The Smiley Smile Message Board

This previous was around, I believe, in pretty abysmal quality. But it appears the Old Grey Whistle Test Archive has posted a nice run of raw footage of the Beach Boys running through "You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone" in 1972. Great stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTVc5mIVFq0

Also just recently posted is an episode with an interview with "American Spring":

https://youtu.be/wT05UTBUmKQ?t=15m1s

This is great....never saw it before.

It looks like this OGWT YouTube channel is pretty new. Hopefully it will survive and not have bunch of takedowns from copyright holders/publishers.

Thanks for those links, HJ!  Always loved the YNAMOHTSA video, its always been one of my favorite songs, and the boys all look great!  And I never saw that American Spring video, great stuff!!!

Holy sh!t, they're singing "Alley oop"  ;D ;D

I really like the song. I wished they had done a whole album like this in the 70s (basically the first half of So tough" extended)





Nice! And going right into some of the best footage of the Killer (Toronto Peace Festival 1969).

One of the most underrated BB songs IMO. They all look really cool in this video (except for Mike). Also, Carl saying "sorry" after messing up the second take is pretty funny and cute.

Another piece of the puzzle is revealed. Diane was the one to get the fire hats for the Mrs. O'Leary's Cow session. :lol   I never knew that. I knew she was on the AFM Contracts for many Smile Sessions though. I also like the fact that both Marilyn and Diane have great love and respect for what Brian was doing.  Marilyn did sing a high part on Do You Wanna Dance with Brian. She also sang lead on a Vocal session outtake for Vegetables.

Wow! Thanks for posting those links.

As pointed out in the comments, they're there to promote their own music and the host asks them a bunch of questions about the Beach Boys.  ::)  Very interesting, though. I don't know if i've ever seen an interview of them or Marilyn alone from prior to the 1990s. Thanks for posting.

Too bad Brian wasn't there for the Spring interview. How I'd love to see something like that...

Very Interesting, The third take is the broacasted one but in the broadcasted version a voiceover sounds during the first seconds.

Sure they discussed lots of interesting and valuable Brian/Beach Boys lore in the interview, but even after seeing this I still feel like American Spring is a group shrouded in mystery and unanswered questions. But it is an American Spring interview after all, and you don’t see that every day, so I’ll take it!

Edit: If I’m remembering correctly, American Spring mentions that Brian was involved producing most, if not all, of their record. I’ve heard from many forum members that this wasn’t the case, and he was involved only minimally.

Didn't Brian do an interview around the time with Wolfman Jack where he said that the Spring album is better than Pet Sounds? ;D

That's certainly just PR-talk. Brian's participation was the selling point of American Spring. IIRC Marylin said in later years that Brian was maybe 25% involved.

At the end of the day, would Spring have even recorded an album and/or been on "Old Grey Whistle Test" promoting said album were it not for their connection to Brian?

There's no question that Marilyn and Diane had and still have potentially hundreds of amazing stories to tell about stuff they did and stuff they did with Brian (musically and otherwise). But when it comes specifically to the American Spring album, their stores are always going to be, in part, "so-and-so gave us this song and told us to sing it this way." I'm not saying they had no creative input. But was mostly cover versions, and Sandler and/or Brian were guiding the sessions on both the A&R sort of side and the production side I would imagine.

Sounds like marketing from Brian. Out of curiosity I googled it and discovered this. A documentary on the Wolfman is due with contributors from Mike and apparently Brian.

https://www.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi3992041497

I love this performance.  I wish there was more footage of the band from this era.  I wonder if more of this concert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewuwdg0-DKY) exists in the vault.

Regarding "You need a mess of help", can someone tell me who sings the lead apart from Carl? It sounds like the the "rough"-singing voice might be someone else doubling Carl. Yet it also might be Carl, but I'm not sure about this.

It sounds to me like two Carls, including the rough one, plus Blondie as the third voice.