The Smiley Smile Message Board

While looking up archival articles from this discussion that turned toward the Hawaii shows in August 67: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,27606.0.html (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,27606.0.html)  ,
I found some interesting footnotes from that summer related to Dennis visiting Honolulu in July '67 and shopping for a house there! I thought the timeline was interesting based on surrounding articles and announcements first of the concert being a rumor, then a confirmation of the concert and how it would be recorded for a live album. It's also interesting to think how history may have been different if Dennis had bought property in Hawaii that summer, because not only does it suggest he was looking for a getaway out of LA, but also Manson had just been released from prison a few months ago, and if Dennis was spending more time in Hawaii than LA, they may never have crossed paths in '68.

Most of this comes from Dave Donnelly's "The Teen Beat" music column which appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. In his Wednesday July 26th '67 column, he wrote:
"All six of the Beach Boys (the sixth being Bruce Johnston) sing on the group's barbershop flavored "Heroes And Villains". Rumor has it that the group may appear in Honolulu before the summer is over. They want to record an 'in person' album here, because the crowds are so responsive and groovy." Then, interestingly, he mentions Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe" single, coincidentally she would appear with the Boys for her debut live performance at the concerts which were just a rumor at this point.

Then in Donnelly's Saturday July 29th '67 column in the Star-Bulletin, he writes this, after reporting Carl's acquittal in a US District Court on his draft evasion charges:
"Brother Dennis Wilson sneaked into Honolulu this week, and announced to pals he wants to live here permanently. If The Beach Boys plan to stick together as a performing group, a move seems unlikely, but don't be surprised at an announcement that the group will do a show here in the near future."

A few days later, Wednesday Aug. 2 '67, Donnelly wrote:
"Beach Boy Dennis Wilson is house hunting in Honolulu. He already has a home in Los Angeles, but would like to have a headquarters here as well. We asked him if he'd just fly back to record and he replied, "Maybe we'll build a recording studio here." Could it be that all the Beach Boys will move here? In the meantime Dennis is looking for a house, "preferably an old one."
Again Donnelly mentions Billie Gentry, how her single sold 500,000 copies in two weeks, and how a Mainland (Hawaii) promoter is interested in bringing her here for a show.

The next day, August 3rd, both the Star-Bulletin (as a regular news story) and the Honolulu Advertiser (in Wayne Harada's 'On The Record' music column) announced the Beach Boys "Summer Spectacular" series of concerts with Paul Revere for the 25th and 26th, not mentioning Gentry's addition to the lineup until the next week. Harada's column mentioned that a live album would be recorded at the shows.

I found it interesting that Dennis flew to Hawaii the week before the concerts were announced, and made his own announcement that he was shopping for a home there! I wonder how much more this series of events extends into Beach Boys history at that time beyond Dennis visiting Hawaii low-key, and whether there were talks within the band of actually moving there too in some capacity. Obviously Dennis spoke to Donnelly, otherwise Donnelly would not have been able to print quotes as he did. Donnelly seemed to have the inside track on the upcoming concerts too, prior to the official announcements, did he get that info from Dennis himself on that visit? And who else went with Dennis on this trip? Management, Capitol reps, etc? It just mentions his "pals".

And it's still fascinating to think how history would have been different if Dennis had indeed bought a house there in '67.

Well for one thing, Dennis would have a peaceful life free of troubles. Kinda fits his character actually. This was a good read!

An old Denny might still be living in a Honolulu bungalow had history taken a turn there. Imagine Dennis just being a fairly anonymous old fellow who did his share of surfing and is now enjoying quiet Hawaiian life... Sad, but being a Beach Boy is ultimately what killed Dennis. Had he not been a Beach Boy on the other hand the world would not have heard his unique music.

Indeed, it seems more likely than not that moving out of L.A. would have been beneficial for Denny.   It's interesting, and also to some extent consistent with larger demographic trends for their generation, that most of the group did eventually move away from greater Los Angeles.   Except for that weird sojourn to St Charles, Illinois (where apparently one winter was enough), Brian has proven to be the inveterate Angeleno. 

Oddly, I had a dream about DW the other night. Odd, because I hadn't particularly been thinking of him recently. Anyways, in this dream, it was modern-day times, and Dennis re-emerged from a faked death. He told me he had faked his own death to get away and live in anonymity, away from the spotlight and the entertainment business. He looked older, but good - kind of like his 1966 self, but with grey hair, and small, round tinted eyeglasses. His voice was a "normal" DW voice, not hoarse and raspy. He stood up straight, and seemed really fit for his age, with no noticeable vices. I asked him if he still lived in California, and he said no, he had to get away from there. I had the feeling he was living on an island somewhere in the Pacific...

Whoa! That’s one heck of a dream!

Interestingly, I read that Dennis's son, Gage, lives in Hawaii. Perhaps following in his father's almost footsteps.

Indeed, so many alternate possibilities for how things could've gone differently, it is simultaneously fascinating as it is sad.

It's not as widely reported that Dennis or any of the band members were considering such a move at this specific time, and for me it added yet another layer of situations that were swirling around the band and affecting their decision-making and essentially changing the course of their future plans at this exact time in history. They had the Smile situation, Carl's legal issues regarding the draft, the lawsuit with Capitol which was still working itself out in various ways, the establishment of a new record label and business, Monterey Pop was on the horizon with Brian on the board of governors, and the touring band had just returned from a European tour where they received some pretty stinging reviews from the critics...yet they were having what was probably their most successful period financially and even critically up to that point. The August 3 newspaper column in the Star-Bulletin announcing the Summer Spectacular concerts noted that the band's recordings alone earned them 2 million dollars in 1966.

So it is surprising but also not surprising at the same time that Dennis would be looking for an escape chute of sorts...they had the money, he had the resources, and Hawaii was becoming known even this early as a paradise for not only surfers and a more laid-back lifestyle, but also as a destination for those seeking spiritual, cosmic, or chemically-aided enlightenment. Consider one of the themes of Smile centered around Hawaii, and Smiley Smile featured a musical and lyrical ode to having a pad in Hawaii! Coincidence? I think not.

And I agree, the Hawaiian lifestyle on the surface did seem like a perfect fit for Dennis.

So one question becomes why did the move not happen? The articles clearly state his intentions at that time, and also address the issues of his work with the band and how the distance was a major issue, yet it also doesn't suggest Dennis was looking to move entirely to Hawaii, but rather have it as his getaway? It's unclear. Obviously nothing ever happened.

But I just file this into the importance of that one specific time in the band's history, roughly May into June 1967 after they returned from Europe and after work on what was previously "Smile" had stopped and the temporary home studio was set up. To me, whatever happened during those few weeks, whatever was said, whatever ultimately got decided (like the move to Brian's living room to record), and whatever was left on the drawing board is absolutely *crucial* to at least the next several decades of the band's history. It seems like the table in front of the band was overflowing with ideas and new business plans, for all members to partake, yet look at how things played out in reality. Nothing seemed to click despite having some pretty solid business plans, and there always seemed to be an air of uncertainty hanging over the group.

When it's learned Dennis was looking to buy a house in Hawaii at this same time, we have to wonder if he was looking for an "out" from Hollywood and all the BS that goes with it, if he was just looking for a "Little Pad" to chill out and escape for weeks at a time, or if there was some notion in the air of the band not sticking around for much longer and Dennis was looking for other options apart from being a Beach Boy...who knows. Even Brian questioned how long they could be "Beach-Boying" into the future in an interview he gave at the Hawaii rehearsals. We can only piece things together from articles and interviews at this point, and the pickings are slim from this time in the band's history.

Brian himself said in 1968 that the group had nearly "broke up for good" a year earlier.

Not sure the ultimate source of this quotation but it appears around the internet (e.g., in the Prokopy Smile notes, etc):

Early 1967, I had planned to make an album entitled SMILE.  I was working with a guy named Van Dyke Parks, who was collaborating with me on some of the tunes, and in the process, we came up with a song called "Surf's Up," and I performed that with just a piano on a documentary show made on rock music.  The song "Surf's Up" that I sang on that documentary never came out on an album, and it was supposed to come out on the SMILE album, and that and a couple of other songs were junked... because... I don't know why... for some
 reason didn't want to put them on the album.  And the group nearly broke up, actually broke up for good after that.
  -Brian Wilson, 1968


Based on that quote, I've often wondered whether the Inside Pop "Surf's Up" itself played an outsized role in the intra-band strife during that period... and Smile's collapse.  Remember, David Oppenheim had also filmed the *group* singing in the studio.  How much resentment among the other guys was there that only Brian made the cut for that TV show... singing his artsy-fartsy ballad in a solo piano rendition?    Obviously, Brian had no editorial control over what Oppenheim put in his documentary, so it wasn't his fault per se, but this was a pretty unprecedented turn of events for the group who had always appeared together on Ed Sullivan etc. 

 But think about how bizarre that whole thing was.  You have Brian singing this gorgeous song on national TV (at a time when that meant perhaps 1/3 of the entire country's TV audience was watching)... a song that the show's narrator describes as "beautiful in its obscurity," and then you don't even bother to finish the damned song and rush it into record stores, like, immediately?    Something very weird was happening with the group.  And, next thing you know, it's "Smiley Smile produced by the Beach Boys"

As Dennis explained to Pete Fornatale in 1976, it was Brian who insisted that the production credit on their records be given to the whole group beginning with Smiley. Honestly, I think that was because he no longer wished to bear the "official" responsibility himself, regardless of the fact that he was the one actually producing the records still, at this point. He was withdrawing from the "production race".

It's possible the group wasn't even aware of Brian's appearance on the Inside Pop special or cared about it. They may have been touring, I'm sure someone knows. I mean Caroline No was released under Brian's name. I think we care a lot more about this stuff than the BB's did.

