What would the aborted '90s reunion album have looked like?

[coco1997]

We know a few of the songs that were worked on for this album (Soul Searching, You're Still A Mystery, Dancing the Night Away). But what other songs from this period could have worked as Beach Boys song and found their way onto the '90s reunion album? Has anyone ever mocked up a tracklist of this unreleased album?

[Wirestone]

God, I love this question. I think that looking at the Wilson-Paley song list can give you a pretty good idea. Something like "It's Not Easy Being Me" was probably intended as a BW solo track. But something like "Desert Drive" clearly has vocal lines for the Boys. I also think that such an album would clearly have spots for Al or Mike or Bruce features, along with Brian's material. So something like the following seems plausible to me --

SOUL SEARCHIN' (The Beach Boys, 1996)

Soul Searchin'
You're Still a Mystery
Dancin' the Night Away / Baywatch Nights
Desert Drive
My Mary Anne
Proud Mary (we know he worked on this with Don Was)
Chain Reaction of Love
Saturday Morning in the City
I'm Broke (maybe? or possibly another BW tune)
And I Always Will / Jenny Clover (Al Jardine spot)
Glow Crescent Glow (or some Mike Love song)

Realistically, these were the songs that were most done and that could have incorporated the '90s BB voices most successfully. At least to my ears!

[coco1997]

Nice song selections. Someone on the Endless Harmony forum proposed this one:

The Beach Boys - Somewhere Out in Malibu

1. Baywatch Nights (Dancing the Night Away) 
2. Soul Searchin' 
3. Unleash the Love (Mike mentioned in an interview in '95 that this was a song he had that Brian loved)   
4. Don't Fight the Sea
5. You're Still a Mystery
6. Waves of Love
7. Elbow '63
8. Chain Reaction of Love
9. Run Don't Walk
10. Desert Drive
11. Mary Anne
12. Proud Mary
13. Gettin' in Over My Head
14. In My Moondreams
15. Must Be a Miracle

[Ian]

While the album could have ended up like that due to politics….i would hope that they would have worked up a whole album on the level of She’s a Mystery and Soul Searching which I quite like-rather than just hastily throw together a bunch of old tracks like Still Cruising. Something very lazy about that concept-like oh we need an album let’s just slap together any stuff we have lying around-even if it has no unity of purpose at all.

[HeyJude]

If we're looking more at the idea of "what would have been the most likely album to actually be finished and released?", I think it would be pretty much an album's worth of the Paley material, possibly with some re-recording/rejiggering from Don Was. The "Still Cruisin' format of just cobbling tracks together from various members wouldn't have worked with the Paley material really (some would argue it didn't work on "Still Cruisin'" either!).

"Don't Fight the Sea" with a bunch of DX7s wouldn't have worked alongside that material. Same with any conceivable arrangement of "Unleash the Love", and any of the "Beckley Lamm Wilson" stuff if produced and arranged the way it was on that album.

One of the big frustrations with them and trying to do albums from a fan perspective is that, even in cases where you can see/understand why some members wouldn't like a certain format (e.g. maybe Mike doesn't like another album where he just sings on songs written by Brian and an outside writer), it wouldn't have ever been such a big deal if they had STAYED ACTIVE as recording artists. Some members aren't the biggest fan of the style of one album? No big deal, then the *next* album can be different.

In order to really do an album with a bunch of writers that sounded *cohesive*, they would have needed a producer that could A&R material and get it all sounding somewhat on the same page. I think a few "Summer in Paradise" type tracks, *with better production*, and then some Al tracks like what he had kicking around at the time, and some Carl "Beckley Lamm Wilson" type songs (again with better production), and then Brian coming in with some stuff and/or co-writes with Mike, they could have followed up a retro-ish Paley album with something that sounded like the mid-point between like "Still Cruisin'" and "Imagination" or something.

[coco1997]

Is that Mike singing towards the end of "Chain Reaction of Love"?

[Rocker]

Is that Mike singing towards the end of "Chain Reaction of Love"?

Every version that I know (which is one) only has Brian and who I guess is Andy Paley on vocals.
Interestingly, though, I remember reading that Mike took a liking to that song and even wanted to rewrite the lyrics/write new lyrics to it.

[HeyJude]

Mike is only on "Soul Searchin'", "You're Still a Mystery", and "Dancing the Night Away."

