The Smiley Smile Message Board

Gershwin, the Four Freshmen, Rosemary Clooney, Phil Spector, the Beatles and Randy Newman always pop up when you read about Brian's favourite music but which other artists is he known to really enjoy listening to?

I haven't read that many interviews where he elaborates on this and if he get's asked about it he always seems to bring up the same old names. But then again, he may be pretty locked in to specific acts, rarely listening to anything else. Anyone here in the know?

On interesting observation I've had is in my edition of the Todd Gold autobiography - there's a photo of 70s Brian wearing a 'Face the Music'-era Electric Light Orchestra t-shirt.  :)

Someone tried to ask about the Kinks during that Facebook Q & A thing. Brian, in his traditional hilarious fashion, went off on a tangent without actually answering the question.

Other than that, I dunno. I think he doesn't like the Who all too much - I remember Pete Townshend being rather crushed by it, he was a big fan of the Beach Boys.

EDIT: He's got to like Bob Dylan. Everyone of the 60s likes Bob Dylan, no exceptions.

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,8605.0.html (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,8605.0.html)

Not sure about Townshend, he was rather disparaging towards a lot of BB stuff but Moon was a massive fan and I assume that Daltrey is too considering he narrated the Dennis Wilson radio documentary from 2 years ago.

Besides his shout out to them in "I Love L.A." has Newman ever actually said anything substantial about Brian or the Beach Boys? Does he know that Brian listened to Sail Away obsessively while in Holland and that it helped him from sinking further into depression?

Roger's not only a huge fan, but he & Brian are good friends: Brian stayed at his Sussex farm more than once.

Newman's a big fan of Brian's melodies---if you get him to say so---he's not particularly apt to praise anyone under normal circumstances.

Brian said in the FB chat he used to listen to Zappa in the 60s but doesn't anymore. Considering he sang BVs on stage with the Moody Blues on "Ride My See-Saw" I would think he was a bit of a fan, though I could be wrong.

I've alwas wondered if Brian was fond of Neil Young's music and also Roy Orbison?

So who's gonna say Wishbone Ash?

Norbit: Original Music From the Motion Picture

Newman's best friend is Lenny Waronker who we know was excited by Brian's SMiLE-era music, helped get the band signed to Warners in '70 and produced Brian in the late 80s. Even if Newman hated the Beach Boys, I'm sure he's had to hear some praise from Waronker over the years.

He likes a song called "Be My Baby."

Be My Baby
Be My Baby
Be My Baby
What A Fool Believes
Let it Be
Be My Baby
Be My Baby
and Be My Baby


oh, and My Obsession by the Rolling Stones

Also is connected to Van Dyke Parks - VDP produced his first record (although not very well, i must confess) with Waronker and The Wrecking Crew in 1968.

Green Day

I read in an interview that he couldn't listen to Let it Be anymore because it scared him.

He's mentioned liking Frank Sinatra on a few occasions I believe, particularly "Strangers In The Night." 

yep, he mentioned it as it being one of his top 3 songs.

Yeah, it's a really odd album for Randy Newman when you've listened to basically everything that came after it in the 1970s. It's definitely more dated ("overproduced," especially for someone like Randy Newman) than the follow-up not two years later, the night-perfect 12 Songs. Talk about artistic evolution!

didn't he mention Aerosmith in a recent interview?


and someone here said he liked Pink Floyd. or Dark Side of the Moon at least...


I wonder if he's a Steely Dan man?

While obviously Brian has been through a lot since the mid 70s-interviews from 73 and 74 show that he was pretty up back then on al lot of the music that was going on. I don't think he is (or at least was back then) as myopic as the legends suggest. He knew about plenty of non Phil Spector music back then.  For example in one interview he suggests that he was up on the music of the Fifth Dimension, the Buckinghams and the Four Tops.  He played Curtis Mayfield records from his collection for Richard Williams of Melody Maker.  He also played Twilight Time by the Platters for him and gushed about "I'm So Young" by the Students (which he covered of course)-of which he said "that record took me through senior year in high school."  I am assuming that it was his decision to cover "The Letter" by the Box Tops since he took the lead. He covered "Gimme Some Lovin" by Spencer Davis in the 70s and expressed admiration for that group too.  He is fond of Three Dog Night as well of course and he once gushed about how much he loved Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Do you happen to know the source of that? I'd love to read Brian's comment in context.

I believe he once said he liked Cole Porter a lot

Shortnin' Bread
Da Do Ron Ron
That synthesizer Bach album

according to wikipedia, Townshend likes their Smiley Smile album, so I'd say he's a fan.

