1967 Hawaii Concerts

[Cabinessenceking]

When they came to Hawai'i in 1967, it marked Wilson's first appearance with the Beach Boys in three years. At the time, the young falsetto had stopped touring to focus instead on writing and recording. But the show at the Honolulu International Center was to be part of a live album called "Lei'd in Hawaii."

"I'm actually nervous — afraid," he said before the concert. "Why Hawai'i? It's a good place. We wanted to do another live album where the mood's good. And it's great here."

Although the album was never released, bootleg copies have circulated for years. Some say the version of "Surfer Girl" recorded then was the best the group ever produced.





Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Aug/22/il/hawaii808220330.html

I dunno about the live version of Surfer Girl at the concerts, but the live rehearsal found on the GV box is certainly one of their finest performances ever.

[TMinthePM]

I put the Wally Heider version of Good Vibrations in the place of the classic in a revamped Smiley Smile and it sits perfectly in the midst of the madness. Rework the song sequence and add the newly discovered Surf's Up and a reconstructed "doing doing" Cabinessence from SOT as closers and Smiley Smile rises to a whole 'nother dimension.
   

[Cabinessenceking]

I put the Wally Heider version of Good Vibrations in the place of the classic in a revamped Smiley Smile and it sits perfectly in the midst of the madness. Rework the song sequence and add the newly discovered Surf's Up and a reconstructed "doing doing" Cabinessence from SOT as closers and Smiley Smile rises to a whole 'nother dimension.
   

Alternate Smiley:

Side A:
Heroes And Villains
Vegetables
Fall Breaks And Back To Winter
Wonderful
Surf's Up*

Side B:
Little Pad
Whistle In
Wind Chimes
With Me Tonight
Good Vibrations**


*From TSS Wild Honey session
**From Hawthorne, CA comp.

Quite enjoyable actually.

[TMinthePM]

I Like it.

Now add Well, You're Welcome as and album opener.

[Generation42]

Ooh, I love everything about Hawaii '67, including all of the intrigue surrounding the band at the time, the presence of Brian at the helm, the twisted, glorious, sometimes sloppy, yet somehow sublime results of the concert itself and not least, the setting of a tropical paradise so perfect for a group like the Beach Boys (I so very wanted to see the group to play a final C50 show in Hawaii last year).

Among the unreleased numbers everyone is looking forward to in Made in California, I don't know that I often hear a call for any unheard recordings from the actual rehearsal before the Hawaii shows, but if "Good Vibrations," "Surfer Girl" and "God Only Knows," are any indication, I really want to hear more!

And man, how I dig watching that footage from Hawaii synched to a live version of "God Only Knows."

As a final aside, I know I tend to go on about my fantasy releases by the group, but it would be right up there near the top of my list if enough footage from the concerts (and the trip, at large) were collected and put to a soundtrack of live recordings, giving us a blu ray concert package telling the story of the Hawaiian trip and, more generally, the life of the group at the time.  Listening to the tapes, it sounds to me as if there were a number of songs from the two concerts performed well enough to be considered suitable for use in such a release, but that said (even if it might be considered inauthentic by some), it wouldn't ruffle my feathers any if, as with GOK, audio from other sources were utilized for the presentation of the live songs, here and there, too.

The story could be framed by a smattering of both the audio and film recorded during the rehearsals, the Heider studio recordings and some Smiley Smile numbers, as well.  I suppose one could then cap things off with some photographs and newsreel footage of the visit.  Sounds like it might be kind of cool, no?  I'd view something like this as a way of putting the '67 recordings to good use and finally realizing (at least a version of) the original vision behind the project.

If I were somehow ever inexplicably appointed Lord of the Beach, I'd even go as far as to regroup the C50 lineup, send them to Hawaii, rehearse them like dogs for a couple of weeks, record a couple of shows in Honolulu and include this concert footage, along with present day recollections of the '67 trip by the guys, as a means of contrasting and celebrating the development of the band over the last 45 years.  Package the whole thing and call it, I don't know, "THE BEACH BOYS: Lei'd in Hawaii."  It has a ring to it.

Of course, this probably takes the entire idea of the project and raises it from "don't hold 'yer breath," to the level of "when hell freezes over," but it's good to dream.  

[TMinthePM]

Try this:

http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/epiphany-at-zuma-beach-or-ibrian-wilson-hallucinates-mei/

[TMinthePM]

Here you go man - 1st of 3 articles telling the story of Lei'd in Hawaii:

Epiphany at Zuma Beach Or Brian Wilson Hallucinates Me
By David Dalton

After Pet Sounds Brian Wilson became the mad genius of the Beach Boys, a prodigy who had miraculously emerged out of the surf and car culture of southern California. He was an American kind of prodigy, a tinkerer and visionary like Edison, someone who could spin magic out of thin, sweetened air. He was as self-effacing, childlike, and bemused as Huck Finn—and utterly devoid of the aggressive hipsterism of other late sixties idols. Brian actually had little interest in cars or surfing—these were Dennis's domain. When I once asked him about surfing he advised me to "Stay away from that stuff. It's
dangerous."

It was July 1967 the Summer of Love on Zuma Beach, California, that I first met Brian Wilson during one of those loony episodes mystical bond as mistaken identity that could only have happened in that year. A group of select photographers had been invited to the beach for the afternoon to shoot the Beach Boys. I had managed to wangle myself an invitation from their press agent, the sublime and subversive Derek Taylor.

