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https://thebeachboys.com/sail-on-sailor-sessionography/

Great!! Thank you for linking this!


So it's Carl playing one of my favorite bass lines in a Beach Boys song (Here She comes). I didn't expect that.
The background vocals on the new "Cuddle up" mix sounded a little shaky to me so I thought they might've been a wall of Dennis. But seems like that was also wrong. From looking at the credits I guess Blondie is doing the falsetto part. He still has that voice as you can hear in that Fender promo clip with Brian, Blondie and Nicky Wonder from a couple of years back. Blondie takes the hight part of "I get around" and sounds really good.

I have to go through the whole list now. Thanks again and thanks to C-Man for his incredible work

Laughed at Carl “Cookie” Wilson, never occurred to me that was Carl doubling himself on “Mess of Help”, I never really questioned what that was but it makes for a cool effect!

Oh, Cookie as in Cookie Monster? That would explain the growl-y voice Carl used on the vocal doubling!

This is awesome!!

But isn't that Brian doing the falsetto part in Cuddle Up??

surprised to see Tandym Almer on so many songs.

and is that Michael Clarke of the Byrds drumming on Rooftop Harry??

Yes on Michael Clarke. I remember reading that somewhere - perhaps that Bedroom Tapes article from one of the LA papers.

I hope they publish sessionographies for everything else.

Biggest surprise to me is seeing how much Brian is contributing instrumentally on all his tracks -- except for Sail on Sailor. He's basically all of Funky Pretty and the backbone of Mess of Help and Marcella, for instance. Forget the whole "Til I Die" was the last of Brian thing. He was pouring his soul out on really rocking tunes.

This is truly fantastic. Can't wait to see similar session info released for other BBs eras!

BTW I believe Brian specifically pointed out that he played "bass guitar" on "Funky pretty" and that he can't really remember anything else about the recording. I never could hear something I would consider to be a bass (you know, like a p-bass or something similar) and the sessionography shows that the bass parts were played on a Moog Synth. Does anyone hear a bass on that song? I wonder because Brian is so specific in that regard.

The thing with Cuddle Up is they did the backing vocals twice. In the new alternate mix, both tracks are featured at the same time, and on one you've got the five original Beach Boys singing with Brian on the highest part. The humming in the first verse is them alone and can just about be heard in the single mix. Those vocals were essentially replaced in the final mix by Dennis, Carl, Blondie and Toni Tennille, who's covering the same high part Brian was in the second verse. The backing vocals in the rising "your love" chorus are just the latter group, though.

Brian says a lotta things, the bass on that is just a Moog. Always the possibility with these things that he played something that was taped over however.

I didn’t post this before, partly because I haven’t looked through the whole thing yet - I don’t want to have too many spoilers especially since I haven’t had a chance to pick up the box set yet (don’t throw me off the thread or the board  :lol), but…

Thank you c-man, Alan Boyd, Joshilyn, WillJC, and John Brode (the last name I don’t recognize) for your amazing and time-consuming work on the sessionography. In my opinion, this is as awesome as the set (and I don’t have the box yet, nor have I looked through more than a few songs in the sessionography). I love you all.  ;)

(Also, it’s nice to see more (lead) guitar credits for Carl on the couple or so I’ve looked at so far.)

EDIT: Not that I doubt everyone’s research, but it still shocks me that Carl is behind the ‘second’/gruff lead vocal on You Need A Mess of Help to Stand Alone.

For some reason I'd always assumed that the gruff voice was Brian!

Thanks so much to everyone involved in putting that sessionography together. I _love_ reading this kind of detail !

Wiggy.

Funny little tidbit: last year I interviewed a Dutch guy who made friends with Ricky Fataar in the Summer of 1972. Because of that he frequently visited the BBC2 studio and also got to meet an talk with other Beach Boys. And Carl actuallly told him that he played bass on Here She Comes, which was a surprise for me as well. Nice to see that after a lot of research Will, Craig, Joshilyn and John drew the same conclusion.

And I agree with you, that's one cool bass line he's playing.