I've said it many times including above, but something big happened to change the dynamic after the band returned from Europe in May 1967. Big as in a game-changer with ripple effects lasting well into the next decade and beyond, or a whole host of issues and gripes reaching a boiling point both from the group as a whole and with individual members. I think there were simultaneous factors coming from band members and Brian that either triggered certain events or led to actions following up on other events. I do think the attention on Brian from appearances like Inside Pop where he played solo with nary a Beach Boy in sight (even though they had been filmed too for the same show) and various articles singling him out caused conflict, or at least some resentment, within the band. This is backed up below...

And I also think Brian at various points during and after this time period had the mindset of saying "screw this", wanted to bail from the stress and bulllshit, and no doubt, he did want to withdraw from the competition of the production race (even though he was still clearly running the show in the studio for Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends as the tapes show). Also backed up below...

But it does seem possible that at some point, late May/June 1967, everyone reconvened after that  tour and had an airing of grievances in some form, who knows how or what actually happened beyond those who were there. But the dam seems to have burst in some form within the group. Derek Taylor mentioned some of the issues the band addressed among each other in one of his columns from this time. Then one burst of positive energy came July 5th, when Brian and an entourage hopped in their cars to deliver his final Heroes mix to KHJ (and according to the LA Times, other radio stations around LA too), and even that turned into a debacle which deflated Brian.

And a few weeks later in July 1967, we see reports of Dennis looking to buy a house in Hawaii. It just adds more layers and questions to a period of time which seems crucial to the band's future trajectory yet a period which is rarely reported beyond the surface.

Relevant quotes to consider from the Don Was documentary:

Brian:
"I had a great big, a great problem with the Beach Boys. And I wanted to do my kind of music and they wanted to do their kind of music. So it was a tug of war, I felt like I was getting pulled to pieces. Like two...inner turmoil that's struggling, with the see-saw, kind of teeter totter kind of thing, you know? Where I was being pulled all around, you know? And I just about, I fell to pieces."

"When I was younger I was a real competitor, then as I got older I said is it worth the bull, the bullshit, you know, to compete like that? And I said, nah, for awhile there I said I just said hey I'm gonna coast, I'm gonna make real nice music, nothing competitive, right?"

Marilyn:
"He had a real hard time with the guys, after Pet Sounds and after Smile. Because he felt guilty that he got all the attention, and he was the one who was called the genius. And, you know, he knew, he felt that the guys really resented that, and I think they did. I think it was very hard for them to understand why is Brian Wilson singled out. But anybody with a brain would know why."

"Well he would slowly just stay in the bedroom and let the guys record in the studio, since the Beach Boys paid for the studio. And it just became more and more that he would just stay in bed, didn't want to go down, and, you know, 'let them do their thing, let them do their thing'. And it was very tough for him because he thought that they all hated him. I think it was like, 'OK you assholes, you know, you wanna...you think you can do as good as me, or whatever? Like, go ahead. So you can do it, you do it. You think it's so easy? You do it.'"

"And I don't think Brian really ever came back. I don't think he ever had the need, I mean...he was just torn down, he really was. They slowly tore him down. I hate to say it, but they did."

The group was aware of all this, not only were they all filmed for the show by Oppenheim's CBS News crew but even Murry showed up when the CBS crew was filming and they got footage of him in the swimming pool. The show first aired in April '67 and was also rebroadcast that summer. No way the band members would not have known or cared when they were not only filmed (and their appearances left on the cutting room floor) but their brother-cousin-bandmate was going to be featured on network TV.

Re: Caroline No as a BW single. Consider for the discussion how the album released after Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, similarly featured the song "Gettin Hungry" which was pressed as a single under the name "Brian Wilson and Mike Love", rather than a Beach Boys single. Coincidence? The reasons why that was done are up for discussion, but it doesn't seem to be a random decision.

(http://images.45cat.com/brian-wilson-and-mike-love-gettin-hungry-1967-5-s.jpg)

^^^ This was the single most significant line in IJWMFTT, in my opinion.  Let's face it, few were or are in a better position than Marilyn to understand the dynamics at play during that period.

In the Jamake Highwater interview in 1968, Brian himself (tragically) says, "I stopped trying to do such great things."

To some extent, all of this is "of a piece."   I would add in Brian's ill-fated attempt to branch out with Redwood, as described by Chuck Negron years later:

"It all came to a head...when Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine came to the studio and heard our version of 'Time To Get Alone'...They manoeuvred Brian into the control booth and reduced him to tears. It was a cruel and pathetic scene. Danny, Cory and I were in the studio and could see it all happening through the control-booth window. It was as if Brian had turned into a little boy. The conversation appeared quiet and calm, but we could tell it was emotional and intense. The others were doing most of the talking, like overbearing, controlling parents. Brian would move away, and they would block his escape. We couldn't hear what was being said, but I think a good lip-reader would have picked up something like, 'We don't give a **** about these guys, and we want those songs for us.' We could actually feel Brian crumbling, and when he came out of the booth, a tear dropped down his cheek. His head was lowered and his shoulders sagged. It was the body language of a child who had just been scolded and punished. And this brilliant musical icon - whose songs defined one generation and influenced another - weepingly told us, 'We can't do this. I have to give the songs to them. They're family and I have to take care of my family. They want the songs. I'll give you any amount of money you want to finish an album, but I can't produce it. They won't let me.'"

The currently fashionable term for what occurred in 1967 is "deplatforming." How or why that happened is up for debate (not really) but that's what it was. 

The Marilyn quote and the Three Dog Night episode are both pretty telling. It's really no wonder Brian got into a more passive-aggressive mode at the time. The band also gave him a hard time over Old Man River, right? I find it remarkable that he still gave them any good material after all that, so I guess they probably reconciled their differences at least for some short periods of time, like for the Sunflower sessions where he was more involved afaik, although not as their leader (which I feel is apparent in the music, which is nice but doesn't really sound like a Brian production to me). In terms of making (and finishing) music I don't think he ever regained the drive he had in the 60s, except maybe for a brief period during the "Brian's Back" timeframe.

"I have to give the songs to them.....They want the songs...., but I can't produce it. They won't let me."

to my mind it's one thing the rest of the group wanted those songs for the Beach Boys, but it's quite another thing they're preventing Brian from producing Redwood songs at all

The group was afraid of competition?  It doesn't exactly make sense since of course Brian had already produced records for other artists--glen campbell,  the Castells, Sharon marie, etc.  They didn't exactly get bent out of shape about those

That's a fair point, but I would note that there may have been a change in attitude between 1964 and 1967.   Three years after Brian was doing side projects with the likes of Sharon Marie, the other guys had acquired houses and wives and even ex-wives.  There may have been less in the way of "let Brian have his fun" and more in the way of "hey, we all have bills to pay here."

"we all have bills to pay here"

the rest of the group will always have their bills to pay, it does not rule out Brian producing records for others.  Honeys record production may be viewed as an ongoing thing.  And later Carl produces 2 albums for The Flame

Danny Hutton once said Mike Love took him aside (since he was Brians close friend) and told him a Redwood 45 was possible, but not Brian producing an entire album for them (Danny apparently turned down the offer of just a 45).  So I wonder what song that 45 would've been--Time To Get Alone?

It's also worth noting that there was much more external recognition / reputation around Brian and his ability in 1967 vs 1964. Perhaps some outside production would've been more successful than previously. Counter to that he did a few more Honeys things without any great success.

There is also at least one parallel in the Fred Vail album project a few years later.

Perhaps the biggest point regarding production was that to Brian at that time, production and songwriting were one and the same, for the most part at least. I would say that at least 90% of what Brian produced, he wrote. That percentage is considerably higher if you add in valuable reinterpretation.

The other thing is, the Beach Boys sans Brian . . had no material at that time. None. Hence Al's "attempt" at Good News during the Smiley Smile sessions.

Redwood weren't really hit songwriters (proven by the fact that Three Dog Night always recorded outside material for their singles). Hence, Brian's involvement with them would've been supplying material AND producing it. In '63-'64, Brian was writing and producing plenty of hits for The Beach Boys, so they weren't as concerned with his outside endeavors (which, aside from his cowrites with Jan Berry for J&D, weren't resulting in hits). By late '67 though, the career of The Beach Boys was on the line - H&V was a relative failure compared to GV, and the Smiley Smile album was turning out to be a huge letdown, in terms of commercial and artistic appeal. I'm sure the band was desperate to hold onto any BW material that might possibly give them any chance of having a hit. To their minds, that HAD to be Brian's sole priority now.

posts coming to the defense of Mike Love putting the ki-bosh on Brians' Redwood project back then

astonishing!

Time to get alone (in the control booth) with Mike Love. >:D

If Brian gave Time to Get Alone and Darlin' away to Redwood, nobody would know those songs today.

I can't imagine anyone is being totally honest with themselves when acting as though they'd prefer Danny Hutton singing Time to Get Alone and Darlin' to Carl and Brian, as much as the circumstances surrounding the switch were ugly. In the long run, Brian loved those songs with the Beach Boys' voices, and he worked enthusiastically on them to completion in both cases (emphasis on both, despite the 20/20 inner gatefold).

Danny Hutton generally did not take the lead vocals on 3 dog night songs, it was corey wells or chuck Negron who sang.  everybody knows this.  

you can hear corey wells sing darlin' on a beach boys live concert video from the late '80s that's easy to access online (brian is there), when they hand the song off to 3 dog night (2 out of 3 members, chuck negron having disassociated himself)

and you can hear redwood sing Time To Get Alone, which as I recall is mostly chuck negrons voice although it does alternate, on the double CD celebrate the three dog night story (it has a slight unfinished quality, as if Brian was only 90% done producing it originally)

asserting that Darlin' belongs to Carl and him alone is worse than revisionist history, it's erasive history since that's exactly what happened--recorded redwood vocals were 'wiped' and replaced w/ the beach boys.  remember that darlin' was brians to do with as he wished, it being a re-write of a previously recorded melody of his Thinking 'Bout You Baby, likewise released by another singer (Sharon marie)

And Brian has repeatedly called out Darlin' as one of his favourite Carl vocals, second to God Only Knows, and one of his favourite Beach Boys songs period. I don't think he feels too hard done by about that one.