It was a singular occasion because this was the first time Brian Wilson had been photographed or seen since he had entered his mad genius phase which had began with the genesis of Pet Sounds. Brian had done much of the astounding production work on the album while the rest of the group was away on tour. You could call their previous LP, Summer Days, a conceptual album if you accepted Mike Love's definition that it was "a concept of different feelings you have in the summer." But Pet Sounds was a veritable gesamtkunstwerk. Roll over, Wagner, tell Stockhausen the news! When Pet Sounds came out in 1966, everyone was stunned. So subtle and hypnotic was it that it seemed to emanate from some intercortical place inside your brain.

Before Pet Sounds Brian had been simply a Boy Wonder with a flair for writing pop songs that accelerated like hot rods. By ingeniously fusing Chuck Berry's guitar onto Four Freshman harmonies he had created the Beach Boys' custom sound. He was brilliant, everybody conceded that, but before Pet Sounds no one outside of his brothers and intimates guessed that there was anything strange or out of the ordinary about Brian. And maybe there wasn't. Then along came fame and drugs. Now he was in upper realms of inspired eccentricity. One of those possessed geniuses who repair to mountain retreats and ivory towers to recreate the world out of their own fevered brains. In Brian's case his sonic laboratory was on Bellagio Drive in Bel Air where he planned to create his own "teenage symphonies to God."

What the Surf Said

We had come to Zuma Beach to capture a rare event, the young genius at play. As we approached, we could see Brian's head bobbing in the waves. A French photographer aptly compared it to the recently published photographs of Mao Zedong swimming in the Yellow River. So here was Brian—a very large Brian—swimming, paddling, walking on the sand. The Beach Boys all except Brian were assuming traditional Beach Boy poses. You know, like the ones on the album covers. Tan, blond boys all in a line carrying a surf board, in front of a woody station wagon, on a sailboat. Essentially a California Buick commercial. But Brian was not cooperating.

He was off by himself being a genius. Nothing on earth could persuade him to join the Beach Boy pyramid now being constructed down the beach—Al Jardine and Carl Wilson on the shoulders of Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston. With that infinitely sweet vacant look of his, he ignored all imploring cries to join the contrived fun. There wasn't anything defiant or rebellious about this. Brian was just being Brian. There were Japanese photographers smothered in so many Nikons it looked like samurai armor. There were earnest Germans with sun umbrellas, New York sharp shooters, and French existentialists seizing the decisive moment. Except there weren't any decisive moments. Brian just wouldn't play with the others. If there'd been a Christmas tree he wouldn't have sat under it with the other children. Frustrating as it was, we understood. We were in the presence of genius. Brian was a genius and this is what geniuses do.

Would the Buddha have sat under the Bodhi tree for a photo opportunity? "Work with me, here, Govinda. A little more profile, gimme that inscrutable smile thing. Good. Hold it!" So we put up with it, shooting whatever we could. I felt Brian and I were kin in some indefinable way. I had listened to Pet Sounds under controlled substances and thought I had divined its kabbalistic core. I sensed that I alone could reach him. I approached him gingerly, as one would to address the Dalai Lama. And then something amazing happened. Instead of picking up a sea shell and turning away to examine it as he had done with the other photographers, Brian beamed at me. I felt, at that moment, blessed. Perhaps he did recognize some affinity with me. I had tuned into the Buddha/Brian wavelength. Brian looked like an American Buddha—benign, unruffled, inscrutable and I wanted to catch that quality. I asked him to sit on the shoreline with his back to the ocean so the waves would break around his head like a cloud-halo in a Tibetan tanka. This he did without a moment's hesitation. Brian understood symbolism. The world was fast becoming transparent, and surf for him had by now transubstantiated into a mystic essence. In "Surf’s Up" waves represented, he said, "the eternal now," a Heraclitan analog for the ceaseless lapping of a hallucinated present on an ever-receding
consciousness.

Whatever pose I asked him to assume, he carried it out with great earnestness. With touching concern he would ask if he was doing a good job. "Is this what you want? Am I doin’ okay?" It was beyond my wildest dreams. It was beginning to seriously enrage the other paparazzi. How far could I go with this? To capture the cosmic and surreal quality of the moment I asked Brian if I could photograph him reflected in the hubcap of his Rolls Royce (on getting to the parking lot we decided that the chrome fender of a fifties Buick would make a cooler mirror). As if partaking in some bizarre ceremony he bowed down with great solemnity and put his face next to the shiny convex surface. Looking at Brian’s abruptly curved reflection (and my own spidery crouching shape) through the camera viewfinder it was as if we were in some haunted hyperspace.

What was this strange power I exerted over him? He behaved as if my requests were part of some magic test from a folk tale where the king has to recognize the humble stranger as a celestial messenger. At this point Brian suggested we go back to his place for some grass and peanut butter sandwiches. This seemed like a good idea to me. The throng of photographers on the beach was stunned. On the way back, Dennis driving like a maniac caught up with us. Through the window of their Rolls Royce, Carl and Bruce Johnston began throwing handfuls of jellybeans across the space between us. The red-yellow-blue-purple candies seemed to float in slow motion between the two cars (okay, we’d already had a few puffs of Honduran sinsemilla). In the intoxication of the moment I sensed another transcendental allegory basking on the banks of the Ganges. It was over the top, but at that instant it seemed to perfectly capture the mood. Absurdly, this scene— jellybeans hovering between two Rolls Royces—brought to mind Shiva throwing flower petals from his chariot and watching them turn into butterflies.

