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There's lip-sync footage of him playing all the way up through the "Problem Child" video in '91, and perhaps later for all I can remember (and I'm always impressed he seems to be playing the correct bass line), but when was the last time Bruce actually played bass onstage?  IIRC he did two songs for Knebworth in '80, and that's the last time I remember it happening.  When I saw them in '81, I don't think he played bass at all (though Al did).

Anyone know?

He was still playing bass live in '81, at least at some shows (Long Tall Texan and Help Me Rhonda at Long Beach 7/5/81).  When I saw them in '82, he only played piano & electric piano.  Back in the early '90s someone told me that he still played bass once a year.

Here is seen playing bass in a December 29, 2005 performance in Memphis TN at the Liberty Bowl.

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i don't know when he played bass last but at the july 1981 show in huntington wva he played bass during help me, rhonda. brian walked across the stage and played the electric piano during that song. i like listening to the tape of that show that i made just to listen to bruce's bass playing.

  He played bass during Help Me Rhonda during their show in Wildwood, NJ in the summer of 91. With a pick that is now in my possession.

Just watching again the Olympia Show from 1969. While there is no doubt Bruce is really proficient on piano/keyboards/organ, there are times while watching that show his bass playing is cringe worthy!  And this is when he is NOT singing.  Adam you agree?  His playing just seems a little amatuerish.  What is that story I once read about Bruce where he said Keith Moon dragged him on stage and Bruce kept protesting "But I'm not a bass player!"  At least he admits it.   

He screws up a few things, there were a couple of other places where he surprised me by getting a bit creative.  There was one place where he did both.

I was watching Bruce's bass playing too, it was the most I'd ever seen him do it.  I think he was adequate, but yeah, if you looked real carefully you could see the flaws.  I think the guy was a good all-around musician, and as such he managed OK on bass.  That's the best way I would put it.  The thing I thought was a puzzler was why they still had two guys on a mic at all times.  That's just not going to help your playing any.

Last year when I was hanging out with Bruce, I asked him if he missed playing bass.  He said not really, because he wasn't that good at it.  Then he went on to say "I'll tell you what I do miss...I miss Carl, Al, and Brian.  And Dennis".  I thought that was nice.

I found tis on the web. It says it is from the Super Bowl 1998.

(http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-295270-galleryV9-apmr.jpg)

The amount of Sousaphones in that picture is disturbing me :)

it looks like Bruce is playing a Squier bass.  weird.

Just a few weeks before Carl passed away....  :-\

The gear was probably provided by whatever cheap-ass put the event together!

I thought he played bass sometime last year at a private gig in London - Annabel's or something like that.

I posted the footage from Annabel's back in March 2011, Bruce is playing guitar. Checking the links, Youtube says that the footage has been removed by the user...

Bruce was miming during that show, there wasn't enough room onstage for his keyboard, so he took a guitar to save room.

My bad, I guess. Miming?

Weird, huh? He told about this on the BBB-board. No room for a keyboard, but to have something in his hands, he chose to strap a guitar on. He wasn't plugged in...

I heard he filled in for Geddy Lee a couple of dates the last time Rush toured....

when's the last time bruce baked me a pie? ;(

When did Bruce start wearing a cap?

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know when Brian last played bass live? or more interestingly, in the studio?

Silly question..Every show ive ever seen..Bruce always picks up the bass at some point

Bruce or do you mean Brian?

Bruce..He always seems to pick up bass guitar until the Mike + Bruce show. After CW died,,No more ..Before that he always picked that sucker up ..I dont like Bruce"s bass playing..but. HAL BLAINE is quoted as saying.. Bruce is one of the best keyboard players he has ever seen + heard....That comes from one of the greatest studio musicians that ever lived..So i believe him..BW.. He had decent chop"s 60"s + 70"s..After that i dont think he has a clue.. Thats OK// BB arent the Allman Bros band..Their thing was songs production harmony..

...and then you go on to mention that you haven't seen Bruce play bass since before Carl's death.

Wow! This has me laughing still!  :lol

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B6yyTTmh8pc/

1991

He was holding one at least in 2005. https://twitter.com/beachboyslegacy/status/1211324425662091264

Ya can't clap, adjust the mike stand and play bass at the same time so the bass went bye bye.  ::)

I think it’s a shame as he was actually a pretty good bassist back in the day.