Yeah, except that he thought "Good Vibrations" was so overproduced you could hardly recognise the song underneath it all. Even if he does like Smiley Smile, I'm not so sure he's a Beach Boys fan per se.

Wendy Carlos, he also seemed really honored to hear that Alex Chilton was into him, and seemed to dig him.

In one of the DVDs, Pete says he loves Brian.

ELO? Really? I think we need a barf smiley. ;D

That would be the Brian Wilson On Tour dvd, I believe.

In the liner notes to Pete's "Scoop", he says that he tried to recreate the sound of Smiley Smile whilst recording Gone Fishin'.

Surprised no one has mentioned Burt Bacharach. I also wonder what he thought of the Doors. I believe I heard that Morrison loved the Wild Honey LP. ELO wouldn't suprise me. I am guessing he liked Chicago, the Eagles, Elton John, Simon and Garfunkel, and Elvis Costello.

Pete Townshend: "I love Brian. There's not many people I would say that about. I think he's a truly, truly, truly great genius. I love him so much it's just terrible - I find it hard to live with. From my own era I especially admire Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles and Brian Wilson. 'God Only Knows' is simple and elegant and was stunning when it first appeared; it still sounds perfect."

Seconded. Jeff Lynne has committed many a crime against the arts. It's that wushy wushy slick sound of ELO... terrible. All ELO records sound like Euroshopper Hair Conditioner, because:

(http://www.s9.com/images/portraits/33719_Jeff-Lynne19471200--.jpg)

Thinking about the changes/melodies in songs like "Turn To Stone" and "Mr. Blue Sky", I'd expect BW to dig em.  But yeah, sometimes the production values can be too glossy for me.  Wasn't thrilled when Jeff was brought in to produce the "new" Beatles tracks for the Anthology discs.

Huh, well I guess I was totally wrong. Did he just not like "Good Vibrations" then? It doesn't seem so far removed from the studio-as-instrument showcase of Pet Sounds so it seems like a fairly arbitrary judgment to me, I dunno.

really? I thoroughly enjoy ELO from the beginning up until after DISCOvery

Brian on Facebook, February 24, 2010:

- "I love Bach! I have to tell you that JS Bach was easily the greatest musical innovator in the history of the world. He was so advanced for his time. There's a spiritual depth to his music. You can listen to it and it's like meditation."

- "I think Marvin Gaye was one of the greatest music-makers of all time."

Presumably Brian had a soft spot for Jellyfish and certainly The Wondermints at some times.

You may! It's not for me to prescribe taste... heaven forbid. As I wrote long ago, at age 8, I was a super fan of James Last. That has changed over the years. And as another poster here remarked: ELO did have its musicality in terms of chord patterns and so on. It's just their sound that makes me feel uneasy.

Someone on the board once posted a bizarre story about Brian in the late 90s/early 00s, when he was out at a bar or club with Rodney. Brian had had a couple and was somewhat weird, and he was really enthusing about some Janes's Addiction that was playing on the jukebox.

He thought they were really rockin'.

Hehe. I bet it is the combination of antidepressants and too much alcohol. People get disinhibited, say and do strange things. They themselves don't realize that they show this behaviour, but others do certainly. I guess the same combination was to blame for his weird insults towards VDP, at Ringo's birthday bash.

There is an interview with Townshend from '66 I believe where he unloads on Brian's work with the Beach Boys, and is quite critical, but at that time Townshend was trying to come off as a bitter tough guy rocker with a lot of opinions, to further the image of the band and all of that. It's been proven in the years after his angry young rocker phase that he respects Brian's work, and I'd go so far as to say Brian was one of his bigger influences on what he did with the Who, especially how Pete viewed himself in the role of producer and main creator of the music. Add up all of his comments since '66 and he's nothing but complimentary of Brian's music.

The Queen reference is in Richard Cromelin's piece for Sounds, Aug 7 1976:  Brian says "Like for instance there's a group called Queen.  They made a record, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which to me was a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer, of artistic music...I studied the record.  I became very familiar with it, and I'm very very fond of it and I'm scared of it at the same time.  Oh, it's the most competitive thing that's come along in ages! It's just totally amazing what people do when they lose their noggins, when they lose their heads and they go in there and freak...That's what Queen did.  They had enough of what was happening, and by God they went in and did their thing and stomped! And I appreciate that and I'm very fond of it."   Clearly in 1975 Brian was doing very little and probably listened to Rodney , Jim Pewter and other DJ's every day.  By the way-I had the privilege of interviewing Chip Rachlin for my book and he told me that he took Dennis to see Queen in 1975 or 76 and that Dennis insisted on going backstage afterwards and meeting them.

