The Smiley Smile Message Board

Mark Linnet was on the live show today at Produce Like A Pro and brought with him some Beach Boys multitracks, including some Smile stuff. Must see.


https://youtu.be/prFdy74TyuA?t=9356 (https://youtu.be/prFdy74TyuA?t=9356) Time stamped.

Oh lord.

"Hasn't been released YET"

This is great to see.  "It was recorded here."  Weird to think about that.  Very cool.  I'll be using this plug in when the time comes.  Beach Boys multitracks are very very special to me.  Very tantalizing stuff.  Lots more I could say...

MULTITRACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great discussions about Sunset Sound history and recording history!  Glorious!!

Mark if you check in here, about the board routing which you touch on in the video--I keep reading Bob Olhsson mentioning that Cal Harris told him that Chuck Britz actually preferred to bypass the board at Western a lot of the time, favoring an Ampex MX-10 for dynamics and ribbons, and going right into a limiter for tube mics.

Was that...possible?  Did the Putnam boards bypassing board-pre inserts from outboard pres?

Also, this detail from the end: "large project" coming "we hope this fall."

Thanks Mark.  We all really appreciate your work.  Really grateful for when you talk about it in this level of detail.

Amazing!!!!

Thanks!!

This just reminds me that we actually don't have that many Dennis backing tracks, do we? "San Miguel" sounds great, I never realized that with the vocals.



RE: Cottonfields

IIRC the players on the session are the Boys themselves plus Red Rhodes on Pedal Steel.

Yes!  And Carter on Bass, Dragon on Keys, and their road horns at the time, Edwwards, Koyen, Peterson, and Small.

Cool, do you have any clue of the musicians involved in the San Miguel sessions?

Damn, this is awesome. Wow.

I've always thought that "San Miguel" was one of the most underrated tracks in the catalog. There is some wicked amazing vocal stuff going on, and I can't wait to hear that song newly mixed, because it's a very muddy mix that we have currently.

Does anybody know, was the mix that was released in the early 1980s done by Dennis back in 1969?
Or was it mixed newly in the 80s at the time it was released?

Yes - the basic track at Sunset was laid down with Dennis on piano, Carl and James Burton on guitars, Lyle Ritz on bass, Hal on drums, Daryl on marimba. Then horns and strings were added at two back-to-back sessions at Valentine nine days later. A couple of days after that, it was back to Sunset for a percussion overdub by Dennis and Hal (castanets & tympani?). Finally, Dennis and Carl added another unknown overdub at Sunset a few days after that (maybe the kazoo solo?).

Mark, if you do see this thread, you mentioned that one multi-track needs to be held down while it's played. I'm wondering if you can share which tape that would be?

Love the interview. The new mix of San Miguel sounds great

I'd read in the pages of the "Add Some Music" fanzine that "San Miguel" was remixed by the group at MIU in late '77. I'd read somewhere else later that this mix was used on the Ten Years Harmony release in '81. I haven't compared that to the bootlegged Landlocked version, or the CD release on 30 Years Of Good Vibrations from '93 to see if there are any noticeable differences (meaning, I don't know if the '93 release used the same mix as the '81 release, or the original '69 mix).

That was fantastic - Thanks Mark, you are a treasure!  :)

What also leapt out from the interview is just how well done Brian Wilson Presents Smile really was, and how precise and respectful the new recordings in 2004 were to the originals in 66-67. Major, majuor kudos to Mark, Brian, Darian, and everyone involved for creating a masterpiece.

Also worth noting is how Mark describes Brian's working methods in 66-67, *without* anything resembling digital editing and easy-access filing of recordings, and just how he managed to create a final mix of Good Vibrations from all of those tapes. Brian, as Mark said, was at least 30 years ahead of his time conceptually, and the technology which we all take for granted since the 90's was the template of how Brian was working in analog in 1967. It is truly amazing to consider that single aspect, and anyone who thinks Brian's "genius" is overrated should get a lecture on that element of his work.

This makes me want to go on a listening binge with Brian Wilson Presents Smile - It's been too long since I have.


