Hofner Beatle bass.

The Hofner Beatle bass had become their official onstage bass by early '67 (Bruce, Carl, Al, and Brian at the Hawaii shows, all used it).  Interestingly, Bruce is seen playing a different brand of violin-shaped bass (with an "E" logo on the headstock) in a shot on page 134 of "Look Listen Vibrate SMiLE" (original edition).

As for the question of Beach Boys vs. studio musicians..."Wild Honey" is mostly all Beach Boys, except for some horns and maybe one or two other things, like Theremin.

Did Ron Brown play bass on it?

He very well may have, but none of the documentation indicates that.  If he did, it was probably overdubs.  He DID however play on the 1967 version of "Time To Get Alone", according to the AFM sheets.

Do you have track-by-track credits for it? I know Bruce is bass and organ on the title track, but that's about it.

Just an aside, the violin bass with the "E" on the headstock was an Eko bass - made in Italy by the same company that made guitars for Vox from about 1964-on, after the Beatles hit world-wide and the U.K. factory couldn't keep up with demand. Electronics and other features were very similar between Ekos and Voxes. I always thought it interesting that the Beach Boys used Vox amps briefly (as seen in the tour shots on the back of the Pet Sounds cover) and wonder how long that lasted. I guess no one escaped the effects of the British invasion, even if the influence was brief.

Dean

Unfortunately not, or at least not yet.  There are only a handful of AFM sheets available from those sessions, and they list all of the Boys but don't indicate what instrument they played.  Like I said, not much in the way of studio musicians except Paul Tanner on the Theremin for "Wild Honey" and maybe a couple of horn players.  A string octet was employed for "Aren't You Glad", but this overdub was not used in the final mix, as you can tell.  Bruce has said it's Carl playing drums on the outtake of "With A Little Help From My Friends", and I think it might be Brian or Carl playing drums on "How She Boogalooed It", since the AFM sheet just lists Brian, Carl, and Bruce on that one.  I'd definitely say Bruce is playing organ on that one, too, and maybe the rest of the organ on the album.  Sounds like a Farfisa or Vox organ on "Wild Honey" and "How She Boogalooed It", compared to most of the rest of the tunes, which sound like the big Baldwin.  The session tapes don't reveal a whole lot about who played what, at least not what I've heard so far.

Thanks. I'm really much more interested in the personnel listings than the "scandal" stuff. I'd love to see a full "who-plays-and-sings-what" book for the Beach Boys.

Is there any evidence to suggest Brian played bass on the album at all, or did he last play bass on SDSN (or Pet Sounds)?

Brian seems to have played much of the bass for Smiley Smile, with bass cameos on SDSN and Pet Sounds.

I think that by comparing the sound of the bass when we know Ron Brown is playing (TTGA, live on tour) to other tracks it can be infered that he played on a lot of WH tracks.

Sounds about right.

I liked the sound Brian got while playing his bass. It was a little different from Al's, which seemed to have a more 'plucky' sound to it. Maybe he used a pick. I know Brian didn't.

Is "he" meaning Brian or Ron, in this case?

Huh?

Didn't Carl play some bass on WH? "I Was Made To Love Her" was mentioned, once, I believe. Or was that Carol Kaye? Carl didn't play bass til later, did he? What was the first song he picked up the bass? "I'm So Young"?

IIRC "I was made to love her" was Carol Kaye and "I'm so young" was Al. Check out http://www.beachboysarchives.com (http://www.beachboysarchives.com) for the Today-stuff



Thanks to everyone for all the answers. But does anybody know what kind of (electric) guitars Al and Carl played on the album?

Carol Kaye has claimed she's on the Boys version of "I Was Made To Love Her", but there's no supporting evidence that I know of.  She also said Hal was the drummer on that, which is apparently not true.

Re: I'm So Young, yeah, Al was bass; but Carl was six-string bass. We're both right! ;D

Do we have a bassist for "Here Comes The Night"?

No, Carol Kaye played on the original "I Was Made To Love Her". Always remember that.

The AFM sheet lists six BB, Diane Rovell and engineers Jim Lockert & Bill Halversen.

Yeah, right!  ;D

I thought that was Jamerson... :lol

In my brief interactions with Al, he says the Boys pretty much always used their stage equipment to record.  I would imagine, then, that Carl used his Bigsby Equipped Telecaster for much of Wild Honey, and Al Strats.  But of course there was an armada of guitars in the Beach Boys possession, so there's really no way to know with certainty what was used, as sad as that reality is.