Nothing weird about that...

in a 1988 interview with Pete Fornatele, the five records he'd keep for his own jukebox:

Be my baby
Da doo ron ron
Good Vibrations
Macarthur Park
and...
Spooky by the Classics Four... "I thought that was a great record!"

Dude, 12 Songs is so good it's not even funny. I was listening to it on the way to work today and it actually made the tube bearable....
Silly question - you heard Nilsson Sings Newman? If yeah, what do you think?

I do not understand the "minor masterpiece" talk about Nilsson Sings Newman. I think it's a fine album for what it is: someone who can sing very well performing Randy Newman compositions. For me, it lacks the satirical edge of Newman singing his own songs. Sometimes this works, however, but that is mainly for songs he wrote that were not meant to be so satirical, I think, such as "Dayton, Ohio 1903" or "I'll Be Home" or "Living Without You". I don't think Nilsson shows enough of his own personality on the album, I guess, and that he sings very well on it doesn't elevate it beyond 'pleasant interpretation' for me (for the most part). Newman "can't sing" in the common sense of the term [being able to sound nice while doing so, like, say, Brian Wilson] but I don't think anyone else can impart the comical nature of a song like "You Can Leave Your Hat On" or the absurdity of "Yellow Man" like him. Whether that means something as uninteresting as 'Randy Newman knows his own compositions better than other performers' or 'it takes a certain kind of person to grasp what Newman tries to do and impart this, and Nilsson is not that person', I'm not sure anymore. My point is that I think it's a fine album, but nothing spectacular like some people seem to think because Nilsson is too mannered (or something) when singing.

I wonder how Brian would react if he heard Tom Waits. ^_^

I wonder what BB music he has on his ipod or playlist or mix cds...does it include any solo works of either himself or the other guys?
I imagine listen to a lot of his favorite collabs he's had over the years....Tony Asher (stuff from the 90s), maybe some Gary Usher?, some VDP, stephen kalinich?, and maybe Jack Rieley?  ;D
I'm sure he has a special place in his heart for Looking Back with Love...I can only imagine Mike giving a copy to each of the guys for Christmas that year...Even the guys like to keep their albums sealed for worth.   ;) :p

I have read that Brian was once played Dukes Of Stratospear's Pale and Precious and that he listened silently, eyes closed. Then when the "up she rises" bit had kicked in, he opened his eyes and yelled "I LOVE IT!"

Also read that Randy Newman really loves the old Beach Boys stuff, but that he doesn't 'get' Pet Sound or anything after...

If I had been a pro musicial for that long, I really wouldn't want to carry my own work with me. Or listen to it.

Wendy Carlos "Switched on Bach"

Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon"

This seems bizarre to me. Got any more info on this -- a source or further quote-age or something?

Yep that must have made it their best Christmas ever bar none.  ::)

I'm 100% sure of reading this excact information on the stevehoffman forum. It was said by Randy's personal archivist.

he said he dug she & him.  but how can you not??? 

Huh, that's strange. I would have thought, given Newman's predilection for Americana, that he would have appreciated the maturation of Brian Wilson's song- and music-craft -- and, as they were both in the same broad scene [1960s L.A.] that he might have known something or other about SMiLE (as I believe someone else pointed out, because he was [and still is?] friends with Lenny Waronker) and been intrigued. Oh well, I suppose Newman did also write some more or less straightforward pop songs starting out as a staff writer for Meteor [I think?] -- and this was, I believe, around the same time The Beach Boys and Brian were coming up on the scene too, in the early-to-mid-1960s -- and perhaps it is that aspect of Brian Wilson that he valued the most. I can see that too.

My thoughts exactly...even aside from the fact that Zooey is the perfect woman (who Brian obviously had a thing for when they did that MySpace interview), their records are incredibly melodic and filled with great harmonies.  There are a few tracks with very well-done Spector-like production as well.  It's easy to see why Brian would enjoy their music.

wouldn't that be something if he produced a couple of tracks for them?

My question is, what influenced Brian to get into waltzes?

Why not waltzes? They're nice things  ;D

Oh yes, I'm 100% with you on this. But for some reason, especially on the Friends era stuff Brian was just into waltzes. was this something he just picked at random? What was his inspiration there? I think they're really nice, I was just curious.