The Smiley Smile Message Board

The David Bennett Piano YouTube channel has done a music analysis of Good Vibrations. I was very impressed with his research and it’s def worth checking out.

 https://youtu.be/wSbT0ovpr7Y (https://youtu.be/wSbT0ovpr7Y)

He's got some chords wrong...

And it's not disputed AT ALL which Bassists made it to the final cut.  

That said -- wonderful to get a substantive musicological look at a Beach Boys song!

Doesn’t Carol still swear she is on the record?

Last I heard, yeah. And any amount of evidence to the contrary isn't likely to change her belief. But trust us - although she played on some of the GV sessions (guitar on some, bass on others), none of those sessions was used in the final edit.

It's disputed in the same sense the question of whether humans landed on the moon is.

Are Carol and AGD still going at it? ::)

Unfortunate that Carol keeps getting name checked in these types of videos. It's not a terrible idea to mention unused musicians on a track, but at least talk about Ray Pohlman, Lyle Ritz, Bill Pitman, Arthur Wright and Jimmy Bond first!

Yes, please do!

So you are saying that Carole Kaye is not on the final track at all?  Because I thought she was playing the upper part and Ray Pohlman was playing the lower part on acoustic bass.

She is not and has never been on the final track at all. The electric part she usually takes credit for in the verse is Ray Pohlman, and the upright response is Lyle Ritz.

Poor Ray -- he is the true bassist behind the classic / quintessential electric bass sounds of this era, the signature sound of Pet Sounds is him, all that clicky, high stuff.

Thanks.  I never knew, but I haven't really questioned it either. 

EDIT: I just checked the book with the Smile Sessions big box, and found the final master credits for the verses with that info. 

You could also go back to the 1997 Pet Sounds box set, which includes the full master take from the first "GV" session on 2/17-18/66 as a bonus track. You'll notice that the verses from that version are the ones used in the final 1966 single edit. You'll also notice that in that box, Ray Pohlman is credited with Fender bass and Lyle Ritz with "string" (i.e., upright) bass. You could then also find the Keith Badman book on The Beach Boys and see a reproduction of the American Federation of Musicians contract from that date, which names those two, but not Carol Kaye. And, you could then track down the Sea Of Tunes "Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 15" bootleg set covering the "Good Vibrations" sessions and hear the actual session tape for that version, on which Brian can be heard giving instructions to Ray as the Fender bassist, and on which there is no mention of, or audible voice of, Carol Kaye.