You mean we're gonna see less Walgreens commercials featuring BBs music?

"And I seen all kinds of girls. Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the states. Back to the cutest girls in the world. I wish they all could be California girls..."

#1 - Suggests that no girls are as cute as California girls. Which is false.
#2 - Suggests that the Beach Boys advocate eugenics, or at the very least, a global takeover initiated by the state of California. Which is unclear - how exactly does he "wish" that we could all be Californian?
#3 - Suggests that the "cutest" girls are inherently better than other girls. Blatant objectification of women.

The Beach Boys need not be associated with this malarkey. Females, like illegal immigrants, are a race that we should all be respectful and mindful of. Anyone up for a petition to ban "California Girls"?

No point arguing with anybody drinking the media Kool-Aid... anybody who thinks playing at a presidential inauguration will ruin "the Beach Boys" brand clearly hasn't been paying attention for the last 49.5 years.

What about the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson? I heard that he liked the Four Freshmen and Chuck Berry. Is that true?

Yeah, but was Pet Sounds inspired by Rubber Soul?

^ Doesn't sound right to me. I have Gb9 (Gb left hand / Bb-Db-Ab right hand) to Db6 (Db / Bb-Db-Gb).

Can't figure out the rest.

Are you serious? He may "change his story" depending on the interviewer and level of comfort, but this is 100% Brian, and this is how he really feels. Do you know otherwise? Are you actually Professor Ben Greenman?

...except, of course, as we ALL know... neither 'He Gives Speeches', nor 'She's Going Bald', nor anything like EITHER composition, made it IN to SMiLE in 2004, either in the live stage performances, or in the recorded album. The only place He Gives Speeches appears at all is, as we would expect, on the SMiLE Sessions box set... and of course there it's the historical late summer 1966 recording, for which nothing needed to be recreated at all!.

Yeah, it's definitely not Brian talking about "He Gives Speeches" there, so we can put away the absurd "100% real Brian" figure. Greenman obviously made an error while he was padding out the book with factoids from Wikipedia.

Let's be realistic, there is no denying that paragraphs like:

"I wasn’t at the center of the band anymore. Some people will say that I pulled away from the center. Some people will say that I was pushed away. Maybe it was a little bit of both. I’m not sure. What I’m sure of is that all the guys in the band had different ideas about what kind of music to release, how to go onstage and perform our songs, when we should repeat ourselves and when we should try new things."

...was edited from this kind of interview:

Greenman: Were you still at the center of the band?
Brian: No.
Greenman: Did you pull away from the group, or were you pushed out?
Brian: I'm not sure. A little bit of both.
Greenman: I read that everyone in the band had different ideas on what direction to go in.
Brian: Yeah.
Greenman: What did they disagree on?
Brian: Things like what kind of music to release, how to go onstage and perform our songs, when we should repeat ourselves and when we should try new things.

Yeah, instead of preserving the original 1966 master print and sound, they should have remade it with its original negatives, and digitally remove all the film scratches and overexposed frames. Maybe autotune the vocals a little bit too.

There are a lot of moments where it's obvious Greenman is copying Wikipedia trivia into the book and attributing it to Wilson. For instance, the Beach Boys' version of "Talk to Me" is clearly based on the high-charting 1958 Little Willie John version, but "Brian" describes the song as an obscure Spector production. (I think I remember reading once that it was a favorite of Carl's, and that's why the song was recorded.)

'Digital processing', for all intents and purposes, IS autotune. How else does something sound 'digitally' processed in this band? Compression, tube distortion, plate reverb, tape delay, equalization, ADT, these are all effects that can be digitally processed, but nobody would say it sounds 'digital'. Unless you have audiophile ears, which very few people have, those effects are indistinguishable from 'analog processing'. And autotune is the quintessential 'digital' sound.

Wow this thread expanded to 8 pages since I posted! Sorry if the following was already posted and clarified:

Would Mike's wife have been happy at the idea of Carnie or Wendy joining in? And they have had a career in music.

Here is half of the relevant passage from the book:

I asked Brian if Ambha could sing “Sail On, Sailor,” which was one of his leads, for this one concert on the tour. He said yes. During sound check, Ambha asked Brian as well. He agreed but was skeptical that a girl so young could actually do it. Then the band played the song, and Ambha was awesome.
“Wow,” Brian said, “you did it better than me.”
We were good to go, but then backstage, Melinda, their son Dylan in tow, stormed up to Jacquelyne and contended that Ambha should be singing one of my leads, not one of Brian’s. She asked how I would feel if Dylan sang “California Girls.”
Jacquelyn said that I would have no problem with that as long as Dylan could sing it well.

Here are other relevant passages from a couple pages earlier:

The crux of the partnership, according to Joe Thomas, Brian’s producer, was that Brian would be “king of the studio” (for the new album), while I would be “king of the road” (for the tour).  ...

.. I consulted with Brian on the anniversary set list—he didn’t want the lead on “Sloop John B” because he didn’t want to sing about fighting—and I drew up the songs that would work for the integrated band. I assumed everything was in place. But when I arrived at our first rehearsal, Melinda was already there, and incredibly, she had changed the set list. She had also ordered five Auto-Tune devices, to correct off-key vocals, and attached them to the mics used by Brian, Al, Bruce, David, and me. But no one used the device except Brian, no one else wanted to use it, and they shouldn’t have been purchased and installed without approval.

I’d had enough. I told Melinda that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be and reminded her that I was in charge of the tour.

“You know what’s wrong with you, Mike Love,” she said. “You’ve got a fucking chip on your shoulder.”

“Really? Well, me and my fucking chip are out of here. Enjoy the tour.” And I walked out.

