The Smiley Smile Message Board

First I wanted to call this thread "best piano player in the Beach Boys" but since the answer very certainly would be (and rightly so) Bruce, I just made it about the two Beach Boys who probably saw (and still see) the piano as their instrument.

So, how good were Dennis and Brian ? Dennis started to play very late, compared to Brian, but I wonder if Brian could've played something like "Piano variations on: Thoughts of you". He always seems to pound more than play the piano, the right hand hammering the beats and the left playing a bassline (very rock'n'roll-like). I don't think Dennis did that too much. Quite often he plays the piano more like picking a guitar ("Time" is a very good example) which on the other hand limited his basslines on the keyboard.
In the promo video for Billy Hinsche's DVD about Dennis, Jack Riley calls Dennis a "brilliant piano player" (you can see the clip on youtube). But was he really that good?
Interesting thought: Dennis was considered a clubber on drums and came up with this exquisite stuff on piano like "Piano variations..." while Brian's kinda a clubber on piano but could, according to Steve Desper, at one point play drums in a way as tasteful as Hal Blaine

I'm not sure who is considered the better player from a technical view as I don't know enough about that sort of thing but I must say that I find Dennys piano playing to be very sparse yet moving and beautiful. Some of my favourite piano progressions come from Denny - River Song, Barbara, Holy Man, Mexico, Piano Variations On Thoughts of You and many more.

I don't feel that Brian is a clubber, on Surf's Up he plays beautifully but as Brian didn't seem to often play prominent piano parts on record, (corrections welcomed if I'm wrong) it's hard for me to judge against Denny who seemed to play the majority of piano on his recordings (again, corrections welcomed). Brian wrote on the piano and obviously made some of the greatest music ever so his piano playing must be at least quite good....... :

So for the best pianor player im going with Dennis but for best piano composer i'm going with Brian (somewhat fence sitting, I know).

A basic flaw in the premise...Dennis did not begin playing piano very late, he was playing boogie woogie(as taught by Audree) before the BB's were a band, he was playing Beethoven and Gershwin pieces in the earliest days of the Beach Boys at rehearsals and after gigs, Carole Wilson stated that the first thing Dennis bought when they moved in together ('64) was a piano and that he immediately started composing...this is all well documented by folks who were there. Bruce's assertion that he 'taught" Dennis how to play the piano on the '66 Japan tour has been shot down by several people who knew Dennis before Bruce was on the BB's scene, perhaps he taught Dennis more advanced chordings etc... than he was capable of prior to that...but Dennis probably learned basic piano in '59 or '60(of course self taught, or taught by Brian, Audree and maybe even Murry). By '69 or '70 Dennis was blowing people's minds with his piano voicings. The other premise problem is that Dennis as clubber/drummer is a dying myth as we learn more and more about the many classic BB's tracks that DW was drummer on. Again, self taught, primitive perhaps, but the guy played on some of the BB's best stuff, Don't Worry Baby, Catch a Wave, Little Saint Nick, I Get Around, When I Grow Up, Dance Dance Dance, I Can Hear Music and on and on. Anyway, my point is the Wilsons were all really versatile musicians, none of them were significantly better than the other. On a given song one could outshine the other, but overall, not much distance between them as musicians, or as players.

I would have to say that, currently, Brian is without a doubt the better piano player.  8)

Apparently Irving Berlin was a horrible piano player, but he was quite a good songwriter.

True fact: Irving Berlin could only play in one key. So he had a transposing piano made, on which he could change the key he was playing in with a (IIRC) foot pedal.

"Variations" is pretty but is it really all that technically difficult?

I'd have to give Brian the upper hand, for the chord progressions he came up with and the ability to play Gershwin, Four Freshman harmonies, etc.

Thanks for mentioning that, Jon ! Didn't know that but was going with Daryl Dragon who says that Dennis didn't know who Richard Wagner was when he first heard him play.



