The Smiley Smile Message Board

Thought I'd initiate a little conversation.  In 1988 Brian gave one of his most interesting interviews to Pulse Magazine (put out by the now defunct Tower Records).  Here is an excerpt-what do you think?
"There are so many mixed feelings in the Beach Boys that I can't handle it.  I don't like it.  I don't like the way it feels, so I just canned it and said that I don't want to do very many shows with them.  I stopped worrying about Mike Love and Carl Wilson and those guys and started worrying about myself.  If there's a fight, that would be very discomforting, but if there is, there is. 
When I show up to a concert, I feel their resentment.  I feel like they think 'Oh he gets to come out whenever he wants to but we have to work all year.' Little do they know I'm under just as much pressure as they are.  I think the Beach Boys are playing fear games with me.  They write letters to Gene and other people saying, 'We don't think Brian should get a share (of concert income) because he's not on the road.'  It makes me feared out.  They know it's going to fear me out when they do that because their touring is my only source of income. 
If it's going to come to those kind of games, I'll bow out entirely.  I will not participate in a group that plays games like that.  If they tell me to my face they want to do something with me (that's one thing), but if it's through letters to Gene and other people, I won't do it. I'd rather just go in and do my second album and f.... off with the Beach Boys.  It's not worth it to me to go through that much s..... 
The Beach Boys probably feel a little shackled too, when every night they've got to do '409' and 'Shut Down' and 'Surfin Safari.'  They have to do all those songs and they hate it, but that's what made them famous so they've got to do it.  I think the guys would much rather do some of the album cuts that we've done over the years, but they do those stupid old songs that sound for s....  They sound real stupid."
Brian then told the interviewer that the BBs shelved a great commercial song called "Boys, Girls" in the late 70s due to group tensions.  "It was a real commercial little song, but we threw it in the can.  We never did anything with it.  Why not?  I don't know.  Everyone just got crazy.  I got all screwed up. We sort of felt sour grapes about what was happening with us.  The LA (Light Album) didn't sell and it had a f....in'  great couple of songs on it.  We were looking for a big record with that one.  That set us back a little bit when that album bombed."

Anyways-I don't necessarily agree with all Brian says-but it has to be admitted its a very lucid and surprisisingly verbose and interesting interview.  Certainly far more frank, open and verbose than he has been in most interviews the last ten years or so.

At the end there-just to correct the quote-he said "it got all screwed up" not "I got all screwed up"

Some of the complexities I'm sure of dealing with a bunch of egos, and the mental issues and drug issues some of the members have.  I can completely understand why they stopped working together.

You fill somebody full of speed and they'll talk.

Reading this, you'll understand why Brian don't want to be a part of reunion with the Boys, and if he'll refuse to work with Mike Love on new songs.
It's a mix of mostly bad things and bad feelings, and a little bit of good feelings and good memories.

There are two sides to every relationship, this is just one side's story. I'm sure the Boys had equally sympathic stories about what a jerk Brian and Gene could be.

Frankly, this reads like Brian was 1.) both pumped full of stimulants (which Landy did repeatedly to him before interviews and performances) and 2.) repeating a Landy party line. Does this sound at all like BW?


This sounds like something Brian was told. To me. I think he's pretty proud of some of those old songs -- at least these days.

Didn't Stebbins note, in his book on Dennis, that all of the Wilsons did, in fact, hate how 'The Beach Boys' became a touring oldies revue and they wanted to perform songs that were not just "409" and "Surfin' USA" and whatever -- deeper album cuts, new songs, and so on? That aspect of his comments at least doesn't seem that outlandish, I think.

I'm sure Brian was high and repeating the party line, but most people's minds work with kind of an all-encompassing judgement of everything.


What I mean by that is, even if Landy told Brian that Carl resented him.... it wouldn't have been the first time Brian thought about that.  So you can blame Landy, but I'm sure Brian truly did feel like Carl and the others resented him when he showed up and hadn't worked for months.  He actually sounds in this interview like he understand where they're coming from.

Like said above, two sides to every story.  This doesn't surprise me, it just surprises me that Brian was so honest to a reporter about what he felt.  He usually gives guarded interviews where he shares nothing that means anything. 