Side note: I missed the live event, but if my memory and facts are correct, I went to college with and was in the same program as the moderator (Peter) running the event on YouTube for IK Multimedia. When he said in the chat that he did a production analysis of a Tears For Fears track at Berklee, I was like "Yes sir!" lol. Another one was Sloop John B, and no student I knew ever tackled doing the soundalike of that one because it was just too damn complex to nail.  I'll have to see if we can request "MORE!" content like this...I could listen to these talks for hours.

Cool! Thanks Mr. Slowinski

Fascinating, thanks for the info.

Is that really a kazoo solo? During the bridge you are referring to?
No joke, I always thought that was a fuzzed-out electric guitar.

I think that they recorded a guitar solo and they later overdubbed a kazoo with fuzz in order to double that solo

Love hearing San Miguel in such clean quality. The GV box set was really my intro into the deep fandom but the songs on there are so muddy.

Amazing. That makes sense now that I think about it.

I've always thought that was possibly the coolest guitar solo in the entire catalog, it captures the late 1960s fuzz guitar in a very authentic, non-forced type of manner in my opinion. Sort of what they were trying to achieve with bluebirds over the mountain, but on that song the fuzz guitar came off as forced.

Road horn guys, or studio hires?  How big was the string section?

For sure. Hearing San Miguel like it was meant to be heard is reminiscent of hearing Pet Sounds in stereo for the first time back in '96. Fantastic!

Mark does the Lords work

Hope he knows how much the beach boys community appreciates home

Oh yeah, i have the same feeling towards Mark, you are the real MVP (well, you and Alan Boyd)

I have no way of knowing whether there is ANY truth in this statement, or whether the guy was just being a troll and trying to get everybody's hopes up in vain for his own lolz... but did anyone here watch the Mark/Warren Huart interview at Sunset with the live chat enabled at the side? It came on by default in my browser and most of it was the fairly forgettable stuff you get in live comment feeds... but, towards the end, after Mark mentioned during the interview that the final eight-track multitrack master tape for Good Vibrations was missing, this guy calling himself 'MegaBirdman2' made two comments at around 3hrs 55mins into the stream (pics of both attached to the end of this post).

I have no idea who he's talking about (I'm based in the UK), but a quick Google revealed that there is an West Coast-based engineer called Robert Honablue, quite old now, who worked at CBS at some point and ran his own studio until recently.

Like I say, this might just be an on-line guy yanking everyone's chain on the IK live chat because, well... it's a live chat, he has a pseudonym and he *can*... but is it worth checking this GV multitrack info out any further?

Caveat emptor: the same guy, 'MegaBirdman2' seemed a bit cheesed off earlier in the live chat thread, as he felt the live giveaways IK were doing during the streamed interviews weren't very fair and he was (unfairly, it seemed to me) annoyed that he hadn't won anything. So I think he might have just been trying to stir things up a bit. If that was his aim, it didn't work, since as far as I could see no-one responded to his Good Vibrations comments at all! Which is why I've posted this... I thought everyone here would be discussing it by now, but it seems it passed unnoticed thus far. I thought 'ah, he's probably just a troll... I'll forget it too'. But then the thought grabbed me: what if it WAS true and the GV multi HAD actually survived by being taken from CBS before all the tapes there were junked? I wouldn't want that info to be missed if there's the slightest possibility it's true...?

*I'm* on the level, by the way. I'm an audio tech journalist based in the UK. I post under my real name, and have been doing so here for years. I interviewed Mark myself and wrote the piece in the UK recording magazine Sound On Sound in 2004 on the recording of BWPS, and also conducted a Sound On Sound video interview with Mark last year in his own studio about... well, all sorts of stuff, but mainly the back catalogue copyright retention reissues. I would love the GV multitrack to be found (wouldn't we all?).

Sadly, I can't necessarily say the same for 'MegaBirdman2'. I've no idea who he is and he might just be trying to get a rise out of people. But surely, what he says might be worth looking into?

MattB

Oh wow, they'll need to check if the info provided by this guy is real, he might be bluffing but yeah, who knows (btw, i loved the Sound on Sound interview of Mark in 2019, you need to interview him when this Feel Flows box set-thing releases)

After a quick google search it doesn’t look like it would be very difficult to get in touch with Robert and see if there is any truth.

