The Smiley Smile Message Board

Figure that's worth commemorating with a thread. BTW, who drew the sleeve? Doesn't look like a Frank Holmes opus to me.

The beginning of the end. They should have recorded a song called "Good To My Baby Again: Gooder To My Baby" instead.

Ballad of Ole'r Betsy/ Shut Down, Part 3 could've been the biggest hit single of '67

Or "Republicans And Villains" for that matter.

I do on occasion wonder what would have come after GV if Brian had not found himself sitting with Van Dyke at Terry's, and Mike had somehow ended up in the lyricist's chair for the next album after PS.  GV in its earlier stages was pretty soulful and hard-driving, a bit like Wild Honey. Would we have seen something similar to WH emerge at the end of '66 instead of the end of '67?

 In a way that would have made the guys even further ahead of their time.  I've seen the occasional article that pointed out that in doing WH the BBs prefigured the whole back-to-basics thing in rock before "Lady Madonna" and John Wesley Harding. (In terms of released material, since the Basement Tapes were recorded just before WH though unreleased then.)

But then that would mean no Smile....and if such an album had hit big, maybe no Summer of Love.  Or maybe there would have been one in a somewhat different, um, context....
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-clVODEVy0U

The "official" release date is misleading, unless release means when actual copies were put on the store shelves: Shades of official release dates in modern times being shattered by internet leaks and uploads (Hello TWGMTR, 2012...), it's more a case of the record actually being available to buy in the shops on a specific day, though it was on certain top-40 radio stations for several weeks.

AM station KHJ in LA had the Heroes single listed as a Hitbound (new entry on the chart that week) on their survey for the week of July 12 '67. This was soon after Brian and his caravan of BB's and friends showed up unannounced with the fresh pressing of the new Heroes single, found Tom Maule working his shift at the station, and then found that Maule would not play the record on air until he called his boss Ron Jacobs. This was in the week leading up to that week of July 12th.

Then there is a tape of KHJ DJ Bobby Tripp recorded sometime between July 17-19 where he gives a lukewarm review of the new single.

Several stations in Boston, Chicago, and other cities had the single listed on their surveys as Hitbound for the last week in July, again pre-dating the official release and showing the record had gotten out to the various markets prior to it actually being available to buy.

Looking back on it all, yes Tom Maule gets some blame for the rejection incident, but if you saturate your strongest home market station with a record *3 weeks* - give or take - prior to the release, wouldn't people after three weeks be a bit too familiar with it to want to rush out and buy it? Again, this is only KHJ in LA, Brian's home station, and the other markets and cities didn't get that "KHJ Exclusive" for another few weeks. And some cities wouldn't catch on to the record until late August/early September, basically it didn't chart at all for several weeks even after the official release.

It's fascinating to tie all the loose ends together and get a bigger picture happening around the history and dates. I see a release date for a certain record and assume that was the first time anyone had heard it, especially in terms of that era and how things were done. But that wasn't the case, and with Heroes the hip listeners in LA had been hearing Heroes in rotation since the second week of July '67.

Would a birthday cake be in order?  ;D

Even in its stripped back Smiley form, it still remains one of the greatest singles (and songs) of their career...

I'm spinning the In Concert version and goshdarn, it rocks so hard :rock

I find "Heroes and Villains" to be good, not great. It's probably the muddiness in the production that bothers me more than the song itself. It's pretty far down on my list.

Then you must not like Pet Sounds, Today, or Wild Honey that much. All muddy in production.

It's sad that these three albums are not great now. :lol

I'm gonna be honest...I think Brian's high point, production-wise, was probably "Heroes And Villains". It was an insanely huge hit like "Good Vibrations", but it was definitely a hit, clocking in at number 12 on Billboard. And that's nothing to be ashamed of.  And I know many don't agree, but I think that the Smiley Smile version of the song is probably the best. It was more compact than the "cantina" version, and honestly I think it benefits from it. Its still a crazy song and it deserves more attention.

I do wish however that they woulda done a version of "Heroes And Villains" that includes "I'm In Great Shape" and "Barnyard". I know that there wasn't anything like that in the vault besides the demo for Humble Harve, but I think there is a enough historical precedent that Mark and Alan shoulda tried it.

Over a year ago (circa May - June 2011) there was a thread concerning the story of the night in July 1967 when Brian and company took an acetate of Heroes and Villains to LA radio station KHJ, offering a worldwide premiere and exclusive, only to be told by the dj that he couldn't play anything that was not not the playlist.

Back then I contacted KHJ's 1956-69 program director, Ron Jacobs, for his comments on the story, and was surprised to find that he had no knowledge of it.  I paraphrased some of his comments in a post back then, and promised to post his detailed comments "soon" which I never did.

So now, with Ron Jacob's permission to post his emails, for those interested in the story, here are Ron Jacob's comments (in yellow) concerning the incident.

From: Ron Jacobs
Subject:    Re: KHJ July 1967
Date:    May 27, 2011 7:47:39 PM PDT
To: Rob Shepherd

On May 27, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Rob Shepherd wrote:

Hello Ron -

Aloha, Rob.

I've got a couple of questions regarding 93/KHJ in July '67 which I hope you might be able to answer.  With the forthcoming release of The Beach Boys Smile Sessions there has been a renewed focus on the events surrounding Brian Wilson's activities as they pertain to those legendary recordings.  The story has long been told how Wilson and a caravan of friends took a seven inch acetate of The Beach Boys new single Heroes and Villains to KHJ, offering a worldwide premiere exclusive, only to have the dj on duty tell him, "Sorry, I can't play anything that's not on the playlist."  Wilson was crestfallen, but, as the story goes, a few of Wilson's friends protested, the jock then made a phone call, presumably to you, and was told something like, "Put it on the air, you idiot!"  As Brian Wilson was heading home, he finally did hear Heroes and Villains being played on KHJ, but was depressed and dejected about the reception his offering of new music had received.

Well, Brian wasn't the straightest bamboo in the jungle. I first met him in 1962 when his miserable father booked the guys to play for free on the roof of our station in minor league Fresno.  They"headlined" the AKMAFAF (Annual Kmake McKinley Avenue Festival of Arts and Flowers).  I'll just leave THAT there and try to help you with your stuff.

I have never heard anything of this story.  Which does not mean that it didn't happen, either as passed on, or, like most "great" stories, hyped by each generation perpetuating it.  I do remember the guys, maybe Brian, maybe one of the other more aggressive and social ones, jogging down from the Capitol Tower with something I put on as soon as I could whisper "KHJ Exclusive," which would be transferred on to cart and popped on the air with no way anyone could dub it without our audio watermark.  (Which is where the name of our company Watermark came from, BTW).  

If the story is true, the jock did the right thing. It was the kind of thing I would do to f*** up a competitive station, hoping the jock would just spin the acetate after a big buildup and then on would come a stream of screamed filth that would make any gangsta rap sound mild.  I should write about the covert operations we inflicted on our opposition.  Everything short of chopping down a tower, which even I though could being on horrible consequences if we were caught.  

The participants telling this story never named the jock, but it's been widely presumed it was Tom Maule, as he held the 9 to midnight shift on Tuesday night, July 11, which is the presumed date this incident occurred.  If it was Maule, he would have been only four weeks into his dream job of working at KHJ, and could have taken the "don't play anything not on the playlist" edict way too seriously.

Great research, man.  But Maule, whose bachelor party in Fresno was one of the wildest ever, for 1963 and was a great, hardworking guy, ain't reading this e-mail (or then again ... ?) but I am copying Johnny Williams and anyone who was there at the time, or who know more stuff about KHJ than I do since they were hard core listeners some of whom I've been friends for decades through various mutual interests other than just KHJ.  

But, the participants recalling the story also mention that the incident occurred around midnight, with the possibility of arriving at KHJ after midnight.  If so, the jock would have been Johnny Williams, unless this happened on a Sunday night, in which case Tom Maule was working an 8 pm to 2 am Sunday shift.

The people "recalling the story" claim to be "participants." WHO might they be?  Did you hear this from "them," read it somewhere, see on TV, etc.?

Obviously, Brian Wilson or someone in his party should have first called the station, advising KHJ that he was bringing the new Beach Boys record over for a worldwide exclusive premiere.

Not simple at that hour. Switchboard shut down.  Jock not to handle any incoming calls to switchboard for KHJ radio or TV.  No Boss Phone Girls at that hour.  Only way to contact via phone would be on listener request line, which, unfortunately, could be ignored by the Boss Jock on duty for a long time ... even though they were to deal with it when they had time between sets.

Anyone actually getting into the AM studio would have had to get past the guard shack.  And those guys had heard every b.s. story ever used to try to hustle scammers inside.

 A time would have been scheduled (Steele or Harv's show would have been perfect), the premiere could have been hyped, and he would have been greeted with open arms.

No. When we got something by Beatles, Stones, Supremes, etc. and it was truly world exclusive we would not f*** around like that, sorry.  The day I received the first US copy of Sgt. Pepper on 7-inch tape in the men's john at Nickodells in a wrinkled brown bag, like a drug deal, I put it on the reel-to-reel machine in my office, killed the light and listened straight through, and while straight.  As an album it blew me away like nothing before or since.  

I took the tape to the engineer on duty, maybe Dexter Young, and he carted up the title track, which was a must, and the one that killed me and became the #1 song on the HRR: A DAY IN THE LIFE.  We had to do this, my whisper, the dubbing to cart, while the engineer, whomever it was, was running the board for whoever was on.  That's how committed the engineers had become (except for Dexter, Bill Mouzis, Ed Dela Pina and a few others were with us enthusiastically on Day One), from being totally cynical and suspicious of us to being proud to be with the top station in LA, one that was being copied everywhere, everyone wondering how we did this or that.

But instead Wilson relied on the advice of his astrologer, a woman named Genevelyn, who advised him that later that night was the perfect time to take the new single to KHJ for a worldwide premiere.

Oh, I'm sure :)  Urban mythology is far out!

On the KHJ Boss 30 survey "Premiered July 12, 1967" Heroes and Villains is listed as a Boss Hitbound.  If the Tuesday night, July 11 date that this incident supposedly occurred is correct, it means that you or someone from KHJ would have had to call the printers early the next morning (Wed. July 12) and make a change on the Boss Hitbounds, adding Heroes and Villains, as Michael Hagerty told me that the Boss 30 was compiled and sent to the printers on Tuesdays, and premiered on KHJ Wed nites at 6.