Oceanic State of Mind

The house at Bellagio Drive was a sprawling low-slung California mansion that reminded me of a small ocean liner. The state-of-the-art recording studio was at one end of the house and, like a sort of engine room-cum-bridge, it seemed to pull the rest of the house along in its wake. The year before in a moment of inspiration Brian had had the outside of the house painted bright purple to match his vibrational pitch at the time. His neighbors were horrified. They claimed it was adversely affecting property values and made him repaint it. Inside, shag carpeting, color TV with the sound off, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles spinning on the turntable. There was the white grand piano, but the legendary sandbox in which Brian wiggled his toes while he composed was gone. Apparently the cats had misunderstood its purpose. On a glass coffee table was a veritable pyramid of joints all rolled by the in-house joint roller. He'd been a flack in the publicity department of Capitol records and now he had this job: rolling doobies for the Beach Boys.    

Their drug of choice was Redi Whip. You know, the kind that comes in spray cans. You turn the can upside down, press the button and inhale the fumes out of the nozzle. It gave you a crazy little buzz—the propellant was nitrous oxide. There were piles of garbage bags filled with empty Redi Whip cans. Periodically there was talk about donating the cans to some institution—the whipped cream was still in them. Then again, several hundred cans with the nitrous oxide sucked out of them might arouse suspicion.

In this "Doris Day of rock groups" (Bruce Johnston's phrase) Dennis was decidedly the hippest—he was a recognizable type, a kind of surfer delinquent. At first encounter he also seemed the most normal member of the group. This turned out to be a serious misreading. A couple of years later when I moved into the house in Beverly Glen where he and Barbara lived I discovered him to be a perfect maniac. It was Dennis after all who brought Charles Manson round. But that's another story. For the moment Dennis seemed affable and cool. I passed him a joint. He sniffed it the way a dog might do, holding the scent in his nostrils. Abruptly he pushed it away and very matter-of-factly said: "When I smoke grass with someone, I don't know whether to kiss them or run screaming out of the room." Looking into his now-swirling eyes I didn't know which one would have been scarier. There was something of a werewolf about Dennis. In the last couple of years before he died with his long white hair and haunted face he actually began to resemble the doomed Lawrence Talbot on a full moon.

Delirium As Mistaken Identity

Brian was (apparently) oblivious of everything swirling around him. He walked about his house with a child’s cassette player in the shape of a yellow plastic duck, swinging it by the handle like a toddler. On it he played only one song, the Ronette's "Be My Baby" (and only the first four notes of that). "Be My Baby" was one of Phil Spector's classic productions and Brian studied it like an adept memorizing the Koran. He had about twenty copies of it on tape. He'd play it in the studio, in the car, out at the pool. Brian worshipped Phil Spector, who by this time had become a paranoid recluse and was seen by mortals even less frequently than Brian. People reported sightings of Phil on Sunset Strip the way you'd spot an alien landing. Clearly Brian was following in Spector's footsteps. The difference was there was something dark and gothic about Phil. Brian, however strange, could never be described as sinister

Over and over again Brian would play those four Masonic notes. Boom boom-boom pow! Boom boom-boom pow! Boom boom-boom pow! They followed him wherever he went like the leitmotif of a character in an opera. They possessed for Brian an almost mystical significance. He saw them as some sort of cosmic code. He felt that through this sonic key he had unlocked a universal mystery, as if all sounds participated in some mysterium tremendum, a sort of pre-verbal language that intimately links humans, animals and inanimate things.

"Know what's weird about this?" Brian asked in his ingenuous way, playing those four pantocratic notes for the twentieth time. "It's the same sound a carpenter makes when he's hammering in a nail, a bird sings when it gets on its branch, or a baby makes when she shakes her rattle. Didja ever notice that?" A little sheepishly, I admitted I hadn't. Given the mystical affinity between us, I felt I shouldn’t have missed this cosmic clue.

Brian is deep. He really is. A little like Andy Warhol, he affected a sort of feeble-minded precociousness that acted as a protection. Once, when Brian and Marilyn were away I stayed in his house. In the bedroom I found a box full of tapes. I assumed they were studio demos or reference tracks and threw one on the tape machine. It was the strangest thing. All the tapes were of Brian talking into a tape recorder. Hour after hour of stoned ramblings on the meaning of life, color vibrations, fate, death, vegetarianism and Phil Spector.

"C'mon upstairs," said Brian conspiratorially, "I want to show you something." In the master bedroom was a very expensive automatic baby swing that would rock back and forth at different speeds to different lullabies. It was the only thing in the house that didn't play "Be My Baby." It didn't need to, it was a present from Phil Spector. Brian pointed it out to me knowingly. Okay, I understood the mystic significance of those four notes, but what could I possibly read into a baby swing? What did it mean? That Phil had bestowed his mana on Brian's child? I could see Brian was waiting for me to acknowledge something. But what? Was I meant now to reveal who I really was? But who was I? I was speechless. The clues were everywhere, but I'd missed them. In almost a whisper he said: "Phil, what are you doing here?" All right, now I was seriously freaked. Phil? It's true I had a scraggly little beard and mustache at the time, but reader, I don't remotely resemble Phil Spector. Brian was clearly getting a wee bit paranoid himself. He thought Phil Spector had disguised himself as a rock photographer to find out what Brian was up to in the studio. So my entree into the sanctum sanctorum of the Beach Boys had not been based on some mystical bonding of souls but on a case of mistaken identity (or maybe not).