I wanna acknowledge that it was Klaas who brought it to our attention in the first place out of speaking to that guy. Some of these credits aren't completely set in stone or directly evidenced by what's on tape - in hindsight I wish there was more clear distinction between what's absolutely confirmed and what's just very likely through context/playing style/process of elimination, but instruments wouldn't be put next to names unless there were substantial and well-considered reasons to think that's who played them. Here She Comes is a tricky one, because they essentially recorded two different versions of the track on the same day, and the first one is definitely Carl on guitar and Blondie on bass. By the revised takes though, it's a completely different arrangement. The descending bass riff is there, different timbre, played with a pick instead of fingerstyle. The main guitar's also a totally different sound. And whenever the song was played live in '72 with Blondie on bass, he never replicated the opening riff - it's always like the earlier takes. So several things seem to stack up in favour of putting our trust in the Dutch guy and in Carl for this one. Carl also ably handled the bass when playing in a trio with Blondie and Ricky for a jam session in an adjacent studio to the BBC2 barn that summer.

That's interesting stuff. Thank you, guys!





I always thoght it to be Carl but wondered why they would do one track "clean" and one track "gruff", so I figured it must've been someone else who was singing along with Carl. After hearing the vocals-only version I thought it to be Mike. Looks like the closer I listen the wronger I am  :-D

I think it's a shame that the powers that be didn't do an isolation mix on the "Cookie" voice so we could hear it in greater detail. The original LP mix had those two vocals hard-panned L/R and if you had a receiver/tuner that could isolate L/R and put it into both speakers (a feature that seems to have become a highly endangered species in years since) you'd have been able to do just that. My guess at the time was that it was Carl doing both vocals, but that there were a few extra overdubs in "gruff" style--a few not-so-carefully placed shouts and grunts--that might well be Brian.

It should also be noted that "Mess of Help" was intensely disliked by Bruce Johnston, who spoke out against it, specifically citing the lead vocals as sloppy and pretty much unbecoming of the band. Such commentary was almost certainly part of the widening rift between Bruce and Carl, who'd championed the track in its formative stages and had brought the track over the finish line. (Refer to the Klaas translation of an interview with Carl in Holland that occurred in the "in-between" time of "Beatrice" and the rewrite/session add-ons that occurred in April). Those comments might have been the "straw that broke the camel's back" WRT Bruce's tenure in the band.


All of this gives more credence to the commentaries from Jack Rieley about Brian's involvement with the band during CATP, which seem to have been totally discounted due to other elements of Jack's "antics"--and the prevalent myth that inordinately lengthened Brian's "time in the bedroom." My sense is that there's a linkage between "Beatrice/MEss of Help" and "Funky Pretty" that's involved with the song structure--a parallel kind of "modularity" built around "tags" (as Carl said in an interview once: "we're big tag fans") that becomes clearer when you listen to someone like Devin Lawrence do piano recreations of the two tracks.

Brian is the only piano on He Come Down?  That is very surprising to me.  Just doesn't sound like his style to me. 

Yes, it's definitely him. He plays in a somewhat, but not entirely, similar gospel style on THAT SAME SONG. More elaborate on the former, more minimalist on the latter.

FYI y'all - especially anyone who has printed the sessionography out to drop into their box set...revisions have been posted to the credits for LEAVING THIS TOWN (thanks, Gerry) and I'M THE PIED PIPER. Also a small formatting issue has been corrected in the credits for CUDDLE UP.

Is Ricky not singing on “Funky Pretty”? I always thought he was part of that round with Al, Blondie, and Mike:

where's my spark in the dark? - Al
Glow glow glow c’mon glow - Ricky
The funky pretty flame in my heart - Blondie
Me and my Pisces lady are apart - Mike

But I can see how that could just also be Blondie.

Just Blondie on those lines.

Yeah, Blondie clearly has a gruffer, more soulful vocal style, as heard on that line. Ricky's lead voice is relatively "straight", for want of a better word. You might say "flat", but that has an unintended negative connotation. You can really tell the difference between them on HERE SHE COMES, where they trade off sections, with Ricky singing the verses and Blondie the refrains.

Whatever happened to the advertised Made In California sessionography?