No matter how much I love Dennis' drumming (he's my favorite drummer of all time, but not when it comes to technique of course; that place probably would go to Ron Tutt), the mentioned songs have effective but not very difficult drum parts, so I guess the "clubbing" still fits with them, especially since it's just a metaphoric expression which more or less means what you, rightly, call "primitive"

Didn't he have a lever like this one? :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTLZz2hUOA

By the way, Fred Astaire was a better pianist than his friend, Irving Berlin!

Thanks for that fact, Clay, I've never known that.

My choice is Dennis. Brian was/is a musical genius and some more inventive melodies and chord patterns than Dennis...but Brian's piano style 9 times out of then seems to be the same block chords style or boogie woogie style. Dennis' piano was beautiful, fluid and slightly classically influenced. They complemented each other perfectly.

AGD once heard Brian play "Rhapsody In Blue" (perfectly, he said) up close and personal.  Andrew, maybe you'd like to share your impression of that?

And, although Billy Hinsche isn't technically a "Beach Boy", I thought I'd mention that Bruce told me last year that he considers Billy the best piano player the band ever had, outside of Brian.  That's interesting in that Bruce is basically saying that Billy's awesome, Brian's better, and they're both better than him (he was possibly just being humble in that regard).

Yeah, I had Brian's Gershwin stuff in the back of my mind, as well was when he'll break out the odd Four Freshmen stuff in an interview.

Unfortunately all we have to go on is what's on record, but I'm willing to bet that Brian had more chops than just the block chords/boogie woogie that we always hear him play.  Not necessarily because of his composing skills, but just based on what we've heard about his skills as a musician in general.  If he wanted to learn how to play piano in a more classical way, I don't think it would have been much of a challenge for him.  If he did though, it just wasn't something he ever displayed on record.

I'll second c-man's question to AGD, I would be curious to hear more about that.

Yet ANOTHER BB myth busted...I *really* should make a BB mythbusters thread..

Didn't someone in the Wrecking Crew say that Brian had the best left hand in the business?  He played some awesome, really inventive piano basslines, like in the coda of Surf's Up.

Firstly, bear in mind the context: back in March 1985, I was hardly the cynical ol' grouch I am now, and I was in the middle of a week in LA during which I hung out with Steve Desper, Jasper Dailey, Stevie Kalinich, Bruce, got to meet Chuck Britz in Western 3 control room and spend several hours with the band while they mixed two tracks on the new album.

That said, after running through a few minutes of bog-standard boogie-woogie (with a few fluffs), Brian just slid smoothly in "RIB", and to my (hardly objective) ears, it sounded just perfect - certainly not his usual pounding, but a true performance. The transition into "Cast Your Fate To The Winds" was equally seamless - so much so that it took me a few beats to realise he had !  It was, simply, a magical experience, as much for the music as for the effect it had on Brian. For those fleeting minutes, he was, basically, 'old' Brian.

I'm digging that piano that's all over Wild Honey right now. Great bass lines. Did Brian play all of the main piano parts on that album?

I believe so.  On a piano specially-tuned for his ears.  A lot of the organ might be Bruce, but I think ALL the piano on that album is Bri.

You make a good point, I love 'Variations...' but it is just essentially broken chords I think...I suppose what is interesting is the amount of mileage Dennis was able to get out of some simple broken chords.

In a dream I heard a remixed stereo version of Smiley Smile and Wild Honey. Not only could I hear Brian's brilliant piano playing more clearly, but some of the songs were radically different. Had the Beach Boys released the version of "I Was Made to Love Her" I listened to in my dream, it probably would have been a hit. It had a great guitar part and some interesting twists and turns that aren't in the real version. If this hadn't been a dream, I would now be able to understand how some members of the group thought Brian was purposefully underproducing some of their songs.

  I think most of us have seen the clip of Daryl Dragon talking about Dennis's song "Barbara" and that the folks he had been in "music school" (sorry can't think of the proper term)  couldn't even write that.   

I believe it's on "Endless Harmony".   