According to my ear, Ron Brown played bass on the following cuts, AFM be damned.  (I think as was typical, the Beach Boys just left off the hired help, like Ron Swallow on numerous sessions, etc.)

Aren't You Glad
Darlin'
Let the Wind Blow

I would also add to that list:

Lonely Days


I would not bet the house on it, but I do think that he played on A Thing or Two and Here comes the Night as well.

Ron certainly would be a heck of an important interview.

Reading your posts, I certainly admire your ear for a bass player, but as devil's advocate, you're more likely to leave a roadie playing tambourine [which is mostly what Swallow did, right?] off an AFM sheet than someone playing one of the most important instruments on some pretty sparse tracks...

Consider this possibility:  some years ago, Nik Venet told Adam Marsland that the original bass parts on the "WH" album had to be re-tracked due to some problem with the way they were recorded.  He was thinking it was Ray Pohlman who redid the bass, but it could just as easily have been Ron Brown.  And perhaps the AFM sheet from that overdub session just hasn't materialized (not all the sheets from the "WH" sessions have turned up).  NOW, we all know Nik Venet was (a) full of the stinky stuff, and (b) not intimately involved with the Boys by this time.  However, I believe he was still an A&R guy at Capitol at the time, and therefore could have been at least peripherally involved (or at least aware) of some administration-type aspects of their recording career.  It's worth pondering.  And it would explain Ron Brown playing bass on the album without being on the sheets.

Well, I did some digging through my resources and found that all the Wild Honey 8-tracks seem to have been tracked giving the bass it's own track, so it would be entirely possible for Ray or Ron to redo parts without worrying about losing other parts, unlike earlier times where bass would have been locked in mono with all sorts of other instruments on a 4-track tape.

I wonder if we listened carefully enough if we could hear remnants of old bass parts that leaked into other mics...

I still say Ron Brown would be an important interview...not just about this but about the Beach Boys in general during an enigmatic time.

Ah, I see.

Um, Nik left Capitol in 1963, I believe. Of course it's not impossible he kept contact with the band and/or the company, but...

This is fascinating for me, because who played bass on WILD HONEY has been one of my burning questions -- the bass lines on that album are fantastic -- hence my question to Nik Venet.  And for reasons Andrew already stated, I've always been a bit skeptical about his answer.  OTOH, he was right on about Earl Palmer playing on the early sessions, which at that time (1996 IIRC) was not widely known but later was proved right.  So who knows...keep it comin'!  I'm loving this discussion.

Yeah, I love this stuff too. I'm always happy to hear a Beach Boy rather than a session man played on something.  ;D

So is there bass on the Wild Honey Unsurpassed Master? I don't own that one. 

Yeah, which was probably dubbed from the 8-tracks.  Been awhile since I listened to that one though.

Does anybody know Ron Brown's whereabouts?

I wonder if it's the same Ron Brown as the one from Motown ("Funk brothers", including other wrecking crew guys) mentioned in this (http://www.bassland.net/books-n-mags.htm) article

Right, so not live with the instruments on the rhythm track...

SOT 19, disc 2, track 21 is the sole "Wild Honey" track session... no bass.

drums
piano
organ
bongos
tambourine

Track 23 is an acoustic guitar ovedub (guitar sounds like it's strung with rubber bands !)

Track 25 is the electro-theremin overdub (Paul Tanner)

There is bass on the Wild Honey track.  It's low in the mix but clearly audible, especially before the piano starts doubling it.

Ah - so maybe THAT'S Bruce - come to think of it, didn't he say he played the organ solo[i/]? So who's organ then? Or did Bruce misremember, and Alan is bass?

With overdubs, no reason Bruce couldn't have played all kinds of instruments on the track.

Here's the tracklist:

1 - rhy
2 - piano
3 - BG voices
4 - guitar
5 - theremin
6 - Carl
7 - organ
8 - bass

Ah. I thought this was all happening live, and that Bruce O.D.'d the organ solo.

Without hearing the entire session, there's really no way to know how much was tracked live.  There's not a whole lot of leakage clues either, so yeah, no way to know.

I still find it hard to believe that you can hear any leakage on any single track when there are multiple tracks playing.