Joe Thomas and John Branca, who was one of Brian’s former lawyers and was now serving as a co-consultant on the fiftieth anniversary efforts, called me to try to mend the fences, and I told them I would return only if Melinda was banned from rehearsals until the final day, when the press arrived. They agreed, and we continued on.

The context:

1. At soundcheck, Mike asks Brian if daughter Ambha can sing lead on Sail On Sailor
2. Brian says OK
3. Melinda "storms" to Jacquelyne, says Ambha can't sing a Brian lead
4. “Mike already discussed the matter with his partner, Brian.”
5. “Mike’s not his fucking partner. I’m his fucking partner.”

I fully understand that. But even if you match the keys and the sections, they're still different progressions.

In Child Is Father of the Man's chorus and Little Bird's bridge section, the drum pattern, bass line, instruments, and progressions (+chords) are identical. The only thing different is the vocal melody and arrangement.

If Little Pad and Tune X has different progressions, different chords, different melodies, different keys, different arrangements, and different structures, what do they have in common? A 4/4 time signature?

The songs are as related to each other as Do You Like Worms, Cabinessence, Little Children, and Too Much Sugar, which all alternate between the chords F and B♭.

Even those Tune X chords the OP wrote out alternate between the tonic (I) and the subdominant (IV). Which ultimately diverges significantly from the progression of Little Pad.

It's like calling I'm Waiting for the Day an "early version" of My Mary Anne. It's not. They just use similar music devices. Brian happens to recycle them frequently.

Tune X is an early version of Little Pad.

Nice singing, but no, it's not. Tune X is just a composition that may accommodate the melody of Little Pad via semi-related chords. They both have extremely generic progressions.

This is hilarious because you can tell a genuine amount of time was wasted putting thought into this.

One must also consider this chord progression from the second part of "Surf's Up":

  iv ii   V  I
  adieu or die...

Now, here is "Everybody Wants to Live":

     iv     ii   ii/V  I
  ...your life can be

What could this mean? Sure, one chord is different, but the songs are in the same key (F major). Plus, one of the lyrics says "die", while the other says "life". There's no way this was unintentional. Was Brian trying to hint at a lost "cigarette butt suite"?

It's amazing how - if we look hard enough - we can find new mysteries about Smile every day!

The truth is that "Barnyard Billy" was written by Zeppo Wilson before it was stolen by Dennis for "I Don't Know". After they fought over the song on an airport tarmac, Dennis was inspired to write "Barnyard Blues". Which was supposed to be the centerpiece of Pet Sounds.

We know this because all of those songs are tuned to A440.

More excerpts here about Smile and Manson

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-3761744/One-Charles-Manson-s-murderers-gang-babysat-two-children-says-Beach-Boys-star-Mike-Love.html

I highly doubt these recordings are being pulled off of YouTube because of them supposedly being 'substandard' performances and/or recordings or else they would've never released

The only reason "Carry Me Home" was not released on Made in California was because of the Dennis lyric "don't let me die". Yes, recordings are being kept from release just because some people feel it's "uncomfortable" for Beach Boys music. Aren't you glad that The People in Charge are honoring his legacy by locking up music he worked so hard for us to hear?

Brother Records can't monetize the videos because the recordings of those songs have never been published. For that same reason, they shouldn't be able to DMCA most of them. But they did anyway.

I don't see the point in starting a '"rateyourmusic.com" for Beach Boys fans. I'd prefer a site on par with www.chalkhills.org. Chords, tablature, interviews, quotes, and other details regarding every recording made by the band.

There are threads in this forum that are 100 pages long but contain invaluable gems, like the magazine thread, which contains a wealth of vintage articles. How about some mirrors of these scans with decent organization, or even transcribed text? A section for adapted liner notes? Links to vintage news articles, like older Beach Boys sites used to have? Collaboration with Craig Slowinski for personnel lists and recording date information?

Yeah I know, it will never happen. People on here would rather fantasize how life would be different if the Beach Boys were born female than contribute to such an easy project...

[Mark Linett]

Mark Linett: "... on this set, we were transferring reels for the Wild Honey album late last year and completely unmarked on the session reel for a song called “Country Air” discovered Brian doing four or five takes of “Surf’s  Up” – just him at the piano from late ’67.  So, we included that on the box.  No explanation for why he did that and it was never taken any farther.  Although I don’t think the intention was to take it any farther because it’s just him singing live and playing piano."

http://www.iconfetch.com/great-music-interviews/2011-shows/418-mark-linett-beach-boys-smile-part-two-interview.html

[If it’s the jumbo popcorn bag of Beach Boys lore you saltily crave,]

I read a Vanity Fair review of the competing memoirs of Mike Love and Brian Wilson, which says the Love book is better.

Does it?

If it’s the jumbo popcorn bag of Beach Boys lore you saltily crave, then Love’s Good Vibrations should hold you the length of the circus. In the battle of the Beach Boys memoirs, it’s the better read: lively, informative, thumbtacked with crazy specifics, and a decent job of self-exoneration.

In other words, he's saying "if you're obsessive over the band's lore like I am, then you're better off with Love's book." Whereas I Am Brian Wilson seems like a compilation of typical Brian phone call interviews since 2010, Good Vibrations looks like an atypical Mike phone call interview that continued on for several hours. I don't care about the Manson times, but isn't Mike's book unprecedented in that nobody in the band has ever publicly acknowledged Manson on their own volition?

A better question would be how the book compares to WIBN '91

Wouldn't It Be Nice isn't traditional European folk music and God Only Knows isn't a Christmas song. Clearly Brian must do away with those accordions and sleigh bells.