Good theory based on available facts.  But I cannot recall EVER calling the printers.  But perhaps someone in Betty Breneman's music library did.  But it sounds a bit too complex for us to worry about or deal with.

So here's where I'm hoping KHJ's program director can help shed some light on this legendary incident.  Was Tom Maule the dj who told Brian Wilson he couldn't play the Beach Boys new record because it wasn't on the playlist, or could it have been Johnny Williams?  

Dunno, see above.

Do you recall Maule (or Williams) calling you about playing the record?

Nope, but that means nothing since my brain is warped by drugs, rock'n'roll and old, old age.

Would Tues July 11 around midnight work as the night this occurred, requiring a call to the printer on the morning of Wed July 12 to add Heroes and Villains as a Boss Hitbound for the survey dated that day?

Whew!  Like I said, I've heard none of this, at least thatI can recall from FORTY-FOUR years ago, mon.

Any recollections you have would be truly appreciated!

OK.  Hope that helps.  AND IF ANYONE RECEIVING THIS, PLEASE EMAIL ROB DIRECTLY AND COPY ME IF YOU PLEASE.  

(Note:  Ron’s email was cc’d to 26 other people, asking for recollections and/or comments.)

I truly appreciated your caring for KHJ that much and for so long.  Means much to me.

Thanks again, Ron, for any info you can provide concerning Brian Wilson's unannounced midnight hour visit to KHJ back in 1967!

Aloha,
Rob Shepherd

Note:  Of the 26 people CC’d on Ron Jacob’s email, three people responded.

One person stated that he had heard this story only one other time a number of years ago while working at KRLA and chalked it up to urban legend.
 
KHJ nighttime jock Johnny Williams replied that the record was not delivered to him, and doesn’t recall when the first spin of the record was, but he does remember playing it, with Ron Jacob’s whispered “KHJ exclusive” over the track.  He also stated that if Brian Wilson or anyone else dropped by the station and said he had a new record he wanted KHJ to play, he would not have gotten past the security gate.  He stated there was just no entry to the station after business hours without the prior approval of management.

Ken Levine stated that Brian had done the same thing (show up at a radio station with the Beach Boys’ new single for an exclusive premiere) at another station, but the difference was that the dj was Roger Christian at KFWB, his collaborator on a lot of songs, and KFWB’s music policy was not as strict.  

Ken then contacted David Leaf who stated that he did not have any first hand research on this story, although as far as he could recall this story was first told by the late Terry Melcher in the Rolling Stone cover story circa November 1971, but it might have been part of Jules Siegel’s piece intended for the Saturday Evening Post that was instead published in Cheetah in 1967.

He added that perhaps Danny Hutton or Bruce Johnston might be able to shed some light on the story.

He then added that he’d be seeing Brian in a couple of weeks and can ask him if he remembers, but he never got back to Ken with any recollections of the story from Brian.  

Leaf closed with: “But it's such a good story...don't we want to just keep printing the legend? :)”

From: Ron Jacobs
Subject:    Re: KHJ July 1967 - Rolling Stone article from 1971
Date:    May 30, 2011 9:42:35 PM PDT
To: Rob Shepherd

Hey Rob,

What the hell do you do with your time when you are not pursuing the facts of this matter? …  I tend to use what little remains of my focus on important events, not dribble trivia in the scheme of things like see, I am more concerned about learning the real truth about the murder of Jack Kennedy before I die or where the hell did Jimmy Hoffa end up or how the Rams football team will perform in what is shaping up to be the sloppiest, unpredictable season, even more so than the last time there was a work stoppage.

Anyway, man, I must reciprocate your diligence, though when I scratch below the surface of this Great Mystery it is amusing because most folks, even 45 years later, want to know about stuff that REALLY DID happen.  And the fantasies about those that did pump up the moment that females are involved, not a bunch of galoy young white boys, know what I mean?

On May 28, 2011, at 9:17 PM, Rob Shepherd wrote:

The incident was also recalled by Beach Boy Al Jardine in a July 2000 article in Goldmine, and by Jardine and engineer Stephen Desper in a recorded 2003 conference call.  

I would not put Al past going along with any story with a happy ending.

There is one major Beach Boys biography, The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White (former Billboard editor), 1994, that does not mention the incident.  

Uh, does this prompt a Jon Stewart-like comment? Hamlet by Wm. Shakespeare does not mention the night I nailed Mary Ann Taylor, either.

Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile by Dominic Priore, 1995 (Priore is writing the text for the book included in the Deluxe version of the soon to be released Smile Sessions), contains a reprint of a KHJ survey with a drawing of Tom Maule on the front.

There were several jock drawing series. (I have one complete mint set up for sale.)

 A cartoon caption has been added to have Maule saying:  "Astrological moment?!?!  It says here in my rule book that I can't play anything that isn't on the playlist..."

Great, perpetual web tribute to Tom, who didn't have a malicious bone in his body.

Peter Ames Carlin's book (2006) specifically names Maule as the jock, but the others just say "the dj".

It was really, "The deejay on the grassy knoll."

Here's the text of the Rolling Stone article, with the info provided by Terry Melcher, the late son of Doris Day, member of Bruce and Terry, producer of The Byrds, Paul Revere and the Raiders, etc:

I've known Terry since the 1950s.  I even played his mother's hits when I first started.  Very nice, bright guy, who produced this for us, my words, Brian's music, of course.

Terry was present for the public debut of "Heroes and Villains."

"Brian was holding on to this single, like: 'All right world - I've got it,' and waiting for the right time.  He felt it was important to wait for the right time.  It was a good record.  This woman, I guess she was an astrologer - of sorts - she came by Brian's house.  She said to him, 'Brian - the time is right.'  He was waiting for the word from this woman to release the record, I guess."

"So he said, 'All right.'  He called the whole group.  It was like: 'OK. Look. Here it is.'  A small disc, you know.  Seven inches.  [An acetate.]  It was very solemn, very important.  Weighty.  A heavy situation.  It was all, 'Brace yourself - for the big one.'  All the group had these limos.  And there was a caravan of these Rolls Royces taking the record to KHJ.  He was going to give the station an exclusive, just give it to them without telling Capitol."

"We got to the gate of KHJ.  The guard wouldn't let us in."

"A little talking a little hubbub, a little bullsh*t.  The guard was finally intimidated enough by four or five Rolls Royce limousines to finally open the gate.”

Bullsh*t, there was hardly room back there for two dozen cars, all occupied by night shift TV workers.

[One published account says the guard called his superiors.  This same account says they left Brian's house around 11 PM.  Another account says they arrived shortly before midnight.]  We got in the building, got to the disc jockey who was presiding over the turntable.  It was pretty late, probably around midnight.  Brian said, 'Hi, I'm Brian Wilson, here's the new Beach Boys single.  I'd like to give you and KHJ an exclusive on it.'  And this asshole turned around and he said: 'Can't play anything that's not on the playlist.'  

WHOMEVER WROTE THIS IS THE ASSHOLE. If anyone actually did get inside, the jock, presumably Maule or Williams, could never be the assholes these guys turned into when the BB were hotsh*t big-timers.

And Brian almost fainted.  It was all over.  He'd been holding this record, waiting for the right time.  He'd had astrologers figuring out the correct moment.  It really killed him."

"Finally they played it, after a few calls to the program director or someone who screamed, 'Put it on, you idiot!'”

Total bullsh*t.  I would never call a jock an idiot when he was on the air, only later.

“But the damage to Brian had already been done."  [In the account published in Brian Wilson's autobiography, he says he finally heard the song on KHJ as his Rolls Royce was driving out the KHJ gates.]

f*** biographies, auto and otherwise.  

So, Ron, that's the first published account of the story (hitting the newsstands close to 40 years ago, and five years after the

A L L E G E D

incident took place).  The forthcoming release of The Beach Boys "Smile Sessions" has resulted in a renewed interest in the events surrounding the music created for that album, which had officially been junked a couple of months before this incident.  Heroes and Villains had originally been slated for the Smile album, but was reworked, shortened, and released as a single on July 24.  The song appeared on the album Smiley Smile in Sept. 67.

And when the album came out maybe my wife listened to it, but I had much more important things to do. Aloha and good luck.

RJ

From: Ron Jacobs
Subject:    Re: Backdoor Waikiki book
Date:    July 20, 2011 8:33:17 PM PDT
To: Rob Shepherd

Hi Rob,

I will insert my comments below re. the ridiculous "legend" of the B'Boys and KHJ.  

On Jul 13, 2011, at 1:02 PM, Rob Shepherd wrote:

Hello Ron,

A follow-up question on our earlier discussion of Brain Wilson and company taking an acetate of Heroes and Villains late one night in July '67 and being told by the dj, presumably Tom Maule, that it couldn't be played because it wasn't on the playlist.  

Just for the record, I can only assume Maule was the Boss Jock on duty at that time and on that date.  Whatever program logs, etc. have long since been destroyed.  I'm sure that the new owners dumped that material, if KHJ itself did not, since they were only required to be kept for several years.  And, sadly, Tom is not here to help us out, as you know.

The RADIO section [at KHJ AM, FM, & TV] is not connected to any exterior doors.  It required going through some long hallways to get to any of the exits.  Besides, all doors would be locked at the end of business hours and the only way into the building would be through the REAR entrance, which was directly into the TV operations and studio area. So, IF one could get past the guard(s) at the only vehicular entrance (on Melrose) and IF one could find a spot for car(s) it would still require getting past TV personnel, who were very alert to unauthorized entry by anyone.

Is it possible that Wilson and company were actually speaking to the engineer, who would have had to have been the person to place the record on a turntable and play it, when they were told it couldn't be played because it wasn't on the playlist?

No.  IF someone could make it to the engineer on duty, the only way they might get something unauthorized played was if someone put a gun to their head!  And AGAIN, it would not have been a "record on a turntable" since all songs were initially transferred to tape cartridges, for a variety of reasons.  I DON'T KNOW WHAT I CAN DO TO CONVINCE YOU THAT THIS EVENT, based on the versions and suppositions you've suggested, COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.

You would be amazed at the stories I receive from all manner of people from all over asking about things they "heard" second, third or fourth-hand.  Or just rumors/legends that have been revised and built up over the years.

I am working on my fourth book, co-writing with my friend who was the Rams equipment manager for close to 30 years. And I am as loyal to and as nuts about that team as you are about the B'Boys.  Believe me, so many things I thought were true (from my POV as a fan/groupie or from press reports) have turned out to be total bullsh*t or gross exaggerations.  