By this point Brian was seeing Phil Spectors all over the place —especially where he wasn’t. It was as if Phil’s absence had created an entity so pervasive and ubiquitous that he had become as menacing and spectral as his name. Brian came out of the John Frankenheimer movie Sounds in the scaly grip of twin demons. He imagined that the hallucinated (and unlikely) pairing of Phil Spector and John Frankenheimer had plotted to "mess with my head." In his terror the wildly oscillating Brian had cast himself as a psychotic phantom running down the sun-drenched sidewalks of Sunset Strip from his own pursuing shadow.

A year and a half later, after Altamont, I came back for another visit. After the gotterdammerung of the late sixties the idea of escaping back into Brian’s magic kingdom was very appealing. So I came back to L.A. and spent several months hanging out with the Beach Boys while they cut their album Sunflower. The times had changed, the cosmic finger had writ and having writ moved on. Brian and I now bonded over new varieties of peanut butter. I spent a lot of time with him that winter, but nothing afterwards ever approached my goofy epiphany at Zuma Beach.

      
                                                                   *****

[TMinthePM]

Lei'd In Hawaii

In August of 1967, the Beach Boys were reeling from a sudden and complete shift in their popularity in the United States.  Just under one year earlier, they had the number one single in the country with "Good Vibrations", while at the same time, Brian Wilson had been in the midst of recording the follow-up to Pet Sounds, the Smile LP, with the two-part "Heroes And Villains" 45 as its centerpiece.  Unfortunately, due to oft-documented problems both mentally and musically, by the late summer of 1967, Brian and the Beach Boys lost their momentum.   They cancelled an important date at the Monterey Pop Festival, Smile went uncompleted, the bastardized "Heroes And Villains" 45 was issued and was not close to the success that "Good Vibrations" had been, and the "bunt instead of a grand slam" Smiley Smile album was to be issued in early September to relatively little chart action.

In light of all this activity, business realities were creeping in.   The Beach Boys still owed Capitol Records more albums through their newly activated Brother Records imprint, and to plug the gap, a live album was discussed.  The logic behind this move was actually fairly sound.  Interestingly, to date the Beach Boys has only enjoyed one #1 album in the U.S., 1964's Beach Boys Concert,  A year later, the "live in the studio" Beach Boys Party had been a massive success.  Therefore, while working on Smile, Brian had actually gone along with the Boys the previous October to record concerts in Michigan, the tapes of which proved too rough for public consumption (though they can be heard on Vigotone's Mike Love Not War).  It was decided instead to record and film two shows on August 25th and 26th in a  slightly more welcoming climate, Honolulu, Hawaii, for a project wittily entitled Lei'd In Hawaii.

However, one important difference between these Hawaii performances and the earlier Michigan shows was the return to the stage of Brian Wilson, taking the place of his stand-in, Bruce Johnston.  While this sounds tantalizing, the truth of the matter is that Brian ended up being a major reason these tapes went unused!  Brian and the boys had not spent much time rehearsing, and his insistence on staying put behind his massive Wurlitzer organ for the most part during the performance led Carl and Al having to split up bass guitar duties.  The only problem with this was that neither one was particularly used to playing said instrument, and the concert from the 25th that is featured here on Aloha From Hawaii (And Hollywood) shows off these limitations, both instrumentally and vocally.  While one tune from this show, "Heroes And Villains", has been featured on Capitol's Concert / Live In London twofer as a bonus track, and a clip of "God Only Knows" was used in the 1998 Endless Harmony documentary, this is the first time that the concert has been issued in its entirety, in glorious mono, just the way Brian dubbed it down in early September 1967.

During this rough mixing process, it became patently obvious that the show was not going to be able to be issued in this form without a considerable amount of doctoring.  However, for reasons still unexplained, instead of simply overdubbing over the existing tracks, the Boys (with Bruce back in tow) reconvened in Hollywood on September 11th at Wally Heider Recording and recorded "live in the studio" versions of the tracks that were to appear on the album.  Whether they were going to attempt a "fake" live album by overdubbing crowd noise or to do another Party-styled release is unknown, but the resulting recordings were certainly better than any of the Hawaii attempts!  In the end, it was obviously thought best to let it be, as it were, and the entire Lei'd In Hawaii project was abandoned directly after these "rehearsal" sessions in favor of a new studio album, Wild Honey, the recordings for which took place from September through October at both Heider's and Brian's home studio.

The first time any of these tapes was utilized in an official capacity was when "The Letter" appeared on 1983's Beach Boys Rarities LP, while other bits and pieces have shown up on both official and unofficial releases.  Over the years, it has been assumed that these rehearsal sessions took place before the concert at the Honolulu International Center, but once recording details surfaced in the late 1990's, the truth became known that these were truly "after the fact" recordings.   Here, compiled for the first time, are all the available tapes from this September 11, 1967 recording date.

