The Smiley Smile Message Board

I own the vinyl for Carl's first album and I have no idea who "J.W.G." is, does anyone know?

James William Guercio.

Thanks Andrew :) I never knew that he played an instrument, I always just thought of him as a producer.

Considering what producers do, I dont' think I'd trust one who didn't...and preferably who didn't play several.

I think he was also in the Beach Boys' backing band in the mid-70s and played bass I believe.

I didnt mean that I thought he couldnt play an instrument at all, I just didnt know that he was a good enough bass player/percussionist.

Gotcha.

On a VERY bizarre aside, I had a dream about this thread last night! I dreamed that someone said, "What about 'STE,' I heard he couldn't so much as play air guitar and yet he produced Queen's best albums!"

Of course, in my dream, I noticed the poster was wrong, as Queen's producer was Roy Thomas Baker, or RTB, if you must abbreviate--my dream-self determined the poster meant Stephen Thomas Erlewine, reviewer for Allmusic.com. And I have NO IDEA whether Roy Thomas Baker could play any instruments. But I couldn't decide whether to respond to that poster. Weird, weird dream...

Yes, that is very very weird, how did your brain come up with all that? :p

Easy: my brain is messed up.

Here is a question. If Carl was mad enough to leave the Beach Boys why did he come back? Surely money can't be the only reason. I would have to think because Dennis and Brian got worse then ever right after he left.

I have no idea, but thats a very interesting question. Poor Carl, that would've been pretty tough having two brothers and seeing them turn into drug addicts etc.. Why did Brian/Dennis ever have to do drugs. I wish Brian still had his old voice. I mean Carl's voice was still pretty much intact by the time he died. I think thats one of the saddest pieces of footage of the boys, Dennis explaining how much of an honour it was being a Beach Boys and then trying to sing You Are So Beautiful and only managing about 10 words or so and then just slowly walking back to his position, it annoys me that straight after they start playing Barbara Ann (or something - I cant remember) and just pretend there's nothing wrong (not mentioning any names  ;)) Sorry to go a bit off topic there...

Although Carl left the band for a while, he said all along he was still a Beach Boy. In other words, he went on strike against his own band, bargaining his return for certain conditions to be met. I would think that those conditions were met, for a while at least. Clearly they didn't stay away from the Vegas/resort circuit for long, but they did start rehearsing again and they did put out a new album.


   

1. Money - he was still a young man
2. Fame - praise, love and adoration, standing ovations.
3. Optimism - I always believed that Carl hung in there because he hoped (believed?) that Brian would (maybe?) come back and do some great things in the band.

All good replies, I know he didn't legally leave but still I keep thinking when did the Beach Boys stop working as a unit? As early as 1963 Brian was removing himself from things.  Brian held Dennis and Carl back when he did 15 Big Ones, Carl was against a Pet Sounds tour in 1996 and also walked out on the Don Was sessions. It wasn't just Love dilluting  the others creative juices, but everyone did their part as far as forcing others to go against their better judgement. There was  a point (I hold stedfeast to 1973) where it would have been in everyone's creative interest to breakup. Fiscally things prevented that from happening. Would Brian still have his voice, would Dennis and Carl be here? Who knows? What did happen was fated to be.

I know about the Was-sessions, but am hearing for the first time (that I can remember) about a '96-Pet Sounds-tour. Anyone could give more insight?
Bruce already talked in the early 90s about such a tour iIrc.

Well it is in the Catch a Wave book and Melinda seems to be the soruce so it may be not the way it really went down, but Carl thought Brian would not be able to vocally sound professinal enough to do the songs justice.

Damn, I have that book (and love it). I probably have to go through it a second time.
But now you mention it, I rememebr that "Brian's vocals"-part. If it really was this way, it's sad, because it would've been good promotion for the boxset and the last great concerts were already 3 years behind. I kinda doubt that Carl really was against this, but who knows...

Wow, that's a pretty surreal thought.  Imagine the Beach Boys recording career ending with that round at the close of Funky Pretty.  Or - even more so - Mount Vernon and Fairway!   A few Wilson Brothers albums in the years that followed?  Yeah!

Which is poppycock! By that point, no one in the BB could sing like Brian used to so they had Matt Jardine doing Brian's vocals. And before Matt, Adrian Baker, Jeff Foskett, etc.  A BB PS tour could have happened, but  it would have taken work - work that perhaps Carl wasn't interested in doing.  Saying that "Brian wouldn't be up to snuff" sounds like a red herring to me.

Al Jardine claimed he had to fight just to get Sail on Sailor in the set in the mid 90s so I can only imagine the opposition Pet Sounds would have drawn. With the proper backing muscians, they could have pulled it off. The leads Brian and Al turned in at the East Coast concerts this fall which would have been 10 years later prove that.