Based on EVERYTHING I KNOW about broadcast (and print) journalism, there is NO WAY any respectable reporter or entity would go with your hypothetical "story" based on all you have told me.  In the first place, there are contradictions in what you have passed on to me.  And, I WAS in charge of what went on the air at KHJ during the time of these
alleged events.  IF they had happened there is NO WAY I WOULD NOT HAVE HEARD OF IT, and that is if no one checked with me in advance.  Sorry, but the RECORDS were not the most important priority when it came to attracting and holding an audience (this is obvious the more one reads my KHJ book) and NO jock would have jeopardized his JOB over what, to us, was "just another record."  The list I mentioned to BILLBOARD of some of our recent exclusives includes hits as big or bigger than B'Boys stuff.  

It would be much simpler for me to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah it happened...that way..." than spend the time I have providing you with the many facts that make your story possibly interesting to hard core B'Boy fans but with NO FACTUAL INCONTROVERTIBLE evidence that this "event" happened I just can't do that. Plus, there have to be tons of anecdotes more interesting than this myth, even if it did happen.  

My LAST WORD on all this after-hours airplay of this B'Boy record is: "I have absolutely no knowledge of such a thing happening. The people I checked with (and my own personal records) have ZERO knowledge of such a thing happening. And as anyone who
worked at KHJ during my time there (and what should be obvious to anyone reading my jock memos) we had RULES that were rigidly enforced."  That is my OFFICIAL position and final comment on ANY of this, OK?

Me ke aloha pumehana,

RJ

[/color]

Jeezus!

I actually don't find those anywhere near as murky as "Heroes and Villains" and I don't have great hearing. Pet Sounds sparkles to me, Today a little less so, and Wild Honey sounds like it was made in somebody's living room or garage.

"Heroes" is weird in that I've heard what, six or seven different edits and mixes of the '66 and '67 recordings? And mix-wise, none of them even begin to sound like what I think it should sound like. Was it just somehow not that well recorded, and the sources that Brian and later Mark etc. had to work with just weren't gonna make it happen? I say "What I think it should sound like", but I know a lot of other people have expressed similar complaints: that it's too muddy, that the snare sounds like it was recorded in a different city, that the high end is kind of out of control (applies mainly to more recent stereo mixes).

Did Brian just create a song so frigging complex and layered that a good mix isn't quite possible? The BWPS mix is pretty decent, but it's obviously not the same recording and, to me, is one of the few performances on BWPS that are lacking in comparison to the original (although still good, obviously). Was it a matter of Brian's arrangement being too complex for the technology at the time, perhaps, and the track limitations of the day still being a factor when creating mixes today?

This is incredible information. Despite the lack of response to it so far (and that is disappointing considering what's been posted here...), I have to thank Rob, "Custom Machine" for doing this! I was also involved in that first thread, and most of it was speculation based on firsthand accounts which were supposedly accurate re-tellings of what happened that night from those who were there. Now we have Ron Jacobs basically calling bullshit on the whole scenario as told and re-told by several sources.

I got hooked on this whole thing after hearing a Bobby Tripp aircheck from July 17-19 1967, then posted about it including transcribing what Tripp said on the old Smile Shop (Bobby Tripp, BTW, has been dead for about 44 years, and Tom Maule, Robert W., Real Don Steele, et al...many if not most of those cats are gone, and Jacobs remains the primary source of info since he was head coach of that team). At that time it was pretty much universally accepted among those who followed the story that it was Tom Maule at the mic that night - if he wasn't named, it was assumed by putting together the facts about which DJs worked which shifts and what day it happened.

Now all of the information from Ron Jacobs...I was curious and wanted to contact Jacobs for several years, and this is what he says about it...basically it calls the whole story about the caravan to KHJ a complete load of crap, it never *could* have happened the way it was told because the station wasn't available or open as we all I think assumed it had to be for a caravan to pull in and a Beach Boys entourage marches in with a new record.

How do we feel about this? Rob, honestly, do you think the old story has no merit at all as Ron Jacobs responded to the questions? KBLA as a rock station was gone as of June '67, KRLA was fading fast to KHJ and hanging on in summer '67 after getting destroyed by KHJ...could after all these years people just have assumed it was KHJ when it really could have been KRLA that got the visit?

If it were KRLA, that could radically change the accepted story.

I want to say again, maybe a different way: What Ron Jacobs said in reply to very specific, very direct questions was basically the whole story is false and those who told it were mistaken. This is huge. On one hand, the information relayed by Rob, that he's looked into, the info I looked up, checked, asked, etc. for years about this, plus all the accounts...it's very, very specific information. Jacobs at the same time says some insider information about how things worked which only someone like him would know, the everyday mundane show-up-at-work routine things like how the front gate worked which no one outside that station would ever know. And, most important...he was "The Boss" at Boss Radio. If anyone were called that night by a DJ saying Brian Wilson was standing here with his new exclusive single, it was Ron fucking Jacobs getting that call.

Ron Jacobs says it never happened.

Damn. I'm exhausted. Was it KRLA, then?  :o

It was also Hitbound on KELO Souix Fall SD on their survey for the week ending July 15 1967. Maybe our 11th date is too late? Didn't the July aircheck say it was a KHJ exclusive?

Later: When did Maule start at KHJ?

Cam, I'm glad to see you posting in this thread, and am curious to hear what you think because you've looked into the facts of this radio visit in the past, if I recall.

About Tom Maule: His first days on KHJ doing his regular evening shift started in mid-June 1967. The survey sheet from June 21, 1967 is the first of those to advertise the "all new" Tom Maule show, 9-to-midnight weekdays. One of the speculations I had - and others too I'm sure, is that since Maule was literally just hired a few weeks ago, he'd want to play "by the book" because he had been on the job less than a month at the time we assume this incident of Brian and Heroes took place on his shift. That was the speculation that if Brian had shown up on another DJ's shift, say a guy he knew personally from Martoni's or some hipster party or events or whatever, the record may have been played.

But Jacobs makes some pretty airtight points which throw the entire story out the window.

About the aircheck: Frustration of frustrations, the Bobby Tripp aircheck I heard is "scoped", which means you get only a few seconds of music at the front and back of each record, while preserving all the DJ patter, copy, and some advertisements. The only reference Tripp makes is that the record is a "Boss Hitbound" that week, and that aircheck dates to July 17-19. You don't get to hear whether Jacobs did his "KHJ Exclusive" whisper over the record, which is unfortunate, but since the disc was literally hot off the press and I'm still assuming no one had it (more research necessary...), I'd say the "exclusive" tag was there because that's how they tagged the records which they only they had as advance copies.

If The Sioux City station was a Drake-Chenault station which was implementing the "Boss Radio" format and programming like Ron Jacobs in LA, then it would actually make sense that they'd have it as a hitbound that early, if it got sent their way. It's still several weeks before many markets got it at all.

How do you feel about Jacobs' comments? It's rewriting and/or correcting a story we all assumed was true for years!

The surveys before and after do show it as the "Boss 13 + 20 from KELO."

I don't know anything more then anybody else knows. Where is the original story, the story as a quote from an eyewitness?

Jacobs admits he is operating from a suspect memory. His scepticism seems warranted according to his presumably more reliable memory of the routines and rules and building layout etc.. It could all be true I suppose but I'm wondering if there weren't some one-off circumstances and some confusion and mixing of story and story about story. You know something like it all happened but it wasn't played that very night, it was played a day/days later after being vetted and voiced over etc..
We need to collect all the stories and sources. Didn't we do that already before?

Really glad that Guitarfool2002 mentioned the story of Heroes and Villains at KHJ in this thread, since that caused me to recall that around a year ago I had summarized some of Ron Jacobs' first email comments concerning the incident under discussion and was planning to post more comments when I received them, but never got around to doing so.

In answer to Cam’s question, Tom Maule started at KHJ on Monday, June 12, 1967, about a month before our story takes place.

Jacobs is one of the most legendary programmers in radio history, but he initially states that he may not recall the story since "my brain is warped by drugs, rock'n'roll and old, old age."  (He's also quite an entertaining writer.  I especially enjoyed his old column in Hawaii magazine.)  But when he sent emails to 26 people asking for comments and found no one who could corroborate the story, coupled with details in the story that seemed highly implausible to him, he doubted the veracity of the whole thing.

I just went back and reread Al Jardine's 2000 interview in Goldmine magazine (dated July 28, 2000), and his account is quite different from the traditional account which originated with Terry Melcher in Rolling Stone in 1971, an account that has been retold a number of times over the years in a various books.  

Al states, "Actually, Brian was so excited, more excited than the rest of us, about the way Heroes and Villains, the single, had come out.  We went down to a radio station, I think it was KRLA, and burst in on the jock and played the record.  Brian wanted to be the first person to play it for L.A., for the whole city to hear it, and it just didn't have any punch.  There was on sonic value in it.  The song was great, but the sonic value was bad."  So in Al's story, he was uncertain of the station, but thought it was KRLA, and they all burst in and the jock played the record!  

(KFWB was the big top 40 station in LA starting in 1958.  KRLA went top 40 in the early 60s and soon overtook KFWB in the ratings, although both stations remained very popular.  KHJ went top 40 in April 1965 with the arrival of consultant Bill Drake who hired Ron Jacobs as program director, with their "Boss Radio" format instantly zooming to number one.  It should be noted that in past interviews various members of the Beach Boys, when referring to an LA top 40 radio stations, have often exhibited uncertainty or disagreement as to which radio station it was.)

I'll post more comments about all this later, but for now I'm wondering if Stephen Desper is reading this and what recollections he may have.  In one of the emails to Ron Jacobs last year I stated that the incident was also recalled Al Jardine and engineer Stephen Desper in a recorded 2003 conference call, but I can't seem to locate any info on that call.  Stephen, if you are reading this, can you tell us what you recall?  Was that the time a bunch of gardening equipment had to be removed from Brian's car so people could fit in to drive to KHJ?

It's a great song and a great record and it was an underwhelming, and exasperatingly long overdue, follow up to GV.

Problems were many, but the reason it didn't sell was because big Brian forgot one little thing - 60's teenagers didn't buy Beach Boy records simply on the strength of the amazing vocals.

The release version is muddy and the instruments are not crisp or tight.

OK, fine...One can always argue that Brian WANTED it that way. But I'll wager he also wanted a hit.

He could have had a hit IF he'd used a Fender Bass (hey, Carol, treble up!) instead of the sluggish string bass, and mixed the drums up slightly.

Some crunchy guitar would have helped too, in my view.