Two observations:

1 - that was over 20 years ago.

2 - I'll wager a large sum that Brian was just spouting what he'd been told to say. Can you say "Eugene Ellsworth Landy" ?  ::)

First time ever I've read a comment on the Light Album by Brian. Never knew it was such an important album for the group, but I suppose it makes perfect sense. Too bad the whole thing didn't work out.

Speaking of this article, what is the deal with "Boys and Girls" or whatever it is? Is there a finished recording in the vaults? Or is there a Brian demo out there. I've heard it talked up sometimes as a good song. Anybody got any info on it? When it was recorded, who was involved, leads, producers?

Anyways, I think that the Boys should have done an album in '81 or '82 with all the little gems Brian was writing around this period. There were quite a few little things that he was working on that could have been pretty commercial (if polished up) and pretty interesting artistically. You could have had an album with cuts like "Boys and Girls", "Sweetie", "Stevie", "I'm Begging You Please" and maybe "California Feelin'" from Brian, maybe "Why Don't They Let Us Fall in Love" and "Be My Baby" from those Brian/Mike sessions (hopefully sparing us LBWL in the process), "Heaven" from Carl (sparing us his debut), and maybe a few choice cuts from Bambu. Could have been a decently strong album. If only...

Recorded October 19th 1979 and November 18th the following year, both times at Western.

Was it finished? Have our beloved vault combers found it. And who did the lead? Brian i presume?

Well, let's put it this way - I didn't pull those dates out of thin air.  ;D

First, thanks Ian for this article !



Would Brian mention his brother as "Carl Wilson"? Every time I heard him talk about his brothers, he just mentioned the first name

Regardless of whether Brian was parroting someone else or not...its a fact that the commercial failure of L.A. Light was a HUGE disappointment for the band, the label, and anyone else connected to it. This was their CBS debut after being given a large advance and signed in a high industry profile. Although the band stumbled delivering the debut LP on time, and although it admittedly had about four great tracks, CBS and the Beach Boys ate dirt when it not only didn't make the top 40...it didn't make the top 99. A massive promo campaign was pumped into the LP and especially the 1st single, you can still find promo material by the container full for this(see ebay) picture discs, colored vinyl promo 12"s, posters, t-shirts, visors, promo singles, radio was bombarded with this stuff, as was the print media, plus high profile TV shows(midnight special), radio interviews by the dozen, the single was added to an impressive number of radio stations, a Radio City Music Hall kickoff, joint record store signings by ALL SIX Beach Boys!!!...and then people heard the goods... "Here Comes The Night" disco...THUD! Despite the largest promo campaign for the BB's since...don't say Brian's Back because that was a media campaign driven by the band's management...Reprise didn't do much like usual...and 15 BO's/R&R Music's success was at least partially radio driven...but L.A. Light was pushed by the label like one of those commercial's by Billy Mays(RIP). They did house-calls and shoved the thing under your front door(practically). People rejected it, yawned at it, and more than a few verbally eviscerated it for the inclusion of a 12 minute disco mistake(cue 11 people saying, "but I loved that track"...) "Good Timin'" did decent considering the BB's popularity cliff dive that occurred right before it was released as a single,  but it was too late, KTSA had no chance and was weak anyway. And then years before they whimpered to a CBS contract close with BB's 85. L.A. Light showed just how fast you can fritter away a label's hope, a fanbase's patience, and the media's interest. It was an epic disaster...oh...and the last partially good BB's LP.

Question: do you think if Good Timin had been the first single getting all of that hype, things would have been different?  It would be sad to think that all they had to do to have a hit album in the late 70s was swap the first and second single, but the way you just described it, it seems plausable.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I think the big mistake was in withdrawing the HCTN single.  I remember that getting a lot of play at the time and the edited version sounded GREAT on the radio...Carl's vocal just leapt out of the speakers and the whole thing sounded really edgy.  IIRC it peaked out at #44, but if they'd stuck with the single and it had gone higher, it could have easily set up "Good Timin'" to do better.

Now, my understanding of how it all went down could be totally wrong, but if it's true they pulled HCTN while it was climbing, then I think it was a very bad move.  My recollection was the song was getting a decent amount of play and the production value on it did a lot to restore the impression of the BBs as a current band.

