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Anyone else know about this? I was recently looking through my copy of "The Beach Boys: A Definitive Diary" and on page 368, it says that Brian recorded a new take on this song with a "newly composed bridge." Has anyone ever heard this? Any other details on it?

It's from 1975 and is supposed to be a transitional recording with Brian audibly loosing his old voice.

What do you mean by 'transitional recording'?

From what I understand it's half his smooth voice and half rough.

What was the new bridge like; is this known?

Is that why Dennis did it at a few '75 concerts?

This would have made the ideal partner to Just Once in My Life of 15BOs... similar vibe to my minds, esp if lead vox duties had been shared by DW & BW. Maybe the two were deemed too similar for a finished release to happen.

There are so many "might have beens" in BBs' history!

Awesome.  I can hear it now... big moog bass "Rrrrrurrrmp!"  A simple snare "BAP, BAP, BAP."  And Brian's "plunk, plunk, plunk" piano chords.

I love late 70s Beach Boys!

I love late 70s BBs studio recordings, but I think their days as a great live act ended right after the '75 Beachago tour.

I would say that was the last perfect tour. I find the Beach Boys of 76-80 to be intersting but erratic.

So, another interesting piece of music languishing in the vaults?  Maybe it's not a gem, but it sounds pretty cool.  Who doesn't want to hear more from mid-70s Brian?  The historical value gives it merit already.  I've always loved this song and it sounds like something Brian would have done really well in the early/mid 70s before losing his voice.  Of course, he could have sang it with his lost voice too and it would have came out cool too.

I think we need to define "rough". Are we talking about Brian's post 1974/5 "falsetto"(which is good in itself, but rough for Brian's "reputation" of having a killer high voice), or Brian's "Love You voice", which was "whiskey/smoking rough"?

I haven't heard it and I don't know if it's falsetto or not. What I am getting at was that there was a certain phrasing Brian had through 1974, a tonal quality. Whatever you want to call it, just something  that never was there from "Back Home" 1975  on. Again I was told Brian was trying to sing as he always had up to that point but the new voice broke through at times. Again all I can say is if it is as described  this would the transitional missing link we all have looked for when trying to pinpoint exactly when Brian couldn't sing the same way anymore.

In my dreams, some of the wonderful people involved in the Beach Boys world would be allowed into the vaults to create the definitive box set (which would include Adult/Child!).  Who knows, maybe one day the Beach Boys legacy will finally have the closure it deserves.  I really want to hear this version of In The Back Of My Mind.  Man, the things they could have done..

Exactly. The difference between hoarse Brian and smooth Brian doesn't just come down to destroyed vocal chords, but also to the approach. Pre 1975, he never shout-sang his leads (although he could sing them hard and strong as in "Wouldn't It Be Nice"). Post 1975, on top of the whisky-and-cigarettes treatment, there was the shouting. Only on rare occasions did/does he still sing with the same approach as the young BW, most notably the 1994 "Gettin' In Over My Head".

I often think of "Sail on Sailor" as the Beach Boys we never got.  While I absolutely love the odd Smiley-Smile-esque Beach Boys found on Love You...Sail on Sailor is the clearest view into what we could have had in the 70s.  They would have been a super group making cool, smooth and sophisticated sounding LPs in the 70s.  It would have made much of their 60s stuff seem like their kid years - rather than their golden years.

I do see it that way.

Me too. In my opinion that group really "matured" from 1966/7 and on. With a few exceptions, of course. Don't Worry Baby, Warmth of The Sun, Little Girl I Once Knew, etc.

61-65 is great and you know it was probably the best time of their lives. 66-72 is very equal to me and in some ways even better. It's just hard for me to say I would want one era and not the other. It's all pretty much gold the first 12 years.

My feeling is that from 1961-1966, they were just another surf and car band, trying to get in on whatever the trend was. From Pet Sounds on, they became "artists". Even a highly complex song like The Little Girl I Once Knew still retains a certain "cuteness" about it. Don't get me wrong, I still love their early years. I just think that it took a few years for the group and everybody else to think of "The Beach Boys" in a serious way.

I understand what you are getting at. In a way I agree but I must stress that the Beach Boys were THE surf and car band of the era. They more or less defined and created the vocal end of those genres

In my opinion pop music does not necessarily have to be all that "serious" as that's just not the point about it. Furthermore I don't think that "Marcella" (to pick just one of their early seventies singles as a random example) is in any way more serious or artistic than "Surfer Girl", it probably just sounds more like a common rock song, lacking some of the unadulterated beauty and imagination of the group's sixties classics. Mind you, I still adore all the records they did right up until the Light Album (and even most of the things they did afterwards, for that matter), yet there's a certain quality to their earlier material that got lost probably right after Surf's Up (the album), which to me is the last time the Beach Boys did really sound like themselves. When they later did another record showcasing the group regaining much of their initial un-seriousness (The Beach Boys Love You, of course), that's when they got very close to the old magic again. I'm certainly glad they didn't sound like The Band for all of the seventies.