But don't say "Sure Mr. Farm, but that would have made it a different song."Count up all the different versions and mixes that have surfaces over the decades. They're ALL different.

It's a boss song, but the big boy blew it, production wise.

I thought I read something where Al mentioned KRLA...thanks for the confirmation! I think through all the years this might have been something which was overlooked, that fact that perhaps it was not KHJ but actually another station - in this case, the only other station playing that kind of music in LA in July 1967, KRLA! And even poor KRLA was getting their collective ass kicked by Jacobs and KHJ.

Thanks again, Custom Machine for that tidbit of info! I knew I wasn't dreaming it.

On the issue of Jacobs, let's compare ideas for a minute: He is so specific about the operational details of KHJ "after hours", and he of all surviving people would know since he was one of the main guys running that station. If Jacobs specifically says there was no way such a group like Brian's could have gotten into the station and into the DJ booth at that time of night completely unannounced and without previous planning, we need to believe him.

Ron Jacobs' ass was on the line - let's say the other stations were out to sabotage him, as he says he wouldn't be against doing to them, by putting a disc filled with profanity and nonsense on the air as a secret, "exclusive" premiere from a certain star who shows up unannounced holding a reel or a record and asking to play it without auditioning it.

Thinking more about that aspect, he's obviously right: It most likely would never be allowed to happen especially if no one was at the station except for the on0air DJ and perhaps an engineer, guards, and maybe a switchboard person...Jacobs would know, he dealt with these issues every week. How many fans would try anything to get into that station? The security had to be somewhat tight.

Once again I'll say the more I read and re-read what Jacobs said, the accepted version of the story no longer seems as factual as we may have assumed for all this time.

And I wonder how Tom Maule became the scapegoat all these years, apart from the obvious digs he received in LLVS.

David Leaf's comment seems tantamount to "why let the truth get in the way of a good story. Shame...

Having the wrong station would makes the most sense probably.

KRLA does not show any sign of H&V on the July 8 survey. Their next survey would be the 15th. I haven't found the 15th through August 1 surveys. H&V is not on their August 8 survey either. KRLA does not seem to have an HB catagory but maybe I haven't seen enough surveys. Maybe KRLA Beat pub would have something.

Here is the July 15th iss of KRLA Beat:

http://krlabeat.sakionline.net/issue/15july67.pdf

Anybody want to plow through it? Seems like KRLA was heavily involved with Monterey and Derek Taylor which seems promising for it being a Brian target.

"Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?" seems to be Mr.Leaf's philosophy toward everything.

Here's the transcript of that 2003 conference call. Scroll down near tthe bottom for the H&V story, what there is of it.

Stephen Desper: What do you remember of the Smile period? A lot of people ask questions, and it seems to be a mystery, and maybe we can get some clues from the source here. You were around during that time, right? [laughter]

Alan Jardine: You mean – you’re not talking about Smiley Smile?

SD: No, not Smiley Smile, the stuff over at Columbia, and Capitol…

AJ: For that stuff, the band never really participated in that, because it never got to a level of vocalizing. Because we had just finished Pet Sounds. Well, no, what am I saying? We were really working Pet Sounds and Smile at the same time. We were doing both of those projects. And, you know, they were like, intermingled together, and I don’t think we really knew what was going where at the time. And then Brian turned the chauffeur’s quarter into an echo chamber! [Al laughs] I remember. And that’s when you [referring to Mr. Desper] came in. Yeah, but the mystery of those tracks [indecipherable] is still interesting, I mean, to me even, because at that time Brian was pretty heavily sedated, and doing a lot of experimental stuff, and I wasn’t part of that, I never really went in for that stuff. The taking drugs and stuff. So I think probably a question like that would be better put to Hal Blaine, or some of the musicians who took part. Now we did vocalize – I should correct myself – we did vocalize on fragments, as we call them. And that was pretty traumatic stuff, because it didn’t really have any continuity. It was more – fragments. Fragmentary, I guess, is a better, the best term. Some of which, however, did make it on an album called 20/20, which was the last project on Capitol.

LATER…

Unidentified audience member: Have you had the opportunity to see Brian and his current touring band?

AJ: No.

UAM: OK, part 2. Um, were you aware that he’s planning on touring Smile next year? And what were your thoughts on that?

AJ: I heard about it, I think it’s crazy. [laughter]

Susan Lang: Well, good crazy or bad crazy, Al?

AJ: Well, not for good, I mean, why, [incredulously] how? I mean, I guess you could play snippets of it. Because it was never assembled, so, I mean, it’s an interesting idea but I think people are pushing Brian too hard. I mean, why in the world would he want to go back and do that, you know? Why not do something a little more progressive? I mean, if he wanted to do that he’d need the band to create… But his handlers, the people that make those decisions, they’ve forgotten origins I think of from whence that stuff came, you know? And it would require a great deal of imagination, I think, to call it a quote “SMiLE Tour” – I mean, that’s ridiculous, and who would relate to that? I mean, in this generation? What does that mean? I don’t know. I guess we would enjoy seeing it, but-

Dan Lega: I think there’s a lot of young people who do know about the SMiLE myth and are waiting to see it.

SD: He’s playing on the myth, though.

Alan Boyd: The legend looms large.

AJ: Does it really?

Peter Beyer: I think a lot of people consider it Brian Wilson’s finest music – legitimately. Not for the myth, but for the music.

AJ: Well, yeah, but it’s not there.

DL: Well, there’s more there than we thought there was for so many years.

SD: No, there’s not. [laughter] There really isn’t – you mean to make up a whole concert? No.

SL: I don’t think he intended to make it the whole concert.

UAM: Probably about 30 minutes.

AB: No, I think it would be, my guess is it would be a segment within a larger show.

PB: Just like Pet Sounds.

UAM: It would be Vega-Tables and Wonderful and Cabin Essence…

AJ: Well, there you go.

AB: Probably like a half hour set within the show.

SD: It’s a clever name because it brings in the customers.

DL: They’re selling out like crazy over in the UK.

AJ: Uh, is Vegetables part of that album?

UAMs: Yeah, oh yeah. Mm-hm.

PB: Vega-Tables, Wonderful, Cabin Essence, Surf’s Up, Heroes & Villains.

AJ: Well, we re-recorded that stuff, and re-recorded it so much that [Al laughs] in a sense, you know, so many different projects, I suppose it could be assimilated into one CD, even. That might be something Capitol ought to do. And then he could go out and tour on that I guess. I guess you’re right. I keep thinking of all the stuff we didn’t finish but I guess you’re right. There is a lot of stuff there. I like Vegetables. I think Brian did a version of Vegetables which I prefer, the one with the tack piano and some of the more cutting edge stuff that we had been working on, as opposed to our version on Smiley Smile. And, for some reason, it just - You know, Steve, we had a great little medium, a little opportunity there to record, but it wasn’t edgy enough for me. I mean, we didn’t have that tack piano, and the Baldwin just seemed to, I don’t know, it just fills up too much space. Takes up too much space on tape, I think.

SD: You mean, it’s over-produced?

AJ: No, I don’t know, it just changed. Things changed. Under-produced, I would say. I liked that tack piano sound we had for a while. With Heroes & Villains in particular, Don Randi and some of those great players, and Leon Russell – people like that – were playing on ten or twelve versions of Heroes & Villains that we had on the box set. That particular sound to me was more alive, more progressive. When we moved to the house we didn’t have the dynamics of those instruments anymore, or the players.

SD: Well, that’s because they were all over there at Studio 3, I guess, at Western, and all playing together.

AJ: Yeah, that’s why we had them come up to the house.

SD: Yeah – well, no, it was because the Beach Boys themselves played a lot of the instruments.

AJ: [indecipherable, but from what I can make out, he’s asking if Heroes & Villains was recorded at the house]

SD: Parts of it, we did parts of it there, bits and pieces of it.

AJ: And it was probably Jim Lockert’s studio, right -

SD: Yes, well that was still the house. Or do you mean Wally Heider?

AJ: Oh, Heider’s, yeah. Anyway, it had kind of a muffled, there’s something about it I didn’t like, the EQ, the whole track was not right, it didn’t have the brightness, and I think we needed that tack piano a lot. It didn’t bite. It didn’t have a bite on it. And when we took it down to KHJ, and Brian was so excited about it, and the guy on duty whoever it was, like around midnight, we all jumped into the - [the next few sentences are difficult to make out on my tape, but we all know the story about Brian taking the group to the radio station to premiere the new Beach Boys single, and the DJ refused to play it because it wasn’t on the playlist, until the manager made him do it. Anyway, I’m only missing about 10 seconds here. Then Al asks Steve if he remembers making the journey with them.]

SD: It was an acetate.

AJ: Oh, yeah!! Right! Right. I’ll be, that’s right.

SD: And I also remember having to take the lawn mower out of the back of the Phantom 5 limo.

AJ: [huge, hearty laugh]

SD: To make room for everybody. [more laughter]

AJ: That’s a great story! [still laughing] What the hell was the lawn mower doing in there? [new wave of laughter]

SD: Brian didn’t have a truck so he used his Rolls Royce to haul his yard equipment around, and we had it fixed.

AJ: Oh, God, I didn’t even know that. That is so funny…

Thank you, Catbirdman, for posting that transcription! Unfortunately the comments only seem to contradict what Al said before - he says here that it was KHJ, where in the other interview he said KRLA - and in a moment worthy of Richard Nixon's tapes, the sentences which got garbled are the ones which directly involve the issue we're trying to solve!

I think there is no doubt at this point that Brian did in fact organize a caravan to deliver his new record to some radio station that night. But to have such a definitive set of points made by Ron Jacobs, which would serve to eliminate the possibility of such a group even having access to KHJ studios late-night, it still seems as possible that another station was involved.

Bottom line, this is a real clusterfuck of an event to sort out.

I remember the first time that transcript was made available. I am as struck now as I was then at the incredulous reaction to the possibility that there was enough material from the Smile era. Obviously I could understand the hesitation to think they could pull it off - I'm sure many of us were in that position. But it is almost as if Al really had no idea what the Smile music actually was.

I agree 100%. Your last sentence itself speaks volumes about the whole scene around Smile, which carried on for decades. I thought the way the topic of Smile and Brian doing Smile live was discussed at that event bordered on dismissive.

Now compare that interview (one of several like it...) to the more positive tone of the comments that we heard on that series of YouTube Smile "webisodes" and other press releases where it seems at times they're either different people talking about the same Smile project, or the same people talking about a different album.