Road horn guys Fred Koyen, Mike Price, and Ernie Small...plus Darryl Eaton (who may or may not have toured with them at some point) and Roger Neumann, who served as horn arranger on quite a few of their late-'60s sessions. In fact, he's also listed on the session for the string section overdub which immediately followed...along with five violinists. EDIT: not sure exactly what instrument is playing the solo - I used to think it was a Moog, but Jan. '69 seems too early for Moog on a BBs session, and Paul Beaver is not listed on the AFM contracts, as he is on contracts for "Celebrate The News", "Forever", and "Loop De Loop" a couple of months later. Listening to it now, it could very well be a highly-compressed electric guitar with fuzztone, maybe doubled by a kazoo fed through the same amp? I dunno, but that would explain the Dennis and Carl overdub session. Also, dig how Hal's voice can be heard counting down the track under the castanets, which were obviously overdubbed. Lastly - regarding the mix, I found a quote I'd saved from Mr. Petsite: "San Miguel was pulled for MIU and remixed. Then pulled again for KTSA. The version Carl used mastering TYOH was the remixed one."

Craig, did you clock the discussion above about the Good Vibrations multitrack? Does that sound like it might be worth exploring... or is it just a load of smoke and mirrors from some guy on-line...?

May I sneak in a third person whose work is pretty important right now? And make it a trinity? (Think "Power Mower".)

Hey Matt - good to hear from you again! Yes, this seems too good to be true - so it probably is. But stranger things have definitely happened! Time will tell!

Yeah, that's it Craig... in Doctor Who fandom (which I also graze along the edge of...) they're always looking for missing tapes of old material recorded in the 1960s and 1970s too (the parallels with the BB archive are a bit uncanny sometimes...) and one of the arch-episode-hunters has pretty much exactly what you've just said as his watchword when looking for this old stuff. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". And "Don't believe anything until you have experienced *first-hand* incontrovertible evidence that it's true". So no 'my mate whom I really trust says he heard/saw it... so it must be true'.

It's still got to be worth a quick look at this stage though, eh?

Matt

This Honablue story is certainly intriguing even if it's ultimately a bunch of hot air. Hopefully someone indeed can at least check on this. Who knows, perhaps the name Honablue is already known to those who have looked for the tapes in the past.

For that matter, do we know how active the search for the GV multis has been in the past? Meaning, has anyone tried calling a bunch of people who worked for CBS and could have possibly been in the vicinity of these tapes? I'm not saying someone should have, it certainly becomes and etiquette issue at a certain point if you start cold-calling every living former employee of CBS and related studios.

One of any number of things that would seem to make this story less likely is that it seems that Honablue is indeed an industry veteran who has worked a lot of jobs and would presumably have a good working knowledge of the industry. One would think this guy would have been aware long ago that the multis for GV are missing. If the guy really had the GV vocal multis, it would imply he's either super-duper not paying attention to that area of the industry, or he's being cagey or hoarding or whatever one would want to call it, regarding the tapes.

We've seen stories in the past of some random person ending up with tapes, and sometimes it makes sense that they don't know what it is or what the context is. But this would be a case of a working engineer who came up in that era ending up with the multi-track tapes to part of one of the most famous songs in recorded popular music history. You'd think someone with that knowledge would have either handed the tapes over or, if they desire to benefit from them, made overtures to make some sort of financial arrangement.

After what happened with those "Shut Down Vol. 2" tapes, it's certainly worth looking into if they haven't already.

It's Linett, by the way--he's probably more likely to post if we keep spelling his name right...   ;D

Corrected! Ta.

Yes like Beetlejuice if you get my name right I will appear.......... or not

Glad everyone liked the interview

Sad to report that the GV tape thing was as I  expected, a hoax  ......... I've spoken to the engineer in question and he never worked at CBS in Hollywood and has no idea  who the mystery person is who posted during the interview , or why the troll would claim that he had the tape......

Would have been nice if it had been true however.

Mark

i knew that the guy was bluffing/faking the whole situation, i liked the interview and the mix of the tracks presented on the interview, good job Mark!

I just think it's great that Sunset Sound is still there! So many other legendary studios of that era are gone:  Gold Star, Columbia, RCA, Wally Heider, The Hit Factory in NYC. Thank God we still have Western (now East-West, but with a virtually unchanged Studio Three), Sunset, the Village, and the Record Plant (at least the one in L.A.). EDIT: and Capitol!