If you solo one track, then perhaps its possible,...even then its still a bit impossible. This is just my experience with working on tape.

The instrumentation is so sparse that using panning and OOP you pretty much can hear single tracks.

OK, now that I think of it, given the way the tracks seem to have been cut, the bass having its own track is a little weird to me.  If you have multiple instruments on a rhythm track, then generally you would have drums-bass, or drums-rhythm instrument-bass.  If you're specifically leaving the bass off and then overdubbing it clear on the other side of the reel, it seems to me there has to be a reason.  C-Man, IIRC, there were a few times this was done back in the day so that Brian could go back and overdub the bass after doing the piano ("Don't Worry Baby", perhaps?  Although now that I think about it Brian's bass credit on that has been disputed).  How often was this standard procedure?  On the PET SOUNDS sessions, prior to mono dubdown, how often (if ever) did the bass get its own track?  If they were just used to doing it that way for the 8-track instrumental tracks on PET SOUNDS and SMILE and then didn't need to do the mono dubdown because of the limited number of vocals on WILD HONEY, then I could see it.  (I don't own any of the Unsurpassed Master bootlegs so my knowledge might be behind the curve here)

Now, with the limited number of tracks available, I can think of a few reasons to leave the bass off the basic.  The most obvious is so that some other band member can overdub it later...and if that is the case, the most logical person would be Brian, because IIRC those amazing bass lines are copied directly off Brian's left hand.  If the bass was going to do a note-for-note copy of the piano bass, then it would make sense for the other guys not to bother to learn it, and just have Brian overdub it later.

Another possibility would be that (and this would dovetail with what Nik Venet says he had heard) the bass WAS in the original rhythm track, but was too low in the mix, and so had to be re-dubbed so that it could cut through the mix.  If that's the case, then we should be able to hear two different though nearly identical bass tracks on careful listening, but if the tracks were cut sequentially it would explain why the bass is on track 8 (although it could be over there just to avoid leakage).  It would be odd for this problem to carry over every track, however.  Still, Dennis Wilson's bass drum is almost nowhere to be heard on the non-"Darlin'" tracks, correct?  What the heck is up with that?

A third more technical reason for having the bass on its own track might be the nature of the album itself...if the band was trying to cut a soul record, they might have been concerned with having enough bottom end on the record -- not too long before this The Beatles were harassing George Martin about why their records never had as much low end as the American soul records did.  Isolating the bass on its own track would enable them more control over the low end.

My own opinion is that the most likely explanation is that the bass was left off the rhythm tracks because it had to closely double Brian's piano hand, and it either was left for Brian to overdub himself or for someone else to take the time to learn it (and do multiple punch-ins, if necessary) to get it right.

Thoughts?

Al played bass on Don't Worry Baby.  Straight from his mouth.



Never, really.  It was always combined with something, although there might be a few tracks where it was by itself on a second generation 3-track or something.


Makes sense to me, but most of the WH bass doesn't really sound like Brian's bass playing or bass tone.



Not all the bass tracks on on track 8.  They're all over the board, so I kind of doubt they were that concerned about track placement, though that could point to sequential tracking.


I don't even think there was much bass drum to be in the mix.  It's all snare and tamborine.



That's a good point.  I'd add that they probably gave the bass it's own track simply because they could.


Very possible.  Interestingly, apparently many of the Wild Honey tracks are not through-recorded, that is they only cut one verse, one chorus, and then copied and spliced the form of the song together.  So whoever had to learn the bass parts only had to get it right once.

The last album I could really hear Brian's bass playing was on Today! in certain songs, but he really let Al do alot (50%?) of the tracking after Surfer Girl. But, he probably played more than some people think, probably doing overdubs on top of Al's work.

Who knows for sure.

Speaking of Brian's bass playing, there's a picture in the 30th box set of him sitting there holding his Fender, must be during a break. He has white pants and a hat on. Anyone know what session that was? I've been curious about that for years.

Party! Sessions.

Ah! 1965, that's what I figured, by the look of his hair.

Did he play bass on most of that album?

From what I can tell, Bruce played much of the bass on Party!

I think you're probably right that the bass playing on WILD HONEY wasn't Brian's style...which sort of puts us back where we started?