Honestly, and I'm probably wrong, I just think Al felt left out and when he's excluded, his interviews are more negative and when he's back in the Beach Boys loop, he can be quite positive. I guess everyone is that way, human nature and all that.

Can we find out whom would have been on duty on the night shift at KRLA?  And who the manager would have thAt approved the playing of the record?

I'm on it! Hopefully results soon...

The weekday lineup for KRLA as of mid-June 1967:

Charlie O'Donnell 6-9 AM
Rebel Foster 9 -noon
Casey Kasem noon-3
Dave Hull 3-6 PM
Johnny Hayes 6-9 PM
Dick Biondi 9-midnight
Pat Moore midnight-6

Fill-ins, weekends, substitutes:
Bob Eubanks
Dick Moreland
Bill Slater
Bob Dayton

Dick Moreland was also listed as the Program Director, details are spotty but it would appear Moreland would have had that job in July '67. Cecil Tuck was the News Director and publisher of the KRLA Beat magazine.

Bob Dayton was a fill-in and weekend host after his former employer KBLA switched to a country format in mid June '67 and joined KRLA that same month, June 17. Dayton therefore was the "new guy" at that time, and would fill in for any regular DJ who wasn't able to do their shift. He could have been on the air at any time, we need to narrow a few things down of course.

KRLA's schedule had just been shaken up a bit after Dave Hull was fired in late April for not following procedure/orders. Through his connections Hull received an advance tape of When I'm 64 from the forthcoming Sgt. Pepper, and wanted to play his 'exclusive" on the air. Management refused to allow it as a deal had been struck for all stations to play it at the same time, no "scoops" or exclusives with the new Beatles, even though KRLA had billed itself as "The Beatles Station" in LA for several years. So Hull didn't show up for a shift, went to a party for Twiggy instead, and lost his job. Hull's fans flooded KRLA with complaints, and staged several public protests outside the station and eventually Hull was hired back, and took his regular spot. So there was somewhat of a temporary shakeup, but this was well before July, and probably had no effect on what we're discussing.

Then in August '67, KRLA went through yet another more drastic shakeup after they were losing more in the ratings, but again I think the list of DJ's and weekenders posted above would represent what was there in early July 1967.

Great info, great thread. I dig the info about Dave Hull, what a rebel. Along with Jim Steck, he was one of the cats that stowed away on The Beatles' airplane on the summer '64 USA tour to catch more exclusive interviews. Which begs the trivia question: What Beatles album does Hal Blaine perform on?

Anyway, nice research all around here.

Someone want to invite Mr. Desper?

Checking the KHJ, KRLA, and KFWB surveys, I’d say KHJ was the station the guys went to.  Heroes and Villains first appears, as a Hitbound, on KHJ’s survey dated July 12, whereas the song does not appear on KFWB’s July 25 survey, nor on KRLA’s Aug. 5 survey (the only ones from that time period that I was able to find on the web).  All this suggests that KHJ had an exclusive on the record before the other LA stations received it. Plus, KHJ overnight dj Johnny Williams remembers playing the record with Ron Jacobs’ “KHJ exclusive” whispered voiceover.

Other than the one time Al Jardine says “I think it was KRLA”, the station in this story has always been identified as KHJ, and three years after that Al said he thought it might be KRLA he stated that the station was KHJ.   (Thanks to Catbirdman for posting the transcript of that 2003 conference call.)

KHJ was the number one station and the best choice to premiere the Beach Boys new record. Good Vibrations had received its world premiere on KHJ-TV’s “Boss City” (hosted by KHJ dj The Real Don Steele) the previous September, and the BBs performed the song on that show a few weeks later.  The AM, FM, and TV were all in the same building, so the guys were familiar with the station and its location.

So I’d say the station the guys went to was almost certainly KHJ.  What’s in question is what transpired after they got there.

Let It Be?  ;D

There was a lengthy thread on stevehoffman.tv last year in which it was claimed Blaine played all over the White Album and some later Beatles stuff...and was also on the Zep's "When The Levee Breaks." Someone else suggested that Carol Kaye played on all the records after Paul died. I just knew that Shears kid couldn't cut it.

In 1966 Sam Riddle would have been the host of the Saturday show "Boss City", he also did the live daily music and dance show "9th Street West" on KHJ-TV, although Steele and other KHJ personalities would show up (as evidenced by photos, etc.) or guest host or whatever, but Riddle was the main guy. I think Steele took over as official host of Boss City in 1970, plus he had his own self-titled TV show, and of course Morgan in the late 60's had his own show "Groovy"...it pays to have a TV station and radio station share the same building(s)!

Premiering "Good Vibrations" actually made the news in Billboard Dec 3 1966, you can still see it on Google...shades of what would come with MTV, this move was hailed as a new and fresh idea and KHJ was praised for using radio and TV to premiere a record. In 2012 standards it seems silly to think a station playing a new record on TV was worthy of a news item in Billboard. One of my own personal "Holy Grail" videos would be Brian appearing on "Boss City" in '66, but I don't think it will ever happen. Last I heard there are tapes of the show, but not that time period as 9th Street West was live every day, "Boss City" was taped during the week and aired Saturday, and they'd just wipe the tapes and reuse them. At least that was the last I heard, and I'd imagine if it were available they would have had it in all the Smile releases somewhere, as they've been using the GV studio film recently.

Maybe you're right on KHJ being the station after all the go-arounds, I totally agree with all the points and it's confirming what we assumed/concluded in years past. Maybe the part of the story about them actually getting to the DJ in the studio that night with the record, then the DJ calling Jacobs who ordered him to play it was an embellishment or an outright fabrication to juice up the tale. I still can't get past the fact that Jacobs said there would be no access like that at night, and that's not the kind of thing that you'd confuse or forget after 45 years, it's the way it was at that station.

Perhaps it was as simple as the guard at the gate/door turning them away and the part about the DJ was pure fantasy. Or perhaps Jacobs is mistaken.

Back to square 1... :-D

Edit: It's all a bit confusing about hosting details, in 1966-67 was "Boss City" a co-hosting deal with both Riddle and Steele, and 9th Street West a solo hosting gig for Riddle? Or were they both just Riddle? And was Kam Nelson on the show in '66 when Brian would have been there? I know she was there in 67, and there's the picture of her at the KHJ "Yellow Submarine" party in '68 with several Beach Boys, BB wives, and the KHJ staff.

The lack of any substantial video from these shows makes it very confusing to find solid info!

I agree. After looking at the availbale KRLA stuff, it must have been KHJ. 

Someone refresh me please, the date shown on survey is the date of the first day of week being being surveyed? Anyway, as far as I've seen the stations who don't have "Boss" in their headline do not have H&V on a survey until the July 19/22 week. Anybody find a non-"Boss" survey with H&V in that July12/15 week or before? If not then wouldn't that and a KHJ dj remembering H&V having an "exclusive" audiomark  pretty much lay it at KHJ's feet?

 I think it probably must be another example of the Velvet Steamroller [Brian] getting his way and the KHJ staff amongst those victim to being under his spell enough for him to get his way to a large extent regardless of the rules and regs or the reservations of those who got velvet rolled. You know, just like all of the musicians, engineers, label suits, Boys, et al before them had done.

Something to keep in mind when comparing record surveys is that they are not all dated the same way.  For example, the KHJ survey “previewed July 12” hit the record stores on the following day, July 13.  Heroes and Villains debuted on the Billboard national chart “for the week ending Aug. 4, 1967” with the issue that contained that survey arriving in mailboxes and hitting the newsstands roughly a week earlier than the survey date.

KGB, the Drake-Chenault consulted Boss Radio station in San Diego, where Tom Maule had worked right up until his debut at KHJ in mid-June, doesn’t list Heroes and Villains as a hitbound until July 19, a week after it appeared on the KHJ survey.

Right, KHJ's week started the 12th, so info from July 5 to 12. KELO's week ended the 15th, so info from July 8 to 15. KGB's began the 19th, so July 12 to 19. All "Boss" stations.  So maybe this occurred sometime between July 8 and 12th?

And of course no-one is more guilty of this than Bruce who raves about SMiLE, and how fantastic it would've been had it been released, in the web-isodes, and yet a  decade ago when asked about SMiLE in Q magazine he sneered: 'Brian had us crawling around on our hands and knees. It was all so f**king humiliating!'

Anyone ask Mr. Desper yet?

I know, you're thinking: "why don't you do it, Cam?" and I'm thinking: "someone else's turn".  :P

With all due respect, I'd seriously reconsider some of those statements, unless they're tongue-in-cheek in which case it's all good!  ;D

I'm going to call Ron Jacobs out on this one, and ask Cam to consider a few points. I've read a lot from Ron Jacobs, blog posts, articles, books, interviews, etc...I can't say whatever is available online but it's close to that.

In several places, Jacobs is all but bragging how rock stars and their managers would hand-carry a new single "hot off the press" to KHJ studios, Jacobs would whisper "KHJ exclusive" throughout the song, and it would go on the air as soon as they could get it on the air. He specifically mentions Brian Wilson hand-delivering songs to KHJ which had just been mixed, to give them the exclusive. As Billboard points out in Dec 1966, KHJ scored a coup in the industry by having Brian premiere his new record GV both on KHJ radio and KHJ-TV...again, it sounds innocent as of 2012 but this was 1966 and it made the news. And other artists did the very same thing...witness how KHJ got similar Monkees exclusives and premieres throughout 1967 while they were associated with KHJ personality Robert W Morgan, and the station in general championed the band and the TV show by playing anything they could find, including recordings off the television that no record contained.

So Jacobs, those several times he's specifically mentioned Brian and other times the fans like myself have seen, and his station KHJ have benefited from Brian Wilson giving them an exclusive premiere of a record when he could have taken it anywhere. Yet at the same time Jacobs seems less than enthusiastic about Brian doing this in his email replies?

It doesn't wash. You can't through the years tout the fact that Brian would hand-carry his new mixes to KHJ for exclusive airplay premieres, then suggest it was something less than memorable bordering on "against the regulations" in a series of email replies about this one instance.

And remember, too, Brian gave them permission to use one of his songs as a promo jingle sung by all the KHJ on-air staff as Jacobs was just getting the Boss Radio format up and running in '65. So I'd say Jacobs over time may have lost some of the gratitude he expressed to Brian previously, or simply forgot this one particular incident with Heroes, where they showed up after hours anyway and it messed up the process.

I'm not sure I'm following.

