Dennis' studio work post Light Album

[Jim V.]

So, I know this has been talked about on here before, but do we have much of a clue what Dennis recorded post L.A. (Light Album)?

For sure there is "Labor Day," but it doesn't seem that anybody knows how far along it was. I hope there is a reasonable vocal on it, and that we hear it one day. And there's "Stevie", which he produced with Brian singing lead, and then the "cocaine" sessions.

And I know it was said that he actually did more than we had previously assumed from 1980 to 1983, and that he had random work at a few different studios. Any word on that? And what do we know? Have any of the tapes been rounded up? Is there anything even remotely releasable or complete?

[Magic Transistor Radio]

If you go scuba diving in the Pacific Ocean, it is haunted. You can here his music under water. Ha Ha!

[Lonely Summer]

Troll

[adamghost]

I know I'm one of the sources for the above information, so I'll just say that when the BAMBU set came out, I heard the same story from 2 or 3 different people...that there was a substantial amount of post-BAMBU recording but it was scattered in various places.  There was talk of gathering these up and putting it out in light of the success of BAMBU, but as far as I know that's as far as it got.  I was skeptical but these were separate people in a position to know saying the same thing.  I don't know much else besides that, other than that I THINK someone told me that there was a goodly amount of Christine McVie-Dennis Wilson duet material.  But it's a couple of years ago now and that may just be me confusing conversations.

Stebbins would certainly know.  Jon, are you at liberty to say?

[The Shift]

Nice post Adam.

If the BBs are looking around for a way of getting fresh Dennis vocals on to the new album this could be a route to go down, assuming rights aren't a stumbling block.

Very wary of it myself but accept that there's a wish from some quarters.

It would be great though to have another Dennis package released; I doubt it could b as mind-blowing as POB/Bambu but I'm willing to be surprised!

[MarcellaHasDirtyFeet]

Just theorizing here, but... Maybe it'll be released in conjunction with The Drummer? C. McVie will definitely have a major role in the movie (speculation!) and somebody somewhere mentioned that was the material that would be featured in the soundtrack. Hopefully we don't just get re-recordings of Eckhart and Farmiga.

[hypehat]

I know I'm one of the sources for the above information, so I'll just say that when the BAMBU set came out, I heard the same story from 2 or 3 different people...that there was a substantial amount of post-BAMBU recording but it was scattered in various places.  There was talk of gathering these up and putting it out in light of the success of BAMBU, but as far as I know that's as far as it got.  I was skeptical but these were separate people in a position to know saying the same thing.  I don't know much else besides that, other than that I THINK someone told me that there was a goodly amount of Christine McVie-Dennis Wilson duet material.  But it's a couple of years ago now and that may just be me confusing conversations.

Stebbins would certainly know.  Jon, are you at liberty to say?

Yeah, we did talk about this recently - I can't remember duets being mentioned, but Jon did say there is a lot of material from the 80's, and that it doesn't seem to suffer from Dennis' diminishing condition as much as you'd think. Wish I could remember the thread. I think he might have said rights were an issue, studios owning tape and things.

[The Shift]

Snippets from the Dennis Wilson Movie news thread:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11284.msg255744.html#msg255744

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11284.msg244282.html#msg244282

[Jon Stebbins]

We all got into this pretty deeply in a thread that is probably a year or two passed...but I believe my position was that there is NOT very much developed DW material from post 1979. The reason being, because of alcoholism, he was unable to focus for long enough periods of time to methodically build his productions ala POB/Bambu...so most things are just bits and snippets of songs in partial form. What some may be remembering is that I can confirm there is still a good amount of 1975 - 1979 material that is unreleased and unbooted and some of it is equal to the quality of POB/Bambu. A few really giant productions in the can that the public has not heard. These may (or may not) be accessed during "The Drummer" production, I don't know because I'm not in that loop even in the slightest. Also there is some Dennis/Christine material that they recorded in Hawaii, (79 or 80) although no one (that I know of) has evaluated its viability. It might be great, it might be drunken rambling. Probably a bit of both. As far as 1980 - 83 goes I just don't think there is much. The Cocaine sessions were on home reel to reel, barely demo quality. "Stevie" is studio quality and should be released in a good mix. other than that there is the rumored "Labor Day"...but I think Ed remembers it isn't much. Dennis did revisit his Bambu tapes a bit post '79 but didn't get much done from what Tom Murphy remembers. The thing about Dennis is he had a lot of songs and melodies and progressions he was carrying around, and he could sit at a piano and play some beautiful things that probably never made tape. Hopefully some of them did, and we just haven't found it yet, or somebody is keeping a good secret until the right time.

