The Smiley Smile Message Board

I'll start.

David Gilmour

The Beach Boys?
Brian, Al and Dave?
Mike and Bruce?

....who are we talking about here?

The Beach Boys in the 60's were the most absurdly stacked vocal group I've ever known. Most bands had one great singer if they had any, the Beatles had two, (and one near-great singer in George), the Beach Boys had 5. It was just absurd.

NVM, a guest vocalist? I love Ann and Nancy Wilson, thought they did a great version of Good Vibrations, so I'll say them.

yes

David Gates

Anyone more like Carl & Dennis i terms of music style preference and hipness than Bruce. Could've made a big, big difference.

Ronnie Spector.

good ole doris day

The real Santa Claus

For what they did they were actually 'complete'. Which makes sense since they invented much of what they did. A tautology, but yeah. Any distinct extra voice would have been 'too much'.

Maybe they could have used an extra folky-voice guy (besides Al) on a couple of tracks or give a guesting Sam Cooke the lead on something to which they harmonise in the background, that might have been nice (I know they opened for him quite early in their career but I'm talking about a record, of course). Dunno, just spitballing here..

another question I should ask here (without starting a new thread) is what guest musician would you have liked on a song or album?

Manzarek I think would have been a good guest keyboardist on their late 60s/early 70s stuff.

Another Carl Wilson

Nancy Sinatra

I think Frank Sinatra, Jr. should record "Still I Dream Of It"....

alvin

theodor

simon

 :thewilsons

I don't think Manzarek would have been a good fit. The Beach Boys made tightly structured pop songs and Manzarek was more about stretching out and playing jazzy flourishes.

Freddie Mercury

hell no.

I'd love to have heard them record something with Annette Funicello.

Honestly, none. Every time they have had a guest vocalist on stage or on a recording I have found myself saying, "man that would have sounded great if (Al, Carl, Mike, Brian, Dennis) had sung it".

How's that, Freddie? I thought you're a big CW fan, so you know that no one can take his place, because no one can sing like Carl today. He's one of a kind.

My vote goes for the lead singer of The Guess Who. I reckon he could be good for songs like "Funky Pretty" or "This Whole World". Though it'd be even greater if they all sang "Undun", Mike doing his usual bass bits. It's such a great song!

So I'm sitting outside on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying a nice summer day, and 'Wichita Lineman" comes on the radio. Now I've listened to that song 1,000 times in my lifetime, but, for some reason, it really touched me today. I got to thinking about Glen Campbell and his illness, but, it especially hit me how long ago those Jimmy Webb songs were written and recorded. I mean, Glen was literally right of the Beach Boys when he hit it big. The Gentle On My Mind album was Album Of The Year in 1967 - the year that SMiLE should've come out. Anyway, I digress...

Glen's vocal on "Wichita Lineman" is so smooth and touching and great, and I got to thinking. What if Glen Campbell had remained in The Beach Boys? Can you imagine a band in the mid/late 1960's and early 1970's with lead vocalists the likes of Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Al Jardine - and Glen Campbell? It also would've been interesting to see what the group would've done live, with the talent Glen displayed on guitar. It is not discussed often, but just think how the band might've progressed with Glen Campbell as a full-time member, singer, guitar player and personality.

Wichita Lineman is nice, but I'm more keen on Galveston. Hands down one of Glen's best vocals in his entire career. As for guitar playing, you are absolutely right, Glen's contributions in this field often get overlooked. But luckily, there were some musicians who admired his guitar style. Year or 2 ago, in the RS article dedicated to Glen, Leon Russell admitted that the former is the most versatile guitar player he ever heard, adding he was his favorite session musician. Also, it was in this article where I found out that Glen appeared in more than 500 recordings (rough estimate), some of them becoming stone cold classics. That's almost unbelievable! He's a real hard-worker.

Their harmonies were so powerful, I don't think it would have sounded right having anybody else sing with them, without relegating them to a backup status.  So you could have had somebody sing lead, and then the boys sing harmony, but it would overpower whoever was singing lead imho.  It worked and was balanced when it was a member of the band singing lead and everybody else singing harmony.



I will say, though, that you could have came up with some interesting things by adding female voices to the mix.  I know there's a few songs with Marilyn on it, but I mean going more with a girl group call and response type of thing, instead of having the boys sing all the harmony pads have a few girl group pads in there.  I'm hearing something like the Royal Teen's "Short Shorts" in my mind, lol.  That would be awesome. 

When Carl died back in 98, and I saw the band falling apart, I immediately thought, "get Christopher Cross". You may laugh, but he alone comes closest to Carl's vocal. I still think Christopher Cross should be called on to handle Carl's leads. In fact, I think he once was a special guest at a BB concert/event. Can anyone confirm?

he guested at the farm aid concert in 1999 or a year prior.

James Griffin  :)

Harry Nilsson