Time to Get Alone - yes, clearly some lingering negative feelings there, as told by Ray Lawlor in a post on here years ago. Regardless, it was Brian who then spearheaded four separate attempts after the Redwood incident to record/rewrite/rearrange/rerecord the song for the Beach Boys. Not Carl independently, not anyone else in the group, not forced. Maybe he felt obligated to, but Brian did do that.

I'm aware that the Three Dog interpretation is a three-way shared lead. Their mix is a dubbed-down mono master, not something 90% of the way there. That's it. It was done. It's nice, and it isn't a patch on the Beach Boys' take that has Brian singing on it. Opinions may vary.

I find it fascinating to ponder darlin' & TTGA both started as full-blown redwood recordings produced by brian alone, and at a time he was trying hard to bounce back from SMiLE project abortion and Monterey Pop cancellation

of course they were quality material songs and the Beach Boys as a group now had a template on which to base their renditions

Brian speaks in a most positive way (about Carl and Darlin') at least in part because for a very long time the original redwood versions were unknown to the beach boys public audience, so what else is there (to address)

A few points to consider in all of this.

With Brian writing songs for other artists, this episode in October '67 was a deja vu of the "Surf City" situation four years prior. Look at how much crap Brian took for "giving away" that song, and here was the same situation with Redwood with Mike "putting the screws" to Brian this time instead of Murry. Brian says he wrote the songs for Redwood, and decades later it still stung when he talked with Danny Hutton about it, and later mentioned in his book too. I think that says a lot about what went down that day that it still hurt decades later. I always found it a little odd to speculate whether or not the song or songs for Redwood would have been a hit. It would be like saying The Beatles would have flopped had they been signed by Decca and not rejected, it feels like trying to put salve on the wound after the fact without acknowledging Decca going down in history as one of the labels who let The Beatles get away. The Beatles went with EMI and had amazing success, Redwood became Three Dog Night and had amazing success. But it never seemed useful to excuse what happened by saying in either case "it/they wouldn't have been a hit". The point is Decca and others could have had the biggest group of the 60's, and they rejected them, and the new label Brother Records could have had the trio who became one of the biggest selling groups of the 70's and they were given an ultimatum (by Mike) of one single or nothing.

What I never understood either is the whole business plan of Brother Records also revolved around signing and working with outside artists. Redwood happened to be the first of these, and when Brian did start working with them, the kibosh was put on it. So the group agreed to the Brother plan, the plan was being put into motion with a vocal group that had potential and at least two quality songs in the works (unlike the Pickle Brothers for one, who were a disaster), and the plug gets pulled? I always thought the Brother business plan, on paper, was solid. Sign other artists, develop, produce, and release their records, and it puts more money back into the business with less work needed to be done by the group. If Redwood or a hypothetical group like them *had* become successful, it would benefit Brother and all the members. All members of Brother's board and band members overall had the opportunity to do this same thing. It was almost the same business plan adopted by The Beatles with their Apple label. For all the negativity around Apple, they did sign James Taylor, Badfinger, Mary Hopkin, Jackie Lomax, and had a run of pretty decent selling singles and albums to their credit. And here was Brother Records with a plan to do similar things, a year earlier, and the plug got pulled. No one else in the group really stepped up, probably the only one who did was Carl by signing The Flame a few years later. I never understood that.

Again back to "Surf City", Brian was ok giving that one away and the best explanation I've ever heard for that decision was in his book, where he said by doing so and by that song becoming a hit, it helped put more money into and get more exposure and interest from labels for the new "surf" genre. It makes sense. When something sells big in the music biz, all the labels want a piece. But look at the crap he took for doing so. I think that can also explain why some of those outside productions from 63-65 were not as successful or even not as artistically solid - All the best material Brian was writing and all the better production ideas he had were going to the Beach Boys. That makes sense too.

But when a label is set up by the band to bring in outside artists and develop them, it does not make sense to stymie it on the first time out of the gate.

And even more puzzling is both the notion that persisted for years that Brian dropped out after Smile and was too zonked out to make records so Carl stepped in as producer, and the notion that he wasn't still actively making records for The Beach Boys while he was recording with Redwood.

On the former, the session tapes shattered that mythology. I laugh when I think of how the band was asking and demanding that Brian come back to produce the Beach Boys that October...but how could they be doing that if he was already checked out and too zonked out to cut records? Anyway...On the latter, the Beach Boys had specifically changed to a heavier R&B influence and sound by October '67. I see no evidence that this was not agreed on across the board by the group, after Brian suggested that change (according to Carl). It fit, and their stage sound could now sound just like the records with the addition of a horn section. Brian had already written the title song and single "Wild Honey" with Mike's lyrical co-write by October 1967, and that single was already in the pipeline when the Redwood incident went down at Heider's. That was the lead single to announce their new R&B flavored sound. Other tracks were being worked on. There was a plan in motion.

Subsequently Brian is working with Redwood - Does Time To Get Alone sound like the "new sound" of The Beach Boys with R&B flavor? Of course it does not, in fact it sounds more like a Smile-era production with all the sonic trappings. A waltz, no less! There are no waltzes in heavy 60's R&B to speak of unless it's a slow ballad. "Darlin" is what it is, and of course it worked out for the Beach Boys, but as mentioned earlier the way it was done is still pretty shitty. And it was originally designated as a Redwood song, whether or not the BB's did the definitive hit version.

I guess the question could be along the lines of "What more did they want Brian to do?". He had given them the lead single Wild Honey which became the lead track on the album, sessions were still happening for the Beach Boys as he was cutting tracks for Redwood...it seems like more than sometimes gets said on the surface. Perhaps it was closer in origin (and emotion) to Murry's reasons for blasting Brian over letting Surf City go to J&D than anything else. There is no reason why it couldn't all have coexisted as Surf City ended up doing while the Beach Boys were doing their thing in 63-64.

I don't have a copy of it handy, but I seem to remember from Paul Williams' extended print interview with David Anderle from 1968 something along the lines that Mike had been fully on board with and excited about the Brother Records concept.  Anderle's recollection of ML's attitude at that point seems to be at odds with the latter's handling of the Redwood situation.  On the other hand, it's possible that ML truly did have favorable opinion about the Brother enterprise in early '67 when Anderle was running it and everyone was still basking in the glow of Good Vibrations success, but Love's opinion had soured by the fall of the year as the group's fortunes had faded and Anderle was long gone.

Do I'd Love Just Once to See You, or Country Air, or Mama Says, or Cool Cool Water sound like the "new sound" R&B Beach Boys? I just don't fly with the idea that any of the music Brian made in late '67 was anything other than him following his muse in that moment. Brian didn't care about cultivating a sound for the Beach Boys that melded them on stage and in the studio. If he did, he wouldn't still be lugging that Baldwin organ everywhere, or stacking overdubs on top of his piano, or making a conscious effort to de-emphasise the role of guitars in his arrangements, or pushing loops and tape splices to an even further extreme than he had previously. There were tastes and inspirations that floated up at the time and passed like in any other period. Brian's "R&B album" concept was one angle to the picture. Wild Honey, the album, isn't heavy R&B.

Darlin' isn't apart to the rest of Wild Honey. In some ways sparser than much of it, besides a small horn section, which Aren't You Glad also has. Let the Wind Blow is a waltz. Time to Get Alone is the lone late '67 large production scale exception, and that was hardly alike Smile in its construction. It's Wild Honey but bigger. Also something new, in a different way. The music and arrangement flag Brian's direction in the first half of 1968, and the parts that don't (the stacked keyboards) were Danny Hutton's input. Not to erase conflict that did happen, but to me viewing the rest of his music in those months as a watered-down compromise for a band he was trapped by is a reductive and, honestly, just boring way to approach Brian as an artist at that stage of his career.

"We all really dug Motown, right? So Brian reckoned we should get more into a white R&B bag. I also recall around that time the band, and Brian in particular, getting criticized very heavily for sounding like choirboys."  - Carl Wilson

I think you may have misunderstood my use of the word "heavy" - A heavier R&B influence meaning more of an R&B influence, not that the Boys were trying to cut Sam & Dave or Aretha records. Although worth noting is that Wild Honey did feature a Stevie Wonder cover.

The R&B influence comes out in the vocals, just listen to Carl wail on the two singles' lead vocal and the Stevie cover, the chorus of Here Comes The Night has that same R&B-flavored lead up front, and listen to Brian on his section of "Let The Wind Blow", the chorus of Aren't You Glad, etc. The original tracklist also had The Letter featured, again an example of that R&B sound they were both into and going for. Carl was a big fan of that vocal style and these new songs gave him a chance to truly blow soul in his vocals probably for the first time on a Beach Boys album - Did any previous BB's albums have that kind of obvious R&B/soul vocal style featured as the lead? And Mama Says has it's roots in 50's street-corner R&B and doo-wop which Mike loved to sing and all the guys cut their teeth on years ago.

I'd say at least 75% of the album's tracks have that R&B lead vocal style featured prominently in either the entire track or in key parts of the tracks like choruses or hooks. It's clear they were featuring a new sound on their records, and that sound was a heavier (as in *more*) R&B influence than what they had done before.

I don't know where someone was viewing or describing Brian's work in Fall '67 as a watered down compromise, but you can clearly hear a separation in the Beach Boys' sound from what had come before and what they were doing now as on Wild Honey, especially in the vocals and Carl's leads in particular. The album was a chance for them to try a new R&B flavored sound, give Carl a chance to wail on lead vocals in that style, and Brian was involved in all of this (unlike previous narratives) yet he was still making music that seemed to be more for him or more akin to what he had been doing in the previous year.