The Beach Boys would go on to record many, many more of their concerts over the next 15 years, with two actually seeing commercial release in 1970 (Live In London, recorded in 1968) and 1973 (In Concert, taped in 1972 and 1973), but neither would have the amount of time expended on them that the unissued Lei'd In Hawaii enjoyed.  While there may be better recordings available, Aloha From Hawaii (And Hollywood) is a truly unique opportunity to hear how the five original Beach Boys sounded in 1967 performing many of their best-known songs in the midst of much internal and external strife.  On a good day, there was still no better vocal group to be heard in the US of A.
Wung Fat Chin Ho June 2001


1.Introduction
2.The Letter
3.Hawaii
4.You're So Good to Me
5.intro
6.Surfer Girl
7.intro
8.Surfin'
9.intro
10.Gettin' Hungry
11.intro
12.California Girls
13.intro
14.Wouldn't It Be Nice
15.Heroes & Villains
16.intro
17.God Only Knows
18.intro
19.Good Vibrations
20.Barbara Ann
21.Outro
Wally Heider Sessions:
22.You're So Good to Me
23.Help Me Rhonda
24.Surfer Girl(rehearsal)
25.Surfer Girl
26.California Girls(Rehearsal)
27.California Girls
28.Surfin'(Rehearsal)
29.God Only Knws(Rehearsal)
30.God Only Knows(Takes 1-6)
31.God Only Knows
32.Good Vibrations(rehearsal)
33.Heroes & Villains
34.The Letter(from "Rarities)



                  *****

[TMinthePM]

Recording the Beach Boys in Hawaii
Posted on 03.31.05 by Dale Manquen

This story doesn’t involve Wally to any large extent, but it describes Wally’s willingness to stretch the envelope.

The Beach Boys were headed for the Honolulu International Center (HIC) in Hawaii, and they hired Heider Recording to record the performances. This was to be the first double 8-track remote, two machines running together, making redundant recordings with a slight overlap so that nothing got lost. The 8-track 1” format was still fairly new, and not many people had two machines that they could send out on a remote, but Wally had two 3M Model 23 8-tracks ready for the job.

What Wally didn’t have was an 8-bus console to feed the 8-track machines. Frank DeMedio was working on an 8-bus console that would eventually be used in Wally’s Studio 3, but it wasn’t finished.

Wally invited me to travel to Hawaii as the tech, accompanying Bill Halverson on the job. I guess he figured I knew the tape machines inside out, and I could probably figure out any console problems. To help me become familiar with the console, he suggested that I visit Frank’s home, where Frank and his Dad were building the console, sometime prior to the trip for a familiarization by Frank. That sounded like a good plan.

Time went by and there was no familiarization trip. Finally, time ran out, and the night before the trip I went over to Frank’s place. What I found was only the pieces of a console. I asked if there was anything that I could do to help, but Frank suggested that I just make myself comfortable for a while as they finished up. That was maybe around 7:00 p.m.

Since the console was due to be loaded onto a pallet at the airport around 10:00 a.m. the following morning, I assumed that things were under control and I would soon be able to get a rundown. By about 9:00 p.m. I was starting to get concerned. Things were still scattered around the room. My offer to help once again was refused.

By about 10:30 p.m. it was obvious that things were totally out of control. This time my offer was accepted, and I was put to work on the meter panel. The three of us feverishly worked through the night. About dawn I had to start getting ready to go to the airport for a mid-morning flight. As I climbed into the shower at Frank’s house, Frank was just trying to send signals through the console for the first time. When I finished dressing, I found the ‘tested’ console almost ready to go. A number of the input channels had big strips of masking tape marked “NFG”. There wasn’t any more time to troubleshoot the remaining problems. I headed for the airport, and the console did get loaded onto the pallet in time.

The flight to Hawaii was my first experience of flying First Class. At least the Beach Boys knew how to treat a guy right! I had so many Mai Tais that I think I was still cruising at 35,000 feet when the plane was coming down on approach to Honolulu. We stayed at the Kahala Hilton hotel on the other side of Diamondhead, the hotel for Hollywood celebrities.

The hotel is quite a ways from Waikiki, but the hotel offered a shuttle for those wishing to visit Waikiki. One night I took the shuttle, but it was so late that I decided to stay later than the last return shuttle. I figured I would just walk home. If I kept the ocean on my right, I couldn’t miss the hotel. As I was walking back in the dark, I could hear the surf, so I knew I was headed in the right direction. Since there was a nice rock wall along the roadway on the ocean side, I decided to walk on top of the wall to avoid the auto traffic. It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered that the edge of the wall was a sheer drop to the surf below. The road had been carved rather precariously around the edge of Diamondhead, and the drop to the beach was 100 feet or more. If I had gone over that edge, nobody would have known where I was or what happened.

We checked out the equipment and did some testing when the Beach Boys rehearsed. I remember one particular a capella song that they sang just for fun. What beautiful harmony (when they weren’t stoned!)

The warm-up acts were different for the two nights. One night was Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the other night was Dino, Desi and Billy. I don’t remember who was on which night. At almost the last minute, Bill Halverson cut a deal with that night’s warm-up act to also record their performance. They came on stage and we fired up both 8-track in record. Then we noticed that one of the channels on one of the machines wasn’t recording! During our alignments everything had been fine.

I swapped a bunch of cables from channel to channel, and it appeared to be something related to the record head, maybe missing bias or some other symptom. I tore into the machine, frantically pulling off trim plate to gain access to the head connectors. Parts were strewn all over the place. After much poking around, the channel came back to life. I replaced all the covers and got the machine back on line just as the warm-up act left the stage. The machine ran fine for the rest of the gig.

Bill Halverson later said to me “When I saw all those parts scattered around, I was sure that we were down to just one machine for the rest of the trip. I don’t care if you don’t do a single thing more while we are here. You have already earned your way on this trip!”

It wasn’t until maybe a year or more later that I found the real problem with the record circuitry. One of the pins on the cable to the record head had been improperly crimped, with the crimp on the insulation of the wire rather than the stripped conductor. My prodding had caused the uncrimped wire end to make physical contact with the pin, restoring operation. Eventually the problem returned, but this time I was able to complete a leisurely diagnosis in Wally’s shop.