You must've missed the recent post on this topic...here's what Alan Boyd had to say:  "At one point, it was listed under the title 'Boys and Girls Living Together.'  We have the unfinished backing track from the KTSA sessions.  Very nice, upbeat, with some cool changes.  It was one of the tracks I brought along for the listening session when Steve Desper and I went to Susan Lang's fan gathering in Connecticut some years ago."

The 1979 version was produced by Bruce, and the players were Gary Mallaber (drums), Jerry Scheff (bass), Billy House (guitar), and Mike Meros, Brian Wilson, and Bruce Johnston (keyboards).  The 1980 version was produced by Brian, and the players were Ron Tutt (drums), Stephens LaFever (bass), Ed Carter (guitar), Mike Meros and probably Brian Wilson (keyboards), Carl Fortina (accordion), and Steve Douglas and Jay Migliori (saxes).  Chuck Britz engineered both versions.

Man, why can't they play something like the disco version of Here Comes The Night on the radio today?  ;D I've been hard on the song in the past, but I must admit that a tastefully done edit of about four minutes or so would make it a pretty damn good song. The "dit dit dit" background vocals, against a pounding bass driven beat, culminating in Carl's hard edged vocals(especially in the chorus) is actually quite kick ass, now that I truly listen to the song. It's easy to just go along with the rest of the negative comments. The Beach Boys, and DISCO? That's the most ridiculous idea ever. But when you actually PAY ATTENTION to it, it's quite well done.

That is true of a lot of BB music-out of step with the times it was released but great today.  I mean-I like the Friends album-but I also am sharp enough to recognize that it was not a commercial release in early 1968.  Did not help the 1968 Beach Boys at all.  I actually really like Wild Honey as well-but in the fall of 67 the world wanted a much more dynamic statement from Brian.  Really-I think that if Brian had gotten a 4 minute single version of "Can't wait Too Long" together in the fall of 67-it might have been the right release.

We must have been on different planets...because when HCTN was released I was a 22 year old musician playing clubs all over L.A. and making records. I was REALLY paying attention to trends and radio, and music press...and no one I knew thought of HCTN as "edgy" especially since disco was a dying trend. In fact anything but disco would have been perceived as cooler in 79. If they had made a disco record in '75 that would have been edgy. This release was ridiculed, thought of as a pathetic joke and therefore it massively underperformed in relation to the promotion budget it was given. The BB's and CBS suddenly pretended HCTN didn't exist because of the backlash it received...booed at Radio City Music Hall. People I knew didn't hate it just because it was disco, there were plenty of disco records we adored...people hated it because it was a desperate and dated sounding record. Love You and POB had shown the BB's could still be edgy, and the hope was that progression might flower, things like Angel Come Home (which actually got airplay on KROQ) hinted at the possibility...but HCTN reeked of sell out. People didn't like the smell. It was an embarrassing moment to be a diehard BB's fan. I was there...I remember. It was a failure.

HCTN was gimmicky, it didn't work for the Beach Boys, even though the original track was good.  Rod Stewart did a disco record at around the same time and it was a huge hit.

A most interesting interview all in all.

I despised HCTN the moment I heard it - I hated it so much that I gouged the song on the album so the needle would skip it.  The problem with that song was not that it was disco - lots of acts from the Stones to McCartney and of course the Bee Gees.  The problem was that it sounded like a generic disco song from 1976 with thrown in Beach Boy vocals.  The Stones, for example, did a disco song that was pure Rolling Stones.  The Beach Boys did a a disco song that was pure Silver Convention.

Regarding the failure of LA (The best post Holland product depite HCTN) - I think it would have been doomed no matter what the first release was.  The prior three albums had destroyed the band's artistic credibilty and the quality of the live shows in 1977 and 1978 was just not there.  It was a the period where the band was at its nadir.   

I will fight you to the death if you're implying that Love You is not a fuckin' great album! >:(

Awesome ! Ron Tutt is one of the greatest drummers of all time. Would've loved to hear him on a Beach Boys-record (especially on a good one)

My opinion of Love You is that it has many great moments but it was not something I would play for my friends.  The songs are catchy but the lyrics make me cringe.  My view of that is that the Band had decided to let Brian carry them and, if going by the note on the album sleeve, they weren't exactly enthralled by the results either.