That end bit on "Chain Reaction..." certainly sounds like type of thing Mike could have sung had the band worked on more of the tracks. Indeed, it sounds like Andy Paley may have been purposefully or otherwise kind of doing a "Mike" on that bit. He did a similar thing on his bit on "Slightly American Music."

I do remember Mike being linked to possibly adding some lyrics and/or vocals to "Chain Reaction...", but I can't recall if Mike volunteered that or if Andy and/or Brian thought of it for Mike.

[coco1997]

Mike is only on "Soul Searchin'", "You're Still a Mystery", and "Dancing the Night Away."

That end bit on "Chain Reaction..." certainly sounds like type of thing Mike could have sung had the band worked on more of the tracks. Indeed, it sounds like Andy Paley may have been purposefully or otherwise kind of doing a "Mike" on that bit. He did a similar thing on his bit on "Slightly American Music."

I do remember Mike being linked to possibly adding some lyrics and/or vocals to "Chain Reaction...", but I can't recall if Mike volunteered that or if Andy and/or Brian thought of it for Mike.

Yeah, I figured it was Andy and it definitely sounds like's putting on a Mike affectation during that last part of the song.

[All Summer Long]

Hi everyone,

I really need to listen to more of these Wilson-Paley sessions songs.  I've listened to some on YouTube and/or Brian's official website, plus the band's versions of "Soul Searchin'" and "You're Still A Mystery" (and "Some Sweet Day" from Brian's Playback solo compilation (which I had a CD copy of but lost, unfortunately, before listening to any of it, other than listening to "Some Sweet Day" and "Run James Run" online).  I wonder if "Some Sweet Day" and/or Brian's version of "This Could Be The Night" would have been considered for this album, but I'm assuming they'd need to add/replace some of the existing Brian or Brian & Andy harmonies with parts for Mike, Al, Carl, Bruce, and Matt Jardine. 

For a while, I saw "Unleash the Love" mentioned here but kept thinking of "Summer in Paradise".  I wonder if a re-recording of "Summer in Paradise" could have worked as a potential Mike solo writing spot and as one song where he would sing lead (with some lyric revisions to/rewrites of at least the second verse, though), since very few people would have heard it in the first place.

I don't know the stories behind these songs as much as I'd like, so I have some quick questions for if/whenever anybody has a moment to answer them.  First, would Mike have likely been the lead vocalist on "Desert Drive"?  Do we know if any of these songs in particular were slated as potential vocal spots for Al, or would Al have brought something of his own in, like "Wish" or "Waves of Love"? Did Bruce have any songs that he could have contributed for his typical post-1979 one lead per album?   Would Carl have probably brought in some of the Beckley-Lamm-Wilson songs?  Finally, regarding "Dancin' the Night Away", am I remembering correctly that Mike (and Brian?) had recorded some vocals for this and that Carl had recorded both vocals and guitar for it before it was abandoned?  Thank you all in advance!!

[Zenobi]

Hi everyone,

I really need to listen to more of these Wilson-Paley sessions songs.  I've listened to some on YouTube and/or Brian's official website, plus the band's versions of "Soul Searchin'" and "You're Still A Mystery" (and "Some Sweet Day" from Brian's Playback solo compilation (which I had a CD copy of but lost, unfortunately, before listening to any of it, other than listening to "Some Sweet Day" and "Run James Run" online).  I wonder if "Some Sweet Day" and/or Brian's version of "This Could Be The Night" would have been considered for this album, but I'm assuming they'd need to add/replace some of the existing Brian or Brian & Andy harmonies with parts for Mike, Al, Carl, Bruce, and Matt Jardine.  

For a while, I saw "Unleash the Love" mentioned here but kept thinking of "Summer in Paradise".  I wonder if a re-recording of "Summer in Paradise" could have worked as a potential Mike solo writing spot and as one song where he would sing lead (with some lyric revisions to/rewrites of at least the second verse, though), since very few people would have heard it in the first place.

I don't know the stories behind these songs as much as I'd like, so I have some quick questions for if/whenever anybody has a moment to answer them.  First, would Mike have likely been the lead vocalist on "Desert Drive"?  Do we know if any of these songs in particular were slated as potential vocal spots for Al, or would Al have brought something of his own in, like "Wish" or "Waves of Love"? Did Bruce have any songs that he could have contributed for his typical post-1979 one lead per album?   Would Carl have probably brought in some of the Beckley-Lamm-Wilson songs?  Finally, regarding "Dancin' the Night Away", am I remembering correctly that Mike (and Brian?) had recorded some vocals for this and that Carl had recorded both vocals and guitar for it before it was abandoned?  Thank you all in advance!!