I'm saying that Jacobs apparently wasn't there at the time and it seems likely Brian got his way inspite of whatever rules Jacobs had in place. I'd like to hear a fuller witness from an eyewitness and I hope Mr. Desper has it.

Jacobs does seem to contradict himself I'm reading in your post. In my experience, the older we get the better/harder-ass we were. Jacobs might have been a hard ass with a lot of rules etc. but to me this fits the M.O. that Brian had of getting his way and getting people to go along with what he wanted regardless of what others wanted or what the rules were just like he did with those and the rules at Capitol and Columbia and the Posse and the Boys, etc., etc.. Doesn't that fit with what you are saying?

The contradiction I see is that Ron Jacobs had in the past all but boasted that Brian would personally deliver a new song to KHJ, which appeared to me to be not only pointing out the stature of KHJ as a station but also the stature of KHJ (and of Jacobs himself, in a good but still bragging-rights kind of way) as the place where the bigger stars in music at that time in LA would show up in person to play their record.

It also carries over to another storied place in the history, "Martoni's", that restaurant where Mike Love once got thrown out. It also happened to be the place where KHJ DJs would hang out before and after their shifts, and all types of managers, agents, etc. would cozy up to them and possibly hand off a new record in an effort to promote "their star", whichever band or artist that was. Some records actually broke because they got played on KHJ, I know Real Don Steele was one of Sonny and Cher's earliest champions on the radio and he did help spread some buzz and hype about them in particular, early on.

Take all of that into consideration, and there was in fact a history of stars, Brian in particular as Jacobs had mentioned him by name, who would show up at KHJ with a new record for them to play. It was, by July 1967, somewhat of a standard practice that Jacobs seemed to relish as the hottest PD in radio around that time. He even had a radiotelephone in his car, an early version of the cel phone, so he could stay informed with goings-on at the station or if he had one of his own to report before his competitors.

So for him to talk as he did of Brian in the July 1967 doesn't line up with that history. And it seems to have less to do with Brian wanting to get his way as it does with Brian doing what he had done on at least two documented events and several that Jacobs spoke of...that would be showing up at the station with his new record for them to play.

Why would Brian be doing something "wrong" if he essentially did what he had done in the previous two years and considered it a big deal to hand off the "exclusive" to KHJ before other stations had it?

I agree but even if there were hard ass rules etc. in place and it was after hours which would be different from what Jacobs was describing and so I still feel it would be the usual for Brian to get his way still because he had a way of getting people to do what he wanted whether there were rules or hard asses or objections or whatever.

I'm repeating myself. Old.

I see that, but if Brian were just doing what we know he had been welcomed with open arms at KHJ for doing when he had done the same thing in the recent past, it wouldn't be as much about Brian getting his way as it would be a case of wondering why it didn't happen this time.

I think I can describe my take on the recent info by saying Ron Jacobs contradicted what he had described before as a pretty common thing for artists, including Brian, to drop in at KHJ with their newest records. Ultimately, and I've said it before, but I think Brian's timing was just off on choosing that particular night and time to drop in. If Jacobs himself were still there, it would have gone on the air most likely with an interview to go along with the record. But no one was informed the band would be showing up, and they showed up after hours.

It was quite a coup to have Brian and band show up with a new record in July 1967.

When I contacted Ron Jacobs a little over a year ago asking for his comments on this story and if the jock was Tom Maule, I expected a reply along the lines of, “Oh yeah, Tom Maule was the dj in question and I couldn’t believe he told someone like Brian Wilson that he couldn’t play the Beach Boys new record because it wasn’t on the playlist!  Maule was a great jock, but he was new to the station and apparently so intimidated by the rules that I guess he didn’t realize that there were times you’ve gotta bend ‘em!  Man, did I chew his ass out on that one!  I’ll never forget that call, ‘Uh, Ron, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys is here with their new record and he want’s to give us an exclusive, but I had to tell him that I can’t play it because it’s not on the playlist and I was just wondering if …’”

So you can imagine my surprise when Jacobs said, “If the story is true, the jock did the right thing.”  And I was even more surprised when he stated, “I have never heard anything of this story.  Which does not mean that it didn't happen, either as passed on, or, like most ‘great’ stories, hyped by each generation perpetuating it.”

With the exception of Al Jardine’s brief account, where he says the dj played the record but doesn’t go into details of what may have occurred prior to the record being played, all other published accounts of this story appear to be based on Terry Melcher’s account, first published in Rolling Stone in 1971.

Did Terry Melcher embellish the story when he told it to Tom Nolan of Rolling Stone?  Or was his memory somewhat faulty, although he was retelling the story only four years after the incident in question.  The author of the Rolling Stone article says Melcher was present for the public debut, but is it possible he was not and was recounting a story he had heard second hand?

Who all accompanied Brian to the KHJ studios? From Melcher’s account, it sounds like at least some of, and perhaps all of the other members of the Beach Boys were there.

So maybe the story simply did not occur in the dramatic fashion described by Terry Melcher.  Maybe it wasn’t a huge caravan of limos.  Although Ron Jacobs says no after hours entry was allowed, I can certainly see someone of Brian Wilson’s stature making it inside, especially if one of the guards recognized him and other members of the band.  Maybe Tom Maule said he couldn’t play the record just then because it wasn’t on the playlist and thus would first need to be carted (recorded onto a Fidelipac tape cartridge for broadcast). 

KHJ jocks did not run their own board, with those duties assigned to an engineer.  Maybe the engineer carted the acetate, obviously listening to it as he did, then they put it on the air.  Or maybe it wasn’t carted until the morning when Ron Jacobs arrived at the studio and recorded his “KHJ exclusive” voiceover.

Stephen Desper has been a wonderful resource in understanding so many facets of Beach Boys history, and it would be great to have him chime in on all this.

In 2003 Mr. Desper stated that he’d taken a lawn mower out of Brian’s Rolls Royce Phanton 5 so that more people could fit in the car for the trip to KHJ, about 20 minutes away at 5515 Melrose.

Who all does Stephen Desper recall making the trip?  Did Mr. Desper himself make the trip, or after removing the lawn mower did he head home or stay back at Brian’s home studio?

How many vehicles does he recall making the trip?  Since he went to the trouble of removing the lawn mover to make room, was it just Brian’s Rolls, or as Melcher stated, was it a caravan of limos?

Assuming Stephen Desper went to the KHJ studios, what are his recollections of what transpired?

COMMENT:  Custom Machine ask me to post my thoughts on this thread, so here they are . . .

SD: And I also remember having to take the lawn mower out of the back of the Phantom 5 limo.

AJ: [huge, hearty laugh]

SD: To make room for everybody. [more laughter]

AJ: That’s a great story! [still laughing] What the hell was the lawn mower doing in there? [new wave of laughter]

SD: Brian didn’t have a truck so he used his Rolls Royce to haul his yard equipment around, and we had it fixed.

AJ: Oh, God, I didn’t even know that. That is so funny…


In 2003 Mr. Desper stated that he’d taken a lawn mower out of Brian’s Rolls Royce Phantom 5 so that more people could fit in the car for the trip to KHJ, about 20 minutes away at 5515 Melrose.

That is still what I remember. I can’t recall if Brian or Dennis helped me with the removal of lawnmower, but someone did. None of this lawnmower business would be known or remembered by the station DJ.  It all happened in the back parking area of Brian’s home.

Who all does Stephen Desper recall making the trip? 

I simply do not recall. I think Brian’s wife or her sister went along, otherwise I do not recall. Maybe Carl. Maybe Alan.

Did Mr. Desper himself make the trip, or after removing the lawn mower did he head home or stay back at Brian’s home studio?

First of all, the song was delivered on an acetate disc which I had cut some time earlier at Artisan Mastering House in Hollywood. It may have been cut the day before, don’t remember. Then it was played a few times and was sitting on the kitchen counter for some time before Brian got the idea of taking it and delivering it himself to the station. He was anxious to get a reaction from the DJ and see how it sounded on the radio. There was some discussion in the kitchen with everyone jazzing each other about this idea -- finally a simple game plan evolved (big plan, drive to the station) and a dash was made to the cars. That was when we discovered the lawnmower was stilll in the Phantom.  I don’t recall who-all went, sorry. It was about five or six people, including me, because the trip was not your usual thing to do in the evening and everyone that was around wanted to go and be part of the “trip to the radio station.” 

How many vehicles does he recall making the trip?  

I can’t be certain, but I think it was two. Most in the Rolls-Royce and overflow in the other car. 

Since he went to the trouble of removing the lawn mover to make room, was it just Brian’s Rolls, or as Melcher stated, was it a caravan of limos?

The Phantom 5 will seat seven or eight people if you use the jump seats. So I would say five or six were in the Limo and the other car was just your standard sedan. I enjoyed driving the Rolls, so it may well have been that I drove. Any additional cars would have been personal cars that happened to be at the home studio that night.

Assuming Stephen Desper went to the KHJ studios, what are his recollections of what transpired?

When we got to the station there was nowhere to park and Brian wanted to go right in, so the Phantom 5 was parked on the street; illegally parked. We all hoped it's size and distinction would give it some sort of VIP illusion and not be towed.

Brian's Black Phantom 5 >>> http://www.autowp.ru/pictures/rolls_royce/phantom/autowp.ru_rolls-royce_phantom_royal_limousine_5.jpg

(( The horn of Brian's Rolls-Royce is featured in Take a Load Off Your Feet))

I remember there was some commotion about getting into the station, that is past the front desk. No appointment – and you don’t just bust into a radio show already on-the-air. But after that was straightened out, the DJ was still a little flabbergasted to have Brian there – and with a new record to be previewed on his show. On the air it seemed as if he was searching for his words, as if trying to buy himself some time before actually playing the record. He was on the phone to get clearance from someone; to cover his ass -- after all he had a responsibility to the station, not The Beach Boys. I recall that at first there was a question if Brian could do this without the record company’s OK, and if airing the song would present a later problem for the station. That was bantered about for a few minutes, but then it was decided to play it just once. You see, in those days if you released a single without stock in the store, you ran the risk of having what was then called “a turntable hit.” That is, a hit that was requested over and over to be played on the radio. By the time the record company could supply stock to the stores, the song would have run its course and not be a hit that was in demand to buy. Hence only a hit on the radio station’s turntable.  So this was something that the DJ did not want to be accused of doing by the record company's A&R people. But Brian and company was there and talking on the air about the recording of the song. The interest had been aired, so at the risk of making a turntable hit, it was decided this would be reduced by playing it once . . . so the song was played. After the airing, it was all over, Brian had gotten the reactions he wanted, and we left. The Rolls was still parked in front of the station on busy Melrose Avenue. I returned to the house studio while others departed for their homes from the station. That’s about it.