The Beach Boys had rented a fleet of Honda or Yamaha motorcycles for scooting around the island. One of the group had ridden his motorcycle to the HIC, but after the show he didn’t want to ride it back to the hotel. Being an avid motorcycle rider, I volunteered to take the bike back to the hotel. I hopped on the bike and rode along that same road around Diamondhead with the rock wall, shaking my head at my own stupidity. It was a typical balmy tropical night and the ride was wonderful. When I was almost at the hotel, I realized that I really didn’t need to immediately return the bike.

I pulled a U-turn in the hotel driveway and decided to ride around part of the Island. Oahu couldn’t be that big, and if I kept the ocean on my right again, I couldn’t get lost! So off I went, riding along in the warm breeze. Before long I had left Honolulu behind me and I was riding along the coast. Although things got pretty desolate, I kept going. I figured I would soon be around to the backside, and I knew there was a highway across the waist of the island that we had used on one of our sightseeing trips.

Then the engine sputtered and I ran out of gas. I was able to find the gas shutoff valve and turn it to the ‘Reserve Tank’ position. I had no idea how far the motorcycle would go on reserve, or how far I was from a gas station. Well the answer to the second question was “What gas station?” On the backside of the island everything was dark. The road was empty and there just weren’t any gas stations to be found. I had underestimated my progress around the island, too. I still had quite a ways to go before I finally found the road that cuts across the mountains to Honolulu. I did make it back to Honolulu, but then I had a hard time finding a gas station that was open. I must have been running on fumes when I finally pulled into the station. I had gone on reserve about 35 miles back. I bought some gas and rode back to the hotel, parking the bike in the designated area with the other bikes.

While we were in Honolulu, an acquaintance of Wally’s named Herbert Ono, took us out to dinner. Herb owned Sounds of Hawaii, a small recording studio in Honolulu. Needless to say, he was awestruck by a full 8-track setup with two machines. We went to probably the best Chinese restaurant in Honolulu. The restaurant’s owner played in a band with Herb, and the service and food was excellent. If we liked something, they just kept bringing it until we couldn’t eat any more. This was actually my first time to eat Chinese food, and I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction.

Not long after I got back to Camarillo, things took a strange turn. Our salesman, Scotty Lyall, who worked out of 3M headquarters in St. Paul, had come out to Camarillo while I was gone. Jack Mullin was also on vacation, and Scotty was a bit miffed that he couldn’t talk to anyone. When he found out where I was, he raised a big stink about me moonlighting with Wally, and that other customers were complaining that 3M was showing favoritism to Wally. The truth was that Wally’s machines had an excellent reputation for reliability, and sometimes a group would insist upon renting one of Wally’s machines rather than using the host studio’s own 3M machine.

Scotty spoke to the plant manager, who spoke to Jack Mullin, who spoke to me. The word was that I must stop moonlighting for Wally. Jack didn’t really agree with the decision, but he was the designated messenger. I was really offended; to say nothing of the extra income and fun trips I would miss.

I replied that our relationship with Wally was very beneficial to 3M. My work had led to several innovations that came from ideas related to the use of the machines by Wally and his customers. Furthermore, the excellent reputation of Wally’s machines set all the 3M products a cut above our competitors’ products. (Our 3M products were very popular in Hollywood, much more so than in New York City or Nashville.) My remote gigs with Wally were opportunities to demonstrate our products to the local recording folks, much like my contact with Herb Ono in Honolulu. And lastly, if anyone else wanted to pay me to maintain their machines, I was available.

All of this was shoved back up the line, and after due consideration, Scotty was told to put a lid on it, noting that he should be thankful for all the benefits to 3M. I continued to moonlight for Wally even after I left 3M in 1969 to go to graduate school. I was even able to borrow a 3M M79 from Wally for comparative testing when I was working for Ampex in 1972, but that is another story….

Epilog:

The Beach Boys were so stoned during their performances that I don’t think any of the tracks we recorded were ever released. Frank’s console was gutted and completely rebuilt. I stayed in touch with Herb, and several years later he invited me to return to Honolulu as his guest – as long as I gave his 3M M56 16-track recorder a thorough checkup. The machine had a bunch of PC cards and other components that I recognized as being some of the hand-built prototype cards that I had helped build. Turned out Herb had bought the machine from Glen Phoenix, and Glen had apparently built the machine himself out of bootlegged parts!

4 Comments »

Thank you very much, Mr. Manquen, for a fascinating story and post! As a Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan, I was very excited to read more about these two concerts. In the past several years I have done some research and study on these specific shows, which are almost legendary in the Beach Boys saga, and if you wouldn’t mind fielding a few questions, I’d love to ask a few questions about certain unanswered details.

First: There was film shot of these concerts. It was assumed for years that the Beach Boys were filming the Hawaii shows as part of a multi-media live album and film release, but it was revealed that the existing film footage was for personal use instead, and was shot rather poorly on 16mm film (which appeared too dark for the stage shots). This footage has been used in several Beach Boys documentaries, and is always cut to a different audio track, substituting live tapes from London for example for the actual Hawaii recordings. Do you remember anything specific about the filming of these concerts, i.e. who was involved, what the film was to have been used for, and most of all, if there was either film or video shot of the full performance on either night?

