The biggest revelation about Sunshine Tomorrow.. Brian's level of involvement..

[guitarfool2002]

Smiley Smile, but particularly Wild Honey and Friends are surefire attempts at the boys (largely Brian) stripping it down to basics and involving the band more in the proceedings. The main reason for The Beach Boys production credit?

1. To get rid of a lot of the pressure from Brian.
2. Try and step away from the godlike adulation of one Brian Wilson and to get The Beach Boys to be taken seriously as a democratic band, not just one with a puppet master pulling all the strings. (Which is how many fans and critics have viewed the group since the mid-60s. Deserved or not)

I think when I wrote my opening post I should have been clearer that believing that Brian was not the mastermind behind Wild Honey was never something i've actually believed, rather that Sunshine Tomorrow shatters the myth that a lot of people have believed and continue to believe which is that Brian was barely hanging on after SMiLE's collapse and The Beach Boys immediately took up the mantle from Brian. Documentations such as this release show that he was in the drivers seat for the next several albums. Even during his psychiatric troubles during the 20/20 era it was still him the other boys relied on heavily. The I Can Hear Music single and the Sunflower album seem to be the real start of The Beach Boys functioning as a democratic unit in all sense of the word.

Interesting points. I think as in any job or trade even outside of music, there cannot be an expectation for an apprentice or protege/mentee to step in and start doing master-level or even journeyman level work right out of the gate. There is a learning curve, and I think the attempts to suggest or even state outright that Carl or anyone else would have just stepped right into the driver's seat in the summer or fall of '67 to take over the production of an album almost entirely from Brian misses that basic fact of life and work. There is and was a learning curve, and as the skills were sharpened and more tools added to the skill set, then there was product which reflected that in the music. And the band was able to produce quality work with lesser involvement from Brian in the process, even though they did still rely on him, as did the various labels who were signing the band over the next decade even if in name and presence only.

Another Beatles compare and contrast scenario to factor in, and even extending well beyond the Beatles and into the 60's era with bands in general.

How many bands on the level of popularity and status as The Beach Boys had a band member in the self-contained unit who did as much for the music and its creation as Brian? The Beatles had George Martin, obviously, he was "producer". If they needed an oboe and cello arrangement, if they needed strings to sweeten a track, there was George Martin filling that role as producer. I will say some of those really, really classic Beatles recordings would not have been what they are without George Martin, without Geoff Emerick after '66, etc. They were not band members, they didn't write the songs, but they filled in the ideas and filled requests and necessities which the band members could not.

Consider Brian was George Martin in the Beach Boys, along with being a Beach Boy, along with writing the overwhelming majority if not all of the original music on the albums up to 1967...and factor in the output, the number of albums and singles the band released from 62 to 67.

It's staggering to think of it on those terms. It is amazing it produced as much quality as it did in 5 years, and you have to think that kind of work schedule and expectations could not be sustained for too long.

Did any other bands with the stature and success of the Beach Boys in the mid 60's have a single band member responsible for all of those jobs? Most if not all had someone specifically assigned as producer, and that person was most often not actually in the band but rather attached to either the label or another interest whom the band was working for. It really is staggering.

[Mitchell]

I'm just going to throw some thoughts and ideas for discussion. It's an interesting subject, for sure!

Listening to the progression of the approach from the "end" of the Smile period to Wild Honey (and later Friends), it's actually very organic. The Smile box bore this out but hearing the Wild Honey backing tracks/sessions just emphasizes it. Brian's still using the detuned piano for feels, still recording modularly, etc. I don't know what "changed" per se, but Brian was already pulling back from the studio musicians + Beach Boys vocals approach in the Smile era. He was also doing more "basic" tracks to build on.

Other things to consider (as always) are competitiveness, the sheer effort involved (mentally, physically and emotionally), the want for commercial success, the want for critical acclaim, the desire to keep making music, the following of the muse, and, yes, the input from the rest of the group.

You can also look at Party's (and Barbara Ann's) commercial success compared to Little Girl I Once Knew and Pet Sounds. I can see how Brian would get discouraged, or how the rest of the band would question the need for going through all the effort.

[rab2591]

I'm just going to throw some thoughts and ideas for discussion. It's an interesting subject, for sure!

Listening to the progression of the approach from the "end" of the Smile period to Wild Honey (and later Friends), it's actually very organic. The Smile box bore this out but hearing the Wild Honey backing tracks/sessions just emphasizes it. Brian's still using the detuned piano for feels, still recording modularly, etc. I don't know what "changed" per se, but Brian was already pulling back from the studio musicians + Beach Boys vocals approach in the Smile era. He was also doing more "basic" tracks to build on.

Other things to consider (as always) are competitiveness, the sheer effort involved (mentally, physically and emotionally), the want for commercial success, the want for critical acclaim, the desire to keep making music, the following of the muse, and, yes, the input from the rest of the group.