It doesn't necessarily fit with the Beach Boys related "theme", but another older studio that still exists and operates is Electric Lady Studios. It has gone through a fairly extensive renovation over the years though.

And Valentine!

Perhaps slightly off topic, but does Sun Records still exist?

Yes, both the label and the studio still exist, but they are separate companies. The label mostly focuses on reissues and the occasional new artist, while the studio mostly focuses on tours during the day and sessions during the night.

The Chess Records studio in Chicago seems to be functioning as a museum these days, with guided tours daily. Anyone know if recording still happens there?

Just some rambling comments on these classic studios mentioned above and others, hopefully to answer some questions and maybe generate a few tears and groans as well...

Sun Records, mostly a tourist destination but a must see one at that. Not sure about booking availability to actually record there...would like more info on that if possible!

Stax studio is a museum now that has full displays and can be booked for events too - No commercial recording though.

Friends took a trip to visit both Sun and Stax a few months ago, and brought back T-shirts, guitar picks, and other awesome stuff for me from the gift shops! The museums come highly recommended, by anyone I know who has gone to these museums, and a trip well worth considering for any music fans obviously. I have to make that trip before it's too late.

Sigma Sound in Philly, home of the "Philly Sound" with Gamble & Huff, Thom Bell, Joe Tarsia, etc...is sadly a shell of an unused building right now. The place was sold to a developer who gutted it, with plans to demolish it and build commercial/retail at the site, but that never happened and it sits abandoned. The only thing to mark it is a historical marker on the street outside the former studio. But fortunately, thousands of tapes were donated to a local college and are still in the process of being digitized, transferred, and also some newly found forgotten Philly Soul projects have been getting limited releases. But that amazing studio where all those classic sounds were made is gone.

Related and just as sad, Gamble and Huff still had Philadelphia International Studios running until 2010 when some nutcase torched it. Memorabilia was lost as was the facility itself damaged, but no tapes were lost...however, it never recovered and was sold then demolished...again, replaced by commercial/residential development. I think there is a gold brick or something marking the location where so many great records were made.


Now to New York, since the Record Plant and Hit Factory were mentioned.

I was at both of those places in the early 2000's when some of our clients and friends from New York were tracking there.

At that time, The Record Plant (East) still had the same basic studio design and features, obviously with the gear updated. But those wood-panel walls you see in the classic photos of John and Yoko recording there were still fully intact, as was most of the layout of where the board was, the wooden floors, the smaller project/mix studio down the hall, the screening room from the 20's, etc.

I was lucky to have thought enough to take photos, including one in *that room* behind the board right where Lennon was sitting when we were in there. It was almost funny to see several very expensive reel-to-reel multitracks sitting in a corner of the projection room, unused with dust on them, tape machines which were worth tens of thousands just a few years prior. But everything at that time had transitioned to Mac and digital...no one wanted tape in the big city studios. I wonder what happened to all those machines.

Likewise, the tape itself and a pretty wild scene:

So there was access to the roof above the studio, you had to cut through a hall, and through what at that time looked like a catch-all storage for 2" analog tapes and assorted gear. So we walked through...shelves full of tape boxes on the left, and on the right was a little table which had a handful of original Rupert Neve channel strips just sitting there having been removed from some gear or another. Unreal. But that was the state of studios at that time.

Anyway, you'd literally walk through a window, then up some ladder-stairs, and there was the roof. Totally bare, typical Mid-town NYC building roof. But this is where Lennon used to hang out when he'd drop by the Record Plant. The legend told to me was that there was a small room with a tiny stage built for Lennon to hang out and play in the 70's with his buddies...whether true or not, there was indeed a small room on that roof with a small stage and the multi-colored sonic wall treatments and baffles behind a door on that roof. I took pictures of that room and me in it for posterity, a little slice of Lennon and NYC history if the stories were indeed true and that was Lennon's hangout.