Second: A small part of that existing Hawaii footage seems to have been shot in a control room, with the Beach Boys present and standing around a mixing board. It looks to be Jim Lockert at the board, and at one point Brian Wilson reaches over, makes a change or a suggestion to Lockert, and listens to the track. If it were Bill Halverson and yourself working the concert, could this mystery studio control room footage have been shot at Wally Heider’s in LA, after the band had returned and begun mixing your live recordings? Or was Jim Lockert there in another capacity for those concerts, since he had become Brian Wilson’s unofficial “official” engineer after Chuck Britz recommended him for the Smiley Smile home-studio gig? The Beach Boys and various family and friends gathered around Brian and the board in this brief clip are wearing Hawaiian shirts, too!

Third: Again in one of those brief control room clips, there is clearly a television monitor visible and sitting on top of the board above the meters, and the image being projected is of the Beach Boys performing on stage. Do you remember if this was a closed-circuit broadcast strictly for the engineering staff to monitor the activity on stage? Or was there a video remote shot of the full concert for purposes yet to be revealed? It looks like the same board as in the Brian-Lockert scenes, so was this film of this video monitor perhaps also shot in real-time during either night’s performance?

Fourth: It is a legend that Brian’s home organ, his Baldwin theater-model which is all over the Smiley Smile album, was crated up and shipped to Hawaii specifically for these two shows, at great cost. Do you remember anything about this Baldwin organ, and having to deal with it on stage?

Last: The Beach Boys, several weeks after returning from Hawaii in Sept. 1967, went into Wally Heider’s in LA to re-record and replace a handful of the scrapped tracks from Hawaii. Do you have any additional information or any personal anecdotes about those re-record sessions?

Thank you again for a great story about an interesting part of Beach Boys history. There are many questions still left unanswered about the whole Hawaii affair, but any new piece of information, however small, is appreciated by the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan base. I may be able to get clips of and post some screen captures of the control room scenes I mentioned as well, if there is an interest in seeing the control room, the Heider equipment used for the shows, and anyone who was in the room and made it to the film. I’d be happy to do so if there is an interest.

                                                                                             Thanks again!   -Craig

Craig, I can’t tell you anything about film or video related to this show. At this point in my life, I was only 2 years into my career. I was still so busy learning about tape recorders and audio that I hadn’t discovered things with pictures yet.

I’m trying to remember what went on. Jimmie Lockert and I were good friends, and I guess maybe we met on this trip. I don’t know why else I would have bumped into Jimmy. Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall having a drink at the hotel and sharing the Chinese dinner with Jimmy and his wife.

Jimmy had an HO train layout that he was working on, and I remember borrowing it from him for a while and working on some of the trackwork to help the trains run better. (You can see a tour of my Lionel train layout on my website at www.manquen.net.) He and his wife were always happy to spend time with me, and I felt very comfortable at their home.

Bill Halverson was responsible for the equipment – setup, etc., – as the Heider man on scene, and Jimmie was probably the actual recording engineer. Bill probably served as his assistant during the concerts, or maybe Bill ran the knobs and Jimmie ‘produced’. I don’t remember.

I can remember Jimmie’s frustrations with the eccentricities of working with the Beach Boys. Things like irregular hours, recording in the dry swimming pool and the general problems of dealing with an undisciplined group.

I remember one story about a luxury car – probably something like a Rolls – that was parked at the Beach Boys house, and someone left the door open. It sat there with the door open for quite a while, collecting dust. Finally someone decided to get the car cleaned up. When they were done and the car was all spiffy again, they parked it and left the door open….

The tracks from the concert were pretty bad. I guess most of the Boys were quite stoned by the time they hit the stage, and their music suffered.
Sorry I can’t be more accurate and specific.
   
                                                                      Dale Manquen — April 27, 2005 @ 07:34:01


Mr. Manquen, thanks again for adding more to this story! Any information from this era is much appreciated, as it is not as widely available as other parts of the Beach Boys’ story, and thank you very much for taking the time to respond. The Wally Heider facilities in LA did play a big role in what Brian Wilson was recording in the Summer and Fall of 1967, and it’s great to read personal stories from someone who was there.

Apparently the tracks were bad enough to the band’s ears as well that they scheduled the re-record session a few weeks later at Heider’s, trying to recreate the stage sound they had in Hawaii, but with better performances. That’s where my question about Brian’s Baldwin organ came up, because it seems that after shipping it to Hawaii at that high cost, they also had it shipped to Wally Heider’s for these re-records, then apparently back to Brian’s home studio! The whole Hawaii story is fascinating in many ways, and it’s challenging to try and piece it all together from the available information (and recordings).

About Jim Lockert, it is unfortunate that he didn’t go on the record about his experiences working with the Beach Boys as much as he may have done if he were here today, especially with the renewed interest in Brian Wilson’s music over the past several years. To the best of my knowledge, Jim Lockert may have gone on the record in detail one time, in the late 70’s, about his working with the band, including a description of a marathon Smiley Smile mixing session done at Wally Heider’s Studio Three. That is about all that’s been available so far as firsthand accounts from Jim Lockert, and I could post Jim Lockert’s words if it would be of interest to the website.

Thanks again for the great stories about Hawaii!            - Craig


By all means, Craig, this is the place for such stories! Please post the article, and not just in the comments!!

[Cabinessenceking]

Thanks for posting this. I didn't really imagine Brian to be so hard to be with back in the late 60's. Seems like he really lost his mojo...

[Ian]

Note that if you watch american band, there is a very brief snippet of footage of another song being played on stage with brian on bass that is seen after the footage of god only knows.

[James Hughes-Clarke]

Note that if you watch american band, there is a very brief snippet of footage of another song being played on stage with brian on bass that is seen after the footage of god only knows.