 

Tough to answer in that (a) for many songs you don't know WHO is playing the piano on what. Esp after '65 when the songs started having multiple piano/keys parts on the same track. Could be Dennis or could be Daryl Dragon? Could be Brian or could be Wrecking Crew member/Bruce? (b) they were both so good at utilizing their playing talent to come up with great material. (c) both had very different playing styles. I can't play piano so could not say what is harder to play out of say, "Thoughts of You" and "Mt. Vernon and Fairway". I DO know Brian could never have composed the former and Dennis the latter. Both too unique. I'd say it's a tie. Cop out I know!

I wanted to weigh in here since I'm a keyboard player and I've also worked out a lot of both of their parts...and it IS a really tough call because their piano styles are COMPLETELY different.  Brian generally likes to play block chords in rhythm on the piano, with the left hand movement doing the bass line.  Very functional and basic like a lot of his playing.  Dennis is a more apreggiated style not dissimilar from Elton John's.

There's no way to really say for sure.  My gut says that Brian had a much better grasp of music theory than Dennis, and he apparently has or had a really agile left hand.  I suspect, though, that Dennis had more overall chops.  I've heard him do more technically demanding parts and more versatile parts than Brian overall.  I'm excepting things like "Rhapsody In Blue" because basically anybody, musician or no, can learn this or that piece through repetition to a point that it's almost flawless.  I don't count that as the same as overall technical ability.

It's also interesting in terms of the choices they made in the studio as keyboardists.  When not on piano, Brian tended to play the organ, celeste, harpsichord, Moog, things like that.  Things that sounded expansive.  Dennis' sonice tastes were funkier:  electric piano, clavinet, ARP synthesizer.  Again, even their tastes on the keyboard were very dissimilar.

It's funny, they really were two totally different kettle of fish as keyboard players.  CARL'S style was also very distinctive.  Much closer to Brian's but he favored very clustered chord structures and had this weird hammering thing he did with his left hand on the bass notes that I've never seen anyone do.

This thread is great. Adam, could you elaborate on Carl's playing style a bit more?

I don't know how much more to say about it, because I only know from working his parts out and watching a few videos.  But he tended toward Brian's basic style -- block quarters in the right hand, moving bass in the left -- but he seemed to have his own twist on it.  From footage I've seen, he would kind of hit the left hand with sort of a karate chop action.  That would put extra weight on the bottom notes, make them stand out more.  In the right hand, he really liked what my old piano teacher called "crushed chords."  That is, very cramped tonal clusters, and he also seemed to like to follow certain shapes around.  For instance, if you take the first verse chord sequence of Long Promised Road, it goes like this:

Em7/C   Cmaj7/E   Fmaj7-->F6

Those are all white keys.  The left hand makes a simple movement from C, to E, to F.  The right hand likewise hardly moves, but Carl is always holding down FOUR notes in the right hand, with a major 7th being the widest interval between the top and bottom notes, but it's usually just a sixth from top to bottom.  On the first chord, you have a C in the bass, which isn't in the Em7 chord (which technically makes it a C--what, a 13?  This is where my theory fails me).  But the bottom line is that chord has 5 of the 7 notes of the C major scale all lumped together.  And the rest of the song goes on this way - lots of four note chords in the right hand clustered together with the bass off somewhere else, which some seriously crazy voicings, none of which make sense if you're a trained keyboard player but if you're just an intuitive musician feeling your way around the white keys and trying to keep your bass notes away from the tonic, make total sense.  I myself couldn't "learn" the song until I stopped thinking about how the chords related to each other and started thinking about how the SHAPES related to each other.  "Long Promised Road" of all the Beach Boys songs I've ever learned, was the hardest.  The only Brian song I can think of that's more complicated is "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," though there's probably a few others on PET SOUNDS I'm missing.

Anyway, this tendency for Carl to use these closed, complex voicings are part of the reason his songs have this otherworldly quality, and also this feeling of not going anywhere but being tense at the same time.  When you use these kinds of voicings, you're using a lot of 2nds and 6ths and as my piano teacher  once said to me, "those voicings don't lead anywhere."  They created a disturbing kind of static quality, like there's something in the chord that isn't exactly dissonant (because it's in the major scale) but that's "blurring" the chord.