[Lowbacca]

Fascinating. I'm more psyched for unreleased Dennis stuff (solo or BBs-related) than I am for anything else that might be in the archives. Hopefully we will get something out of The Drummer in that regard. And I don't mean just unreleased material sung by Eckhart and Farmiga. I want the real deal. I'm pretty sure there's a certain amount of awesome original Denny stuff still waiting to be released.

[c-man]

There were three times I'm aware of that Dennis & Christine recorded together in a studio, not counting "Love Surrounds Me"...there's the now famous Ed Roach photo of them together at the piano with headphones on the day they met (which would be Village Recorders, during the Tusk sessions), then there's the poster who mentioned seeing the 2" reel labeled with their names at Tom Murphy's Track Record studio circa 1980 (assuming it's a different tape than the one from the aforementioned session), and finally Audissey Studios in Hawaii in November of 1980, when they demoed two of Christine's songs (as reported by Brad Elliott in the pages of Add Some Music). 

[hypehat]

..there's the now famous Ed Roach photo of them together at the piano with headphones on the day they met (which would be Village Recorders, during the Tusk sessions)....

There's something... Do we know if Dennis is on Tusk? That's one of my favourite albums. TBH, I can't hear him, but then again I wasn't looking for him.

[Andrew G. Doe]

He's on one of the inner sleeve collages.

[c-man]

He's on one of the inner sleeve collages.

Yes, a VERY tiny shot of Dennis & Christine holding an infant.  And I should add a caveat to my post above...just b/c they were in the studio, both wearing headphones while they played piano & Chris was singing into a microphone, doesn't mean anything was necessarily taped...they could've just been taking advantage of the studio's monitoring system. 

[hypehat]

I knew it was too good to be true! Thanks, as always 

[PhilSpectre]

We all got into this pretty deeply in a thread that is probably a year or two passed...but I believe my position was that there is NOT very much developed DW material from post 1979. The reason being, because of alcoholism, he was unable to focus for long enough periods of time to methodically build his productions ala POB/Bambu...so most things are just bits and snippets of songs in partial form. What some may be remembering is that I can confirm there is still a good amount of 1975 - 1979 material that is unreleased and unbooted and some of it is equal to the quality of POB/Bambu. A few really giant productions in the can that the public has not heard. These may (or may not) be accessed during "The Drummer" production, I don't know because I'm not in that loop even in the slightest. Also there is some Dennis/Christine material that they recorded in Hawaii, (79 or 80) although no one (that I know of) has evaluated its viability. It might be great, it might be drunken rambling. Probably a bit of both. As far as 1980 - 83 goes I just don't think there is much. The Cocaine sessions were on home reel to reel, barely demo quality. "Stevie" is studio quality and should be released in a good mix. other than that there is the rumored "Labor Day"...but I think Ed remembers it isn't much. Dennis did revisit his Bambu tapes a bit post '79 but didn't get much done from what Tom Murphy remembers. The thing about Dennis is he had a lot of songs and melodies and progressions he was carrying around, and he could sit at a piano and play some beautiful things that probably never made tape. Hopefully some of them did, and we just haven't found it yet, or somebody is keeping a good secret until the right time.

Thank you for this information. I for one would love it if there were enough good unreleased/ unbooted Dennis material to warrant producing a new album/ compilation or two, perhaps something rounding up the best of his unheard late 60's to early 70s solo work, and another the best of the unheard 75-79 era and even one or two things from after that, should they be of sufficient quality. Dennis was a great talent imo and the best of his music deserves to be out there.