You can also look at Party's (and Barbara Ann's) commercial success compared to Little Girl I Once Knew and Pet Sounds. I can see how Brian would get discouraged, or how the rest of the band would question the need for going through all the effort.

Adding to your thoughts...I think also that a complete new direction was probably vital to the survival of this group. Surf music was long irrelevant, the Beatles were doing psychedelia, Dylan electric, (both soon to go more stripped down).

Where could The Beach Boys go? R&B was a perfect avenue for them to travel down; it was a complete new sound and the group absolutely nailed it. Even if Carl was doing far more leads I think that it was less about Brian taking a step back and more about Brian choosing the perfect man to lead their new sound. I think Brian only started stepping back when he realized the public didn't care about their change in sound.

I really think the problem with Wild Honey was that muddy sound. Take a song like 'Darlin'' - put that single out in '67 with its recent remix from this set and it has a far better chance of being chart topping material...that song with the recent mix is out of this world. Becoming more stripped down in their production was a great choice, but not keeping the recordings crisp and defined for release really killed the overall sound.

[MikestheGreatest!!]

I doubt most people here actually agree with the premise of this thread as stated in the subject matter.

I wouldn't have thought so either but Peter Reum is a well respected source.

Clearly we all respect Peter for so many reasons, and his quoted statement certainly contains many seeds of truth. But it is too sweeping in its implications that Brian was a non-functional mental wreck immediately after the shelving of SMiLE. And other experts can correct me, but I simply do not recall cocaine taking center stage in the drug world at that time...it strikes me that this was a seventies phenomenon, which fits in more with Brian's legendary siesta from 1973-75.

Let's remember that the BBs deal with Warners had certain guidelines about how much involvement Brian would have with the LP, so it was clearly necessary for them to make it appear that he was more involved with the studio process than was actually the case. But what we know now indicates that this period began in mid-late '68 and was still nothing like the full-blown malaise that took hold in '73 (with some still continuing to speculate that it was Murry's death which triggered it...I would guess that this was more peripheral, and what really brought it to a head was twofold--the despair of having become a piñata within his own band, particularly with the Love power grab underway, and escalating mental/emotional crises exacerbated by a sharp increase in drug intake during that time (remember, we are referring to '73-'75 here).

Ok, so Brian produced Wild Honey, was fully engaged and on point, and it still bombed.  Likewise with Friends.  Hmm, I'm not too sure I would be pushing this narrative as a Brianista.  Much as I like both records, I was always kind of relieved that Brian was somewhat insulated from their commercial failure by the "Produced by the Beach Boys" narrative.  But then again, maybe HE was expecting the commercial failure and wanted the credits to insulate him from that perceived impending failure....

Having said all this, Smiley and WH, much as I like them, are pullbacks artistically and commercially.  Doesn't mean they are bad, not saying that at all, just that, well, he did bunt, like at least twice in a row and that is something you just don't expect out of your power hitter....

Thanks for this load of drivel that clearly misses the point of what Brian and the band were trying to do at this time. Ignoring the incredible backlash against Smiley is what allows this ludicrous lumping of cause, effect and result. WILD HONEY did not "bomb." Miraculously, given the press at the time, it withstood all that and cracked the top 25. "Darlin'" was a Top 20 hit. Now, FRIENDS was a different matter--it really did BOMB. Part of that seems to have been some really strange timing where the single "Friends" was released three months ahead of the LP and fell off the charts before the album was released.

But what's clear is that even as Brian continued to be the prime mover of the studio work in this time frame, the democratic principle was evolving right alongside that, with Dennis's songs emerging and Carl becoming more of an independent force in the studio (as the quotes in Howie's liner notes for ST demonstrate). It's easy to forget that Carl was still just 20-21 in this time frame--anyone who listens to the PARTY! session CD can hear that his growth into the role he would shortly have within the band was already occurring then...at a time when he was still only 18.

Trying to recover one's bearings after a trying situation was what was going on at the time, which was a helluva lot more important than coming up with a "retro" song that would somehow bring them back to pre-PS commercial glory. This ill-informed pile of ill will overlooks the fact that later in '68, Mike got his way and co-created with Brian a "retro" song--"Do It Again"--and while it has been fully "rehabilitated" thanks to the ripeness of time, the fact AT THE TIME was that it was derided for trying to calculatedly be retro and it struggled to get to the Top 20, doing no better than "Darlin'."

And then Don starts attacking Do It Again and its "retro-ness" for no apparent reason (don't really know the relevance of this to the WH topic at hand).  I have no ill will toward WH.  Nice little album, not terribly ambitious, but then I guess it was not meant to be.  Guess some folks just have a bee in their bonnet.  And you are welcome!