So when you start layering those chords, on piano or guitar, you create this kind of spaced out, murky quality that comes from all those whole step intervals rubbing up against each other.  If this is too hard to understand, just sit down at a keyboard and just lay your hand randomly across a bunch of white keys, and hear the notes kind of smash against each other.  Now imagine layering that sound with organs, electric pianos, guitars, etc.  A blur, right?

This usually doesn't work.  Trained keyboard players tend to stay away from these kinds of voicings because pianos, organs etc. already are so harmonically rich that they'll turn a track to mush just by playing a standard chord.  For example, a trained player probably would have left the "E" out of that first LPR chord, so it would be a "simple" C11 chord, and so there would be at least a third between each note, so there'd be that sonic space maintained.  When Brian would lay out complicated chords -- and most of his chords were complicated -- he mostly did this OR, if he did a dissonant voicing, it would be a major 7th or something where the two notes were right on top of one another but the rest of the chord had space.  There are some exceptions I can think of -- I've never worked it out but "'Til I Die" sounds like it was written in a very similar way to "Long Promised Road" -- but while Brian's chords were unorthodox, the way he voice them on the piano never struck me that way.

So, anyway, Carl had a real genius for making these close, crabbed voicings work, and moreover, layering the instruments to make those voicings create a very particular sonic world that I've never heard anyone else do.  And the guy knew what he was doing...the choice of voicings may have been intuitive, but he was very methodical in his production and how he fit the instruments together.

Oh, and sorry, I should have stressed the fact that both Brian and Carl really had an obsession with putting the root of the chord somewhere other than the tonic.  (Dennis didn't do this as much...in fact, of the three of them, Dennis definitely had the most "traditional" keyboard technique)

Adam, I do remember Don Was saying that Brian told him "Til I Die" was written in a similar fashion: Brian made a certain shape of his hand and just moved his hand in that position for the song, not worrying about the notes. He also said he wasn't entirely sure Brian was serious.

Yeah, that had occurred to me as I wrote it, and I wonder if there isn't more relation to the two songs than was previously thought.  Another that occurred to me was that weird descending keyboard line in "Mess Of Help," which has that strange right hand cluster thing that Carl does, but with a lot of dominant and major 7ths which were Brian's stock in trade.  Which makes me wonder who was picking up what from who, and who played what, in that era.

"Don't Talk" can't be any easier. Also, it bears to be said that Brian was very fond of sharping of flatting the fifth of a chord (i.e. Bm7-5) during the Pet Sounds era, they have a certain texture to them. This was his best period of chord and melody in my opinion.

Adam, thanks for your thorough analysis of Carl's piano style. Do you think his being left-handed was a significant factor in his style of playing?

Carl was left handed?  That's the first I'd ever heard of it.  He played guitar right-handed, which is not very easy to do for a southpaw (having tried my hand playing left handed).

Adam, thanks for a great post. Among all subjects that can (and have) been discussed here, these things interest me the most. Talking about complex right hand fingerings, have you seen the transcript of "It's Over Now" on surfermoon.com (sorry, can't link to it - click on 'chords' and scroll down)? It really shouldn't work, shouldn't sound good, playing those weird chords (one could be written as Em6add9/A if one have to have a 'name' on it). But it does sound good. And I'm, well, flabbergasted, which is a fantastic word by the way.

Yes, indeed. I'm married to a southpaw, so I'm more likely notice them. (BTW, the younger Carl Wilson is a lefty too.)


My southpaw hubby says he prefers playing right-handed because he gets to chord with his strong hand. Might have been something similar for Carl. Wonder if David Marks would know?

Color me a little skeptical...what's your evidence on that?  Though it would be interesting if true.  It might partly account for Carl's meet and potatoes guitar playing style...but all the Wilson Brothers are like that to some degree.

Carl sure seems to be signing with his left hand here:

(http://cache2.asset-cache.net/xc/73988838.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548AFE7969A5C4021BC8F66745D32C598B679A649213CDFADC9)

In other pics from this promotion, the writing on Brian's shirt is from left to right, so we know it's not mirrored.

