Even in more recent years, you'll sometimes see Al playing a random guitar (often a standard American Strat) where it seems he's doing a one-off gig and the promoter or whomever is paying for or arranging the gig provided the instruments.

One time when Al was doing a gig in the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, I was lucky enough to catch the soundcheck. He had two rental Strats for that show.

I just found this:



Just a chime in. Al Jardine came to town last year, spec'd a Rickenbacker 12 for his rental. My good friend works for the backline company. He asked if they could rent my Rickenbacker 330/12 (Blueburst) for the night for 100 bucks. I said sure! Al Jardine played my guitar, said he loved it. Thanks, that's all.

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/beach-boys-rig-rundown-circa-1964.1622936/

Best: "The Spirit of Rock and Roll" (Dylan version)

I don't think that one was ever released.

It's on one of the two Sweet Insanity versions floating about. The other version is on the Hallmark CD. The song was first introduced in the 25th anniversary gig in Hawaii, which I have on DVD.

Yes, but only the version on "Songs from here & back" was ever released. The others are bootlegs. The 25th anniversary show featured them miming to Brian's recording, but was never available afterwards.

I was asked to write liners for one of the late '70's two-fers and when the late Paul Atkinson of Capitol called me to offer the job I said sure as long as I can write that one of them was a mostly crap album. He laughed, said I was right, and I didn't get the job.

M.I.U. ?

Best: "The Spirit of Rock and Roll" (Dylan version)

I don't think that one was ever released.

Forgot to mention this TV appearance was from November 18, 1970 on "Top of the Pops" in the UK:



They mimed to "Tears in the Morning" indeed; I'm curious if there's any chance they did any other numbers. Was it typical to just do one song on TOTP at that time?

Also funny that they went to the trouble to have Mike playing something that seemed to vaguely match the recording, yet Carl and Al just play two electric guitars and Bruce doesn't have any sort of keyboard or organ or piano.

This seems to be the audio of that performance. Though it says Dec. 15th:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2L0KAlwTTk

[The Beach Boys at Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim California, May 15, 1981.]

The Beach Boys at Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim California, May 15, 1981.

http://rocknpics.com/rockpix/Beach%20Boys/921.htm

Some sad pictures of Brian.

[The Beach Boys (July 1973 Interview) • On "Party!" Album, Label Issues, and "God Only Knows"]

Here's some snippets of an interview with the Boys from 1973. Some interesting sounds. Does anyone have the whole thing or knows where it comes from? It's not from the BBC Beach Boys Story, I believe.



The Beach Boys (July 1973 Interview) • On "Party!" Album, Label Issues, and "God Only Knows"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2s47Hf56VY



Dennis Wilson On Forever : "What About It!?" (July 1973) • The Beach Boys Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU9up-237J4




I see the user put a link in his description. You can register on the following site and then listen to the whole thing.


http://www.drdemento.com/online.html?c=e18&s=s 

That's probably a good idea! I guess I'm just stuck too deep in my innocent fantasy that you just pick up your guitar, plug in and play. 

We'd need to take a look into Red Barn.

And is Al playing an ES-125 here?

No, that is a Gibson ES-225T, the first slim hollowbody model Gibson produced. You can spot the 225 by the odd placement of the P-90 pickup, sitting alone in the center rather than close to the neck or bridge, and also by the cutaway. Also note that odd trapeze tailpiece/bridge assembly - That was designed by Les Paul, and was on those initial early runs of the Les Paul models, those early goldtops where that huge tailpiece didn't work so well...but on a slim hollowbody archtop, they fit just fine.

Al is playing probably the most common configuration (and sunburst color) seen on those 50's ES-225 models. They were only made from 55-59 or so.

Thank you!
I wonder where Al got this from. I never saw any of the Boys with that kind of guitar. Carl is playing a twelve-string accoustic, which also didn't happen too often on stage, I believe.


BTW here's an episode of Guitar Of The Day by Norman's Rare Guitars featuring an ES-225T

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubfFjB5KSnA


Is aeijtzsche still on board? Maybe we should update the list.

Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/seattle-dj-pat-oday-now-84-recalls-the-day-superstar-jimi-hendrix-was-too-cool-for-school/

I think the Carl sunburst in that pic is an ES-345; note the extra tone selector switch above the four main knobs, and also the alternate split parallelogram inlay on the neck.  

Yeah, I saw that only after I posted the picture. Thanks for the correction.


Here's a pic of Carl's own E-200 "on display at the Hard Rock Café in Miami" (according to the link in my above message.






And is Al playing an ES-125 here?

Is it me, or did So play this same guitar at the July 1984 Washington show? At least it looks very similar to me, from seeing a picture on Facebook.

Al played a sunburst Gibson ES-335 (or very similar) at the DC '84 gig:



Similar to that generic guitar only in that it's a semi-hollow body double cutaway guitar with a burst finish. But Al's playing the real deal here, and you can also see plenty of differences. It's clearly a Gibson, it has gold hardware, and Al's guitar has a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. Al's guitar here is generally relatively similar to Carl's main guitar of the 80s and 90s, his ES-335.

I don't know if Al is playing Carl's guitar or if it was his own. Here's a better picture of Carl's:







BTW I found another one that wasn't mentioned in this thread, I believe. It's Carl with an Emperador E-200:



Source: https://reverb.com/item/1441156-emperador-e-200-1969-beach-boys-carl-wilson-model

- double post -

While I'm getting way too far head talking about a documentary that will unfortunately more like than not never happen, documentaries have to balance out cost of licensing the footage versus how integral it is.

They'd likely only pay to license old interviews that have something they need for a documentary, rather than just being a curio as far as being rare, old footage.

Yeah, certainly. And also we don't know what they have in their archives and own. But stuff like the Ida Blackburn footage and other stuff showing them in their early prime on stage, is pure gold to me. There's just so few of it in other documentaries. It's mostly the Lost Concert and the T.A.M.I. show. Maybe some appearances on TV shows. But never of an actual tour show.

[Ken Burns On Secrets Of Country Music's History Uncovered In New Documentary]

From MSNBC:

Ken Burns On Secrets Of Country Music's History Uncovered In New Documentary


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VE5manOKig

Here's a TV interview with Carl who was cutting his second solo album at that time. He also talks about Brian just having entered his second Landy term, working with Skunk Baxter and other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcOHwarMNKk

Cool to see. Carl did another even longer interview in 1983, possibly for PBS, where he discussed some of the same topics. It was from the same time frame, so he discussed Brian's therapy and whatnot. I have it on VHS buried somewhere; the video quality was pretty bad but it sounded okay so it was still pretty interesting.

If they ever get around to doing a "Beatles Anthology" sort of thing for the Beach Boys, they're going to have to mine sources like this for Carl interview footage.

Yes. I just thought about something like that yesterday. There's not that much filmed interview material with Dennis, I believe. But there are some radio interviews with him that go into detail. Those certainly could be used. If a new documentary will be made I hope that they use interesting stuff that hasn't been used before that much, like footage from news reports/other filmed concerts, the Ida Blackburn footage/interviews from 1964 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z4N4BSs4Ic ) and all those kind of cool things.

Here's a TV interview with Carl who was cutting his second solo album at that time. He also talks about Brian just having entered his second Landy term, working with Skunk Baxter and other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcOHwarMNKk

Dennis with his father-in-law in 1983:

Re: The Silvertone guitar:

Bob might be playing this guitar on this recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-P18A7_YnM


Producer, Associated  Performer, Vocalist: Brian Wilson
Producer, Associated  Performer, Guitar: Robert Norberg
Studio  Personnel, Mixer, Mastering  Engineer: Mark Linett
Composer  Lyricist: Brian Wilson
Composer  Lyricist: Roger Christian

As for the supposed "Carl Wilson" guitar...we need more info from the original poster Rocker.

Where did this photo of that display come from, can you post a link to it?