One of the things that's kinda interesting about the Beach Boys is how often instruments are swapped - including vocals, that have alternated around Brian, Bruce, Carl, Al, Mike and the session guys over the years. Bass has gone between Brian, Carl, Al and Bruce. Mike used to play the theremin synth thing on Good Vibes...

Lip synching to a track recorded in 1989 from the Endless Summer tv series

The infamous day Brian, Carl (near death) and Al watched on tv as the "Beach Boys", to their surprise, performed at the Super Bowl.

I agree that Bruce was a much better bassist, than even he gives himself credit for. California Girls, I Get Around and Help Me Rhonda aren't exactly easy basslines to master! Wish he'd still pick up the bass in the encore, like he did throughout the 80's. Even if it was just Barbara Ann or Help Me Rhonda, like he used to.

I don't know if it's wildly available but I recently found the Super Bowl clip on youtube.. I"d never seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELjvd6Nl870

What a mess

Incredibly surreal to see Phil Hartman introducing them. It makes it feel like this is some bizarro episode of The Simpsons where Troy McClure is introducing some strange alternate reality version of the band. And Mike's voice sounds too good here and I'm sure it must be lip-synching to studio vocals, no way those are actual live vocals.

What a weird time for the band. Phil Hartman gave them a spoken introduction and had to bend over backwards into a pretzel to describe the band that was about to play. It felt like that description had to be signed off by a bunch of power lawyers, and that's probably not far from the truth. It's also interesting how this band is billed as "a tribute to the beach boys" (for the only time ever?) in contrast to the current band which is actually billed as "the Beach Boys".

That said, considering the studio vocals, they sounded better than I was expecting. But the whole thing is just very weird and awkward. And why wasn't Al here? That was because Mike didn't like his attitude, correct? Poor Al.

I can only imagine what Carl thought. :(

What time in the clip? I can't find any beach boys on the linked video

Actually, they weren't billed as "The Beach Boys", but rather as "A Tribute To The Beach Boys".

13:49 is where Phil Hartman's introduction of the band starts. Performance follows right after.

What a mess indeed.
Still, I'm always glad to see David Marks play with the band.
In what circumstances exactly did he come back to play with Mike and Bruce?
Did David stay in touch with the other Beach Boys during all those "lost years"?

<<What a mess indeed.
Still, I'm always glad to see David Marks play with the band.
In what circumstances exactly did he come back to play with Mike and Bruce?
Did David stay in touch with the other Beach Boys during all those "lost years"?>>


You should read Jon Stebbins' book "The Lost Beach Boy".

Right, I stand corrected. The infamous day Brian, Carl and Al watched, in surprise, as members of their band played as a  tribute to their band at the Super Bowl

I would think they'd have heard about it in advance, like most of us, through the media...it was publicized or advertised days ahead of time.

That would make sense, but according to Al Jardine you'd be wrong

I know - but you'd still think they would've heard, even if they didn't.

Who played on the backing tracks?

I hear Adrian Baker all over the tracks. Every song I can hear his voice I think. Surfin USA and the intro to California Girls are similar if not identical to the versions on Mike's Catch A Wave CD, produced by Baker himself. I obviously hear Mike and Glen's leads. They sound pretty good. I 100% hear Dean Torrence's signature falsetto on Surf City. On the highest harmony of the "surffff cittyyyy" backing vocals. I really liked hearing Glen sing Jan's part on Surf City. He did great Jan impressions on Carnival of Sound and he still could do it well in the 90's.

Despite the sketchy circumstances, and for not being the full band, I'd say this is an all-star lineup of let's say, BBs associates. Mike, Bruce, David, and Glen equal four members of the BBs throughout their history, Stamos can hold his own on drums and had been playing with them for years, not to mention Dean who had been playing with the band since the early 60's. In fact, I'd have been thrilled for any of those guys to stay on full time.... Not Stamos tho :lol :lol :lol

Very embarrassing. They showed the cheerleaders more than the band. Not that i'm complaining....
I just think it was very distasteful to trot this group out there while Carl was on his deathbed.

Totally agree. Terrible lip sync performance at the worst possible time in extremely poor taste to Carl Wilson.