There's no reason why both the Wild Honey recordings and Brian's work with Redwood could not have coexisted. I think it's a simple case of Brian - as was his usual way of making records - had songs which he thought the Boys could do best and songs which he thought Redwood could do best, and then songs and ideas which he perhaps wanted to explore and create himself. It's hard to see a reason why something had to happen which still caused him pain decades after the fact.

Sure, the R&B influence is obviously all over the place, and I'll take misunderstanding 'heavy'. I'm not denying the R&B angle that was the driving motivation behind making that album the way it was made. But the point is that it wasn't exclusively that, and it wasn't about rethinking their studio sound for the sake of live performance. The interpretation I read there is that what Brian was doing with Redwood was somehow the true expression of his musical growth post-Smile, while Wild Honey was an artistic pulled punch that Brian was manoeuvred into doing, which I just don't think is the case. It's all on the same trail.

would Darlin' - both as a song and a Beach Boys recording - even have existed if it were not for Danny Hutton, and the need for Redwood to have a hit song with the start of their association w/ Brian?  I think not.  Remember the simple fact the song title emanates from Dannys' penchant for casually calling everybody 'Darlin', and Brian took that and quickly fashioned a song use then.  If it were not for that origin......no Darlin'

Check out 3 Dog Night's very first 45 "It's For You" from 1968.  It's a compact and catchy little a-capella rendition of a lennon/McCartney tune which showcases their own 3-voice blend exceptionally.  The very type of thing i'm sure Brian picked up on just a year earlier and figured he'd like to try producing himself (as Redwood)

This I just don't agree with at all and will have to agree to disagree. The proof is in the tapes from the second half of '67 and in numerous articles and interviews specifically from spring into summer '67. It could have been an issue Brian wasn't as concerned about while making records in LA, but it absolutely was a concern for the Beach Boys who had been touring and getting plenty of heat from the reviews of their shows that they didn't sound like the records when they played live and that they sounded thinner or weaker on stage than the records fans wanted to hear them play.

That kind of thing not only wears on the psyche of the performer, but it also starts affecting the bottom line financially when the rap on a touring group is that they don't sound like the records in person, which implies it's not a ticket worth buying.

They tried to fix that by bringing along extra musicians like that string section in Europe, but even that caused issues for them. And how practical was it in terms of 1967 live touring to travel everywhere with a large ensemble of musicians to better capture the sound of the recordings?

I think the shortest path to a solution - not using the word compromise although it could be one - would be to cut records that were better able to be reproduced on stage. The main evidence of the results of this surrounding Smiley Smile are the Hawaii concerts and the Heider re-records. It's the Beach Boys' current and previous records given different arrangements and featuring that Smiley vibe. The tapes from the late '67 Wild Honey era shows feature the songs being played on stage not too far different from what they sound like on the records, with additional musicians as or if needed.

I think that was a conscious decision that may have been as much practical or business as it was following a muse. I'm sure the band who was taking heat for their stage show not sounding like the records had a say in the matter, and to me at least it's no coincidence that after they returned from that tour of Europe in May '67 the entire scope of the music they were putting their names on changed drastically. Their records sounded like arrangements that could be reproduced on stage with maybe adding a few horns (like the Stax and Motown touring shows were doing) and not trying to reproduce studio creations.

I think the practical and business concerns of wanting to square up the sound of the live show with the recordings to answer the criticism needed to balance the artistic and creative aspects of actually writing and producing the records, and if any time was crucial in that balance it was this time in the latter half of '67. No matter how much splicing and vari-speeding and cut-n-paste editing and other studio work was done at this time, the final result of the records themselves still sounded more like a sound that could be reproduced on stage with a core band. The question is how much did that pendulum swing either way and what was the ripple effect of that pendulum swinging. I think you can hear it on the tapes from '67 and even into '68, others may not.

And I also think the timing of this unfortunately hit when live rock shows were not yet developed into a process and a revue as they would soon be. It was still primarily the band standing on stage in front of a curtain playing through amplifiers, with no monitors, and at best an 4 or 8-channel mixer through PA speakers if that. Often the necessity of creative innovation exceeds the capabilities of available technology. So something has to be...yes...compromised in the process. All bands went through it at this time unless they were a truly self-contained unit who cut records that sounded like live tracks.

I also don't think the work on Wild Honey was necessarily a pulled punch either, but I do think the issue of the studio sound versus the live sound was a concern that was on the table at this time. It was expressed numerous times by various band members in interviews in '67, and we know they tried numerous "fixes" on their tours to ease those criticisms and concerns. But again agreeing to disagree perhaps, I do think that issue found its way into the studio process as well. There had to be a balance struck between "hey, let's make these amazing studio creations" and "hey, how are we going to play this stuff live?".

You know me and my Beatles comparisons... ;D . With all the attention about to come to "Let It Be", look at how the arrangements and the sound of the Beatles overall changed when the "Get Back" project was planned for some kind of live performance. They literally got back to being a 4-piece self-contained band, and both the songs they were writing and featuring and the arrangements of those songs changed the sound of the band considerably as a result. One could argue it was as much a case of "getting back" to being a raw self-contained rock group stripping down to the basic elements like it was 1962 all over again, or it was an aesthetic or creative choice to do so. I think there was an element of needing to have songs that could work for a 4-piece live band playing on stage versus writing songs which were designed to have openings for all kinds of studio sounds and techniques added to enhance them, which had been the band's M.O. since 1966. And since they quit touring after Revolver changed the game, they didn't need to think in those terms when bringing in new material to work on. The necessities of playing live seemed to dictate the way they were working and recording more than it had previously, at least since '66.

It may be a stretch, but I can see a parallel in what the Beach Boys were going through in '67. There had to be a balance struck somewhere. 

It should be worth noting that the only songs the boys played live for more than one day on their next tour were Wild Honey and Darlin' - both tracks having pretty layered productions with lots of percussion overdubs, electro-theremin on the former, and horns on the latter.

Most if not all of their shows and setlists in late 1967 into '68 (and even beyond that) averaged between 12-14 songs. How many more "album cuts" could they have fit in when they were doing mostly their previous hits and the current single or singles and only had enough time for roughly a dozen songs at each show? They also added additional musicians to the stage on a more permanent basis during this time and that would soon include horns as well. That setup and organization of their setlists didn't seem to change throughout 1969, they played mostly the current singles and previous hit singles fans wanted to hear even during this period.

So why would Brian change the sound for the purpose of live shows when they weren't going to play those songs live? I'm just not hearing that idea in the arrangements or the songwriting in any of Wild Honey.

Deplatforming is a term from a few years ago (possibly pre-dating the alt-right being named the alt-right even) & probably out of date by now, meaning removing a platform from fascists, ie stopping them from'debating' at universities / spreading hate speech in public. Doesn't really apply to The Beach Boys becoming unpopular in late 60s America.

Unless the Beach Boys or most bands for that matter have ESP, they don't know which songs will either catch on with the public or which ones they'll have to play while the songs are still being written. All that stuff gets worked out in rehearsals, after a lead-off single is chosen and in 1967 terms had to be played live to promote it, and in a lot of cases if a song lays an egg with crowds when a band performs it, or if the band just isn't jazzed about it, that song gets dropped from the set. It's the fact these sets back then were averaging 12-14 songs that made the choices even more difficult considering they could simply run the old hits and a new single and most crowds would be OK with that. But when the most recent hits and singles were as complex as Good Vibrations, Heroes, and material from Pet Sounds not to mention 1965 and 66 in general, and both fans and reviewers were blasting their live shows in '67 for not sounding like the records and sounding too thin, I definitely think it became a priority on how to fix that.

Worth noting they did try multiple songs from the Wild Honey album live in '67 but dropped them from the sets, only to bring some back in later years. "Aren't You Glad" in particular, from the Live In London album, is simply amazing. Maybe the '67 crowds just weren't into them in '67 when they first played them on stage.


In terms of the songs that are on Wild Honey, as short of an album as it is compared to what it was originally going to be, the songs are written within a more traditional song format and song form overall, and with more sparse and traditional arrangements, which would be easier to play on stage than almost anything Brian had been writing and recording in the past year. The Theremin line on Wild Honey for example is an octave sweep that anyone could be shown how to play, and Mike could play it on stage easily. Wild Honey (the song) also had the first actual bluesy keyboard solo break on a Beach Boys record in well over a year or more. The songs with horns don't have the Wrecking Crew full horn sections from 65-66, but are right in line with the Memphis Horns and what Stax was doing, or Motown, or even the smaller brass sections heard on everything from Motown to The Beatles to The Buckinghams in 66-67. The songs were not full of different movements, odd transitions, discordant breakdowns, abrupt tempo shifts, grand orchestrations with counterpoint lines and guitar sectionals, or any of the other hallmarks of Brian's productions from the previous year. They were songs which a band could take to the stage and play through, and they were more standard pop and soul song forms to further make that easier.

And even with Smiley Smile, I think one of the themes running through that process was how the band could play on these recordings versus calling in more session players than band members. In that case the pendulum may have swung too far, and a better balance was struck over the next two albums and subsequent sessions.

But I definitely hear on Wild Honey a return to more standard song forms and more standard orchestrations and arrangements, which, coincidence or not, would make those songs easier to reproduce on stage if they needed to be played live. And with more traditional song forms, like Wild Honey and Darlin to name two, the two main singles, they had a better chance of getting those songs on the radio too which would necessitate them being played on tour.