Probably shouldn't say this, but we spent one of the best nights of my life hanging out on that roof, draining a bottle of great whiskey, and watching the city wake up as the sun came up the next morning. Hanging where John Lennon hung out? Too much to process, and a true gift for a Beatles fan never mind getting the chance to work and be in those studios. But anyway, I also spent some quality time in the Record Plant bathroom that next morning, courtesy of the whiskey.  ;D

Sadly, now, the entire building where the Record Plant was housed had been bought, remodeled, and repurposed into a multi-faceted business and office complex, including restaurants. It passed through several owners just after we had worked there. That bare city roof where Lennon hung out is now some kind of commercial deck with tables and umbrellas. The studio rooms are available for business meetings and whatnot...I think there may be one rehearsal studio floor, but I'm not sure. I haven't been there for 16 years (?).

Needless to say, the place where the music was recorded in those amazing rooms is now a modern commercial/residential operation. If anyone has more info on what exactly they do there, please post, but the studios are no longer.

Another place I was fortunate enough to be at sessions just before they closed was The Hit Factory. This was literally a year or two before it closed up. Pretty amazing facility. What struck me was when you walked in and to the elevators, the walls were nearly floor to ceiling with gold records that had been recorded there. When you got to the studio room where our client was, the lounge outside the control room was simply amazing. The room itself was huge. They were setting up for a string session that next morning, and there were many Neumann mics ready to set up on that hardwood floor. I could have made a down-payment on a house with those mics. But what really struck me, at that time still being an analog-minded guy, was how there was a massive board with sidecars and the like, yet all activity was going to a Mac. The board could have been a table instead of a crucial piece of gear. Anyway...those were the times, and that's also why massive facilities like the Hit Factory closed up in the years after that.

I think the Hit Factory building is another one bought and repurposed into high-end commercial/residential use, with yet another rehearsal space perhaps? I just don't know.

But there is no more music being recorded at these amazing studios...and they have been gutted and repurposed into whatever they are now. Sad.

And also worth repeating the earlier sentiment about how fortunate it is that places like East-West and the other Putnam studios are still operating, along with those other legendary rooms mentioned. And fortunate too that classic studios like Sun and Stax (and Motown of course) have been turned into museums for the public to view. Recording active clients there was most likely not a viable option so they opened the doors as a historical site.

PS - Last I heard about Chess was that it perhaps was closed to the public or was not doing so well...They tried to run what I think was called "The Willie Dixon Blues Museum" or something out of the Chess location with tours and whatnot, but I don't know if it's still up and running for the public.

PPS - Anyone interested in recording with vintage gear on the East Coast should look into Sear Sound in NYC. For a long time it was *the* place to go for vintage gear and one of the best working vintage microphone collections in the world, kept running and fully maintained. As far as I know as of the present time, anyone can book a session there. FYI - Walter Sear himself was the Moog representative who hooked up The Beach Boys with Bob Moog's Electro Theremin when they needed something easier than a real Theremin in '66 to play Good Vibrations on tour. Walter passed away about 10 years ago.

Hope that answered a few questions, and if anyone has more specific info on these places (or experiences at The Record Plant, etc) please  let us know!

Thanks for that, Craig. Fascinating memoir indeed! I remember meeting up with Ed Sciaky sometime in the early 70's and going over to Sigma to catch someone cutting a demo and I say someone because I can't remember who it was. It must have been some group that Ed was fond of but I can't remember who it was for the life of me. Off topic, but I DO remember being up at 'MMR one day when Barry Manilow was there for an interview with Ed. After the interview, the three of us walked over to the Snow White Restaurant, a greasy spoon on Walnut and had lunch. Barry was one hell of a nice person. My mom, who adored him, was flabbergasted to say the least.

Ah, so that's why Jack Rieley never posted here. :lol

Sun operates as a museum by day (my wife and I did the tour in 2003), functioning studio at night (Chris Isaak recorded a rockabilly covers album at Sun in 2011).

https://www.sunstudio.com/record

When I went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame museum, they had an actual section of the original 1950's studio, with the original floor and wall design. I remember an old microphone being there, and I *think* perhaps a tape machine of some kind. It was honestly one of the coolest, most amazing things I've ever had the privilege to see in person. The whole museum was amazing beyond words. But that's a whole story in itself. Perhaps I'll make a topic on it. We spent roughly 6-8 hours there.  ;D

It is available to record:

Follow in the footsteps of legends like BB King, Ike Turner, and Elvis Presley!