Desert Drive absolutely PRAYS for Mike lead vocals. I can actually hear him at his raspiest in the vocal-less track we have!
Did I ever mention that I love the WP Sessions?

[SMiLE Brian]

Mike is more like desert drive following BW’s direction….

[Zenobi]

Of course!

[coco1997]

Hi everyone,

I really need to listen to more of these Wilson-Paley sessions songs.  I've listened to some on YouTube and/or Brian's official website, plus the band's versions of "Soul Searchin'" and "You're Still A Mystery" (and "Some Sweet Day" from Brian's Playback solo compilation (which I had a CD copy of but lost, unfortunately, before listening to any of it, other than listening to "Some Sweet Day" and "Run James Run" online).  I wonder if "Some Sweet Day" and/or Brian's version of "This Could Be The Night" would have been considered for this album, but I'm assuming they'd need to add/replace some of the existing Brian or Brian & Andy harmonies with parts for Mike, Al, Carl, Bruce, and Matt Jardine.  

For a while, I saw "Unleash the Love" mentioned here but kept thinking of "Summer in Paradise".  I wonder if a re-recording of "Summer in Paradise" could have worked as a potential Mike solo writing spot and as one song where he would sing lead (with some lyric revisions to/rewrites of at least the second verse, though), since very few people would have heard it in the first place.

I don't know the stories behind these songs as much as I'd like, so I have some quick questions for if/whenever anybody has a moment to answer them.  First, would Mike have likely been the lead vocalist on "Desert Drive"?  Do we know if any of these songs in particular were slated as potential vocal spots for Al, or would Al have brought something of his own in, like "Wish" or "Waves of Love"? Did Bruce have any songs that he could have contributed for his typical post-1979 one lead per album?   Would Carl have probably brought in some of the Beckley-Lamm-Wilson songs?  Finally, regarding "Dancin' the Night Away", am I remembering correctly that Mike (and Brian?) had recorded some vocals for this and that Carl had recorded both vocals and guitar for it before it was abandoned?  Thank you all in advance!!

Desert Drive absolutely PRAYS for Mike lead vocals. I can actually hear him at his raspiest in the vocal-less track we have!
Did I ever mention that I love the WP Sessions?

In case there was any doubt that Mike was meant to sing "Desert Drive"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d59D_rYkYM8&list=PLrIu6iZGPRaR4SmRrrudAg-cHmT_q4wXX

On another note, I've come up with a trackllst that I think works pretty well for how a '90s reunion album might have turned out:

Beach Boys - Soul Searchin'/Somewhere Out in Malibu (1996)

01. Dancin' the Night Away
02. Soul Searchin'
03. Waves of Love
04. You're Still A Mystery
05. Unleash the Love
06. Must Be a Miracle
07. Chain Reaction of Love
08. Run, Don't Walk (I read somewhere that Carl offered this solo song of his to the group)
09. Desert Drive
10. My Mary Anne
11. In My Moondreams
12. And I Always Will

I think if flows pretty well, doesn't overstay its welcome and gives every band member (minus Bruce) a few moments to shine.

Subsequently, I also came up with an alternate "Gettin' In Over My Head" that only uses songs not on the aforementioned reunion album tracklist, so that there's no overlap between the two records:

Brian Wilson - Gettin' In Over My Head (2004)

01. How Could We Still Be Dancin'?
02. You've Touched Me
03. Some Sweet Day
04. Gettin' In Over My Head
05. A Friend Like You
06. It's Not Easy Being Me
07. This Could Be the Night
08. This Song Wants to Sleep With You Tonight
09. Saturday Morning in the City
10. I'm Broke
11. Slightly American Music

In this universe, "Sweet Insanity" was officially released, which is why songs like "Rainbow Eyes," Fairy Tale," etc. are excluded. Less is more here, as the actual GIOMH is a bit bloated, in my opinion (13 tracks and 53 minutes). This trims it to eleven tracks (a la BW '88 and Imagination) and clocks in at under 40 minutes.

[HeyJude]

Fan compilations are all well and good. I won’t belabor the point as I’ve made it I prior posts, but I’d say both in terms of my best guess for what would have actually happened had an album come to fruition, and also in terms of what I think would work in terms of making a cohesive-sounding album, there’s no way they would have mixed stuff like “Unleash the Love” and “And I Always Will” with the Paley material on a 1995 BB album.

