The Smiley Smile Message Board

My essay on the Summer Days outtakes is now up on my website:

www.beachboysarchives.com

It starts on page 99 of the PDF document linked to the website.

Yay! I've been looking forward to this!

Thanx. Great stuff.

Great as always ! One of the best BBs-related sites on the web

Awesome!

Oh man, I just downloaded the whole thing again yesterday to make sure I was up to date and now I have to do it again?   :p

Excellent, Craig.

Jee-ziz, man...I cannot believe you transcribed the Rhonda vocal session.  We could act it out now in a little radio drama.

Now you all know why it took so LONG to get this one done...I could only do a little bit of THAT at a time before I risked going bonkers!

I also made a couple of other little updates here-and-there on the "Summer Days" album essay, so that bears another read-through.    :)

A-mazing... but just one question.

Are you really sure Murry says "bring the kitten" ?  I know he'd been drinking but even so...  :o

Yeah, that was the best guess I could make.  If anyone got something that makes more sense out of that, by all means let me know!

One of my favorite Brian quotes is from that session...it use to be in my signature, I think its time to bring it back. :3d

Awesome site. Thank you.

Great one.

So anybody else want to perform selections of the transcription as some sort of experimental play?

Wow...you're serious?

Serious?  Never and Always.  Not really in this case, though if I had a troupe of performers laying about, I might put on a little community theater performance of it or something in hopes of getting to off-off-off-off-off Broadway.

I would DEFINITELY do this, especially if I get to be Murry.

Well, I'm a Murryista so whoever portrayed Murry would be a sympathetic character laden with, well, pathos.  The whole play the audience will palpably feel this man's pain as he tries desperately to participate in his son's world, and they will understand the frustration as Murry finds he lacks the tools to do it the right way.  All that he can find as he slaps at his tool-belt are the blunt objects that generations of tough-guys and abuse provided.

Let me be drunk during performances and I will do anything you say.

Anything.

I was thinking more along the lines of Robert De Niro.

Sadly, I think my DeNiroing skills are closer to Casino than Taxi Driver or Godfather II. So ... I'm hired, yeah?

C-man, love the new update. Was just reading through some of it and you mention that Carl was the shortest Wilson, but I always thought it was Dennis who was the shortest? It might not be by much but that's what I always read?

Could be...Jon S., can you clarify this?

Just found where I read it c-man, if you care to check page 75 of Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMiLE! and it has the heights of all the guys there. For those who don't have it:

Dennis - 5'9" and 155lbs
Carl - 5'10" and 175lbs
Brian - 6'2" and 195lbs
Mike - 6'1" and 165lbs
Alan - 5'5" and 135lbs
Bruce - 5'5" and 135lbs

Not entirely sure how accurate that is but there it is anyway.

Hmmm...wonder why Carl needed the box and Denny didn't?

Hmmm.. maybe Carl was asking for the box of chocolates?? :P

Seriously though, I have no idea. Would be interested to hear anyones theories. I mean even if it was the other way around, say Dennis was 5'10" and Carl was 5'9", then surely Carl wouldn't need a box to stand on? I mean Al and Bruce yes but all of the Wilsons plus Mike weren't exactly short.

Maybe Carl hadn't reached his full height yet at 18.

Bruce is taller than Al, too.

That list doesn't seem entirely correct.  Carl definitely was still growing into the 70s, I'd say.

I'm looking at the Badman book now, the picture of them supposedly in Mexico with the stranger shows that Bruce has some height on Al, and Carl looks pretty close to Mike.  The next page has the white suit publicity photo and Carl and Mike look almost identical in height.  Sure there could be some parallax, but I could go on.  Post late 60s, Carl looks about 5'11-6' to me, there are all kinds of photos with him nearly level with Mike.

Dennis wasn't  5' 9" when I met him in 1981, maybe 5' 7", and Bruce is at least 5' 8". I make Alan 5' 3" on a good day.

I wonder what the weight for Brian, Mike, Bruce, and Al are now. Al's probably about the same.

Interesting. So you say Bruce is taller? I agree that Alan always does seem the shortest though. Height is such a hard thing to judge though...