I'm guessing the poor lip synching (Glen isn't even close) resulted in fewer close ups & more shots of the cheerleaders.

So somewhere there is a recording of Glen, Dean and Mike singing BB songs?

I remember back in 1998 when that Super Bowl thing aired thinking that it was embarrassing and depressing. And that was without having any context, not knowing that Al was on his way to being squeezed out and Carl was close to passing.

It's like, in 1998 how do you make the Beach Boys (yes, true, they didn't literally use the BB name, only because they legally couldn't) look and sound even worse and even older? Play to awful canned tracks, and add Glen Campbell and Dean Torrence to add to the proceedings of faking burping their way through oldies.

No disrespect to Glen Campbell, he maintained a good singing voice even years later (sounds great on Al's re-re-make of "California Dreamin'").

But this 1998 Super Bowl thing is one of the main candidates for the nadir of the saga, right up there and in some ways more embarrassing than even the Queen Mary '81 gig. At least they played live at that one and FIVE Beach Boys rolled their carcasses out of bed and showed up for that one.

The one thing that pops into my mind as rubbing me the wrong way about this performance, is that it feels Carl and Al's absence caused Mike to immediately push things back into the way that Mike wanted things to be (the cheerleaders). I admit maybe this is me reading too much into stuff. Maybe it wasn't opportunism, and maybe it was just coincidental timing, but I can't exactly feel good about it.

Am I misremembering, or didn't both Carl and Al not want the cheerleaders to be part of the band's live set? Obviously the cheerleaders nevertheless *were* a part of the band's live set for years during Carl and Al's tenure in the band, but then for a couple years the cheerleaders were retired. Is it or is it not a coincidence that the moment both of these guys were together out of the band, Mike brought the cheerleaders back with a vengeance? Yes, I know this was the Super Bowl show, so if there was ever gonna be a cheerleader-centric show, this was gonna be it.  

I also certainly can't say if the band's Super Bowl show would have been markedly different if Carl and Al were still present (other than the "Beach Boys" billing being intact, and no Glen or David present). Maybe there'd have been the same cheerleaders anyway for this one big show, what does everyone think? I dunno. I guess I can't help shake that icky feeling considering Carl's condition at the time. It's not just that the band kept playing shows, but they played shows of this level of tackiness, the complete pendulum swing away from Carl's (and Al's) preferred vision of the band... it's just kinda cringey no matter how hard I might want to brush it off as not being so.

I guess if ever there was an "exhibit A" in terms of showing the dichotomy of the various band factions' preferred vision of the band, this show - especially considering the scale and the timing - would show one side's preference in an unusually extreme fashion.

I'm no American or American football fan but aren't cheerleaders a pretty prominent part of it? Seems to me that they'd have been there anyway since it was the superbowl.

Seeing that Superbowl mess, I was wondering...
What other bands in the history of rock'n roll have gone from the sublime to the sad / ridiculous / tacky / awkward spectrum?

That's something that always amazes me with The Beach Boys : When you see videos like that or the "Summer of Love" video, it must be almost impossible to tell someone who've never heard of them that they're the same band from the 60s and 7Os.

Yes. It's not really fair to look at this as being a representation of what Mike wanted the live Beach Boys to be. it was a one time thing for the Super Bowl. I never had a problem with the cheerleaders, but it was nicer when it was just local high school cheerleaders.
But I still think this Super Bowl gig was a bad idea.

Because, and Mike knows this, in the public eye the entire band's output is closer to Summer of Love than anything else. That's what pays the mortgage.

True.
And, please, don't send me death threats for saying this, but I find the Mike / Bruce shows from today way better than the Beach Boys shows from the mid-90s.

No doubt about that. As someone that was not in the fandom then, I find it hard to imagine myself actually going to those shows year after year had I been. It's just so damn cringey. They did a lot of cool double-billed tours that would've been great...Chicago, Three Dog Night, America, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis etc.

Nothing "cringey" about seeing/hearing Carl, Al and Matt harmonize together.  I'd give anything to see that again.

I agree, although the SIP era was a real test of my fandom. I felt like the Beach Boys had become Mike Love's group, for better or worse - mostly worse.

When I see Carl post-Summer in Paradise until his death, all I can think is : "Poor Carl, you deserved better!"

Yes he did.