[Jay]

We all got into this pretty deeply in a thread that is probably a year or two passed...but I believe my position was that there is NOT very much developed DW material from post 1979. The reason being, because of alcoholism, he was unable to focus for long enough periods of time to methodically build his productions ala POB/Bambu...so most things are just bits and snippets of songs in partial form. What some may be remembering is that I can confirm there is still a good amount of 1975 - 1979 material that is unreleased and unbooted and some of it is equal to the quality of POB/Bambu. A few really giant productions in the can that the public has not heard. These may (or may not) be accessed during "The Drummer" production, I don't know because I'm not in that loop even in the slightest. Also there is some Dennis/Christine material that they recorded in Hawaii, (79 or 80) although no one (that I know of) has evaluated its viability. It might be great, it might be drunken rambling. Probably a bit of both. As far as 1980 - 83 goes I just don't think there is much. The Cocaine sessions were on home reel to reel, barely demo quality. "Stevie" is studio quality and should be released in a good mix. other than that there is the rumored "Labor Day"...but I think Ed remembers it isn't much. Dennis did revisit his Bambu tapes a bit post '79 but didn't get much done from what Tom Murphy remembers. The thing about Dennis is he had a lot of songs and melodies and progressions he was carrying around, and he could sit at a piano and play some beautiful things that probably never made tape. Hopefully some of them did, and we just haven't found it yet, or somebody is keeping a good secret until the right time.

Are you at liberty to elaborate at all on some of those "giant productions" from the POB/Bambu era? It's amazing to think that there is even more stuff that exists that is of the same quality as what was officially released. It seems like Dennis was already working on a third album, and Bambu wasn't even finished yet! 

[Jon Stebbins]

We all got into this pretty deeply in a thread that is probably a year or two passed...but I believe my position was that there is NOT very much developed DW material from post 1979. The reason being, because of alcoholism, he was unable to focus for long enough periods of time to methodically build his productions ala POB/Bambu...so most things are just bits and snippets of songs in partial form. What some may be remembering is that I can confirm there is still a good amount of 1975 - 1979 material that is unreleased and unbooted and some of it is equal to the quality of POB/Bambu. A few really giant productions in the can that the public has not heard. These may (or may not) be accessed during "The Drummer" production, I don't know because I'm not in that loop even in the slightest. Also there is some Dennis/Christine material that they recorded in Hawaii, (79 or 80) although no one (that I know of) has evaluated its viability. It might be great, it might be drunken rambling. Probably a bit of both. As far as 1980 - 83 goes I just don't think there is much. The Cocaine sessions were on home reel to reel, barely demo quality. "Stevie" is studio quality and should be released in a good mix. other than that there is the rumored "Labor Day"...but I think Ed remembers it isn't much. Dennis did revisit his Bambu tapes a bit post '79 but didn't get much done from what Tom Murphy remembers. The thing about Dennis is he had a lot of songs and melodies and progressions he was carrying around, and he could sit at a piano and play some beautiful things that probably never made tape. Hopefully some of them did, and we just haven't found it yet, or somebody is keeping a good secret until the right time.

Are you at liberty to elaborate at all on some of those "giant productions" from the POB/Bambu era? It's amazing to think that there is even more stuff that exists that is of the same quality as what was officially released. It seems like Dennis was already working on a third album, and Bambu wasn't even finished yet! 

Yes Dennis was just constantly recording between '74 and early '78...and there was talk of three albums. It all shut down in 1978, and you know the rest of the story.  The one unreleased track that comes to mind is "Taking Off" which is a glorious production. Its basically the "Piano Variations" tune, but with a giant production on top of the piano, with a haunting choir, big synthesizer sounds, and wordless Dennis vocal that is heartbreaking to hear.  That one would have fit nicely on either POB or Bambu. There's a few other things that are pretty cool, an extended "Rainbows" is great, the released version got edited down a bit.

[Jay]

 Thanks for sharing that.  That Taking Off track sounds amazing.