I found it via a google search. This is the site it was on:

https://www.pinterest.com/loriafrancisco/hardrock-punta-cana-memorabilia/

You can actually zoom in but I can't decipher what the sign says.

Found this picture of Carl's ... is it a Gibson or Epiphone?





Another interesting object:




https://www.mauiinformationguide.com/blog/guitar-used-on-beach-boys-surfer-girl/

This guitar belonged to Bob Norberg and the article says it was used to "make" Surfer Girl. I don't know if they mean it was used on the actual album/song or something else. But I seem to remember seeing a home movie with Brian fooling around with a guitar that might actually be this one (see below). Maybe C-Man knows if this was ever used by the band.

So this seems to be the booklet that was part of the Beach Boys Concert LP, which I hadn't seen before (why wasn't it reprinted for the two-fer?):














Source: https://www.donkey-show.com/?p=10646



As you can see, there's one picture of the whole group up front at the microphones, including Dennis, singing. What song may this have been? Was there any without drums?

[Ken Burns on his country music love story]

The New York Times has a nice review on Burns' documentary. Did any of you watch the movie?


Ken Burns on his country music love story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_7gcq5AYrg



Interestingly the documentary featured as of yet unknown footage of Elvis and Johnny Cash together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QHR7Dc8Bx8

Maury povitch aired that day but was probably taped earlier. I think they played more songs

Ok, thank you! So that was something different to this.

That performance of "BTTYS" is definitely from the National Cheerleading Competition show - I saw the original broadcast and remember it well. The hosts were (then couple) Victoria Principal and Andy Gibb. The Boys also performed "Surfin' U.S.A." during the closing credits roll.

Thanks! Do you know if that was directly after BTTYS or later? At the end of the video they are still on "stage".

There was definitely tension that day. Watch carefully and you can see Dennis send a drumstick flying and it hits Mike in the leg.

Dennis broke sticks constantly because of his playing style. I don't think he threw it at Mike's direction consciously. On the other hand, Dennis DID try to push his drum kit onto Mike once.. so who knows...

The Beach Boys performance was split into two segments, one in the middle and one at the end. Most likely though they were taped back-to-back and then split during editing.

Ok, I see. I guess I will put it on the list then.

Maury povitch aired that day but was probably taped earlier. I think they played more songs

Ok, thank you! So that was something different to this.

That performance of "BTTYS" is definitely from the National Cheerleading Competition show - I saw the original broadcast and remember it well. The hosts were (then couple) Victoria Principal and Andy Gibb. The Boys also performed "Surfin' U.S.A." during the closing credits roll.

Thanks! Do you know if that was directly after BTTYS or later? At the end of the video they are still on "stage".

There was definitely tension that day. Watch carefully and you can see Dennis send a drumstick flying and it hits Mike in the leg.

Dennis broke sticks constantly because of his playing style. I don't think he threw it at Mike's direction consciously. On the other hand, Dennis DID try to push his drum kit onto Mike once.. so who knows...

[Beach Boys Be True To Your School]

Came across this clip that I had totally forgotten about. I guess 1981, Dennis looks pretty good and heathy. Does anyone have more information where it comes from and if there were more songs played by the band? It looks similar to the setup for the 1980 Mike Douglas appearance.


Beach Boys Be True To Your School

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJNlB47QQyg


EDIT:

I also added the August 29th 1964 show including a youtube link. Although it fits the semi-pro category, this is something like an exception, as we don't know if any complete songs were filmed. According to Ian's website there were a couple of shows and two of them were broadcast on radio (I wished we'd have those recordings).

One of the comments on that video claims it was the 4th Annual National Cheerleading Competition in Miami, FL, May 26, 1981. Considering the theme, I would bet BTTYS was the only song performed.

Thanks for pointing that date out! I looked at AGD's Shows & Sessions section, that Ian also added to, and it says for May 26th: 26 - People Are Talking with Maury Povich TV show So it is possible that they played more songs. Maybe Ian will chime in.