They may not have had ESP, but they knew someone who allegedly did... i.e., Jules Siegel's chick who messed with their brains so badly with ESP that they couldn't work.  8)   

Wild Honey does sound like an album fashioned for a live band to play, I can absolutely hear that. What I find interesting is how only a couple of months later, it seems like Brian already had something else on his mind again when the band recorded Friends which abandoned the RnB approach and had several songs that don't lend themselves to a faithful live reproduction for multiple reasons (especially Busy Doin' Nothin', Diamond Head, Transcendental Meditation). I love the music on all of these records but I feel like the Beach Boys, for the first time ever, were struggling for direction around this time and they probably never fully recovered from that. In the years that followed they were trying out new directions all the time, like following up the celebrated Surf's Up with an album that sounds like The Band with some songs that almost sound like Wagner. To me it feels like they were constantly searching for a new sound in those years (going for "all over the place" and cover versions on 20/20, for lush and soft on Sunflower, for dark and contemporary on Surf's Up, etc.). Holland I think sounds like the most successful attempt at coming up with a consistent 70s sound but of course that's when they stopped recording for a couple of years so they didn't really pursue this direction either.

Haha, very true!  :lol

I don't really think they were ever on the hunt for a consistent sound to settle into. Growth and change, and hopping from whim to whim, was what motivated their creativity, especially in Brian's case. Wild Honey was never a 'new sound' so much as it was 'the type of sound we want this one album to have'. That's why I just don't buy that it had anything to do with the live act - they were entering into it consciously knowing this would be a one time in-the-moment deal. I think they were all aware that they would want to try something else later, in whatever form that arrived to them. Brian claimed that he'd 'almost run out of ideas' in January '68... and then within a month or so that new spark had come to him in the shape of Maharishi, Steve Kalinich's poetry, becoming a father, getting a kick out of unexplored genres, and all of the many other changes happening around the group in the first part of that year.

Good points to consider for the bigger picture! They were shifting gears from album to album, and while the lack of cohesiveness would be a concern, at the same time consider how an album like Revolver broke open the floodgates in terms of an artist being able to present a hodge-podge of sometimes jarringly different genres and sounds on a pop album yet still have it be considered a cohesive work by one group. Then there's the trifecta of Smiley Smile/Wild Honey/Friends, and across three albums we hear three radically different "sounds" and even genres from the same band, all released to fans in under one year's time. And each relatively short, averaging under 30 minutes run time. Then 20/20 comes next, and as much as I love the album it's basically a catch-all featuring some tracks recorded three years ago sitting next to a collection of singles and assorted odds and ends. As good as it is, it really isn't a statement as a complete album, right?

I think they were searching for direction, absolutely. And beyond the albums released, consider their live shows as well. They ranged from individually great shows mixed in with downright sloppy ones, and amazing concert lineups of supporting acts mixed in with travesties like The Pickle Brothers getting heckled every night and the debacle of the Maharishi tour.  Even when they did find or have a direction, it tended not to go well for varieties of reasons. Yet contrary to some reports, they were still charting Top-40 singles and getting media exposure.

All of it tends to bring up the hypothetical speculations going back to late '66 and early '67, coming to a head around that last week of May '67. What if everyone had stayed the course? Once the working method set up back in '65 was halted, the band was searching and spinning around looking for a new direction when they basically already had one that had just generated a worldwide smash #1 single and industry buzz.

Going back to Dennis shopping for a house on Hawaii in July '67, followed by Brian in an interview done during the Hawaii rehearsals openly talking about the longevity of the band, I wonder what kind of feelings were in the air at that exact time about continuing the band. And underneath all of that was a newly-formed record label which would have allowed them to cultivate outside artists and potentially sustain the business through those plans.

The lines in bold: No one had any way of knowing what would or wouldn't sell, surely not the Beach Boys nor any other group for that matter. There is no proof that they were entering into Smiley, Wild Honey, or any of the others knowing it was a one-off deal. The proof of this would be in another hypothetical, "what if" the band's new white R&B sound struck gold and that new sound was riding the charts alongside The Buckinghams or The Box Tops who were among the biggest-selling acts of 1967-68, and doing a similar sound? I can see a scenario where if either single from Wild Honey had gone nationwide #1 as GV had done earlier in the year, their next offerings would probably be featuring the same white-soul sound and we might have seen another album primarily featuring Carl belting soul vocals instead of quiet subdued group-heavy vocals.

GF and I had a bit of a tiff some years back when this subject (Redwood/"Darlin'") came up in the context of taking the Lovester to task. I think the context has been broadened in several recent threads to where we can see that the entire band was clearly concerned by Brian's decision to rekindle his outside producer activities with tunes that were within the same zip code as Beach Boys material at a time when...

1) they were taking a drubbing in the press over the release of SMILEY SMILE;
2) they were actively in the process of developing a new direction to counteract 1);
3) that direction was taking shape in R&B/soul-inflected material, as manifested in the "Wild Honey" single.

Clearly "Darlin'" was a track that fit like a glove into that new direction, and it makes 1000% sense to me that the band would be, at the very least, non-plussed to discover that Brian had decided to give it to an outside band. "Time to Get Alone" not so much, though it's quite a fine tune and certainly seems to have been written with the BBs blend in mind. (But thi

Still, the hammer that's been on Mike for this incident has always seemed to be overstated to me, with what certainly seems like retrospective projection of his future behavior onto an incident in which a sizable portion of the band took part. What never seems to get mentioned whenever this item comes up is: why did the band have to go to the studio session in order to confront Brian about these songs? Is it evidence of bullying, or is it evidence of Brian not being completely transparent about what he was doing? Did he not tell the rest of the BBs about this session? Given the state of affairs within the group, would such an action of Brian's part seem like a reasonable thing to do, even given his privileged status as the band's primary musical architect?

The band certainly had some right to be panicked about where things were at for them in October 1967. And that panic and consternation could have pretty reasonably escalated to a flashpoint if they only found out about Brian's Redwood session via some back channel. I still think there is some missing context to this story that we have yet to discover.

And it's clear that in the short term at least, the rest of the band was right to wrangle "Darlin'" back into their bailiwick. It was a Top 20 hit for them when they really needed it, and it boosted the sales of the WILD HONEY album, helping to ensure a pretty respectable sales performance for it. Mike might well have left for his trip to India in early '68 feeling as though the band had weathered the storm; nobody could have anticipated that FRIENDS would perform so poorly and their touring in 1968 would be so fraught with catastrophes, pretty much dropping them right back into the same situation they found themselves in the fall of '67. Only in the fall of '68 Brian had clearly deteriorated psychologically and was no longer up to being in charge. The pain that Brian experienced in this time frame was part of a much deeper problem that had been "building up inside of him" for quite awhile, and it should be noted that the Redwood incident, awkward and mortifying as it must have been, did NOT plunge Brian into a non-creative state: that seems to have taken hold only after the poor performance of FRIENDS, and a "writer's block" that seems to have been triggered by his inability to complete "Can't Wait Too Long."

Don - You make some good points, but I do think those who would point a finger directly at Mike Love over this incident and subsequent events would do so because Mike from most accounts was the one who took the lead in confronting Brian and essentially putting the kibosh on the deal. It was Mike who went to Danny Hutton with an ultimatum, either accept a single or get nothing. That left Brian in the dark more or less, and it's also telling that decades later Brian was *still* apologizing to Danny Hutton over the incident, as if he felt guilty that the whole thing fell apart. There is the notion coming from those inside the inner circle during this time and for years after that Mike's goal was to either be the boss, or be seen as the leader of the band. Jack Reiley said the reason Mike took to wearing sea captain's hats was because he wanted to be seen as the skipper of the band. I think that's pretty well known.

Not to turn this into a discussion solely on Mike, because as mentioned there are other facets to what went down and why (as in most cases), but if Mike were acting as the leader and the point man in this, both confronting Brian and then going to Hutton with the ultimatum, some of the contradictions need to be pointed out as well for the record.

This was filed in the 2005 lawsuit against Brian:

Mike and Brian are recognized as prodigious song-writing pioneers in the early development of this musical genre. But beginning in 1965, drugs began to destroy Brian Wilson. By 1967, Brian lived either in his bed or in his sand-box in his Beverly Hills mansion. While Mike Love and The Beach Boys were touring without him, Brian was surrounded by drug addicts, drug dealers, parasites, and plagiarizers. In 1967, while Brian was living in an environment of drugs and physical and mental illness, Brian and The Beach Boys created the “Smile” album pursuant to their contract with Capitol Records, and paid for by Capitol. Brian also consulted some of the hangers-on that surrounded him at the time.
7. Between 1967 and 2002, Brian was essentially too ill to do anything but collect his royalties, including revenues from BRI and his 25% share of Mike Love’s license royalties.

That, right there, is contradicted directly by the push to stop Brian's work with Redwood and a push to get him back to producing the Beach Boys, specifically Wild Honey in October 1967. So if according to that legal filing Brian was either in his bed or in his sandbox and "too ill to do anything but collect his royalties", how did it come to be that the band pulled him out of producing another act which was going to potentially be on the Brother label and needed him so badly to come back and produce them instead? If the guy portrayed in that legal document was doing what was described, he wouldn't be able to do anything for them, right? Then fast-forward to Friends, again if the same guy is that bad in his daily life and emotional/physical health, how or why was he able to write and produce the bulk of the Friends album?

There's something lingering over all that which I guess a lot of people who have read and heard the backstories, myself included, get a little upset over it. Not to mention Brian himself, who again was still feeling apologetic and guilty over the whole thing decades after the fact. And having people tell false narratives about it decades later doesn't help ease any of that. I'll say again, if Mike was not the one who took the lead, or who acted in a leadership role (whether real or in his own mind) during all of this, he would not be the one singled out. But he did, and therefore he is. The only other Brother voting board members at that time in '67 were Carl and Dennis. According to Danny Hutton in a video interview, Dennis had Brian's back as he almost always did. And Carl didn't say much at the actual incident but ultimately he was siding more with Mike when they shut down the Redwood sessions.