The first album I was exposed to was "Holland" - my sister got it because she like "Sail on Sailor".  I then got "Endless Summer",  "Sprit Of America" & "Good Vibrations - the Best Of . ." (this would be in 1975).  During 1976 I got the twofers and "Sunflower".  I was very excited about the new album.  When I got it I was disappointed - think about going from "Sunflower" to "15 Big Ones".  The state of Brian's voice was shocking and it took me a while to get over that. In addition the subtlety of the production (which attracted me to the music in the first place) was replaced by a denseness (damn the moog) that not only was out of step with Beach Boys music but also the times.

Too bad LA (take out HCTN and put in "It's OK" and "Everyone's in Love with You") could not have been the 1976 comeback album.

When had the rest of The Beach Boys ever been thrilled with what Brian presented to them since 1970? Not very often, it seems to me, and what he did get on BBs albums was either a sympathy pittance or contractual obligation. You know how unimpressed everyone was with "`Til I Die", right? I don't give a merda if Mike or Carl thought it was too depressing -- give me 'depressing' over "Student Demonstration Time" or "Lookin' at Tomorrow" any day. Who cares if "the band" didn't agree with the direction he was going in -- they largely didn't agree with (or were at least were very apprehensive of) the direction Brian wanted to go in when it came to Pet Sounds and Smile as well, if I'm remembering correctly.*

My first Beach Boys album was Surf's Up, I think. Now, I'm now only 21, and I would have been 16- or 17-years-old when I got a hold of it (on vinyl, obviously, despite it being 2005 or 06). My reasons for getting that one first were twofold. The first was that The Beach Boys were making music as strange as "Don't Go Near the Water", "A Day in the Life of a Tree", "Feel Flows", and "Take a Load off Your Feet". The second was that, for the most part, they did it really well and, it seemed to me, convincingly managed to shed their surf-cars-girls image. (At this time I had no real synoptic view of Beach Boys history or anything, mind.) At this point I decided to bother and educate myself, so I immersed myself in their 1960s studio albums. This was another sort of revelation, to be honest, because their early stuff to me seemed (now that I was paying attention to it!) to be so full of life. As I progressed towards Pet Sounds I felt that the sound of a ragged, spontaneous-sounding band was being lost to studio perfectionism. There is nothing wrong with that per se and I certainly don't hate Pet Sounds or Today!, but these albums are distinctly less immediate compared to, say, "No-Go Showboat" or even "In My Room".

Without a doubt Pet Sounds is their [Brian's] (released) crowning achievement. On the other hand, when I ventured into their post-1966 output (excluding the Smile sessions) I was yet again mesmerised! Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and moments of Friends and 20/20 seemed to recapture this sense of spontaneity that the Boys had earlier on, before being so engrossed in musical revolution. To be sure, this was them working within the dominant paradigm and subverting and playing around with it rather than attempting to shift the paradigm -- but, goshdarn, I'm sorry if you don't think "Little Pad" is beautiful or that "Aren't You Glad?" isn't sing-along-and-dance-stupidly fun. They then, of course, moved back into sophisticated production with Sunflower and onward.

What do I like about Love You? I like that it manages, I think, to combine the heartfelt honesty of The Beach Boys -- both the manically happy, the horny, as well as the melancholia -- along with really strange and inventive arrangements that were hallmarks of Brian's most creative period (1965-67), and the spontaneous nature of their earliest and late-1960s work as well as the sheer weirdness that came out in full from Smile onwards (but was for the most part around early-on too) [think: "Baker Man", "I'm Bugged at My Old Man", "Shes Going Bald", "Take a Load off Your Feet", etc.]. It is, to me, a consolidation of everything 'The Beach Boys' (by which I probably mean 'Brian Wilson') were capable of doing -- and doing it in a way that was able to not only arise conviction but also to be simply good music. In short: Love You was a masterful synthesis -- a synthesis of Hegelian proportions, you might say! :lol

That is a lot of words about an album most people seem to not overly like. Welp, there you have it: my (I like to think thought-through) opinion of a thing!

* except for Dennis, who seemed unfailingly supportive!

