Thankfully, having lurked here for a while, I know this isn't going to be too sacriligious - "Forever" is just... aargh! That's not to say that it isn't a pleasant, melodic little ditty, but that the surving members (except for maybe Al Jardine - I know he's cited Pacific Ocean Blue as a "masterpiece" or words to that effect in several interviews) continue to perpetuate the myth that Dennis Wilson's songwriting career began and ended with this cringingly plainspoken love song is absurd.

Evidently he didn't do his research, as Pop (then James Osterberg) would have been taking drum lessons from Sam Lay (of Butterfield/Muddy Waters fame) in 1966, while Cooper achieved his first regional hit ("Why Don't You Love Me", with an early incarnation of the Alice Cooper band known as The Spiders) in the same epoch. I've always presumed that this incident occurred sometime in 1973 (after Holland) or 1974 -- Cooper was at the height of his commercial success, the latter day Stooges had convened in LA to work on Raw Power (if memory serves... either way, Iggy was a regular on the Left Coast until about '76 or so), and we all know this is when Brian's illnesses began to consume him.

As for the sandbox recollection, Mr. Pop has had over thirty years to embellish the story, after all...