No doubt the Boys taking Darlin as a single for themselves was a good move. It's a great song, an amazing song, and it got them on the charts again. But to bust into a session and basically browbeat Brian (or anyone) in that manner is ridiculous and unprofessional to the Nth degree. It's just not done that way, in a purely professional manner, made worse by the fact that this was family doing this in a professional studio in front of other professional musicians and staff. Absurd, no excuse for that behavior.

Interesting point about how much the band members knew about Redwood. Brother was holding regular meetings and updates as a business, and the band was actively recording the songs for Wild Honey before and after (and during) the Redwood sessions. Sure it's a possibility they may not have known, but does it make sense that no one in the band, surrounding the band, or doing work for the band was aware Brian was booking time at Heider's and bringing large ensembles of session players to cut tracks with Redwood? I don't know how this activity would have been kept secret when so much was involved in the process, so I have to think it was known among the group and the Brother business overall. And the Beach Boys themselves were cutting records at Heider's too during this same time, so it's not like Brian was driving to Calabasas or something to record under the name "John Smith" to hide the sessions from the group.  :lol

I agree with your points Don and respect your opinions on these issues, and yes it is a more nuanced and wider-angle situation than basic finger-pointing. But there are some things that happened which can be called out and have been for reasons beyond grudges or whatever else. Needless to say it was not a very stable time for the band, and part of me goes back to what Marilyn said in the documentary which I quoted earlier in this discussion. I think that type of feeling and reaction played a part in Brian's choices, for sure. 

Speculation about Brian's lack of "transparency" is an entirely fair point to raise; he had a track record of not being forthcoming with the "organization" that dates back to, literally, the formation of the group in 1961 and he behaves in this manner time and time again at various critical junctures in the group's early history.   Usually, if not always, Brian’s lack of forthrightness manifested itself in him doing things unannounced, when others who would likely object were not aware of it or who were not well-positioned to stop him from doing what he wanted to do.  It's a good point to raise, but the more interesting and important question is why is Brian like that - why does he do things that way. Very, very short answer: Because he never had a choice, and this goes back to his childhood. There are very few ways to survive, or adapt to a childhood like that, and this was Brian's way of doing it.  Patterns of behavior like that - adaptations - work when they work, don't work when they don't work. As the person like Brian gets older, he usually runs out of road, and the pattern of behavior that worked for him under impossible conditions of childhood stops working. This is what happened to Brian. In effect, the Beach Boys were calling Brian out during the Redwood incident.  Chuck Negron of Redwood/Three Dog Night was of course there, and he remembered Brian's childlike demeanor and the parent-child aspect of the scene because that's basically what it was. Brian behaving the way he had as a child and younger man, and the opposing forces - which are also family forces and therefore "loving" forces, doing what they do to correct the child's misbehavior.

It is fair to take Brian to task for his way of avoiding confrontation and doing things behind certain people's backs (by the way, in my opinion Pet Sounds would not exist if Brian didn't do things this way) but then you have to dig deeper and ask why, and the answer to that question reflects poorly on Brian's entire family and the Beach Boys organization. 


Being the "musical architect" for this family organization is not necessarily a role that signifies "privileged status." Generally, one might say that Brian would be "privileged" if his songs were given priority over those of other competing songwriters in the group. Since there were no other songwriters, Brian isn't, in most instances, privileged to be the source of music.  During the time in question - late '67 and beyond - it is hardly a "privilege."  Brian is not privileged to work on Wild Honey; rather, he is obligated to do that.  However, in some other contexts, and at some points in time, Brian could be privileged.   Brian was in a position of privilege when both internal and external circumstances had fallen into place such that the Beach Boys came to be all about him - Pet Sounds, Good Vibrations, and into Smile.  Those are the days of Brian’s “privilege” (Brian himself acknowledged this in his first autobiography) and it is precisely that privilege which rubbed people the wrong way at the time.  Still, even then there were tremendous creative and commercial burdens to carry along with the musical privileges he enjoyed during that time.  What the Redwood incident signifies is that Brian is being stripped of his privileges, although that process had started already, at an earlier point in 1967, as Guitarfool has been alluding to.

I think one problem with the band's struggle for direction after Smile was how anticlimatic some of their ideas must have felt at the time. Today we know how brilliant Wild Honey is but reading the Paul Williams/David Anderle interview from back in the day suggests that it was much harder to fully appreciate it when it came out. Same with the transition from Surf's Up to Carl and the Passions, where fans were probably hoping for more "deep" stuff like 'Til I Die from Brian and instead he came up with Mess of Help and Marcella which I think are both incredible but they must have felt like lesser efforts at the time to many listeners I'm sure. I agree that Brian and the boys had always gone into new directions but to me, the steps from Surfer Girl to All Summer Long to Today to Pet Sounds feel more logical and confident than what they did in the late 60s and early 70s. I remember an interesting interview snippet from a BB documentary where Ed Roach said (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) that the band really splintered around the Holland period, constantly wondering what would be commercial and Dennis being frustrated about it. Maybe that's something that had already started a couple years earlier?

as I understand it the redwood incident, where Mike (and Carl) confronted Brian in a hostile and demeaning way (being that the redwood members were just outside the door) was a Time To Get Alone recording session, and the song was nearly finished for them (as opposed to Darlin' which had the instrumental track done but needed more vocals).  And yet Mike & Carl took and walked away with the tapes for both songs then.  Why both?  They could've just taken the Darlin' tape(s) and leave TTGA tape behind for possible redwood release on Brother, at least for the time being.  Greedy?  Yes!  After all the Beach Boys didn't get around to doing anything with TTGA for at least another year (and in the end they re-recorded everything, duplicating the redwood instrumentation already done).  Quite insulting.

In 1967 Brian blundered when he couldn't complete SMiLE and backing out of Monterey Pop appearance at the last moment.  However it should be emphasized embarking on Redwood was not a blunder, far from it when one considers the enormous record success 3 Dog Night would enjoy starting just 2 yrs more time.  And the Brother Records label could've had a big piece of that pie thanks to Brians desire, vision, and music producing talent also in 1967.  Boy did his bandmates get things profoundly backwards

Great thread everybody! I need to take my time and read through all of this.

Some points I would like to mention after thinking about some of this. Take them or ignore them, as you please. But I wanted to at least post them:

- article from this time and interviews as well talk often about the possibility of the band breaking up. The article about Dennis' visit to Hawaii that started this thread as well mentions the topic. Around the Hawaii shows Brian says he's not sure how long that Beach Boys thing can go on, and IIRC in '68/'69 Brian says in an interview that the band nearly broke up because of the Smile project. Did the band maybe indeed break up? At least it seems that they did in Brian's mind. Like "If you're not willing to work to be the best band in the world, why try at all? From now on I am only gonna make music if I want to." (Just trying to understand what may have been going on in Brian's head after the Smile confrontations).

- it was mentioned here that Brian was going into the same direction with Redwood's "Darlin'" as he was with the Beach Boys and Wild Honey and that "Darlin'" fits perfectly on the WH album. I have to disagree. "Darlin'" is a great song and production, but it's sound is quite different to the rest of the album.

- the question of why the band changed their sound to a more basic one. It's been said in this thread that it may have been because of how hard it was to re-create songs from Pet Sounds plus Good Vibrations and that the band wasn't keen on taking more harsh critics. Very possible and likely, I guess. Another idea though: While Brian was mostly in the studio working, the band obviously went on tour and therefor probably had a better understanding of what direction the current music scene was going. Why? Because a lot of the bands that went on to become huge in the following years were actually opening acts for the Beach Boys (Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, The Box Tops, Bobbie Gentry etc.). Could it be that the band realized that their sound was starting to lose it's commercial appeal and that the sound of their opening acts or co-headliners was getting more popular, so they switched to a more "band"-sound?

Disagree.  Darlin is of a piece with the rest of the WH due to the style of the lead vocal.  Like several other cuts on WH, Darlin features a raw-ish, R&B-flavored lead that had been essentially foreign to the BBs' oeuvre (though there were hints of that direction on Party! and Smiley, e.g., Gettin' Hungry).  It was as if they decided that their hallmark Four-Freshmen, barbershop style had run its course and they were moving on.  I often have thought that the relative failure of the Heroes & Villains 45 played a huge role in that shift.  Let's face it.  In some ways, H&V was apotheosis of Brian's efforts as vocal arranger in their classic style.  Brian probably held more vocal sessions and put more effort into arranging vocals for H&V than anything up that point (and possibly afterwards, too).  And they all felt that it had bombed. 

That... isn't true at all.

The song wasn't "nearly finished" by Redwood, it was finished. And Brian and Carl worked on it right after it was returned to the Beach Boys, during the Wild Honey sessions.

if TTGA was truly finished it could've, and should've been left (the tapes that is) for Redwood, instead of Mike absconding with same.  Listening to it (on the 3 dog night CD) I get the distinct impression it wasn't quite done (there're parts that don't transition perfectly).  Hence the possible reason for the TTGA session that fateful day, and Mike not wanting Brian to work on it there anymore.  It is certainly true the song waited past the wild honey, past the friends (and technically past the stock-o-tracks) albums to find release eventually on 20/20.  It is also true the entire basic track was re-recorded when finally released on 20/20

No, it wasn't. Another unused track with an entirely new arrangement and reworked structure was recorded by Brian and Carl after the version released on 20/20 (the original production) had already been completed and mixed.

It was Brian's call to work on the song further during the Wild Honey sessions, and his decision to park it for the time being. He tried rewriting it for Friends. There's some evidence that it was being considered as a single for either Gary Puckett & The Union Gap or The Honeys in fall '68 (not exactly a sign of greed), and then Brian brought it back to the Beach Boys again amidst the 20/20 sessions. And when that was done, he kept working on it anyway. The idea that Time to Get Alone was robbed from Brian and completed by the other Beach Boys against his will is a myth stemming from the 20/20 gatefold's production credit. Brian was the one who drove it through every stage of its evolution post-Redwood. With Carl's help, but Brian was always the instigator.