Paley was proud of the fact that, as he told the story, Was came in and re-recorded the backing track to one of the Brian/Andy tunes, and didn’t think the sound he got was right, and started bringing in stuff from the Paley backing track to the point where he had just reverted to Andy’s backing track.

We also have them taking the group vocals off of the Was version of “Soul Searchin’” and grafting them onto the older Paley backing track.

In short, I think even people like Don Was who was presumably brought in to make it sound new/fresh/modern/contemporary, was realizing that the way those tracks sounded when Brian and Andy cut them (and let’s keep in mind Andy seemed offended by the idea that these were demos; he considered them masters, or tracks on their way to being masters) was the best way to present those tracks. I think they would have retained that sound, whatever you want to call it, “wall of sound” –esque, whatever that “retro” sound with the reverb and the Hal Blaine-sounding sparse drums, etc.

None of this stuff like Carl’s “Beckley Lamm Wilson” tracks, or Mike’s “Unleash the Love” tracks, or Al’s stuff that ended up on “Postcards”, fits into that vibe or sound. I’m not saying it would have been impossible for politics to lead to an album that just bluntly goes from “It’s Not Easy Being Me” to “Santa’s Goin’ to Kokomo”, but I feel, and I sense participants felt at the time, that part of the whole point of that project was the throwback/retro/analog sound, in other words sounding more like “Today” and “Summer Days” and moving away from the Terry Melcher “Still Cruisin’” sound.

There was a bit of politics flying in a Mike song years later on TWGMTR, but by that point the material and recordings Brian was bringing in for the group to sing on were less anachronistic than bringing in “Soul Searchin’” in 1995.

Mike infamously in that 1992 Goldmine interview seemed peeved at how “Still Cruisin’” had been bogged down by politics such that everybody brought disparate-sounding tracks to the project. He was sort of accidentally half correct. While he felt the *originals* weighed that project down and he just wanted old “soundtrack” songs as the only theme on that album, which would have obviously made the album worse and less interesting, it is true that stuff like “Still Cruisin’” is not a unified sound or vibe in any way. There’s the Melcher stuff (with thin-sounding drums, etc.), maybe the Al track isn’t too far off from that, but then you have “Make It Big” which was already and old recording by then and sounded from farther back in the 80s, and then you have Brian’s “In My Car” with those BW ’88 synths all over it.

I do think Carl’s “Beckley Lamm Wilson” tracks should be re-recorded from the ground-up (obviously keeping his vocals), because the *songs* from that are pretty solid actually. But the production is awful. I don’t think there would have been any way to take that material and make it sound in line with the Paley material. But I do think they could have taken something like “They’re Only Words” and made it sound similar enough to work on something like TWGMTR.  

[Tony S]

I actually thought the AI version of Dessert Drive sounded pretty good, the Mike and Al sound a likes were pretty much on target for how they would've sounded on it, IMHO.

[Lonely Summer]

I find it weird that we're discussing using Paley sessions stuff on a Beach Boys album, when it wasn't even deemed usable for what became Brian's next solo album, Imagination.

[All Summer Long]

I find it weird that we're discussing using Paley sessions stuff on a Beach Boys album, when it wasn't even deemed usable for what became Brian's next solo album, Imagination.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I believe the reasoning there was that Joe Thomas (and supposedly Melinda) wanted Imagination to have an adult contemporary sound, which was a different sound than the more '60s-influenced Paley sessions had.

[guitarfool2002]

I find it weird that we're discussing using Paley sessions stuff on a Beach Boys album, when it wasn't even deemed usable for what became Brian's next solo album, Imagination.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I believe the reasoning there was that Joe Thomas (and supposedly Melinda) wanted Imagination to have an adult contemporary sound, which was a different sound than the more '60s-influenced Paley sessions had.

You are correct, and if memory serves there were band members like Darian who staged a bit of a coup against Joe after he suggested Brian's music be played live with and have a new smooth, AC "Sade feel". Had that coup not happened, instead of faithful (and to this day the best) recreations of Brian's most classic songs on stage would possibly have been rearranged to sell to the smooth-AC-lite rock market which is where the Imagination album was geared to feature. The overall sound of Imagination is what keeps me from liking that album more than I do, I'm not a fan of the production. But then again, some of the Paley material we've heard suffers from that same 90's aural sheen that sounds pretty dated to these ears at least, whether they were demos, roughs, etc...