Sun Studio is open 7 days a week as an attraction giving tours of the studio. As soon as we close down daytime operations we open up for recording around 7pm. Rates start at $200 per hour for a five hour block.

https://www.sunstudio.com/record


EDIT: Ah, I see it was already answered. Sorry!



There was a Sun Sessions series on youtube with current acts playing in the studio. Here's two of the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnv-trjCtWo

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

Seems like the series was aired on PBS.


BTW, check out Peter Guralnick's massive "Sam Phillips- The man who invented Rock'n'Roll" - a must read and although thick as the Bible, you get very fast through it because it's so well written.




I was going to ask Mr Linett about this. Mark, did you ever go to 706 Union Avenue? I heard that Sam Phillips' self made ceiling makes for a very special and dynamic sound. Now, I've never been there and neither have I a lot of knowledge about this stuff. But you can definitely hear something special on the old recordings.

Just a quick note to say sorry to all on this thread, as I have done elsewhere on-line, for shining a spotlight on something (the untrue so-called lead on the whereabouts of the GV multitrack) that was ultimately just a waste of everyone's time... and which I guess, somewhere, must have given the warped 'Megabirdman' his trolling kicks (Why!!? Why do this? What a waste of space!!!!).

As I said at 'the other place', it seemed suspicious and dodgy, sure... but I figured I *had* to draw attention to it just in case there *was* something in it... which of course must have been exactly what Mr Megabirdman was hoping someone somewhere would do.

My feelings on the whole thing are best (and most politely) summed up in the words of good ol'Charlie Brown: "Rats!".

Now, back to the main purpose of the thread before I blew it off course. Thanks to IK and Mark for the interview, which was great. And I'm afraid I can't add much to the former great studios conversation. I watched a string overdub at CTS Studios once, and that's now just a Wembley Stadium car park... does that count? I think some cool artists recorded there back in the day...? Not as impressive as Craig's excellent recollections from the Record Plant, however...!!!

Mark --  I've had a chance to use the Sunset Plug-In a bit now.  It's interesting to me how relatively short the decay is on Chamber 1.  2 and 3 are much longer.  Is it likely Brian might have used any of these for something like "Here Today"?   Also of note is the great sounding Spring reverb.

Also still hoping you'll talk about my question earlier in the thread about pres and routing!!

I don't know for certain, but doubt that he would have used the AMPEX MX-10 which was vastly inferior to the console in Western Studio 3.  And that console didn't have inserts on each chl. It was a high impedance mixer which was fine because it had 3 or later 4 busses (Outputs) to feed the 3 track or 4 track deck. With only 3 or 4 tracks that was all you needed. The console in Studio 2 had a transformer on the output so an insert patch was possible as was a direct out so that console was easily used for 8 track recording.

Thanks for the response, Mark.  I think it’s extremely important to get as much information about the working methods of the 3-track (and to some extent 4-track) era as we can before it is lost.  So you are doing history a valuable service when you answer my esoteric queries.  I wonder if Cal Harris (for those who don’t know, he was an engineer for Motown Los Angeles) was describing an 8-track era practice, when engineers were starting to have to get used to the sound of solid state consoles.  I could see Chuck bypassing an early transistorized pre?  Do you agree Mark?

And if you feel like it, I really am curious if you feel like you can ID which chambers or plates or tanks you hear on Brian’s Sunset Sound tracks. 

Also one more question for you, Mark, if you feel like answering.

On the IK livestream you mentioned that the Sunset Sound console in the 3 and 4 track era lacked channel EQ, having only the Fairchild 664s on the busses.  Now, the 610 modules had channel EQ, but did United Western also have program EQs on their busses?  And did gold star have any EQ other than Channel EQ (which I assume they had based on some Larry Levine comments)?

Thanks Mark, and history thanks you as well.

FYI, he was also the engineer on the first "Good Vibrations" tracking session (Gold Star, 2/17-18, 1966). :)

Yeah it seems that he cut his teeth both at Gold Star and at United Western (thus the Britz mentorship) before making his career at Motown.  He is hard to find specific biographical information about (like many of those fellows.)