Might sound unfinished to you, but that's a polished and very deliberately edited mono dub, not a rough.

Almost all of this is untrue. If you seek out some recent releases, you can hear Time to Get Alone in its various stages - the Carl/Brian duet version from the Wild Honey sessions on Sunshine Tomorrow, Brian's Friends era demo on Wake the World, and an a cappella mix on I Can Hear Music. Brian's even on tape on the last of those saying "you know, come to think of it, this might be a hit record." The unused remake track that you seem to be confused about is on I Can Hear Music as well.

And, whether or not the Redwood vocals sound good to you, their version is a completed mono master. If they stuck with the song at the time, that exact mix would've been released.

It baffles me a bit how the Beach Boys insisted that TTGA become one of their songs but they never released it as a single, at least not as an A side. Instead they put out stuff like Bluebirds Over the Mountains which is a pretty uninspired production, to my ears anyway. Also, how did Carl get the sole production credit for TTGA if Brian was involved all the way?

Genuine best theory? Capitol art department mistake. Carl's sole credit simply isn't accurate (or even shared credit, if Our Prayer and Cabin Essence are the benchmark - I don't necessarily think they should be), besides Carl being the Beach Boy in the room overseeing the stereo mix, which is an aspect of Brian's own work that rarely interested him at all after that move. Brian arranged those vocals and sang in every corner of them. He introduced new lyrics. And judging by the re-record attempt, it was also his call to edit out the instrumental passage in the middle of the song.

There was a mono single mix prepared, but not released.

"Also, how did Carl get the sole production credit for TTGA if Brian was involved all the way?"

because the song literally was stolen from Brian

You keep stating things that are just factually untrue. Who do you think's singing lead in the chorus?

Interesting points to consider! A few thoughts in reply:

- I keep coming back to the sound of Darlin' being different because of the drums. I always assumed it was Jim Gordon playing that part, because it sounds like his style and it's literally driving the beat right on top of each downbeat if not pushing it ahead. Then we come to find out it's Hal Blaine! But it still sounds like Jim's style which we can hear on dozens of records and concerts to come. Anyway, that very subtle way of driving the beat without rushing it is a more authentic soul-R&B-Memphis style drumming trait which is on many soul records of this era. And Darlin' has that from the very first bars, while other tracks have the more laid-back feel...not a lazy beat but behind the beat. I love Dennis' drumming, I'll defend him as a drummer all day long, but the beat heard on Darlin' isn't something which would be played by Dennis, Carl, Brian, or anyone else in the band who would play drums on a track. And I think that's what makes it stand out - It has more drive in the groove and I think that comes from balancing session guys with in-house band members on these sessions.

- I have to mention Buffalo Springfield first because it's ironic how they perceive their history versus what we're talking about with the Beach Boys. I've heard nearly everyone in the band or involved with the band who has commented decades after the fact say how one of the main issues they had and still have is that the Springfield's albums and recordings never captured what they had happening on stage. And that is a total flip of what we're discussing with the Beach Boys during these exact same years, 66-68. People would see the Springfield live, and there were *three* guitarists doing harmony parts, trading leads, and engaging in extended guitar duels (Stills and Young), multiple vocalists doing live harmony stacks, an amazing and unique bassist Bruce Palmer (when he was actually with the band and not ducking authorities lol), and a solid drummer...and they played intense and loud when they needed, very loud, and could also play dynamics like another instrument.

Very few live recordings exist, and even on those, it really isn't the band in its element. Perhaps the closest thing is oddly enough an early episode of the TV show Mannix where the band is playing live in a small club as Mannix is investigating a case and Stills and Young are trading leads on Bluebird. But anyone who saw them will say the band in its element was simply amazing. Yet, the recordings never captured that energy or that X-Factor which made them special. And the band never was happy with the way the records were mixed.

So there's an ironic flip of the live versus studio topic, where numbers of Beach Boys fans at the time were saying the live shows don't sound enough like the records, and the Springfield band members and fans at the same time were saying the records don't capture what made the band great during the live shows.

I would add a few bands who were *huge* in 66-67 to the list of truly self-contained groups who played both live and in the studio, minus of course when extra instruments like horns and strings were added. To name a few big ones in the US from both coasts and one locale in between: The Lovin Spoonful, The Buckinghams, and The Turtles. What you heard on stage was exactly what was recorded in the studio when those guys played. In the case of the Spoonful, the rhythm section of Joe Butler and Steve Boone had been playing in dance bands and professional working groups for quite a few years before hooking up with Sebastian and Zally, who were in the Greenwich folk scene. They knew how to get people dancing, and they were a rock-solid rhythm section...pro musicians. With the Turtles, they were the same guys who were on the records more or less, with a few members coming and going. But again to the drums, when you have a true pro like Johnny Barbata driving that band, and he's the same guy cutting studio tracks and also playing the live shows, fans heard the same rhythm section more or less. The bass chair was a little more up in the air, as was the 2nd guitar chair, but the band in the studio was more or less the same as the live group. The Buckinghams had a sound that was based on horn sectionals and a "horn band" sound overall, but basically the same core band was both recording in the studio and playing live on tour. I honestly haven't heard any live tapes of the Buckinghams in '67-68 (or don't know if any exist), but it would be interesting to hear how they handled the live shows when their hit record sound was built on horn ensembles.

I'd also add The Doors to this list as perhaps the best example from LA...when the Doors played live, it was exactly the same sound as at least the first two albums, because those first two albums were cut basically live in the studio with the same guys minus Larry Knechtel fattening up some of Ray's piano-bass parts with his Fender. When you watch the Doors live at the Hollywood Bowl, it's only drums, keyboards, and one guitar yet it sounds full and exactly like the records. Same with Cream...three guys on stage and I don't think many fans complained about a thin sound. And factor in the Bay Area bands like the Airplane, the Dead, Quicksilver, Big Brother, others like Spirit...it was definitely changing things around in the rock scene at that time.

Ironic too that Bobbie Gentry had additional string players on stage with her in Hawaii when she played her first big gig opening for the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys took the stage as a five-member, truly self-contained unit with the true original 5 members who cut Surfin' for Hite Morgan. Yet a lot of people hearing the Hawaii tapes would say they sounded thin, especially on the hit singles they played those two nights. The question could be if Bobbie Gentry had extra musicians, why didn't the Beach Boys use them too?

- On the point about breaking up, again I think there is a lot that hasn't been told and a lot which probably never will be told. But when we factor in the quotes you reference from Brian saying the group nearly broke up, Marilyn's quotes, Dennis' quotes, Brian's other quotes, Dennis looking for a house in Hawaii, and a host of other radical shifts that took place in the latter half of '67, I think the notion of somehow splitting the group or even going on hiatus short of a full break-up may have been in the air within the band at this time.

One definite point is that things were never, and I truly mean never the same after May-June 1967 for the band.

I know that it’s not a question, but iirc Brian & Al.

I agree, spreading false info or lying won’t get you anywhere hideyotsuburaya. If you weren’t at the sessions or have any evidence then don’t spread information if you don’t really know, or if you’re being a jerk. Just saying.

I have given you help on where to find the recording sessions on recent releases. I quoted Brian talking about how excited he was about this song for the beach boys in 1968, and told you where you can listen to him talk about it. If you reject real live evidence in order to support a narrative, there's no point in continuing this conversation.

Ha, yes. Brian's also singing the 'ba ba ba' in unison with Al, he's at the top of the 'deep and wide' quartet, and he's in the middle of all the other verse and chorus backing vocals, less obvious. There actually isn't another Beach Boy as frequently featured singing on the track as Brian.

No need to get upset or make accusations on other members in a discussion like this. Just keep it cool.  :)

Just a pure hypothetical here to consider, whether people agree or not with the terminology and understanding this never happened and would never happen in reality:

*What If* John Lennon, George Harrison, and Allen Klein had found out Paul McCartney was recording "Maybe I'm Amazed" at Abbey Road studio 2 in February 1970 on his own, before "Let It Be" had come out. What if even John and George alone had walked in while McCartney was recording that track, began to browbeat Paul, tell him we need material for a new Beatles single, and proceeded to walk out of Abbey Road with the Maybe I'm Amazed tapes. Then while Let It Be was running its course, they went back and added various parts to Paul's tracks while wiping his original vocals. Yet Paul was there with them adding new parts in the name of getting a new Beatles single together.

It's silly, I know, but absurd for a reason. I could understand why some reading an account like that would think the other Beatles "stole" McCartney's track in that scenario, when the track was neither written nor recorded for The Beatles, yet the other Beatles literally walked in on his sessions and walked out with the tapes. Whether or not hypothetical Paul would end up adding more to the track as a Beatle in the scenario, it's what happened and how it was done that might shape opinions.

Again I'm not saying anything is factual or that anyone is right or wrong, but when such a scenario is presented I can see where and why opinions could be formed based on what happened.

And yet, getting out of the imaginary scenarios and in to reality, The Beatles with Apple throughout 1968 and 1969 had individual members recording and producing outside artists for their label, some which became huge hit records like Mary Hopkin, and I can't think of a single example where those activities didn't peacefully co-exist with what was going on musically for The Beatles. They split their time, their efforts, and their songwriting and production skills among the band and outside Apple artists, they scored hit records across the board, and I don't believe any Beatles ever walked into a studio session with an outside artist to hassle another member over giving away good songs and proceed to walk out with the tapes to go on a future Beatles project.  

Or maybe a better ridiculous hypothetical to use in that absurd scenario would have been McCartney writing and producing "Come And Get It" and giving it to Badfinger...lol  ;D

Sure, I can totally understand that, but that isn't the way the Redwood incident happened either. Danny Hutton explicitly recalled this being at Brian's house, in the Beach Boys' studio, not Heider's. Negron only located it as 'the studio'. This was essentially their HQ, where they convened regularly. Nobody physically walked out with any tapes either - they turned up, 'put the screws on' Brian (inarguably bad conduct, regardless of what happened later or how attitudes may have then changed), and then Brian called it off under pressure. Painting it as if the others literally walked in and stole the tapes for Brian's song is to make the situation sound more absurd than it really was.