Well, we WERE actually on different planets if you think about it Jon...you were here in L.A., the epitome of cutting edge culture, reflecting the opinions of people who lived here and movers and shakers in the industry.  I was a kid in rural New York State listening to the radio along with all of the rest of the punters out there.  The single got a ton of play where I lived, the same year that the Bee Gees and Donna Summer were (even at that late date) having hit records, and it sounded good side by side with them.  It's not surprising the perceptions would be different...but they're both valid.  The song actually helped overcome my childhood prejudices against the BBs and start listening to them with fresh ears.  (So did finding POB at the local library)

I'm not saying you're incorrect...but once the band had RELEASED the single, whatever damage was done, was done.  To me to just pull the rug out from under a single that's climbing the charts just compounds the damage.  If the song had wound up making the top 20, peoples' perceptions of the song probably would have changed (as they did with "Kokomo" nine years later).

And yeah, I'll go to bat and say I think it's an edgy track, and it was particularly so at the time relating to peoples' perceptions of the BBs.  Compare and contrast to the Celebration disco album or something by Paul Nicholas, which is as vapid and dull as dishwasher.  HCTN had a lot of eerie/cool production touches (WTF is up with that chimp?!?), a spectacular vocal by Carl.  Disco as a CONCEPT wasn't edgy by 1979 -- you are absolutely correct about that -- but that has nothing to do with what I meant by using the word.  I'm talking about the track itself.

oops.  double post.

Glad to see that post, Adam, as when I read Jon's post my first thought was "huge numbers of people are on different worlds all the time." Of course, sales can be the final judge in these things, but one crowd's limp flop is another's under-appreciated gem. Back to the point of LA as a turning point, it's sad how it went. Regardless of anyone's feelings about the material or presentation of the album, the group's members obviously still had a lot of interesting things to do, not to mention the vocal and instrumental prowess to do them at that time. Now, as we talk about their half-century mark, the group isn't in tact and has lost much of that facility. Shame.

They were disappointments for a reason, so many on many worlds were disappointed, but I'd have to agree that their performance probably varied from "world" to "world".

I don't remember ever hearing either one on the radio in Kansas. Not saying they didn't play, just saying I don't remember hearing them. At all.

I definitely heard Good Timin' (on top 40 radio) and Angel Come Home (on alternative radio) in L.A. I did not hear HCTN on radio more than twice, but I read a lot of derision directed at it in the press, and heard plenty of derision from my friends and fellow musicians. In early '79 Bruce told me this single was going to be groundbreaking. I had high hopes. On first listen the track struck me as just the opposite of what Bruce described, and what you describe Adam...it seemed like very pedestrian disco, obvious, white, not funky, with that done to death slickness...the standard amount of beats per minute feel and the ubiquitous string swoops. I thought Carl's vocal sounded strained, self conscious, and the group vocal arrangement to me was uninteresting, bad disco caricature. Obviously our perception is disparate and will remain so. L.A. was an interesting place in '78 to '83, the kind of place you could run into Dennis Wilson on the street and where members of X or the Bangs might show up at your gig...where Kim Fowley could hear your demo and come to your door to ask about it...and where you could bring your new record to Rodney and hear it on KROQ while driving home. I miss those days...and I don't.

Different worlds indeed.  I personally love HCTN, though I concede the 11-minute version on L.A. was overkill, and I think you know that my taste in Beach Boys music doesn't run to the commercial.  I just have no problem with disco whatsoever, if it's done well, but a lot of people have a real visceral reaction to it (I noticed when I put a disco-flavored song on my own album a lot of people couldn't deal with that, either, to the detriment of the rest of it).  I don't doubt your perception is accurate...but it doesn't play the same way everywhere.  LOVE YOU, for example, was a great album in some ways, very well respected among musicians and hipster types, but for the average Joe on the street in the heartland, it was a head-scratcher.  L.A. at least sounded like a real, professionally-produced album.  Even POB, which was brilliant, had production that has worn well but was odd for its time...very low-midrangey and quirky in other ways.   L.A. was a gateway back to the mainstream.  And in my case, it got me to listen to the Beach Boys seriously.  For a kid in 1979, there was nothing current to relate to in the '60s stuff.  L.A. contextualized the sound in the there and now, and as you say, the record was very well promoted.