Remarkably, it was Carl who vetoed the PS tour (according to Carlin). If MIKE was willing to work  on a PS tour!!!

I think we can all sit here and give fairly good educated guesses as to why certain things did not happen, such as the '96 PS tour or the Don Was sessions.  We all have a certain amount of information and knoweledge at our fingertips.  HOWEVER, it is still limited.  We cannot possibly fathom the what those relationships between Brian, Carl, Mike, Al were really like  underneath it all. It was not as simple as someone saying, " Hey, I want to go out and do a tour full of Pet Sounds material to promote the box set, let's go", or "Although we haven't done an album together in 10 years and I just left my therapist due to your lawsuit, etc, let's make a new album produced by Don Was. "  These things sound great to us in the abstract, but to those guys in those relationships with all kinds of crap behind them that we will never know, it just couldn't happen.   As for Carl putting the kibosh on the PS tour, MY EDUCATED GUESS is that it was possible, although I doubt it was as simple as "Brian's voice isn't good enough anymore" (But rememeber, as we sit here today and hear Brian live, do we forget how MUCH BETTER he is now than when he started this whole venture in 2000?  If Carl had thought that then, would he really have been wrong? Would we have thought the same thing then?)   For instance, I rememeber hearing Al Jardine say that Carl was against the 1993 acoustic tour because he thought Al, Mike and himself weren't good enough to pull those songs off anymore.  Al said that at the time he disagreed with Carl, but that when he later teamed with his kids and Carnie and Wendy, heard all of the young voices singing the songs, he realized Carl was right. (I believe this was from an ESQ interview). I am still not sure I agree with either of them, to me when Carl, Al, Brian and Mike sing together it is the sound of Heaven. But, if Carl simply did not think his group could sing well enough anymore to pull off the more challenging material, I think we have to defer to his judgment and just think about what could have been.

I think we can not blame anyone completely for what happened after 1973 and especally after 1983. No one is faultless either. Simply they ceased to function as a working band. Once they began to talk through their personal managers, lawyers, and flunkies, they did not have any means of working their problems out in a simple manner. The support they had given each other was gone, they all had let the band down at one time or another and weren't forgiving each other so quickly. What gets me though is that they manage to do a country tribute album to themselves that is such a horrible waste of our time and their time. They are ALL at fault for dropping the ball there, and the 1993 tour and the Was sessions shows they could have blown our minds. Very sad and we don't know who did what. Melinda is again not someone I trust to give Carl a fair shake, but once he came back in 82 he was just as guilty for letting the decline happen as any of them..

Agreed, MBE.  Except, I would add that in addition to being a waste of time S&S just rips my heart out because if you can get beyond the schlock, the actual BGV's of the Boys on The warmth of the Sun, Caroline, No, Don't Worry Baby show just how great they could still sound together, circa 1995. For whatvever reason, they chose not to share that with us in any meaningful way. 

I agree that the guys probably had more problems than many of us will ever have, but still they are/were professionals and had work to do. If someone didn't sound as good as 30 years earlier, than work hard, so he sounds good enough again. Making music is the best job in the world, especially if you are as succesful as the Beach Boys, but that doesn't mean that you can rest on your legacy and don't have to work anymore imo.

A couple comments, one on each sentence I quoted above.

1) I think it is nature that overtakes hard work in the "sounds good" department. At a certain time--and the Beach Boys were reaching that point even in the mid-90s--a person is simply going to lose some vocal abillity. The voice changes, wears, people lose range, etc. It's just a fact, and all the hard work in the world wouldn't have prevented it. Sure, cigs, drugs, booze, partying hurt, and sure, hard work and practice help. But even Al and Mike have lost quite a bit (with Al keeping more than the others), and they were widely regarded as the clean-loving guys.

2) I think the Beach Boys have been proof that you can rest on your legacy. It might be disappointing to certain kinds of fans, but it is true. (NOTE: I only mean that in terms of remaining a creative force. Obviously, there is a certain amount of hard work that goes in to touring the country and playing hundreds of shows a year. It is just that those shows stopped being progressive a long time ago.)

To 1) : I didn't say that they would've sounded exactly like in the 60s if they had worked on their voices (and I was mostly talking about Brian, because Carl and Al were still great in the 90s). I just meant that they or Brian could've worked on the voice (hear how good he sounds today) so that it was good enough to sing on such a tour. He made it today, why shouldn't he done it 11 years earlier? Even if they had to play the songs in a different key, but to say one's voice isn't good enough won't do it for me.

To 2) I don't think the Beach Boys showed that. Look at how many people take them serious as important artists. They're dead as artists (and music, after all, is an art and not a business imo). Most people laugh at them because they don't think they ever could have done something great. Only "insiders" really know how great they were. The Beach Boys showed, imo, that the $ really is more worth to them than the quality of their music, and therefor I lost respect for them in later years. And if Carl was really the one stopping a "Pet Sounds"-tour in '96 then I can't say how disappointed I am. They get millions of dollars and imo could get off their ass and do something for the "real" fans. All they did (and Mike&Bruce still do now) is for the general public which has a certain view of the BBs as a surf-and car-band.


