It was a real, 7 hour session, part of which was filmed. The Smile Sessions box set disc 5, tracks 14-16 are from that date. I'm sure it was deflection because she wasn't at that date - but that session didn't produce anything in the final mix either!

not to mention that the album wouldn’t have been completed without his brother stepping in to finish the job.

This is a huge myth that I'd like to see phased out eventually. Carl didn't step in to finish the job - he helped mix the record. What he was given to mix was a completed album, on 24 tracks instead of 2. All the compositions, lyrics, track arrangements, vocal arrangements, performances, etc. were produced by Brian. That's 99% or the work. Carl was in charge of whether that piano goes in the left or the right ear, or whether the backing vocals should be louder than the saxes in this section, etc.

In terms of Landy's influence... yes, Landy pushed Brian to write the songs, and a good half of the album may not have been written if Brian wasn't pushed. But the music still all came from Brian completely.

Telephone Backgrounds exists. Burlesque was not recorded in 1972, but there's an MIU outtake titled "Beach Burlesque" that may be a backing track of the same tune, recorded 5 years on. Body Talk/Grease Job exists and is unrelated to both of these

He's got some chords wrong...

And it's not disputed AT ALL which Bassists made it to the final cut.  

That said -- wonderful to get a substantive musicological look at a Beach Boys song!

So you are saying that Carole Kaye is not on the final track at all?  Because I thought she was playing the upper part and Ray Pohlman was playing the lower part on acoustic bass.

She is not and has never been on the final track at all. The electric part she usually takes credit for in the verse is Ray Pohlman, and the upright response is Lyle Ritz.

Unfortunate that Carol keeps getting name checked in these types of videos. It's not a terrible idea to mention unused musicians on a track, but at least talk about Ray Pohlman, Lyle Ritz, Bill Pitman, Arthur Wright and Jimmy Bond first!

I really love the "new" version of Must Be a Miracle. I wonder if there's any other re-recordings of the Paley material we haven't heard yet?

The vocal on it sounds much closer to Imagination-era than the Paley sessions, but the backing track doesn't have that sheen from Imagination.

We know that Brian, Andy and Don Was produced a track for The Beach Boys in 1995, so that's probably what this is, with later vocals. There's also a version of God Did It with Brian singing lead from the same period, and a few other whole songs that haven't been bootlegged. Release it all!!!

There's a lot of out-of-control high end on the new mixes of the 90s material that sounds similar to what happened on the Feel Flows box. A little painful to listen to, but man what great songs!

Great stuff all around here! These 12 tracks really make me yearn for a much more expansive, comprehensive solo collection, and I think the 90s Paley collaborations definitely deserve their own release, but this soundtrack works as a pretty nice teaser of Brian's unreleased tracks. Since there's nothing out there that really breaks down the tracks, I'll give as much info as I can:

Right Where I Belong is the new Brian Wilson / Jim James song, written and recorded by just the two.

I'm Goin' Home is the 1994 Wilson/Paley recording, presented in a new mix (seemingly by Mark Linett?). It's in stereo which is nice, but Brian's voice has some very strange EQ on it.

It's Not Easy Being Me is also the 1994 Wilson/Paley recording, in a new stereo mix. Sounds pretty great! Always been one of my favorite Brian solo tunes.

Must Be A Miracle, like I said, is not the 1995 bootlegged recording. It's a newer version - could it be the one produced by Brian, Andy and Don Was in 1995, originally meant for the beach boys? Anyway, the vocals sound like late 90s-early 2000s Brian to my ear. No other Beach Boys as far as I can tell.

Slightly American Music is the 90s Wilson/Paley recording as well. Now in full stereo, it sounds great!

It's OK is the 2017/2018 recording done just for the film, with Brian on lead. Nice little session intro, and Brian sings the ending "find a ride"! Very fun little remake.

Rock & Roll Has Got A Hold On Me is a 2000s Brian original, but I'm pretty sure this is a 2017/2018 remake done for the film, but unused. I've heard a bit of the original recording, and I wish that was used instead! The verses are made up of an A section right from Country Feelin, a B section from In My Car, and the bridge comes straight from Concert Tonight! Again, I would've prefered the 2004(?) recording, but this is nice to have officially released!

The Night Was So Young also sounds like another 2017/2018 recording. Brian sings lead again. The autotune is pretty noticeable on this one and the previous song. Very charming to hear old man Brian belt out that "WHY SHE HAS TO HI-I-IDE!"

Honeycomb is another 2017-2018 recording, as seen in the movie. Brian sings lead once again.

Long Promised Road is, once again, the new recording made just for the movie. Brian, Blondie, and Jim James take turns on the lead.

In My Room is the live version featured in the movie. Pretty standard for Brian's band live.

I'm Broke is the 1992 version that's been booted, presented in a new mix. The effects and weird EQ on this one, as well as the rest of the Paley tracks, make it pretty hard to listen to. Who mixed this? There's a lot of buzzing that kind of makes it a painful listen. I'll stick to the mix on Brian's website.

I have it on good word that the Paley collabs are the original versions presented in newer mixes - besides Must Be A Miracle, which is the later version heard in the film.

Brian has explained that Girl Don't Tell Me was one of the few songs he didn't write on a keyboard- but he didn't write it on a guitar either! He came up with the melody just on his own, and later arranged and taught the tune from a piano. That song, Surfer Girl, and Be True To Your School are the only ones he didn't conceive of at a keyboard, as far as I'm aware.