Anyway all I'm saying is this:  the whole point of making a sell-out record is to, well, sell out.  The cardinal sin with HCTN wasn't that the Beach Boys did something crassly commercial,  it was that they didn't get a hit as part of the bargain.  If they'd pulled that off, then it might well have been worth the loss of credibility -- and they'd lost a lot of that anyway by that point, anyway.  To me, pulling the single when it was mid-chart was the worst of both worlds.  Once they'd taken the hit for making a disco record, I think they should have toughed it out and stuck to the original plan.  By backing out when people protested, they just confirmed everyone's suspicions about their motives.  "See?  Even the band thinks it sucks."  Dumb.

I heard HCTN once on AM radio in North Platte, Nebraska (directly north of Kansas for those not familiar with U.S. geography), right before the album came out, so it was my very first time hearing it.  Good Timin' I heard several times, Lady Lynda a couple of times.  The year before, I heard Peggy Sue once I think.  The year after, I heard Livin' With A Heartache a bunch of times.  Oddly, three years later, I heard Goin' On out in the middle of nowhere while driving across the state.

I grew up in Boston:

From 15BO "Rock and Roll music" got a lot of play but I might have only heard "It's OK" once or twice.

My first Beach Boys concert was in November of 1976 at thye Boston Garden (the same night that Brian was on SNL if I recall correctly) and they played "Airplane" (announced as a new single) and "The Night Was So Young" (I think - Carl played keys on it).  I never heard either on the radio.

"Peggy Sue" was played pretty frequently.

I only heard "Good Timin'" from LA - I have never heard HCTN single version.

You would here the hits on oldies radio and WBCN would play a lot of the seventies stuff (one DJ liked "This Whole World") but after "Rock and Roll Music" there was little airplay of new stuff.

Love You is an album sui generis. Call it punk if you want to. There is no album ever released that even comes close. It is brutal, in your face, honest, wounded, sensitive, childlike, embarrassing, harmonic, rhythmic, faultless, full of faults, and a sign of developmental problems and past trauma. And that is why I so dearly love it. There is only one thing lacking on Love You: calculation. The aiming at a specific effect. Pleasing a market segment.

Perhaps is is the best pop album of all time, apart from Philosophy Of The World.

The specific market or effect that Love You was aimed at was this: Brian Wilson, circa 1977. I think that is pretty much what you get and what people should have figured out -- the letter to Brian from his brothers seemed to indicate as much to me, anyway. (Then again, I may have the benefit of hindsight!)

Yeah, I like the album but it's an aquired taste.  It sucks, you can't play it for friends because then you have to explain why every single song is cool and that's not cool. 

I think it's great though, one of the best BB's albums in my opinion.  Really interesting, and most of all, the album's fun. 

I really think Brian that thought Love You was a progressive album. It combined the sense of fun and goofiness the early hits had with modern (for the time) electronic instruments (and the almost pedophile-like quality of 30-40 year old men singing teenage pop songs). Around the time the album was recorded Brian was talking about how he was getting all of the latest electronic instruments brought in to modernize the BBs sound. Yes, he said that. He also said that he wanted to be contemporary, he wanted to what the kids were listening to.

If you listen to Iggy Pop and David Bowie's The Idiot, which was released around the same time, you'll see that Brian wasn't the only big name pursuing this sound. Listen to "Nightclubbing": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlx-8zelo00

It has the mildly creepy vibe and electronic instruments that we've come to love Love You for.

Perhaps...in some alternate dimension.  :)

It is utterly, unapologetically idiosyncratic and it was courageous of them to release it into a merciless commercial marketplace. Three cheers for "Love You"! :)

Yup. I have these great memories... I was in grammar school, and tried to keep up with my then-growing BBs obsession as well as more mainstream rock. 'Love You' is linked in my mind with the Eagles 'On The Border' and 'Hotel California', and 'Rumours'. Somehow also Bowie's 'Pin-Ups' and Springsteen's 'Born To Run' and 'Darkness' fit in (mnemonically speaking, not chronologically).

But 'Love You' sticks out like a sore thumb trumps them all for audacity and erm, disregard for fashion and commerce.