What are the confirmed or likely bass appearances of Brian's from TODAY onward?  (That includes educated guesses based on careful listening)  I was surprised to read that he played on PET SOUNDS...is that true?  The bass credit on "Susie Cincinnati" is apparently for the bass pedals on an organ, and Earle Mankey has told me that the only time he ever saw Brian play a bass was when he played along with the Ronettes album to rehearse for tour, so I'm not aware of any late period in-studio bass playing (probably since it was a lot easier and simpler to use the moog).  Alan Boyd has indicated to me that there was a lot of one-man band recording in the SUNFLOWER era, and even indicated that a particularly cool guitar line on an unreleased track was also Brian's.  But aside from that, what do we know about Brian's bass playing (or Alan's or Bruce's or Carl's, for that matter), post-1964?

We're starting to get into book-length subjects here...

I think that, as Earle's comment suggests, Brian stopped doing much recording on bass when a keyboard instrument came around that gave him the ability to just play basslines on keyboard, the Moog allowed Brian to play whatever basslines he came up with.  I'm not putting Brian's bass playing down, but he was limited in his ability to realize some of his more challenging lines on Fender Bass.

As far as his playing on Pet Sounds, I would be willing to bet that he supplied at least one of the basses on That's Not Me.  The Fender is probably him and the Dano could be too, although it gets a little frisky in the fade that is somewhat uncharacteristic of Brian.

Beyond that, as I mentioned earlier, Brian seems to have provided a lot of bass for Smiley, Vegetables for sure as we have the basic session for that.

But after that, much less.  Maybe a cameo on Wild Honey, Friends seems to be session guys, 20/20 the same, and then come Sunflower and Surf's Up I think that when Ray Pohlman wasn't on hand (as he was for This Whole World, Tears in the Morning, etc) Carl, Al, or Daryl handled the bass.

Suzie Cincinatti's basic session tape doesn't have Brian on it, so he didn't play bass on it.  On the Forever tracking session, who ever is playing bass runs through part of a Bach 2-part invention on the bass, so that suggests Daryl or another session player familiar with Keyboard repertoire.

Surf's Up was probably Daryl, Carl on his songs, and Al on his.

And of course, after this, it was onto Moog bass pretty hardcore.

I bet it's Al playing bass on "Do It Again".  Same trebly pick-like sound that we hear on "Don't Worry Baby" and "She Knows Me Too Well".

And organ-wise, Brian told me that it's Bruce playing the solo on "Wild Honey", and Brian himself playing organ on "Passing By".  Since Bruce was on the "Passing By" session according to Brad Elliott's research, he probably played bass on it, unless there's a second keyboard part mixed in there somewhere. 

Who played bass on 'Wendy'?

Probably Al.

Did Al play the majority of bass on Shut Down, Vol 2?

I believe so.  "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" was cut with the Wrecking Crew, at Gold Star, and has Ray Pohlman on bass.  But everything else, including "Cassius Love vs. Sonny Wilson" is almost certainly Al.  Brian may be on one or two things, but if it's got both piano and bass on the basic, that's Bri and Al respectively.

I'm going to take a crack at the bass on SD Vol 2, just by my ear. Tell me if I'm wrong anywhere...

'Fun, Fun, Fun' - Ray
'Don't Worry Baby' - Al
'In The Parking Lot' - Al
'The Warmth of the Sun' - Brian
'This Car of Mine' - Al
'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' - Ray
'Pom-Pom Playgirl' - Al
'Keep An Eye On Summer' - Al
'Shut Down, Pt. 2' - Brian
'Louie Louie' - Brian

I don't hear much Fender-sound in there but since there is not much guitar-solo-work, it's hard to tell. I always thought that they probably used the semi-accoustic guitars that they also used on tour. And I think Carl didn't play a Telecaster until '68, but I might be wrong on that. (*cough* we need that book  :) )

Both Al and Ray are on the session for "Fun Fun Fun".  One of them MAY have played Fender bass and one of them Dano bass.  Hard to tell, 'cause of the whole big chunky rhythm goin' on there.  To my ears, it seems like a 12-string acoustic rhythm guitar can be heard on the downbeats in the intro(especially the second one, I believe), but that could just be overtones from the piano.  What do you guys think?

full of, 'the stinky stuff,'  you say..

hmm

nik venet iii


Consider this possibility:  some years ago, Nik Venet told Adam Marsland that the original bass parts on the "WH" album had to be re-tracked due to some problem with the way they were recorded.  He was thinking it was Ray Pohlman who redid the bass, but it could just as easily have been Ron Brown.  And perhaps the AFM sheet from that overdub session just hasn't materialized (not all the sheets from the "WH" sessions have turned up).  NOW, we all know Nik Venet was (a) full of the stinky stuff, and (b) not intimately involved with the Boys by this time.  However, I believe he was still an A&R guy at Capitol at the time, and therefore could have been at least peripherally involved (or at least aware) of some administration-type aspects of their recording career.  It's worth pondering.  And it would explain Ron Brown playing bass on the album without being on the sheets.


