I finished my copy of the book recently. It reads very much more like the transcript of a conversation. Narrative bounces around a lot because of that. It sounds like Brian's voice, though, so that aspect of it rang true for me. It's easy enough to read if you're not looking for narrative structure and don't mind tangential reminiscing. He seemed to really talk about Carl a lot. Like his death seemed very fresh for Brian.

I'd give it a 3/5.

I mean, Mike Love has been saying these things for decades, and I assume the likelihood of him saying, “you know what? I overstated the drugs angle over the years, and I apologize. There were more dynamics at play, like mental illness, music industry pressures, and my own ego sometimes getting the better of me” is pretty slim at this point.

Brian and Carl to my knowledge don’t/didn’t really $hit talk in public interviews. Mike does, Dennis did … Bruce & Al are kind of mixed & moody. That’s their personalities I think.

IMO I think Mike genuinely believes what he says and has a chip on his shoulder. If I were playing armchair psychologist, I might say that it’s probably easier to say “drugs ruined the band” than having to confront his own contributions to the problems, along with why Brian, Dennis, etc. had issues working with him

 But I do think he’s not wrong that drugs played a part in the band’s problems, possibly being a primary driver. And I do believe he genuinely feels that it’s sad the group couldn’t maintain the glory days of 1965 forever.

Mike is just what we call in my neck of the woods, a jagoff. Like, he says things like that, and then he wonders why people who like Brian get angry at him. After all, he's done NOTHING but tell the truth about the "tainted Wilson blood" for decades now. I have often tried to give Mike the benefit of the doubt over the years, but it just gets harder and harder when he gives interviews where he'll take a shot at Brian, or worse, take a shot at Dennis, who has been dead now for almost as long as he lived on this planet. Yes, he has a point about drugs causing problems and limiting their productivity, but what good is it now to rehash something that happened decades ago?

Now, that's not to say Brian is innocent all the time. He definitely took his shots at Mike. There is a clip that's readily available on YouTube where Brian flat out says that he can't stand Mike. Brian also took shots at Carl during the time when they weren't getting along because he thought Carl had taken shots at him. Still, it's hard to not just get irritated with Mike since, by all rights, he should feel fantastic. He still tours, still sounds pretty damn good for his age, and lives comfortably. What more could he want out of life?

Dennis was already a heavy drinker long before Manson presented himself at his house.

Controversial opinion time… Despite being a Wilson, Carl post-1983 seems to have a lot more in common with Mike than either of his brothers. Maybe it was Dennis’s loss,  maybe it was him being able to relate to Mike better after joining that cult, I dunno. All I do know is that the *real* band could’ve had one final great album but instead he sided with Mike. Honestly, I think if he’d had lived, we might not have gotten C50 barring a major thawing of relations. We might have had a case where the touring entities with Brian/Al vs Mike/Carl/Bruce. Who would be the “real” Beach Boys in that scenario?

Well, we won't ever know, but relations had already been thawing from where their lowest point was (He was Brian's best man at his wedding to Melinda), and I think once Brian really showed that he was alright to do live touring again, Carl would've wanted to work with Brian, especially when everybody else was also enthusiastic about doing it. I guess we won't ever really know how that would go.

To this day, I never understood what Carl's problem was...

I gave it a 4 and am willing to die on the hill that this is actually a good album minus the ten minute disco slogfest.

"Baby Blue" is my favorite on the album and it highlights how well I think that Dennis and Carl worked together. In fact, they do this twice on the album where one brother writes the song while the other is the primary singer. In this case, Dennis is the writer and Carl the singer and it fits so well. This song is beautiful and it is emotional. It's definitely the one song on the album that makes me FEEL. Carl's vocals are perfect for stuff like that. Compare it to "Angel Come Home" which is written by Carl but Dennis is the singer. It isn't as pretty and feels more raw and that's the sort of thing that Dennis' voice is necessary for. "Lady Lynda" is also a really wonderful song. One of Al's better contributions to the group, especially vocally. It evokes everything that the lyrics talk about. It's gentle and sort of feels like something you could listen to go to sleep to. "Good Timin'" isn't a song that really makes me feel much, but the vocal harmonies are fantastic.

Let's get to this album's real problem children, though. "Here Comes The Night" (DISCO!): I hate this song. I hate disco. My girlfriend loves this song, though, because growing up, her favorite stuff was techno and she loves Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds which has a lot of similarities in sound to this song. She says this is her favorite Beach Boys song to torture me.

"Sumahama"... I don't know how to feel about this song. On the one hand, I really like the music and I like the story being told... But then Mike just has to screw everything up by speaking broken Japanese which is jarring and it sounds ridiculous because while I don't speak Japanese, I'm almost certain he's screwing it up, so it comes off kinda racist.

"Shortnin' Bread": It would've been more fun if they'd used the Adult/Child mix. I'm sorry, that electric guitar just screws it all up. The pounding on the piano is so much better. Whoever mixed that wanted to rock, but it just doesn't work.