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An autobiography by Don Goldberg is out now on amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/1513649892 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1513649892)

Evidently, he was quite the wunderkind, ""at fourteen years old I discovered Chuck Berry."

The Goldberg songs posted a few years ago were certainly interesting, mainly "Sweet and Bitter" which featured a pretty good and somewhat unique Mike lead vocal (even if it had clearly and weirdly been overdubbed many years after 1970-ish).

But I'm probably stating the obvious in wondering how good of "friends" he was or is with Brian Wilson. Seemingly nobody much had heard of Goldberg prior to those song surfacing.

There must be an undeniably interesting story for how he briefly ended up in their orb in the "Sunflower" era to work on a few songs (a story I believe he partially told somewhere back then), and I'm guessing the 138-page count on this new book probably correctly indicates that there is only so much you can stretch that story into an epic book.

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Interesting stuff about Bruce. It seems to line up with the experiences David Marks described in his book with Jon Stebbins, when David re-entered the band's orb in the "Surf's Up" era briefly.

So it would seem the long-ago circulated BB version of "(Out) In the Country" with Al on lead post-dates the Goldberg version. Big question: If they ever officially release the BB version, will Goldberg get a songwriting credit? Will Goldberg's long-ago involvement be something that leads them to just leave such a track off any future BB sets?

I remember someone asking Alan Boyd years ago when "Sweet and Bitter" surfaced if the BBs had that, or any of the other Goldberg stuff, in the BRI vaults. I don't remember if there was a definitive answer.

Does Goldberg describe overdubbing "Sweet and Bitter" years later? When he posted the three tracks online, "Sweet and Bitter" definitely had some late 70s/early 80s-sounding overdubs.

Also, does Goldberg describe posting the stuff online in the 2010s, and/or does he describe the stuff getting yanked from YouTube?

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What an unusual family.  :brow






So, I guess he doesn't like Bruce too much, eh?
Could you elaborate a little on the So Tough story? That sounds interesting.

Thanks for giving us some insight into the book!

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Now I can't get a picture out of my mind of Bruce - dressed as The Hamburglar - sneaking around and hiding a tape, then wiping down the area to erase fingerprints. It's no wonder Bruce left. I wonder where he hid the tapes?

Talk about dysfunction. Reminds me of the type of dysfunctional stuff that happened later in the 70s, with Brian's fridge being padlocked.

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This seems odd since Bruce was out of the band by the time of So Tough.  Why would he have even had access is weird?  It seems like they could have made him give it back.

Bruce left during the So Tough session IIRC. His "Ten year harmony" (later retiteled as "Endless harmony") was supposed to be recorded for So Tough.

Ahhh, ok.  That makes sense then.

Bruce was still in the band, at least the touring band, through to the beginning of April 1972, so that definitely post-dated at least some of the "So Tough" sessions. I don't know how present Bruce was for the actual "So Tough" sessions, but he was in the band up until about a month before "So Tough" came out.

And "funniest" is being generous. In a band with Brian Wilson (a guy that weirded out some of the most crazy rock luminaries of the day), Dennis Wilson (a guy who was buds with Manson for a while, and who went toe-to-toe if not surpassed the likes of Moon and Bonham while sometimes even hanging with them), and Mike Love (rightly or wrongly with the rep as one of the big a-holes in the history of rock/pop), I've long contended it may well just be that, ironically, Bruce Johnston is the weirdest of them all.

Bruce's favorite Honeys song is undoubtedly Hide Go Seek (With Tapes)

Thanks for the additional details. I do now remember a bit that Alan Boyd had commented on "Sweet and Bitter." So presumably if they wanted to issue it with Mike's lead, they'd need to use Goldberg's tape.

It's one of the best Mike leads of that era, so it deserves a release on an archival package.

Presented as a "1972" song, Goldberg's tape just sounds rather anachronistic because of what sound like late 70s/early 80s synths and whatnot. It definitely doesn't sound at all like "So Tough" recordings. But it may well be that the original 1972 backing track is too sparse or has other issues, so the Goldberg tape may be a better presentation of the song.

I'm curious if Goldberg still has the multis for his songs; they could then presumably graft Mike's lead onto the backing track that BRI still has (or just mix out the newer overdubs on Goldberg's tape).

As far as the chances of "So Tough" being issued with some random dude singing one of the songs, I have trouble believing all of the other band members (nor potentially the label) would have gone along with that. I know they had done the track with Rieley singing, but he was the band's manager and could more easily push that sort of stuff through. But you have to wonder if Warner would have looked at "So Tough" and thought "Okay, so there's only 8 or 9 songs on this, and you have seven or eight fully capable lead vocalists in the band, yet you've had a random guy from outside of the band sing one of the songs?"

We also know other instances of a vaguely similar nature were met with the band steamrolling (rightly or wrongly) over outside interlopers. Billy Hinsche's lead on "Honkin' Down the Highway" wasn't used. Bob Burchman has his harrowing tale of being steamrolled on "It's About Time", and Ed Carter's "Surfer Suzie" got shelved supposedly/allegedly because he wouldn't fork over credit and/or royalties, or some such thing.

Knowing Brian, and how crazy things were in that era, Goldberg's song and vocal ending up on "So Tough" isn't like a 100% impossibility in my mind. But I'd lean more towards "unlikely" than "likely" under any circumstance I can think of. It sounds like Goldberg rightly was aware there was a good chance the track wouldn't actually make the cut, with or without Bruce allegedly "hiding" the tape.

