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I just heard the alternate version of It's OK from the Made In California box set and noticed the added notes before the 'normal' start to the song. Is it just me, or am I hearing the same notes as "Gimme some, some, some of your love" from Some of Your Love (Keepin' The Summer Alive)? The songs have the same sort of feel about heading to the beach/being at the beach. I was wondering if they were actually written around the same time or if Some of Your Love was just in one of the early iterations at that point.

Or Mike Come Back To LA

I'd have to listen again, but I do not remember the initial two notes - the 'gim-me" notes in Mike Come Back To L.A.

It's OK was released in 1976, and the Mike Come Back to L.A. session was what - 1978? Some of Your Love was released in 1980. I know Brian likes to revisit a tune if he likes it enough, but it sounds as if the genesis of the song was pre-1976; probably as far back as 1974 as It's OK was part of the Caribou tapes sessions?

Mike Come Back To L.A. was reportedly written in '73.

"It's OK" is a stripped-down reworking of "Mess of Help" where the latter's middle-eight (which repeats, augmented a good bit, as the song's tag) appears only as a tag, with synthesized strings brought down an octave in place of the high-pitched squeal of "Mess of Help's" cello played at the very top of its range. Though the lead vocal part in the tag is different in tone and melody, the repeating structure ("She don't know a thing/She don't know" vs. "Find a ride/Find a ride") is functionally identical. (The rest of the vocal arrangement is different, and helps to mask the fact that one song was cribbed from the other.)

This fact continues to elude folks because the lead vocals are so utterly different in character and the song structure has been radically simplified:

MOH: verse--mini-chorus--verse2--mini-chorus2--instrumental1--middle-8--instrumental2--verse3--mini-chorus3-tag
OK: verse--mini-chorus--verse2--mini-chorus2-verse3--mini-chorus3--tag

As for "Some of Your Love," it could be that Brian got that stuff started for "It's OK," then jettisoned it as it became clearer to him that he could rewrite "Mess of Help," then came back to the discarded part and made a new song from that.

Woah, that's news. When did this come from?  I had never heard this at all.

I always thought "Some of your Love" sounded like "Wontcha come out tonight."

Deleted - I replied to the wrong post!  :-[

You know, everybody talks about the Shortnin' Bread riff, but the MCBTLA-Child of Winter-Some of Your Love riff may have been used even more than the Shortnin' Bread riff.

Wow, more than the short'nin' bread riff? Is that even possible? :)

Page 296 of Brad Elliott's "Surf's Up: The Beach Boys On Record" -
"Some Of Your Love was a rewrite of a 1972 or 1973 Brian composition, Mike, Come Back To L.A."

same as "Child Of Winter" as well.

Same as "Summer of Love" as well ("sum...sum...summer...summer of love") which was written "only" by Mike Love + Terry Melcher.

Does that mean that Brian was screwed out of a songwriting credit? Serious question. It's the melodic hook of the song.

Pretty much, yeah.

It's a variation of the Shortnin' Bread riff.  It's got the same rhythm to it and I think it is JUST similar enough to be a variation...

I don't really hear the similarity.

Or was the above post meant in answer to the thread topic?

Perhaps I listened wrong.  The rhythms to me are similar to the Shortnin' Bread riff, but I think at least both of these are really similar.

I was trying to answer both questions.  I wonder what inspired these riffs other than to BW, Shortnin' Bread was the best song ever.

I hear it, but it's kinda inverted

I can hear how the "some some some" part sounds a bit like the SB riff, but you have to kind of rearrange the chords a bit.

If "Mike Come Back to LA" predates all of the other variants, then that alone could explain all the similarities. But specifically in terms of that "It's OK" riff sounding like the 1977 "Mike Come Back to LA" recording despite pre-dating it, we could certainly go to the 1974 "Child of Winter" track which is the earliest *released* direct use of that motif/riff. The "Mess of Help" similarity is an interesting theory, but we don't appear to hear that same six-note riff used in "Child of Winter", the  pre-song noodling on the "It's OK" alternate, "Mike Come Back to LA", "Some of Your Love", as well as "Summer of Love."

I'm not convinced Mike was *trying* to rework older songs when he did "Summer of Love" (and certainly Brian didn't receive a co-writing credit on that one), whereas I think "Some of Your Love" was a conscious/deliberate reworking of "Mike Come Back to LA."

Probably totally unrelated, but in the general category of "It's OK" and weird song recycling, it was interesting that *years* later, in the 2000s when Mike started adding "It's OK" back to his setlist in a lower key (as heard as well on C50), he added an opening riff/arrangement that is basically the "Skatetown USA" intro.

This is all really interesting.

Okay, so to recap, the last song using that 8-note progression was written after a released song featured it on the opening of the alternate version which pulled it from a 6-note sequence of an pre-dated unreleased version of a song.  :p

...yet setlist-wise, Some of Your Love could easily segue directly into It's OK on an album or in concert - certainly way easier than Child of Winter or Mike Come Back to L.A. would.

Did Mike Come Back To L.A. ever have any verse lyrics? It never sounded like anything but the guys vamping.

Well, I think the "It's OK" connection is really only that someone noodled on that riff. I guess "Some of Your Love" could segue into "It's OK" in that they're both generally similar songs, though it would border on redundant. They were never of course in the setlist at the same time, with "It's OK" being added in 1976 and retained for a few years and then jettisoned by the end of 1979, only to briefly return in 1982 and then disappear until Mike added it to his show in the 2000s. Meanwhile, "Some of Your Love" was only in the setlist for several months in 1980.