Brian could play guitar in the same way any bassist could play guitar. All he's ever played on recordings are simple melodies and bass lines. The Honeys' "The Love Of A Boy And A Girl" is a good indicator of what he can do (along with The Survivors' After The Game, American Spring's Tennessee Waltz, and The Beach Boys' Where Is She).

Has there ever been any info on why My Solution was recorded in the 1st place?

There's no way this was ever done with the intent of it being an album track on any project, right?

I'm guessing it was just written/recorded for fun/as a goof, but wondering if anyone knows any other info.

Considering Brian was planning to put it on an album in 1976, and it ended up (in re-written form) on Imagination, I don't see why they wouldn't have done it back then.

It's not just influence - it's the exact same vocal arrangement note for note. It wasn't originally conceived for Smile either: the same arrangement was used as the intro for All Dressed Up For School in 1964.

It should be worth noting that while the rest of the band were certainly coming into their own around this time, the most complex and layered vocal arrangements still came from Brian. All I Wanna Do, Cool Cool Water, Add Some Music, This Whole World, and At My Window have so many different melodies going on at once. Not to mention Til I Die, Tree, and Break Away having some of the best straight harmony stacks they ever recorded.

And this is getting into another topic here, but I feel like it needs clarifying, as even Carl has been wrong on this one before - Brian does not have perfect pitch.

I have a feeling that the live version of Back Home is an edit of more than one performance. I don't know of any time where Brian and Al did a duet like that.

It actually was a duet between Brian and Al, but what they've done here is replaced Brian's live vocal with a studio take from the 15 Big Ones sessions. Here's the original:

https://youtu.be/X4GZHvHbQNI?t=3913

Hopefully "seasons in the sun" will be the next single. It would be a missed opportunity to not use that song to grab some causal fans or non fans attention.

Well, it's certainly coming out this Friday... along with quite a few other songs

What's bootlegged are two rough, unfinished WIP mixes of a recording that was ultimately intended for commercial release. To make the comparison to Pet Sounds again, there are plenty of moments on that album where only two instruments can be heard, and there are also WIP mixes with rough vocals. However you spin it, it is objectively incorrect to call Brian's version of Everything I Need a demo.

I think it's misleading to call Brian's version of the song a "demo" or any similar word - before Joe Thomas stepped in, that was the version recorded for the Wilsons project. It's a professional studio recording that took several studio sessions, and it's got 37 pro musicians on it, including lots and lots of familiar names from the 60s. It's about as much a demo as anything on Pet Sounds.

The mix of Sweet & Bitter on FF is very different to what Don posted on Youtube some years back... it's stripped back to just what Brian and Don played in the studio that day. Acoustic guitars, organ, piano, bass, and Mike's vocal.

Well, objectively, Brian's version is 17 musicians in a room, + 3 vocalists and an overdubbed 20-piece string section. It's no different from some of the bigger Pet Sounds tracks in that regard, and the instrumentation is similar too! And what's the argument about how long Brian worked with each collaborator? Is No Pier Pressure automatically better than Pet Sounds because Brian spent more time with Joe than Tony? Brian and Van Dyke have also barely worked together since Smile, besides a few songs here and there, and Brian singing all over the Orange Crate Art album - does that mean Smile is bad? It all comes down to personal taste, I suppose. I wasn't around for the hype about this track in the mid 90s, and Brian's original version still sounds miles ahead of the adult contemporary track that Joe produced to my ears.

Yeah, the first version of Everything I Need was flat as a pancake. Lifeless and listless. Joe Thomas worked with Brian to make it somewhat releasable to mass audiences.

The truth hurts in this case, I’m afraid.

I don't think I've ever disagreed with an opinion more than this. The original's gotta be in my top 5 things Brian's done since the 70s! Meanwhile, Joe's version is essentially unlistenable for me.

There were absolutely NO overdubs on this magnificent recording, other than the vocals - however, the tag was spliced in from a separate take.

It always sounded like the french horn had to be overdubbed on that tag if there wasn't a 2nd horn present in the session, alternating playing the same line one after another. It actually sounds impossible to play without being overdubbed or a 2nd horn player present.

If you mean the melodic "withouuuut" part being played in rounds at the end - that's a horn and a woodwind (although the reverb does make it sound like two horns!). All the instruments are live without a single doubt

I've seen 79 as a number of songs he believed he deserved more credit for, including songs he was never credited for in the first place, but ALSO some songs he just wanted a bigger percentage of. Good Vibrations is an example of one of the 79 in the article I've seen that used that number, so the other 31 songs here were probably already Wilson/Love.

It was incomplete and taped over. Once something is taped over, it cannot be recovered. Not lost, just erased very soon after it was captured.

Absolutely nothing from Brian's arrangement of Sloop John B came from Al. All that Al did was suggest the song for Brian to record.

I know the lyrics aren't the greatest, but I freakin' love the "Spirit of Rock and Roll"....   I can't listen to that one without hours later still be singing to myself, "The spirit, the spirit, the spirit of rock and roll"

Interesting how "Black Widow" was rewritten as "Let's Do It Again."   I forgot, was Black Widow itself recycled from something else?

Nothing from Brian's own career. It's got a very strange, unique riff in the verses that he hadn't used before and hasn't used since