Tobler, pages 56-57 and 78-79; Milward (Silver Anniversary book)  94-95; Badman 285 and 337 give a good comparison of the presumably full-grown boys.  Never thought of Dennis as being shorter than me (5'10') or Bruce either at 5-7/5-8.  Although I have seen some shots of Dennis where he does look shorter but I always chalked it up to camera angle or group pose.  Like mikey said, it's not always easy to tell.

Al is definitely shorter than Bruce. And what year are those weights from?

Al's nothing more than a tall dwarf. Or is he a leprachaun? Or a troll? Or a Gnome?

I'm 5' 8" and I can look Bruce straight in the eye. Alan, well, I can see over his head.

To be fair, Al's short, but not so short that a kid would point and stare.  I distinctly remember not being struck by his height when I met him.

Brian on the other hand, is the tallest 6'2" person I've met.  He's just a big guy.  Put somebody the exact same height and weight right next to him and Brian will just seem...bigger.

Brian's the tallest person you've ever met? :o

It doesn't say, but it's at least sometime after February, 1966... since it also states each members marital status and Carl is listed as married

The tallest person who is 6'2", yes.  I realize that's a cerebral concept.

This essay was incredible btw. I read the entire thing in a day and it really gave me a stronger perception of the boys in the studio than even listening to the UMs.
Great job and how about more?
-BK

Thanks!  Always nice to know my work is appreciated.  And yes, more is in the offing...with any luck, this summer I should have an essay on the Party! sessions up, followed by "The Little Girl I Once Knew" single this fall, and hopefully Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" by year's end.  As you can imagine, it takes a LONG time to compile this stuff, since I'm working a straight 9:00-5:00 day gig, and also developing several other projects, including recording an album myself and helping with sundry other BBs-related endeavors...

Oh, and I also intend to post an essay, or at least credits, for "POB/Bambu" upon its release in June.  Which, BTW, I should ask this...I've got TONS of credit & recording info for stuff like Friends, 20/20, Breakaway/Celebrate the News, Sunflower, all the way up to and including things like MIU, LA Light, KTSA, even Brian's first solo album and BWPS.  I could wait to post that stuff until I've got essays to accompany them...which will likely take a couple of years...OR I could post the info I have now (maybe not immediately, but soon), and follow up with the essays as time moves on.  How does everyone here vote on that?

I want it ALL and I want it NOW !

But tomorrow would be OK.  ;D

Seriously, here's a good place to point out that Craig has been a huge help to Ian & I in compiling the gigs & sessions pages. Without his input (and that of someone else who prefers anonymity), the post-60s pages would look a lot different. Not so much orange for one thing.  :)

One of the interesting things in doing this is getting session data, putting it in a timeline with concert dates... and realising that one of them has to be wrong.

Regarding the height issue: I was just standing next to Al Jardine last weekend.  We had several chats over a couple of days, and posed for a bunch of pictures which I am looking at right now.  I can say with a great deal of certainty that he is now very close to 5'4" or 5'5".   Perhaps he lost an inch or two with age - as that happens to most people, but he still isn't ridiculously short.  He was wearing some white sneakers at the time but they didn't have much "lift" to them.  He is certainly short (as he was just a couple inches shorter than me - and yes I realize that I am short too) but in a crowd he wouldn't appear dwarf like at all, he would blend in just fine.

Within the last year I have also stood next to Brian , Mike and Bruce (all of them - several times).  Bruce is without a doubt taller than Al.  Mike is taller than Bruce and Brian - well Brian is a very large guy.  If he wasn't so teddybear-like he might have scared me with the shadow he casts.  I knew Brian was tall but the first time I met him (2002) I was surprised at how big he was.  Last summer he insisted on posing me "properly" for a picture.  After telling me he would love to have his picture taken, he grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around and then put his arm around me and said, "You'd better smile real big so we look the same in the picture".  It was very funny and Brian just seemed to be having a laugh - but when Mr. Wilson gave me an order I listened.

All the info coming together is really nice-especially when it fits perfectly. Example-The BBs played a 1978 tour with Jan and Dean- starting on Aug 25 and ending Sept 4. I searched forever for shows on Aug 28-31 1978 and could never find them.  Now that we have the session dates-I know the reason.  The group took a three day break from the tour to record at Criteria Studios.   so everything makes sense...just takes time to figure it out

C-man, I'd love it if you posted any "who-played-what" info here.

That would get rather cumbersome...some of the sessions have, like, 30 or so string and brass players.

thank you for posting