[/quote]

Which song was that for?

Well, technically, we ALL are full of the stinky stuff...it's a basic bodily function, after all...  ;)  Seriously, I think the "stinky stuff" comment was paraphrasing Carl's early '70s quote.

To rise to Mr. Venet's defense, most people don't deliberately misrepresent things in my experience, but can get confused as time passes and memories intermingle, so it's always best to take anything anyone tells you with a grain of salt.  When I met N. Venet, I found him to be a warm and funny guy and, as I said, the one bit of information he offered not then commonly known was later verified and accepted.

Adam, when you spoke to Nik, how did you broach the subject of the "Wild Honey" bass?  I'm curious how you got on that topic, since it was a few years past Nik's tenure as their producer.

The Brian guitar line was, I think, on one of those all-Brian tracks that he cut with Steve Desper around the SUNFLOWER era.  Alan's the one to ask because I just happened to be over at his house when he was playing it back for some reason or other and the guitar line caught my ear, so I asked him about it.  It may have been called "Where Is She."   I know there was a track by that name, just not sure if I'm mixing up two different memories.

I don't remember how it came up with Venet but I probably said in my dorkily obsessive way that I always wondered who played bass on the WILD HONEY album, and he volunteered the information.

I love threads like this. I was scanning through some old threads and was knocked out that Bruce was mandolin on Disney Girls. As I've said before, I'd love to see complete track-by-track personnel listings, and I think it'd go a long way toward dispelling the "session guys did it all" myth.

What irks me is when I read on some message board about how the Boys were a 'vocal group'. Puhlease.  ::)

Did Mike ever play any instruments in the studio other than sax?

He played with his instrument, but not in the studio, unlike Dennis.... :lol

He was a real sax machine!

He played (or played with) the bass guitar during the early Capitol sessions.
He also played some electric semi-hollowbody guitar during the "Surf's Up" sessions at Brian's.
There's photo evidence of both.  However, both were almost certainly "between-take" performances that didn't get anywhere near vinyl, or maybe even the multi-track tape.

He did play some tambourine on a "Surf's Up" cut or two according to Desper.  I think "Student Demonstration Time".  It's in Steve's book.

I imagined he'd played tambourine and maybe other percussion at some point. Does he play acoustic guitar on Big Sur, I wonder?

Not sure, but I doubt it.  Blondie said they cut the "Saga" as one continuous piece, and the acoustic guitar on that sounds like it keeps going into the next two parts, so if it was Mike, he would've played it on the other two parts as well.  But it probably wasn't him, in my opinion.

I doubt Mike's that bad on guitar, I mean, he's been playing for like 50 years now. I'm surprised he didn't play it live during the late 60s/early 70s when he had little lead vocals.

Maybe he composes on piano - I've seen a concert review c. 1972 in Kingsley Abbot's collected books which says he plays organ, and he seems to know how to do the Jerry Lee rock'n'roll boogie a little, judging by Knebworth.

Anyone have an idea of what Bruce plays bass on? I'm fairly au fait with Brian and Al's credits, but...

There's other footage of Mike playing keyboards (the "Our Team" video from M.I.U.) but it's doubtful he played very well...and given every other member of the band could play keys, there'd be no reason for him to do so.  Add to that Mike's general dislike of the recording process, and there's not much reason he'd be around for tracking.

Which song does he play on?  I like MIU a lot and have always wanted to see the Our Team promo video.

It's basically a jam session....IIRC it's Brian on piano, Al on bass, and Mike noodling on the organ.  It's probably just something they did for the cameras, since Brian's smiling and hamming it up borders on sarcasm.  I'm sure they weren't recording it.  It may have been "Mike Come Back to L.A." they were working on.  There's extensive footage of them cutting that song.