~swd

This is a terrific post, thank you so much for addressing and answering the questions! It does in fact contradict Ron Jacobs' recollections, and all but shows that Brian's group *did* in fact get into the studio and *DID* have a bit of an interview on the air that night!!!

That only makes me wish more for an actual tape of that night but unfortunately I think the total number of hours of KHJ radio broadcasts that exist from 1967 is pretty slim as it is.

I wanted to address one very specific point, the "turntable hit". Isn't this exactly what happened with Heroes And Villains, at least in LA? If it was being played as a "Hitbound" and then as a charting single for three weeks before a listener could actually purchase the 45rpm single at the stores, it would seem that Heroes was a classic case of either being a "turntable hit" or of peaking too soon with the demand for the record.

The record was "charting" on KHJ surveys for three weeks before a listener could walk into a store and buy it!

Stephen, thank you so much for your recollections.  They certainly go a long way in setting the record straight!

A couple more quick questions:

I know you don't recall who all went to the station, but do you think it's possible that Terry Melcher was one of the people who accompanied the group to the KHJ studios?  His account in Rolling Stone sounds like it may well have been embellished, and if he wasn't even there he wouldn't have been providing a first hand account anyway.  It was the details in Melcher's account which program director Ron Jacobs took issue with.  For example, Melcher (as reported by Tom Nolan in Rolling Stone) said the group was driving a caravan of four or five Rolls Royce limos and the KHJ guard finally opened the gate to let the limos park in the KHJ lot, and neither of these statements jibes with your recollections.

Terry Melcher's account also has Brian introducing himself to the dj and offering the station an exclusive on the new record, with the dj flatly stating "Can't play anything that's not on the playlist."  Melcher said, "Brian almost fainted.  It was all over.  It really killed him," but it was finally played after a few calls to the program director or someone who screamed, "Put it on, you idiot!"  Melcher concludes, "But the damage to Brian had already been done."

I get the impression from your account that you have no recollection of the dj flatly saying that he couldn't play the record simply because it wasn't on the KHJ playlist, but rather that he first needed to make a call to get clearance, and that there was potential concern of issues with Capitol Records when the record wasn't even in promo copy form yet.  From your account it sounds like the dj had a rather congenial on-air interview with Brain and company, with Brian leaving the studio satisfied that he had accomplished his mission.  Would you agree that this accurately reflects your recollections?

Thanks again for your input, Stephen!

I'm still finding all of this information and new input amazing and a bit overwhelming. We basically have two versions of the story - one from the radio station's upper management that suggests much ado about nothing, and new input from the person who cut the actual acetate in question and was there with the band! And the confirmation of something which we may have suspected in earlier discussions...that not only was the song played on the air, but an interview was also broadcast around it.

I think some of the information has been embellished and overblown through the years, I also think perhaps some recollections of folks who weren't there that night may not be as keen on an event which wasn't all that memorable for anyone who wasn't at the station that night, and I think the legend of the whole situation blew it up to something greater than what it was.

And ultimately, the record did get played on the air, so it's not like you get a cinema-style ending shot of a dejected Brian walking slow with his head down out of the KHJ studio clutching an unplayed acetate that some other accounts other than Melcher's have suggested...

COMMENT:  Wow! you are certainly into this KHJ thing -- MUCH MORE THAN I AM.  To me it was just another passing evening event. I hardly gave it a second thought. What GuitarFool2002 said in his post does make it a TT hit. These are facts I did not know. I was stuck in the studio working on other stuff. But in hindsight it is interesting. What it sounds like is that KHJ made a copy and continued to play H&V long after Brian's departure. I would guess that once anything is aired, control is out-the-window.

Let's put this in perspective.  This was Brian's show. I was just tagging along -- a chance for this engineer to have a look around the big-city radio station KHJ. I really wasn't paying that much attention to the actual goings' on of the evening. So exactly what the issues were concerning a "play-list" was not of very high concern to me. I was more interested in the make and design of the turntables, tape decks and microphones they used. Please don't hang your hat or rewrite history on my accounting. I just remember it wasn't as simple as Brian thought it would be. He was up against rules, regulations, procedures and internal politics. Brian thought he would just walk into the station, hand the DJ his record and get a response. But the difference between our kitchen talk and the real world soon became apparent.

The DJ had a person of merit, a household name celebrity, the man himself, in the studio -- so if course he wanted to get a "Live" interview. Once on the air, what do you talk about?  Brian wanted to talk about his new song. The way it works is that you kinda have to do what Brian wants to do or else he just shuts up. So yes, the song was talked about, other things too, but mainly H&V.  The record "not being on the play list" may have been a point made to Brian, but only as a stalling tactic. Who knows, behind the scenes someone may have been arranging a buss to capture the acetate on tape when it was played, a buss reaching into a backroom somewhere that housed a tape recorder. Radio stations are always looking for that "exclusive" that can set them apart from the other stations and a BB single only hear-able on KHJ would have given them that edge. So in Brian's childlike thinking he was protected, as long as he left with the record under his arm. I guess in reality he was just being set up.

If the facts bear true that Brian's little adventure resulted in a TT hit, I'm sure the record company was pissed. They like to control the product they pay for, not have an end-run score an empty point.

Was there a fleet of Limo's -- no. The Phantom 5 was the only limo. And it was only used because it was the only car that Brian owned and was at the house. This was a sort of "last minute" thing. To have a caravan of Limo's would have taken hours to arrange, and for what? Certainly if a fleet of limo's were to be used -- and all the preparation that would take -- why wouldn't KHJ have been contacted ahead of time; to expect Brian and company for an exclusive. NO. No one knew anything. Surprise KHJ!!  We are here!  Can't we come in . . . p-l-e-a-s-e.     At first we couldn't even get in the gate. So, to speed things up, we just parked on the street . . . yellowcurb loading zone.

Was Melcher in this group?  He could have been, but I really did not know him that well at the time to remember. If Dennis or Bruce were in the kitchen that evening, he could have been with them. If he says he was there then he was. And, he would have talked to the DJ for certain.

As to offering the station an exclusive . . .  Brian knows the record business. He knew what a turntable hit was. He knew that would hurt sales. So I don't know, but I would doubt he would go so far as to offer KHJ any exclusive. Why would he need to do that?  Shoot himself in the foot?  Brian may have been a little crazy at times, but he is not stupid.

If you want my personal viewpoint . . . I think Brian was just reliving events from his past, back the way he got airplay when the Beach Boys were just starting. It worked then, why not now?  But that is just my personal observation.

~swd

Once again, thank you very much for posting this terrific information - it is a topic which I am also fascinated with, so any new information particularly from someone who was actually there is very much appreciated. Thank you!

I wanted to mention and clarify/repost a few points about what KHJ did with this:

- The record was being spun on KHJ at least in the second week of July, and there is a tape of a Bobby Tripp playing the record on KHJ around July 17, which would prove they had a tape of the song. That surviving bit of audio was the proof we can actually hear versus the KHJ survey from the week before Tripp's broadcast.

- KHJ had done similar things with other records: There exists a tape of them playing the original mix of the Monkees' "Valleri" on the air, and the only way they could have gotten this was to have taped it off the air from the TV broadcast, as it wasn't on an album or wasn't a single until it was remade in '68. So their "exclusive", if it wasn't authorized by the band or Screen Gems/Colgems, was nothing short of broadcasting a bootleg due to the high demand for Monkees songs in early-mid '67.

- Some of the surviving tapes of KHJ broadcasts on airchecks were sourced directly from their board and are in amazing fidelity for what they are, and some of those survived only through the family members of those DJ's who had recorded and saved some of their daily shows. The boss Mr. Drake himself (and possibly Jacobs?) apparently had some kind of a high-tech system (for 1966-67...) where he could dial a phone line from his office and hear a live broadcast of any of his "Drake-Chennault" radio stations, and also record them for his own use. So there were definitely at least two methods where someone at KHJ would be able to do nothing more than hit record on a tape machine and get a tape of what was on the air.

I had always assumed Brian gave them a copy or even a tape dub of the song...hearing that he actually carried an acetate was pretty fascinating, because obviously KHJ had to be playing a tape copy of it in the weeks before the release, after Brian took the disc with him. If there even exists a full, unedited copy of that Bobby Tripp broadcast from mid-July, we'd have it on tape - as such it's only a few seconds of the song itself and all of Tripp's talking.

Again, I'm fascinated to be reading new info about this...

Fascinating!

I wish I had something, anything, substantial to contribute, but I don't. But I can't not say anything either.

Thanks Stephen for indulging us all!! I am happy for you that you have had such a rich life, with special skills to share.

Thanks everyone - guitarfool, etc. - for keeping the research flowing. It's fun to watch.

COMMENT:  I had my teeth cleaned this morning. While in the chair I had the time to reflect on something that puzzles me. Why would TM tell the story that there were a "fleet" of Limo's at the station. Then I got to thinking about the word Limousine. I define it as a specific car model, that is, if GM calls its large Cadillac a Limousine, then it is a Limousine. Rolls-Royce calls there huge five ton automobile the Phantom 5 Limousine -- and that it is.

But Rolls-Royce also makes what is called a "stretch" sedan. This is not a limo, but being a huge automobile also, could, by the average person classify this as a "limo."  Technically it is not. It is in between a limo and a standard sedan. A limo is designed to be driven by a professional driver, not the owner. Brian had a driver at the time, John Parks. A stretch sedan is not quite as long as a limo, but longer than the standard sedan. It is designed to be driven by a driver or the owner. At this time Dennis owned a stretched Rolls-Royce. It was black and maroon and was a stretch Silver Cloud II. He also owned a Ferrari. He kept the Silver Cloud in Brian's garage and personally drove the Ferrari.  Again, this is just me sharing my thoughts with you, but if Dennis and Terry went to the station together, he may have taken his stretched Silver Cloud, from Brian's garage.

Dennis' Silver Cloud II stretched sedan >>> http://www.motorbase.com/picture/by-id/-1590586712

Note how large the back window appears. It kinda looks like a limo.

Loosly defined, this could seem like a couple of limo's coming down the street in tandem. So, maybe that is how TM saw it. Throw in another large car and you have a parade of limo's. Terry's accounting of the car line-up may have just been an honest mistake if you define any large luxurious sedan, a limo.

