By the bye, while I'm here I have to say By the way, while I am here, I want to remind you younger Beach Boys enthusiasts of how fortunate you are to have a website like SmileySmile.net that puts you in contact with people like Jon Stebbins, Andrew G. Doe and all of these other very knowledgeable and important people. I’m not joking – back before The Beach Boys got ‘hip’ again, the attitude among my musician buddies was sort of “when you take The Beach Boys seriously, you don’t just embarrass yourself, you embarrass your friends”. Even as late as ’72, I knew so few people who liked The Beach Boys that when we talked about them, we used ‘turkey talk’ – which is dropping an ‘ob’ in front of every vowel of a word. Lobike thobis. We did it so often that I actually got good at it. The only reason I don’t spend more time here is because on this site, I’m like that fat kid on South Park playing ‘World of Warcraft’, except my family refuses to clean up the mess.

Thank Smileysmile.net and thank you all.

Hello filledeplage,

Thank you - It's so nice to have somebody get that story. Here is another one: in autumn of 1970, I showed up at a housewarming party for some friends of mine who went to UCI. My housewarming gift was a copy of Sunlower. When I handed it to the girl who lived their, she held it up to the crowd and made a bad joke and all of the achingly hip hippies just laughed up their sleeves - it wasn't a comfortable moment but I let it slide.  For the next six months (this was the big party house in the neighborhood) I always checked and they never even took the plastic off the sleeve.

Fast forward 30 years later she tracked me down online and asked where she could find a song called 'Forever' - it was going to be her daughter's wedding song!

Hello Andrew G. Doe.

Thank you for responding and I will apologize until the day I die for not putting your website in the sources - that was a huge error and I am sorry. As for listing you, if you weren't Andrew G. Doe, you would know that seeing 'Andrew G. Doe' on any information means you can take it to the bank. Thank you for all of the stellar work you've done over the years.  I owe ya! The funny thing is: back in the autumn of '70, my old songwriter and I used to drive up to LA and cruise up and down Bellagio with a copy of Sunflower hoping we might find a house that looks like the one in the gatefold and I got to relive that memory every time I went on your site.

What would I have done differently? I would have asked for more time - much more time. There were a LOT of folks who wouldn't be interviewed (mostly because they're writing their own books or didn't want to commit their opinions to a public place). I think with a little more time, I could have worn them down. If I had listed all of the people who turned me down, it would have taken up another page. I have to admit that as honored as I am to be able to make Carl's story public, I still wonder if I've made the right decision.  However, in terms of what I set out to do - which was to reexamine Carl's vital role as a musician in making some of the most important music in history, I think I got that part right and I hope it justifies the whole effort.

By the way, forgetting to list your website wasn't the only STUPID mistake I made: I misspelled Sharon Sheely's name....she went to my high school.

Thanks again - for everything!!!!

By the way, I have one funny Beach Boys story that only the hardest of hardcore buffs will get, so I will sign off with it. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I was growing up in Orange County, The Beach Boys were considered the exact opposite of cool. In fact, when my old songwriting partner and I went to see the November 1970 show at the Whiskey, we didn't even consider trying to get dates - we didn't want to get laughed at while we were getting turned down. Well, we caught the second night just before Brian went home and we were DAZZLED!!! When The Beach Boys came back to Santa Monica a few months later, we knew we had to get dates because in those days, their shows were AMAZING. So we got two cute girls to go with us, but didn't tell them where we were taking them. As we turned the corner into the Santa Monica Civic parking lot, the girls saw 'The Beach Boys' on the marquee (I am NOT making this up) and GASPED!!!  So my buddy Jeff just looked at them and said "a), its a great show and b) if you don't want to go, its a LONG WALK back to Newport..."

Hello Jon, Thank you so much and I couldn't have done it without - you are a GOD!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for all of your support and great work. When it comes to The Beach Boys, you are the MAN and the rest of us only serve!

....okay, one more - my reply to Jeffh is still floating around in the ether - in answer to your question, yes - my first interview was with Billy Hinsche, Marilyn did part with a few quotes even though she is writing her own book, Mike Love is also writing his own book but was very nice about turning me down. I did take Justyn and Jonah out to dinner and walk them through the book, but didn't conduct a formal interview other than Justyn telling me his dad was a southpaw - I just wanted them to know what to expect. As I mentioned earlier, my goal was to focus on Carl as a guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer; so I focus more on musicians and engineers.

...by the bye, I want to thank Andrew G. Doe for listing the interviews that I did, but I realize that when the first interview took place in 1989, it sounds like my remark about a ten month deadline might sound a little questionable. Here is a little background on the book: my wonderful publisher (Jawbone) actually came up with the idea of doing a biography of Carl and I was originally going to handle the research end (because I'm down here in Southern California) and another writer was going to handle the writing (I really wish it had worked out that way, too...) However, part of asking me to contribute was that I had been doing research on L.A. music since the early 90s and had compiled a great deal of information on the BBs and Carl for three books: Surf Beat, the first draft of Bob Keane's The Oracle of Del Fi and The Gold Star Album. This worked out as it did save me bucketloads of time because a lot of the people whom I interviewed over the years are now, sadly, no longer with us. But Backbeat approached me last summer and asked if I wanted to go ahead with it and I did.

THANK YOU!!!! Absolutely!! A full scale biography of Carl would need at least two years and if I'd had two years to do it, I woulda done it! However, one of the big obstacles I encountered was that a lot of people who knew Carl are writing their own books and didn't want to give anything away...I know because I actually showed a couple of them how to submit a nonfiction proposal to a literary agent. Right now, I can tell you that Brian, Mike, Marilyn and Bruce are all involved in writing their own books - and that's why a lot of people wouldn't be interviewed (although, strangely enough, they were all VERY nice about it - especially Bruce and Marilyn, who did give a few very important quotes).

Hello HeyJude,

First of all, thank you. Second of all - you are absolutely right. I really wish I'd had more time to lavish on that point of Carl's career. However, whenever I started an interview, the first question I asked was "what does the world need to know about Carl Wilson?" and the answers that always came back were: a) people need to know what an important part he played in The Beach Boys' records (especially as a guitarist), and b) his importance as a producer. Given the very tight time frame I had (ten months), I chose to focus on those two aspects of Carl's legacy as those are the parts that are most often overlooked in conventional Beach Boys' histories. Think of this as Introduction to Carl and one day abler biographers than I will be able to delve into these issues.

Thank you for having me.

Hello everybody. My name is Kent Crowley and I would have stopped by earlier to introduce myself except even I'm not sure of all of the official release dates. As this site is well known for hosting the most knowledgeable Beach Boys enthusiasts on the planet and some of you have expressed concerns about my upcoming Long Promised Road bio of Carl, I just wanted to let you all know that I am here to address them for you. Thank you.