That's Sloop John B - with Brian playing (quite fumbly) bass.

[SonicVolcano]

Dennis' drumkit lacks a bass drum and cymbals, quite interesting

[Rocker]

Note that if you watch american band, there is a very brief snippet of footage of another song being played on stage with brian on bass that is seen after the footage of god only knows.

That's Sloop John B - with Brian playing (quite fumbly) bass.

I thought it was Barbara Ann

[Rocker]

TMinthePM thanks for your postings!


These shots come from thebeachboys.com and I think they are backstage shots of the Hawaii shows:





And then there's the shot from the "Warmth of the sun"-compilation that probably comes from a rehearsal. Does anyone know why Al didn't use this guitar on stage when he already had it there?



We also know pictures from this time:



Was it another rehearsal? We have movie material from this one (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

[guitarfool2002]

Was it another rehearsal? We have movie material from this one (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

Another rehearsal or soundcheck - they wore the striped shirts for the actual performances.

[Rocker]

Was it another rehearsal? We have movie material from this one (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

Another rehearsal or soundcheck - they wore the striped shirts for the actual performances.

Yeah, I know about the striped shirts. But this looks almost like they really rehearsed quite a bit. But when you hear the recordings...well...
Is there footage of the other rehearsal?

[guitarfool2002]

Was it another rehearsal? We have movie material from this one (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

Another rehearsal or soundcheck - they wore the striped shirts for the actual performances.

Yeah, I know about the striped shirts. But this looks almost like they really rehearsed quite a bit. But when you hear the recordings...well...
Is there footage of the other rehearsal?

Happy you know that, then! I guess I misunderstood the question. 

We don't know which is which, exactly, and if they were there for two shows they may have done soundchecks for both the live sound and Jim Lockert with the recording crew if not full-blown band rehearsals for both shows. At this point it's a matter of taking your pick and having a guess, because unidentified photos from Hawaii could have been from either show or day.

[Rocker]

Was it another rehearsal? We have movie material from this one (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

Another rehearsal or soundcheck - they wore the striped shirts for the actual performances.

Yeah, I know about the striped shirts. But this looks almost like they really rehearsed quite a bit. But when you hear the recordings...well...
Is there footage of the other rehearsal?

Happy you know that, then! I guess I misunderstood the question. 

We don't know which is which, exactly, and if they were there for two shows they may have done soundchecks for both the live sound and Jim Lockert with the recording crew if not full-blown band rehearsals for both shows. At this point it's a matter of taking your pick and having a guess, because unidentified photos from Hawaii could have been from either show or day.

Allright! Thanks, maybe someday we'll know a little more. I guess most of the rehearsing they did was for H&V which came out pretty good in both performances imo. I still wonder about that guitar of Al's though....

[guitarfool2002]

Whatever day or time the photos were taken of Brian wearing the green-ish looking Hawaiian shirt seems to have the most photo evidence. Brian with the blue and white shirt must be whatever other soundcheck or rehearsal session they did.

[guitarfool2002]

Allright! Thanks, maybe someday we'll know a little more. I guess most of the rehearsing they did was for H&V which came out pretty good in both performances imo. I still wonder about that guitar of Al's though....

The red one? We had a great conversation about that same guitar in Hawaii on this board, can't recall the specific details. But it should be easy to find with a search. Maybe Al took it to Hawaii and just didn't like it as much as his others, so he left it as a reserve. Who knows. Weird choice for a stage guitar.

[guitarfool2002]

One other visual clue to notice - may or may not help ID the photos - the one with Brian in the green shirt shows a totally bare stage. The one with Brian in the blue shirt shows the Baldwin organ and what looks like a mic stand decked out with Hawaiian flowers and Lei's, and look close and you *might* be seeing a blurry background image of one of the trees they had decorating the stage which was the subject of some on-stage antics heard on one of the concert tapes.

So one of the photo series with the bare stage seems to have been an early rehearsal or even a set-up when they first got there, the other looks like it may have been closer to the actual showtime(s) as the stage is decorated with flowers and those trees.

Just a guess.

[Rocker]

One other visual clue to notice - may or may not help ID the photos - the one with Brian in the green shirt shows a totally bare stage. The one with Brian in the blue shirt shows the Baldwin organ and what looks like a mic stand decked out with Hawaiian flowers and Lei's, and look close and you *might* be seeing a blurry background image of one of the trees they had decorating the stage which was the subject of some on-stage antics heard on one of the concert tapes.

So one of the photo series with the bare stage seems to have been an early rehearsal or even a set-up when they first got there, the other looks like it may have been closer to the actual showtime(s) as the stage is decorated with flowers and those trees.

Just a guess.

Well, that sounds plausible.
Have to look for the guitar discussion. Thanks!

[Generation42]

These shots come from thebeachboys.com and I think they are backstage shots of the Hawaii shows... (and I think this might be the coolest the Beach Boys ever looked as a group).

Boy, you said it!  And not only these rehearsal shots, but I'll go so far as to suggest that they looked super cool in the live Hawaii footage, where they were sporting the infamous striped shirts.

There's just something about the look of the band during this time period.  It gives me the same cutting-edge, ultra-hip, pop cool sensation that the photos of the Beatles taken during the Revolver sessions does.  The guys looked so good at this time that they could have pulled off almost any look, and I'll never understand those who say the guys could have been a success at Monterey, just as long as they lost the striped shirts.  Crazy, I tells 'ya!