That's a SEVERE understatement.

True. Brian's tag fade to OITC did make it onto So Tough. The melody was repurposed for He Come Down (the"I believe it" phrase).

Although Brian didn't cowrite Sweet & Bitter, he apparently changed the chords over the lines "We're still in love, can't you see it's meant to be..."  Originally, Don Goldberg just played an E7 throughout, but Brian spiced it up with the chords Bm / G / E7

Looking forward to reading this for sure. The combustibility of the band in the 1970-72 period is actually a key aspect of what happened to them, and any first-hand accounts relating to that are incredibly valuable. Bruce's behavior in this time frame is certainly bizarre, but by 1972 he must have realized that he was swimming upstream with his schmaltzmeister material. He probably saw Don Goldberg's stuff as another way for his songs to be further marginalized.

This sounds like a very interesting book. I actually really like all of the Don Goldberg tracks that I've heard. Sweet and Bitter is one of my favorite Mike leads. I honestly don't think Don is much of a singer, but the full version of "In The Country" would have been cool to hear with Al or Carl singing lead. Or even Brian doing a non falsetto type of lead. The thing that confuses me the most about the song is how the full band version and the commonly booted version are so vastly different. This whole story gives me an interesting "What if?" question. Imagine that Don Goldberg had replaced Bruce in the group, and the whole history with Blondie and Ricki(that might not be the right spelling lol) had never happened.

Any interesting/rare pictures in it?

What was going on in the time frame between the documented sessions for SO TOUGH has got to be pretty fraught, what with all these folks doing separate things and some kind of internecine warfare afoot, leading to Bruce's departure and the official inclusion of Blondie and Ricky. It seemed that Carl wound up making the final decisions on all this; his closeness with the Flame, coupled with Dennis' hand injury, would seem to be the decisive factors in all that. Having not yet read Goldberg's book, I don't know if there is anything there beyond the surreptitious "side door" effort to get "In the Country" onto SO TOUGH, but I'd doubt anyone was ready to actually put him into the band.

We could certainly use a much more comprehensive glimpse at what went down in the winter of 1971 through the spring of 1972--a LOT of stuff went down in that time frame, and the sequence of events and specific issues involved remain pretty murky...

Be interesting to get a real history of the band around this time. Carl's relationship with Bruce., Al's relationship with Carl at this time. So many things that we could learn from

I highly recommend the book for those who haven't read yet; it's a short but fascinating look into a strange part of the Beach Boys' career. Here's an interesting picture - a signed copy of Smiley Smile that Brian gave to Don.

Posted this on the other board, also wanted to post my thoughts on the book here.

So I bought the book a few days ago and received it earlier. It's a nice addition to a big time Beach Boys fan's library. At least in my case it really helped to get a feeling for the personalities of the guys, particularly Brian and Bruce, with a bit of material on Carl and Mike.

For example, I think Mr. Goldberg really kinda helped paint the picture of Brian as the generally kinda amiably odd guy we all dig. Just with the way Goldberg would describe certain physical movements Brian would make or certain comments Brian made, it tracks with a lot of what we've heard over the years. It also to me showed that Brian, despite all his humbleness, definitely knows he is a big deal, despite sometimes being shocked at stuff like standing ovations. For instance, it was interesting to read Goldberg describing Brian's discussion of how certain people had said "Good Vibrations" was the greatest song ever or something. I can't remember exactly, but it was Brian sounding quite a bit more secure than we sometimes feel. But at the same time, that leads me to how Brian could seem very up and down. And while obviously that is true of any human being, you could see in this book that Brian was already deep into his battle with his issues, sleeping all day, staying out all night, etc.

Bruce on the other hand also really got a bit of a decent description from Goldberg. And he kinda comes across as a cocky, seemingly insecure son-of-a-bitch. Really kinda coming across as very "Hollywood", feeling like he's a hot sh*t music scene big shot, seemingly always talking down to Goldberg for whatever reason. Condescendingly, if I remember correctly, he would tell Goldberg he should feel lucky to hang with Brian, and that you had to a be really good guitarist to learn "Disney Girls", not to mention what Bruce did with the "Out in the Country" master tape. Overall it just seems like Bruce gets threatened by people in the inner circle who might steal his thunder. Witness how bitchy he's been to Dave Marks all the way from the early '70s all the way through to nearly the turn of the millennium. Then you have Bruce dismissing Blondie and Ricky as sidemen. It's just interesting that of all of The Beach Boys, Bruce often seems to be a huge ass-kisser to the group's perceived leaders (Brian and Mike) while being not so wonderful to others who could or did fill his spot in the group. Goldberg has an interesting rationale for why Bruce might act like this, which I'd never thought off, and does make a bit of sense.

Carl comes across, as usual, as a generally nice guy, seemingly always friendly and willing to help. Mike comes across as a professional, who kept his promise to Goldberg to do a lead vocal for his tune.

Overall an interesting book that I'm sure I'll pick and thumb through it again, to see if I missed any other interesting stories.

Nice to have some fresh stories. Thanks for sharing your experiences Don Goldberg!! Fits in great in my beach boys collection!!

Thanks to reviews. I shan't buy it but looks like interesting read. I liked Goldberg's song about New Year's eve due mainly to its retro-esque mood.