The Smiley Smile Message Board

I have to admit, I really like the guitar work on a lot of later-period songs...particularly Somewhere Near Japan, Lahaina Aloha, Strange Things Happen, Still Cruisin....

Were Carl and Al playing much guitar on the later albums? The tone and playing on some of this stuff is really good. Any idea who did play on it if it wasn't either of them?

Well, Carl and Al didn't play on the Summer in paradise-album, so I guess it was Adrian Baker. Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

BTW I absolutely love the surf-guitar on "Island fever" (US-version)

Um, well, at the risk of seeming a tad obvious...

According to the credits on SIP, the guitars were by Craig Fall. All of them, except for the pedal steel, by John Weston.

Did Ed Carter play on Still Cruisin'? Heard some great playing by him on songs like Somewhere Near Japan and Still Cruisin' in concert, magnificent!

Craig Fall did have an interesting guitar style and I can appreciate it, but it didn't seem right in context to me.  It seemed to take the edge OFF the material, rather than add it...kind of noodly and cluttered.

I don't want to sound like I'm dissing the guy, because it's good guitar playing.  I'd be interested to hear it on some different stylistical material.  On the later BBs material it just seemed to add to the general gauzy and sterile vibe of the tracks to me.  I don't blame him -- he was asked to do his thing and he did it -- and it's at least pleasant to listen to.  I'd rather have heard Carl's clodhopper guitar playing, but that's me.  Your mileage may vary.

Well the guitar sound on these albums is 100 times better than the nylon guitar on IMAGINATION, that's for sure...seriously, why was that ever in fashion with contemporary music?

To paraphrase an old jazz guitar teacher (who was referring to each of the 12 notes available on an instrument), "there's no bad tone." Nylon string guitars are wonderful and entirely appropriate ... when they aren't arranged for a stinkyass mulleted ex-wrestler cheesefest. Check out Leonard Cohen for a good use, and pretend this dumbfuck noodling never happened. (Why do I think someone is going to take issue with some or another part of this post?)

Your right Luther, I meant to say in adult contemporary music...I love a bit of classical guitar myself in classical music...and I bought the Live in London Cohen DVD a few months ago...superb

That being said, Joe Thomas has actually been pretty successful since leaving the BW camp:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Thomas_(producer/director) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Thomas_(producer/director))

And there are many parts of Imagination I love and defend (and ample Wilson-esque arrangements if you know where to listen). But the acoustic guitar bits -- yeah, ech.

Well plenty of people I think suck have been successful!

That wasn't really the point -- I was no great fan of Thomas either (vocal production techniques excepted). It's just that he wasn't exactly a charlatan, in the way of many BW pals over the years -- he seems to be an honest-to-goodness entrepreneur.

I actually thought Imagination was produced very well. I like it much more than SiP's production. "Cry" is wonderful.

**KOFF**

"According to the credits on SIP, the guitars were by Craig Fall. All of them, except for the pedal steel, by John Weston."

Seriously, do people actually read the whole thread or just their own posts ?

Bruce once said somewhere that Craig Fall was the guitarist on "Somewhere Near Japan", so he probably did the chores on the "Still Cruisin'" title track as well.  Joseph Brasler played the guitar on "In My Car" (which was not actually a Brian solo track intended for "Sweet Insanity" with Carl's and Al's voices added later on for inclusion on "Still Cruisin", like a lot of us assumed at the time, but was actually tracked as a Beach Boys session paid for by Capitol specifically for inclusion on that album).

As for live performances of "Still Cruisin'", "Somewhere Near Japan", and "Summer In Paradise"...when I saw them in 1990, Carl played the solo on "Still Cruisin'" (note-for-note on the 12-string)...for "Somewhere Near Japan", Eddie Carter played the hot lead licks with Carl on 12-string and Billy moving over to bass.  For the performances of "Summer In Paradise" I saw in '96, their backline guitar tech Manny came out and played the lead, while in '97 it was Phil Bardowell....in '95, it was either as it was in '96, or Eddie and Billy did the same thing they did for "Japan" in '90 (I'd half to dig out my notes to confirm).

"Wipe Out" has the Fat Boys' band playing the track, right?

I started a thread on Terry Melcher's production value a few years ago. Wasn't too popular.
Still think that Melcher succeeded at delivering an identifiable and contemporary BB sound without being retro or too linked to contemporary trends.

I prefer Melcher's production values over say, Steve Levine...I'm glad they only did one album with him, honestly, and went in a more Melcher direction.  Having said that, being a man of contradiction, Summer In Paradise sounds horrible. It just sounds horrible in a different way than the horrible sounding production of BB85.  I find 85 pretty hard to listen to, honestly. 

I think one of the problem for anyone doing music in the '80s (I was around for the very tail end of it) was the degree to which everyone was trying to please "the industry" and how the things that were necessary to do that were almost universally bad.  I'm remembering Gary Usher's saying to Brian that they "couldn't compete (in the marketplace) with live drums," that they had to use a drum machine.  As nauseating as I find that statement, he was also probably correct.  So Terry Melcher probably did what he thought was the right thing to do at the time.

In the '90s, the trends shifted, and things became more about organic sounds again.  It's no coincidence that the stuff Brian started to do was much more in his vintage style.  It was "OK" and not counter-commercial to go there again.  But in the '80s...forget it.  Even guys with good pop sensibilities like Marshall Crenshaw and Crowded House (with Mitchell Froom being one of the ONLY keyboard players at the time to manage to incorporate vintage sounds and make it work on the radio at the time) had to adapt to the prevailing headwinds.

But, were the Beach Boys that desperate to remain "current"? I mean, it had been around ten years since Endless Summer, why hadn't they reverted to the organic underground/emerging indie scene (sort of like Smiley Smile and Wild Honey following their commercial peak years) and give up trying to write hit songs for the radio? Or was there a certain faction, including Brian, who still wanted commercial hits among the band?

They absolutely still thought they could score hits -- "Come Go With Me" and "Getcha Back" among them.  They weren't aiming to be "indie", they were a big-ass mainstream rock band playing Live Aid right after Bryan Adams!

They were aiming to take the nostalgic stuff and sell it to a big mainstream audience.  And that meant a fair degree of current-ness...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

Then how did all those hair-metal bands get hits without using drum machines?

Ha! This has to go down as one of the greatest responses to AGD in board history :) "yes, i read what you wrote, and what you wrote is factually correct, and if 'd bothered to read the album credits i'd have found out the same thing for myself, but i chose to ignore all that and restate my prior hypothesis."

Agreed -- Jake Thackray, for example, has some of the most wonderful guitar playing I've ever heard, and all his stuff's nylon-string. It's just that it's used so clumsily so often -- much like the tenor sax.