The Smiley Smile Message Board

I read somewhere that out of all of The Beatles Brian only met two of them, Paul McCartney of course and Ringo.  Apparently he only saw George at a nightclub and he had never met John, I'm surprised I thought all of The Beach Boys and Beatles had met and hung out together on numerous occasions. ???

I thought there was a nightclub incident in the early 70s involving Brian, John L and Harry Nilsson. Might be wrong though.

I did notice that of the big names of the 60's (Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Brian Wilson) John never slagged off Brian in the press.  I'm not sure whether they ever met, but for sure John had respect for what he had accomplished and was respectful enough of him not to expend any of his vitrol on Brian.

Yes, John even once said that "The Little Girl I Once Knew", aka TLGIOK, was the only song on the radio bloody worth listening to while he was with those slaggers, the Beatles.

I don't know but there was something with Lennon and Dennis.

On Brian's site you can hear Brian and John talk via phone. 15 seconds I believe and not really interesting

Where on Brian's site is that?  ???

http://www.brianwilson.com/media/audio.html

(quick clip No. 3)

As far as the BBs go- Carl and Mike met the Beatles backstage in Portland in August 1965- there is a new video out about the Beatles 65 Portland, Oregon show and it has interviews about the meeting.  Recently found footage (filmed I believe by Mal Evans or Neil Aspinall) shows that the Beatles met up with the Beach Boys on their tour of England in Nov 1966. This would have been right after John returned from filming How I Won the War.   John and George were at the Dec 67 Unicef show in Paris and met up with the Beach Boys. Mike of course went to India with the Beatles in 68. The only meetings involving Brian were 1966-summer tour when Paul came to meet Brian with Derek Taylor and Apr 1967 when Paul attended a Vegetables session.  Paul also visited Brian in 71-according to Carlin's book.  Rocker- I don't know of a Lennon-Dennis connection, what have you heard?

I heard somewhere that "the All American bullet-headed saxon mother's son" line was written by John in India about Mike.  :lol

Dennis ran into John in L.A. at a restaurant in 72/73 and said "hello John...its Dennis...Wilson." Lennon replied, "I've seen your commercials." Dennis just walked away. This was a classic Lennon put on because there was a ubiquitous TV commercial that ran in L.A. for a clothing store called "Wilson's House of Suede and Leather."

Karen Lamm told me Dennis again ran into Lennon in NY a couple years later and Lennon said, "You know i was joking about the leather thing." Dennis had no clue what he was talking about.

@Ian: Exactly this I meant....  :)





Do you know if anything else interesting happened at that meeting?

ugh, real player :(

http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/maypang.htm

E.C.: I know that Paul McCartney (and even Sean Lennon) is a great fan of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys stuff in the mid-sixties. But, I never recall having read that John Lennon was all that influenced by Wilson and the Beach Boys. So, my question is this: did John ever mention the Beach Boys and/or Brian Wilson in any casual conversations about music and what influenced him (or what current music he liked)?

May: It was Paul McCartney who considered the Beach Boys' PET SOUNDS as one of the greatest albums of all time. He was indeed inspired by Brian’s songwriting and the bass playing (and sound of the bass) on this album to create "something substantial" and he went on to create SGT. PEPPER. Years later, Paul visited Brian at his home and he brought out the Good Vibrations master tape for Paul to hear. Brian kept "remixing" the tape over and over and never got passed the first verse of the song. Brian was obsessed with trying to make it better. Apparently, this situation happened a lot to those who visited Brian at his home.

John liked The Beach Boys as well and we met Dennis Wilson at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Months later, we attended a birthday party for Dean Martin's youngest son, Ricci, and all The Beach Boys were there, including Brian, which thrilled John among other amazing guests that night.

http://www.earcandymag.com/maypang-2005.htm

E.C.: I also recently interviewed Micky Dolenz, and in his book he relates a story of hanging out with John, Harry Nilsson, and Brian Wilson at a Malibu Beach house. Was Brian Wilson a regular with this group?