(http://i42.tinypic.com/nnkx0w.jpg)

My southpaw hubby says he prefers playing right-handed because he gets to chord with his strong hand. Might have been something similar for Carl. Wonder if David Marks would know?
[/quote]

I'm in the same situation, and completely agree.

As starter of this thread, I just wanted to thank you guys, especially Adam with his great insights into the Wilson's playing, for this great discussion. Love to read this.

Analysing the styles of the brothers, it would be interesting to know how Murry and Audree played.

Wow...if Carl was really left handed, that changes a lot.  I know there are a few people who play guitar backwards, and keyboards of course by necessity.  I once did it when I had to play on a left handed guitar, and it can be done.  But it is not easy and it's not conducive to fluid playing.  As I said, it would partly explain why Carl's guitar style always stayed basic and not very agile, even as his musical knowledge grew.  I just always assumed that was a style choice, as it was for Dennis and Brian.

I'm surprised David Marks never mentioned this, if so.  I do know that in the early '60s it was harder for southpaws to get left handed guitars (this was a problem for McCartney IIRC), and so it may not have occurred to Carl that he had that option, but OTOH, their idol was Dick Dale, who was left handed (though he plays a rightie guitar, strung backwards).  So it's not like they wouldn't know such guitars existed.

Interesting correlation to Dennis' drumming style, which reverses the traditional positions for the right and left hand relative to the snare and hi-hat....more power to the snare, but you sacrifice some finesse.  Which is actually the way I myself play the drums, and my drumming style is very similar to Dennis' (e.g. hard, steady and stoopid).  And that's similar to what the other posters have said about left handed guitarists playing right handed.

Also: http://leftyguitars.us/lefty_detail.php?id=435

This guy behind the site wrote a two volume book on left-handed guitarists, so ... I'm guessing he's checked it out.

http://www.uncommon-sound.com/Lefty-Guitarists-book.php

Really interesting Adam.


This being the case (dont know if this is a stupid question), but how was it that Carl DID make it work, that is ensured it didn't turn to 'mush'?  Or is there no real tangible answer to this?

Thanks

Brian's piano and organ work on 15 Big Ones is keeping me in the Brian camp. Dennis' piano playing is a bit too boring in my opinion.

Brian's the more distinctive player for sure.

Extraordinary.  I had no idea.  Thanks for pointing this out! 

Eyewitness account, on multiple occasions. Whenever Carl signed something for me, he wrote with his left hand.

Speaking of southpaw instrumentalists, we just got back from a concert tonight by Cherryholmes, which features a left-handed fiddle player. She's really good, too!

I just found a '65 picture (that's what was said at least) of Dennis mplaying piano. Since we don't have too many early pics of him at the piano, I thought I'd upload it. Hopefully this time it works, as I've had some problems with getty images these last few days. Now I'm gonna upload it form my computer.



[attachment deleted by admin]

Interesting. Please tell me those aren't their hats sitting on the piano?

I've also seen a photo - back view, but it's him - of Dennis at a piano/organ in the early 60s. Unfortunately, the place I saw it was on Harry Jarnagan's Historical Marker site, which has been down for some time.

BUT... the Wayback Machine is a wonderful thing !

http://web.archive.org/web/20061004220948/http://www.beachboyslandmark.org/ (http://web.archive.org/web/20061004220948/http://www.beachboyslandmark.org/)

(btw, the caption is wrong - that's not the Wilson's music room)

Isn't Carl WEARING a hat?

Yeah, that's classic for Carl, goofing for the camera.  ;D

Why didn't Dennis just switch to the piano full time on stage?

It sure is on "Endless Harmony"; it's from one of the great interviews that Boyd did for that film.  Would sure love to see more of those interviews than he got to use in EH...

I don't think that quote is relevant to piano-playing, though. What the Cap'n was talking about--you have to assume--was a gift for melody, songwriting. (He seems to be specifically referring to the melody in the clip.) He certainly didn't mean technical proficiency, unless his music school was full of the worst students in history. But the only Beach Boy whose instrumental technical proficiency was likely to top serious music students was David Marks--in part because he was one himself, at Berklee. I don't mean to demean the band, but their instrumental work is a lot more interesting from an arrangement (or compositional) standpoint than a technical-performance standpoint.