~swd

Somebody needs to ask Brian what he remembers about it.

Thanks so much for your recollections, Stephen.  Yes, it was just another day/night on the job for you, but it's such a legendary story in Beach Boys history that it's really good to set the record straight, even with Brian's friend and author David Leaf saying, "But it's such a good story ... don't we want to just keep printing the legend? :)"

To the best of my knowledge, the first time anyone challenged the story, which was retold in a number of books after first appearing in Rolling Stone 41 years ago, was when KHJ program director Ron Jacobs, in responding to my email, said he had no recollection of the incident and didn't think it could have happened in the manner described in Rolling Stone and the subsequent books, if it did in fact happen at all.  

As an example of how the story was further embellished over the years, in Brian's 1991 "autobiography" (as you well know, Brian later said that he had almost nothing to do with writing the book and never read the final manuscript) he states that close to twenty people in four or five Rolls Royces went to KHJ, and that before the DJ played the record, "I retreated from the embarrassment of ignominity into the back seat of my limo, ordering the driver to take me back home.  The radio was playing.  As we passed through the gates, I heard the DJ cue 'Heroes and Villains' and begin his intro.  It sounded forced.  I pictured the guys standing around him, glaring."

Your account goes a long way in setting the record straight, and indicates that the story as it has been told all these years contained numerous inaccuracies and comes across as embellished for dramatic purposes.

Thanks again, Stephen, for taking the time to share your recollections with us.

If anyone who is currently on tour with the Beach Boys and monitoring this thread: could we impose on you to impose on the beach Boys and ask the fellas who remembers this and what they remember?  Thanks in advance for considering it. Hugs.

Too forward? In our/my defense, this is the greatest American band and every detail of their career should be collected and preserved [you know, Beatles-style] before it is lost and/or they are not here to share it. Shouldn't there be an official sort of archiving of the Boys mementos and recollections, even song by song, from each of them? [gets down off of his high horse]

 I also think this serves to point out that Ron Jacobs memories aren't the "facts cast in stone" so to speak.  Personally speaking, I've had contact with Ron previously, trying to put an actual date with their appearance on the Fresno station roof. Ron remembers the large points, but details, are seemingly beyond him. And this isn't unusual; how many people can remember the datails of events 50 years in the past?  ( or,say, 10?)
So it's very nice to have Stephen recount the event, obviously contradicting Ron. 

So true, and I'll second the appreciation and thanks for Stephen Desper for describing some of his personal memories of that night and for Custom Machine pulling together so many parts of this mystery and keeping the ball rolling. After reading what seemed to be the same written accounts of what happened at the radio station for years, embellishments and all that included, it was a really cool thing to read a firsthand account of the event from someone who was present. Absolutely terrific.

It is great to nail down some of the big facts involved, now as they always say "the devil is in the details". As Cam suggested, maybe/hopefully someone from the band might have more to share as well if asked.

If you reread Ron Jacobs comments, printed in yellow on the first page of this thread, I think it's accurate to say that Stephen's account contradicts a lot of what has been published for years, originally based on the Melcher account, but doesn't necessarily contradict Ron Jacob's presumptions. 

Jacobs says there was no room for limos in the KHJ parking lot at night, and Desper's account agrees, saying they had to park out front.  Jacobs says he has no recollection of the incident and of screaming at the DJ "Put it on the air, you idiot!" and says he would never yell at a jock like that while he was on the air.  Desper's account is that of a much more congenial encounter with the DJ, with the jock calling someone (presumably Jacobs) for permission to play the record.  Without a big blow up, that's probably why Jacobs has no recollection of the incident.  Instead of Tom Maule essentially refusing to play the record, saying "Can't play anything that's not on the playlist," it sounds more like Maule probably made a call waking up a sleepy Ron Jacobs who may have told Maule something like, "Ok, and after interviewing Brian and the guys, be sure to talk over parts of the record so that other stations can't make a recording and play it too.  In the morning I'll record the whispered 'KHJ exclusive' over it."  Jacobs would have then gone back to sleep and forgotten about the whole thing for 44 years until I asked him about it and he said he had no recollection of the incident but didn't think it could have happened the way it was described in the published accounts.

Jacobs does say it would have been difficult to gain entrance to the KHJ studios at night, but doesn't totally dismiss the possibility, and I can see how Brian Wilson, along with other Beach Boys and friends, could have gained entrance, especially if it were the smaller size group that Desper recalls, rather than the large group in the Melcher account.

So in the areas in which Jacobs disagrees with the long told account that originated with Terry Melcher (or Tom Nolan, who wrote the Rolling Stone article in which Melcher was quoted), Stephen Desper's account is one which closely aligns with what Jacobs would have expected.  Also, in Al Jardine's brief account he makes no reference to any blow up where the jock initially refused to play the record.

Hey, and for anyone interested in listening to an incredible collection of classic top 40 era radio station airchecks, check out ReelRadio's Reel Top 40 Radio Repository at reelradio.com.  For a donation of $20 per year this non-profit site, which pays licensing fees for all the airchecks it streams, offers the cool experience of being able to listen, on demand, to any of thousands of airchecks from various stations (with a ton of KHJ, Los Angeles, including their entire History of Rock and Roll).  Most of the airchecks are unscoped (i.e., the music is all there), some are scoped only (DJ talk is there, but just the beginning and end of a song), and quite a few are available both unscoped and scoped.  New airchecks are added weekly.  Ya wanna hear Beach Boys songs being played on the radio back when they were first popular?  ReelRadio.com is the place!

It's been close to 10 months since this thread was originally started.  I've got a big stack of unread stuff I've been going through recently, and in that pile I discovered the Summer 2012 edition of Endless Summer Quarterly, #96, which was published almost a year ago, a couple of months before this thread.  In that issue is a transcript of an Beach Boys press conference held on March 22, 1972, featuring questions from Dennis Kelley, who wrote the ESQ article, Jim Whittemore, and others.

Dennis Kelley asks Carl:  In Rolling Stone, an interview was published with Terry Melcher as part of a two-part story on The Beach Boys, and in the interview Terry describes how Brian brought the 45 of 'Heroes and Villains' down to the biggest station in L.A. to give them an exclusive on it, and the DJ said something like "Sorry buddy, can't play anything that's not on the playlist", and it really killed Brian.

Carl Wilson responds:  Yeah, that's what the story said, but that was ... I believe he may have taken some record down, but it didn't happen the way Rolling Stone and Terry said.

So, although the account of published in Rolling Stone way back in 1971 has made its way into Beach Boys lore and numerous books about the band, here we have further proof, direct from the mouth of Carl Wilson, that this story did not take place as described in Rolling Stone and was significantly embellished either by Terry Melcher and/or Rolling Stone author Tom Nolan.

I wouldn't call that a proof, but at least a strong indication the story was told in a twisted way somehow.

Thanks for this useful information, Mr. Custom! I checked the site & indeed, it's great! There you can even download free MP3s of recent radio issues from Bobby Ocean! Which is very cool, notwithstanding I have no idea who is that human. 

It is a perfect song, the "Sunny Down Snuff" section is to die for...the whole thing weaves together Gershwin (I've Been In This Town) and Bach(Children Were Raised) influences so gracefully. It alone makes me sad there is no proper stereo Smile in existence.

Bobby Ocean is widely considered to be in that elite group of the greatest dj's of the rock era.  He spent the bulk of his career on the west coast including the Drake powerhouse stations KGB in San Diego, KHJ in Los Angeles, and KFRC in San Francisco.  He was also heard as a station image voice on numerous radio stations across the US, and worked as a dj on Sirius/XM's seventies channel.

Annual subscriptions to Reel Radio have been reduced to a $12 minimum donation per year.  As i mentioned previously, Reel Radio  www.reelradio.com  is a great place to listen to actual music radio broadcasts from the sixties, seventies, and eighties (plus the fifties and nineties).  If you'd like to experience radio as it sounded "back in the day" when Beach Boys songs under discussion on this site were first being heard on the radio, Reel Radio is the place.

I found a couple of things of interest in the old archives in possibly relevant to the date of the event. Maybe not.

H&V [it doesn't say what form] was registered [EU 2476] with the United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress on June 29, 1967.

Disc and Music Echo; dated July 15 1967; page 10;  “I’ve had a report from West Coast folks that the Beach Boys’ new disc, ‘Heroes and Villains’ is finally completed. I was told that Brian Wilson immediately made copies of the final tape and took them around to the Los Angeles radio stations even before the record company had it!
Apparently the ‘B’ side of the disc is most unusual. Titled ‘You’re Welcome’, it reportedly has only vocal harmonies - no instrumentation - and the only lyrics are those two words in the title.”

Disc and Music Echo; dated July 22 1967; page 6:  "HEROES And Villains," first new Beach Boys recording since "Good Vibrations" (released nine months ago) has now been completed and was released in America last week. But no release date in Britain has been planned.
"We don't even know the 'B' side," said an EMI spokesman, "and it certainly will not be released this month. The end of August is a more likely date."

Fascinating thread.....but the RS KHJ incident is a minor blip in Brian's life in 1967....Stephen Desper's account is sensible, and I think Brian was exhausted by the time he finished H&V, and it is no coincidence that the group went to Hawaii for R&R for three weeks shortly after Smiley Smile was completed. refer to David Dalton's account of the late 1967 period and the Wild honey back cover shoot for corroboration.

And it's still ahead of its time.

Great to see and re-read this thread as it reappears - Just wanted to chime in on that Disc and Music Echo article from July 15 1967...this lines up exactly with the Bobby Tripp aircheck recording from KHJ where he's playing and commenting on Heroes from that same week. KHJ was already spinning whatever copy they got in advance before the "official" release, and though I haven't heard any evidence to confirm this, if they followed the example of how they spun advance copies of previous singles on the air like Good Vibrations, they'd play a copy and have PD Ron Jacobs' voice saying "KHJ EXCLUSIVE" over various sections of the record so other stations couldn't bootleg it. The reports of this on Good Vibrations after they premiered it on TV (with Brian and Vosse) came from those who have heard it - the actual examples of this I've heard were on things like advance copies of Monkees' songs that KHJ got literally hot off the press.

So there was a definite and well-known precedent of KHJ spinning records prior to the "official" release, as I mentioned in this thread Brian himself had a history of hand-delivering his latest singles to KHJ's studio, and other artists and producers would also sometimes hand-carry their latest single sometimes straight from the studio where it had just been cut to disc to the KHJ offices to be played on the air after Jacobs did his "exclusive" voiceover on top.

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