As for that riff, perhaps it's not coincidental that of course the backing track to "It's OK" was recorded around late October of 1974 (though I can't say for sure that the little keyboard/synth overdub is from that session), while "Child of Winter", using that same riff as a bed for the entire songs, was recorded around November 18 of 1974.

Got another potential contender: Crack at Your Love.

The melody that is happening in the backing track (just as the words "crack at your love" are sung) sounds nearly identical  to this recurring melody. This part recurs in the song over and over again, with an example at 0:24 (as the "whoah-oooh-oh-whoah-hoo" wordless part is sung):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFExH_4Zsx8

Anyone else hear it? You could sing "Sum-sum-summer-summer of love", "Child of Winter", etc over that part.

When I saw the Beach Boys in July of 1976, they performed It's OK along with other cuts from 15 Big Ones.  For the It's OK tag ("Find a ride/" "In the Sum-sum-summertime") Al Jardine sang a great falsetto part on top of the other vocal parts. 

The same falsetto part was later used during the tag for the Celebration It's OK cover featured on the Almost Summer soundtrack LP.

I always thought It's OK might have been a bigger hit in 1976 if they'd included that falsetto part on the Beach Boys single.  The melody for that falsetto line sounded like something Brian would have written.  Perhaps there's a version with that falsetto still in the vault. 

Thanks for the recommendation; I just listened to that version on Youtube, and that outro part you mentioned is pretty rad.

Could that falsetto be added to the BBs version?

<<Could that falsetto be added to the BBs version?>>

It may already be there... the 2012 "faders up" mix of Rock & Roll Music revealed a heretofore unheard falsetto part beginning with the third verse (sung, as I understand, by Marilyn Wilson).  The falsetto line itself is a great little riff... and whoever did the high part in Celebration duplicated - precisely - the same line I heard Al sing in 1976.  So I'd like to assume it was a known counter melody line for It's OK... just not used in the released BB mix.

<<Marilyn? Sounds very much like 1976 vintage Brian to these ears.>>

Marilyn... according to my sources... apparently she did a lot of falsetto on that album.

Maybe we're not talking about the same part...

So much for the Brian as young Mozart, having to recycle the same riffs repeatedly.....of course very young Mozart did recycle riffs ad nauseam, but then, he was like only 4 years old or so....Brian is King Mozart in Reverse!

OK, I'll take the bait...at least he had riffs to recycle. The Mozart comparison was always a piece of inflammatory nonsense, even if it was as misguidedly well-meaning as your remark was misguidedly mean-spirited.

Most of the BBs at the times they were at least moderately active were kings of re-using riffs, melodies, remaking other artists' songs, remaking their own songs, re-recording unreleased songs, doing half-way covers/originals, and so on.

And I'd say Mike is a "culprit", if one needs to be named, in the "Mike Come Back to LA/Child of Winter/Some of Your Love" riff re-use as well, as he was a co-writer on at least some of those variations.

Mike basically set about re-making "Kokomo" and "Still Cruisin'" into an entire album with SIP in 1992. There are also individual examples like "Tricia", which is certainly a re-use of the "Sandy/Sherry" motif.

Mike's treasured "Kokomo" was basically a case of taking someone else's old song off the shelf and rejiggering it.

This is not even getting into wholesale ripping off lines and sections of songs as callbacks, like Mike and Al on "Kona Coast" and using the "Hawaii" bit, or Mike constantly referencing old BB titles and lyrics in his songs like "Summer in Paradise."

Al regularly employed use of cover versions of course. Also, apparently some of his "originals" are reworkings of old songs like "Raspberries, Strawberries."

Brian surely was at least unknowingly referencing "Looking Down the Coast" when he did "Walkin' the Line."

Dennis cross-pollinated "Holy Man" and "Moonshine." I would imagine some of his other riffs and motifs were woven through multiple songs.

Brian, after having "Shortenin' Bread" rolling around his head for years, and even *after* he got it out of his system and released it on "LA (Light Album)", re-recorded it AGAIN in 1980!

Bruce re-used "Ten Years Harmony" for "Endless Harmony."

Al's actual album and Mike's de facto 2004 sort-of album are both rife with remakes and re-recordings. There's also already evidence Mike's *current* album is partly made up of remakes like "Big Sur" and "Getcha Back." His 2015 X-Mas single was a re-recording of a rejected 40-year-old outtake.

Mike has done *numerous* iterations of BB re-make albums with Adrian Baker.

I can't think of Carl recycling much on his own, but that's probably mostly because he was not a prolific writer inside or outside of the group, at least in terms of what we've heard.

Maybe not the exact riff or melody, but several of his songs are reminiscent of "Heaven" - "Where I Belong", "I Wish For You", and "This is Elvis'.

Carl certainly liked that style and arpeggio pattern, but that's just more a stylistic issue as opposed to most of the previous examples of straight-up re-making/re-recording an old song, and/or re-writing a song.

A lot of artists re-use riffs.

Here's another one I just noticed:

The intro and outro of Still Surfin', to my ears, sound musically nearly identical to the intro of Make it Big. Terry and Mike doing a virtual copy/paste, just adding some vocals to make it a bit different.