Carl and Al could both play some pretty mean arpeggiated acoustic guitar.  Carl on things like "Heaven" and  Al on "Welfare Song" and his 1983 WNEW Radio performance of "Sloop John B.".  Maybe not Berklee-level, but pretty good technically nonetheless.

Your post almost answers itself to my point, though: they're more than competent in their idiom, but not the kind of guys who had the chops to outdo people for whom technique is the primary focus. (And let's be serious: for the Beach Boys [or 99.5% of other pop or rock bands], dazzling technique was quite rightly not the primary focus.)

Never heard about that. What is it about? And where could one listen to it?


I have to agree with Luther. Although they grew on their abilities, they never achieved the point where they where on a pro-level. Carl certainly could've been but hadn't had enough time to work on his playing outside of the BBs music. I don't think Dave would've been the player he is now, had he stayed in the Beach Boys either.
But to be fair, there are not many rockstars who play their instrument as good as a studio musician. Still in many cases they give their guitar, for example, a distinctive sound which probably wouldn't happen with a studio-pro.

But isn't this one of the reasons we all love BB/BW music -- there's never a lot of space in it for instrumental grandstanding. The arrangements, not the particular players, are the stars. I mean, Brian can record an entire record essentially on his own -- and it's not like he's a great drummer or anything. But he knows how to use the drips and drabs of what he has to make something that sounds great. (Dennis did that too, for that matter, on some POB tracks.)

The ultimate point for me is how little that matters. Obviously, the records (and shows) ended up great. Most music doesn't demand virtuosity (and more often than not, in my opinion, it suffers from its presence). Songs--pop, folk, rock, whatever, but popular songs--are more about a topic that listeners can relate to, enjoy, and sing along with. And most of the great songs can be played by someone banging out piano chords or strumming an acoustic guitar without suffering for it. So the "who's a better player" argument might be fun, but isn't really that big a deal, in that neither was great and both were good enough. (EDIT: I was writing while Gurwood posted; similar sentiments.)

Obviously, my getting involved professionally with the band, and touring with them the better part of the 70's, brought about an obvious change from my teenage fan period.  Also, there wasn't any internet or anything like it when I was an obsessive fan, and the band were releasing the Capitol albums every couple of months; (which makes me really appreciate this site as I pass through my second - or is it third - childhood).  That being said, I would have been really surprised to read this about David, were it not for Stebbins bio.  His few pages about David's time at Berklee was a giant surprise for me, and caused me to delve much more deeply into appreciating Marks' talents.  Glad you reminded me to reread Jon's book, and really glad to be back learning so much I never knew about the music & players; in other words, back to being an obsessive fan!  (And excuse me getting excited about David in a thread about Dennis & Brian, please)

I would go further with what's been said here is that the Beach Boys' lack of virtuoso chops coupled with an advanced understanding of arrangement is not just what makes their records great, but is fundamental to making a great record, period.  The reason studio musicians are so revered isn't just their technical chops, but their ability to understand instantly what does and doesn't work on a pop record.  Those guys could all play great, yeah...but the point was most of the time they played simply and played what was required. 

Anybody who's worked in a band or produced a record knows that instrumental virtuosity is one of the most dangerous things to making great music, because many times with vituosity comes a need to express that ability in places that aren't appropriate...and egoism in music is nearly always a bad thing.

One of the things that I have always admired about the Wilsons is how much they understood that a solid fundamental is not only all that's required on a great record, but often, all that is desirable.  Carl may not have been a killer lead guitarist but it's also clear that even by the stands of his own ability, he drastically underplayed in the studio.  And I think that is commendable.  All the Wilsons had a keen grasp of simplicity and working towards the greater whole in making a record.  It's actually an unusual knack to have, and it runs counter to the dynamics that exist in most bands.

Where is it?

Somewhere else... in the neighborhood.

Is that Hal Blaine on drums?

Don't know who it is, but definitely not Hal Blaine