For reference, I would point to these sources:

#1:
This board, November 2014

#2:
Interview with Danny Hutton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5zYjs96sZA&list=PL35350BBCE486D776 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5zYjs96sZA&list=PL35350BBCE486D776)

#3:
Carlin book, page 130
"...when Carl and Mike walked through the door of the Wally Heider studio where they were working looking anything but happy."
"Mike and Carl took the master tapes of the two songs for the Beach Boys' new album."

And other sources previously quoted here.

For me, when someone who was actually present at the conversation between Brian and Danny about these situations says what Ray Lawlor said in his post quoted above, and says Brian himself said what went down at Heiders is what Negron related in his book, I'm going to weigh that pretty heavily when piecing together all the reports and facts.

As far as physically carrying out the tapes, of course I exaggerated the scenario and said it was an absurd hypothetical all along to show and understand how opinions can be formed. And it could be the language in Carlin's book (and other reports) that suggested them actually physically carrying out the tapes when he wrote Mike and Carl "took the tapes". And Danny was involved with Darlin from its inception, as well as Time To Get Alone of course, so he was present at both Brian's home studio and at Heider's studios when these events were happening.

But there's no doubt the big incident we're discussing happened at Wally Heider's, as the quotes above - specifically Brian saying it happened as described - would show.

How long a period of time did Mike play theremin onstage? And I'm guessing GV and WH are the only songs the band ever played theremin live? (I think only IJWMFTT was the only other song they ever recored with theremin, yet I suppose they could have included it on other songs in a live setting if they'd wanted to).

The only Mike theremin clip I can recall seeing is from that TV show circa 1968 where the band plays GV with all of those psychedelic bluescreen moments of the band members falling into multiple versions of themselves like a mirror room at a carnival. Mike always looked awkward and unhappy in that clip, I'm assuming he was not used to playing an instrument and singing simultaneously, although of course his mates had done that for years at that point,  yet it is a bit harder to play a lead instrumental line while singing lead.

Danny does explicitly describe it as Brian's house in Priore's book, he doesn't refer the the studio said confrontation happened at in the linked video (only where sessions for TTGA happened), and Negron doesn't either. The only source for Heider's would be Brian. An important source, but it's not weighed up directly by those others. Carlin's also surmising events just as we are. But... that's all besides the point. The point is that "Mike and Carl took the master tapes" away from Brian, as depicted by Carlin and the way hideyotsuburaya argues it, isn't actually what happened. Brian himself erased over those Redwood vocals with his own voice. He initially dropped them under pressure, but it's not like the others used him as a sock puppet.

I totally agree with GF that it seems pretty logical that the Hawaii concerts were evidence of the band trying to get some sort of cohesive and consistent sound down between their live shows and their studio material. And I think WH was an extension of that. No way it was just accidentally easier for the band to replicate in a live setting. I'm sure they were aware that was an added bonus.

And of course, in theory that would've been a very understandable and desirable outcome, which if that consistency had lasted for multiple albums with a few hit songs to boot, would almost certainly been noticed by critics and would have elevated their stature somewhat as a live act.

One thing that I hadn't seen mentioned here is that Wild Honey (the album) was also probably created in its current form as a result of Brian finally agreeing to go back to a "Brian and Mike" songwriting team approach that Brian had been reminded/pushed/guilted (your mileage may vary) into promising he'd rekindle. I don't recall the source, but I do recall reading on this board that after Pet Sounds, at Mike's urging, Brian promised "the next album" would be a "Brian and Mike" album, and then when Brian went back on that promise to make SMiLE, and then sadly faltered in a massive way on delivering the goods of a finished album, that seems like it would have been a prime moment for Mike to again push for it (successfully this time) with the WH album as a result.

While one can wonder/speculate/debate how much of this was gentle nudging/guilt tripping/etc, and nobody will ever *truly* know (I feel it was likely there were grey areas, but that there had to have been an element of guilt tripping, somewhere on that spectrum, it was in the family DNA to do this stuff), I will certainly nevertheless say that the resulting WH album was a great moment and one of the best moments of the Brian/Mike songwriting collaboration in the history of the band.

Danny Hutton quoted in Harvey Kubernik's book "Canyon Of Dreams":
"Just before we became Three Dog Night, we auditioned as the trio. Brian Wilson played us the song Darlin' and we went to do a session at Wally Heider's Studios. Brian played the piano with a bass player from Motown and we did rough guide vocals. The Beach Boys then came in and they used the track and they put their vocals on them."

Danny quoted in the video above:
"So we actually did Time To Get Alone, one of the songs we did, we did it on Selma, we didn't do it at the house."

Wally Heider's studio was located at Selma and Cahuenga in Los Angeles.

Just adding more quotes for the discussion.

If you piece it all together with the above, as you suggest, some of this is beside the point: The point that a confrontation did happen over these tracks going to Redwood, that the project was halted and Mike went to Danny with the ultimatum of one single or nothing from Brian, and the tracks written and recorded for Redwood were then used as Beach Boys tracks. Then Brian felt guilty over it for decades to the point of apologizing to Danny for what happened almost 40 years later. I can see where some reading through all this might feel like the tracks were "taken" from Redwood and from Brian's original intent for them after Mike confronted him and then went to Danny with his ultimatum. No matter what other details are put forth, no matter how things eventually worked out for all parties in the coming years, that's what happened and I can see where some opinions would be formed accordingly.

And when Ray Lawlor posting here in 2014 was actually there when Brian and Danny discussed what had happened, and Brian confirms what Negron said, that's also a major point worth considering when weighing all of it to better understand what went down between all these guys.

Good points to consider! I also cannot recall where that info about promising to renew the collaboration came from, but I do remember hearing similar things about rekindling the Brian-Mike songwriting activity after both Pet Sounds and Smile had mostly other collaborators.

I'd also add again that the somewhat mysterious decision to release (or at least consider) "Gettin Hungry" as a Brian and Mike single might have its roots in these same issues, and could also be a response to "Caroline, No" being labeled a Brian solo single while simultaneously appearing on the current Beach Boys album at the time. It's interesting to consider what exactly happened between all parties involved to lead to these decisions, and no doubt the renewed collaboration produced some classic music. But there was a definite change even in songwriting credits and the writing process at this time, among all the other drastic changes and shifts in direction.

Just to toss in another (possibly unanswerable) question...  When Brian was prepping Darlin' for Redwood, had Mike Love already contributed new lyrics?   He had, of course, been credited on 'Thinkin' About You Baby,' but the new lyrics are completely different.  When were they written?  Before or after the song was taken away from Redwood?   

Had Mike been asked to revise the lyrics to the song... only to discover that Brian intended his work for a different group?  Or was Brian working from his own somewhat different Darlin' lyrics with Redwood, and Mike's contributions were the last-minute sort added during the BBs' vocal sessions (as was very often the case for ML's lyrical contributions)?

I have no idea, but I guess my money would be on the latter scenario since Brian's collaborations with ML were reportedly somewhat different than his with Parks, Asher, Usher, etc.   From what I've gathered, Brian and Mike weren't sitting around for 16 hours a day eating plates of sandwiches, shooting the breeze and working on songs.  It was more like Brian had a title, a melody and a partial lyric, and Mike filled in the gaps on his own time or at the very last minute when they were doing their vocals.  I remember being somewhat surprised when I saw that 1976-ish clip in American Band where Brian says, "The guy I probably wrote with the most is Van Dyke Parks."  At a time when there were maybe a half-dozen released BW-VDP songs (compared to 100s of BW-ML songs) that seemed like yet another bizarre BW statement.  And yet it may actually have been true if by "writing together," Brian meant actually sitting down at a piano and simultaneously working on songs.

I absolutely agree. For me, the lyrics on Wild Honey are some of the best the band ever did. They're fun and creative and they complement the music incredibly well. Come to think of it, Mike was really good at writing love songs together with Brian, as exemplified before on the B side of Today. Later on Mike's lyrical contributions would become pretty awful beginning with M.I.U. of course but before that he did some amazing work even beyond the early surf-era material (which of course is brilliant too).

I do question the full extent of lyrical contribution by Mike on the Wild Honey album considering he is labeled as co-writing "Mama Says" - what else did Mike not write that he's credited for?

Verifiability, nothing other than Mama Says and I'd Love Just Once to See You. In the latter's case, only because nobody's asked about it yet. Wouldn't be surprised however if that's one Brian started alone and Mike edited. The rest of the songs each have comments from Brian, Mike, or other Beach Boys confirming Mike as the primary lyricist.

Mike claims he wrote the Darlin' verses as they were finishing up the track. Brian already had the chorus on his own.

The only sort of comment I've read from the band members regarding the release of "Gettin' Hungry" as a single is that it was credited to Brian and Mike because they were the ones "who just thought it would make a good single." This implies that perhaps the other guys didn't, so as a compromise, it was agreed that it would go out as a Brian and Mike single instead of a Beach Boys single. That single came out about the same time as the Smiley Smile album (the only date I could find was "September", which is the same month as the album's release, so I can't say for sure which was first - unlike the single release of "Caroline, No", which was a good two months before the release of Pet Sounds). 

Another factor behind the release of "Gettin' Hungry" as a Mike/Brian thing might be the intention at the time to have various solo (or in this case duo) releases from the band members - that was a stated goal for Brother Records, and presumably why Dennis and Carl each composed and produced a track during the SMiLE sessions, even though those were never finished and didn't see release at the time. Had Brother continued as a Capitol-distributed label beyond the Smiley Smile era, we might have seen more releases of this type (possibly including "Bluebirds Over The Mountain" as  a Bruce Johnston solo single).