May Pang: I don't remember Brian hanging out with us that much. Brian, we saw a couple of times. We saw him once at this birthday party…in fact, that was the first time that we had seen him. I think it was for Ricky Martin - I'm talking about Dean Martin's son - it was like his 18th birthday or something. I remember seeing this guy - and this was at a time when he was really heavy - and I saw him coming towards us and went, "Oh my god". And I whispered under my breath, as I did quite often with John, "The man that's about to come over to us is Brian Wilson. Remember, we saw Dennis Wilson, his brother, the other day? This is Brian…Beach Boy". And John turned around and he was like, "Ohhh". Just as Brian was about to speak, John spun around and said, "Hi Brian". And you could see this look in Brian's eyes as he said, "Hey man, you have any reds?" John looked at him and said, "Don't do that stuff, sorry man". And he walked away. That's where Brian was at that moment in time.

those stories are kinda sad.
cool to hear that John was "thrilled" to see Brian though.

what's the story on John covering "The Lonely Sea"? is that from a Let It Be rehearsal? i've never heard it.

I don't know how conscious it was on John's part, but I feel Because from Abby Road has many of Brian's fingerprints all over it.

Oh absolutely, I've always thought that "Because" was the Beatles attempting a Brian-like vocal arrangement.  If Smile had actually come out, I would think it was a rip off of "Our Prayer". 

I love "Because", by the way. 

Here are a list of Beatles songs that I feel have BB influence of some sort: Paper Back Writer, Drive My Car, Michelle, Here There and Everywhere, Elenour Rigby, Sgt Pepper album, most of Magical Mystery Tour, Back in the USSR, Birthday, Long Long Long, Good Night, Here Comes the Sun, Because, Sun King and Let it Be

I'm not saying that they were necassarily thing of the BB when they wrote all of these, but there is definately a BB style sound in each of these. Probably a bunch more I'm not thinking of.

What about This Boy? If you look at the structure of the song, its basically a rewrite of Surfer Girl. Also the same can be said of  Yes It Is

I found this interesting article [http://www.tonyrivers.com/castaways/castaways4.htm] when I was searching (as I occassionally do) for Beach Boys articles/stories etc...

"I know that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were fans of the Beach Boys, because I sat on the floor talking to John for about 20 minutes at the Nems Enterprises Xmas Party one year, and the main part of the conversation was the Beach Boys, and how great they were."

The whole thing is pretty interesting though, worth reading.

I've heard that. Atleast that's what it said it was. It wasn't the best quality and there was no singing or anything. In fact I couldn't even tell that it was "The Lonely Sea". From what I recall there wasn't much happening, maby just a bass and a bit of chatter or something. Been a while since Ive heard it though so I could be wrong but it didn't sound too good to me.

Theres no question the influence The Beach Boys and the Beatles had on each other, the harmonies and vocal arrangements in Beatles songs like This Boy, Yes It Is, Here there And Everywhere, Paperback writer and Because are all very Brian in style.  I remember the scene in The Beatles Anthology where Paul, George and Ringo are talking about Paperback Writer and how complex that song was to perform live because of the harmonies and in the same scene they talk about the major influence of Pet Sounds on that song and what they were doing at the time, Paul also would talk of how much he played Pet Sounds for John and how he couldn't "Escape the influence."

I haven't heard it in awhile either, but as I recall it was just John playing the chord progression (which was a very standard one at that time), and kinda humming a bit.  Didn't really seem to me like a real attempt to cover "Lonely Sea", unfortunately. 

Yeh I can't really remember it much at all (mainly because it wasn't any good) but yeh your probably more spot on than me, it was probably John playing the chord progression. As you say, would've been nice if he had made more of an attempt to cover the song. That would be interesting though, THe Beatles covering The Beach Boys. I mean The Beach Boys covered the Beatles with great success (in my opinion) on the Party! album. Would've loved to have heard The Beatles singing The Beach Boys. What song(s) would have sounded good covered by The Beatles I wonder?...

Help Me Rhonda, Marcella, Sail On Sailor, Fun Fun Fun, Girl Don't Tell Me (obviously)

I could hear the Beatles doing a good cover of "Good To My Baby".

I could also see the Beatles doing a great job covering any material from Today and Summer Days especially Help Me Rhonda, Dance, Dance, Dance, Salt Lake City and You're So Good To Me which sounds especially Beatlesque in the chorus.