I can understand your opinion from a certain point of view but my thoughts go in a different direction I guess.
I hope you could understand hat I was saying, I have problems to express my opinion in english.

I think I understand where you're coming from, and only disagreed. Personally, I have no problem disagreeing and have no hard feelings. As for expressing yourself in English, I'd say you do well.

By the way, while I agree that music is an art, sadly it is a business, too. At least, for any of us to hear it (other than when we play for ourselves, our friends and our families), it has to be one. There has to be money for people to make a living, and then everything escalates. I wish that weren't so, but it is.

Anyway, that's another entire topic.

I think the part that Brian "would not be able to vocally sound professional enough to do the songs justice" has to do with the LEAD vocals, not the backing vocals which Matt Jardine, Jeff Foskett, and Adrian Baker supplied. In that scenario, I would agree with whoever, if anybody, made that assertion.

In 1996, it might've been a disaster. At that time, right or wrong, the guys in the group probably didn't think Brian had the capability, or at the very least, the stamina to pull it off. Keep in mind that most of the lead vocals on Pet Sounds are Brian's. It would've been a load. And if you're gonna share them, what's the point?

This was right after Brian got married, so Melinda hadn't yet been able to have her positive effects on Brian's health, both mentally and physically. I mean that seriously. The new medication, therapy, and "emotional support" needed some time to kick in. The Brian in 1996 was still a long way away from the Brian of BWPS in 2004.

Also, Brian didn't have the Darian/Jeff band. This is not a knock against The Beach Boys, but were they sophisticated and creative and saavy enough to do with Brian what his new(er) band did? Did The Beach Boys consider things like teleprompters, shadowing/doubling Brian's leads, multiple instruments, and multiple background singers like Brian's new band? And, even though the guys in The Beach Boys literally grew up with Brian, did they really know how to DEAL with him in the manner of a Darian or Jeff - or Melinda? Brian's relationships with the guys in The Beach Boys was so disfunctional, even with Carl. For Brian to do with The Beach Boys in 1996 what he does now, well, so much would've had to CHANGE and I just don't think they had the foresight.

Rocker I love what you had to say and agree. Money shouldn't have been an issue to the band after the mid seventies. They just didn't know how to save it. In The U.S.A.  the Beach Boys are respected overall, it was much worse in the 80s when they were doing shows like Full House. Even Mike and Bruce do a more creative show now at least sometimes. I am going to see them Saturday and I never thought I would. Why? Because they are going to be backed by a full orchestra and that means it won't be a jukebox type of show. I don't really hear people think of them as just a surf band anymore thanks to how famous Smile and Pet Sounds now are. I just wish Kokomo would self destruct because here it is heard all the darn tiime and is in my eyes one of their worst records.

Back to the topic. If Brian and Dennis had wrecked their voices by 1975 and Mike began to poorly ape his young sound at the same time, the others voices didn't loose any range until they reached their 40s. Yet they still could sound more then presentable as the Don Was and yes even the S&S backing proves. Brian is included as the wonderful performances on some of those Paley demos is quite a revelation. Funny on OCA and the documentary soundtrack he sounded pretty average, so I think it is telling that from 1975 he could sing competently when he felt like it. Even Mike and Bruce have done some shows in the last five years that are far better then we ever expected of them. Which leads me back to my original point that Carl should have stood up to the group and not come back until they were all ready to do work that they could be proud of.

1. First of all, Baker, Foskett and MJ all sang lead vocals in the BB band. Secondly, as much of a Brianista I am, I don't think it would have been neccesary for him to shoulder the lead vocal load on a live PS in '96 save for the easier songs.  Maybe a BB performance of the album would have reclaimed  Pet Sounds as a BB album in the minds of fans.

RobMac,
     Adrian Baker, Jeff Foskett, and Matt Jardine sang, at the most, one, maybe two leads per show. There was the occasional "Don't Worry Baby", "Warmth Of The Sun", or a "Little GTO", but their contribution singing Brian's leads was negligible. Those were usually handled by Carl or Al.

Your point about reclaiming Pet Sounds as a BB album in the minds of the fans? Maybe Carl knew that would be misleading. With the possible exception of Love You, isn't Pet Sounds the closest Beach Boy album we have to a Brian Wilson SOLO ALBUM? That's one of the main reasons he was able to do the entire album in his solo career/tour. Most of the leads were his...

I thought they did a wonderful job this past fall working Al in on the parts he sang. For example, the parts where its Brian doubling himself or layered, Al sounded awesome with him. I am thinking about the tag on Wasn't Made for These Times. It could have been done