How good a guitar player was Carl?

[adamghost]

I think the two posts above this are, each in their own way, right on target.  David Marks has made the same statement -- that Carl stopped progressing as a guitar player after about 1966.  But in the same light, his role in the band expanded and he became less of a specialized player and more of a "big picture" kind of a guy.  You tend to look at your own playing in a bigger context at that point, and it's clear that all the Wilsons had a "less is more" philosophy towards playing...in that whatever their technical limitations were, they deliberately underplayed on tracks even relative to what they COULD do (e.g. Dennis would choose to not play a lot of fills or cymbals, even though he was perfectly capable of doing so). 

As I said above, I continue to be impressed by how many parts Carl could juggle onstage without really giving it a second thought.  It's not the same talent as a Jeff Beck, but it's in a lot of ways a rarer talent.  A lot of the shredding guitar players I know can NOT do that....in fact, many of them cannot even play decent rhythm guitar (another really underrated but important skill...speaking personally I am just an adequate lead guitarist, but I get a lot of work as a guitar player anyway because my time is good).  Carl also seemed, from interviews I have read in the '70s and '80s, to be very focused on tone, which again, is something a lot of guitar players could learn from.  One note played the right way can really do what a sixteen bar solo cannot.

[Wirestone]

In a general sense, though, how many rock players really "progress" after they become famous (or do their best-known work)? I know that some must, but it's not like Elton John plays particularly better piano now than he did in 1970, or that McCartney is a better bass player than the prime years of the Beatles. Brian certainly didn't become a better pianist. The one who did change in the group seems to have been Dennis -- but he was also the one with the most to prove as the 60s turned into the 70s.

The thing is, there are powerful market pressures on budding rock stars in two directions. One, if they want to eat, they have to learn the basics. But two, once they're famous, people seldom want radically new things from them. So there's no reason to push themselves in terms of instrumental chops (songwriting and themes on occasion, but not too far). Assuming Carl wanted to become a Beck or Clapton-style player, no Beach Boys fan would want to hear it anyway.

[adamghost]

I would be interested to hear your opinions on Ricky and Blondie.  Personally I really love the playing on the Flame album.  Again, though a large part of the greatness is probably how tight the Flame were as a unit, presumably in part because the drummer, bassist, and one guitarist were brothers (just like the Wilson).  

I don't have the Flame album...I am a big admirer of the early '70s Beach Boys, particularly IN CONCERT, but I can see the flaws in the concept too.  Blondie and Ricky were great musicians in the traditional sense of the word....technically fluid and they know their craft.  I think I'd make the argument that Ricky was the stronger player of the two (Carl I believe called him one of the best musicians he'd ever seen), in the sense that he could play phenomenal drums, and also keyboards, guitar, flute and pedal steel (which is a bitch of an instrument to learn).

I'm on the fence about how appropriate Ricky's drumming was for the Beach Boys.  He overplays a lot on IN CONCERT.  It kind of works in the way Stewart Copeland kind of works, and it doesn't bug me the way one of their future drummers did when he reinvented the parts on the songs and kinda killed the groove on 'em.  Conversely, what Ricky played on record really wasn't all that different than what Dennis played on record, but I'd argue that Dennis did the dumb drummer thing better than Ricky.  Ricky just sounds bored, and who can blame him really, whereas Dennis could hit a tom and make it sound like the end of the world.

I think the studio albums the Flame guys played on would have been better served by a liver feel.  "Funky Pretty", "Marcella" and "Leaving This Town" are much better live, though NOT "Sail On Sailor" which has a MONSTER groove.  Listen to it with headphones sometime.  The tension between the drums and the keyboards is unreal.  Perfect recording...but I digress.

The difficulty with the early '70s Beach Boys is that, even though Bruce pretty much had to go to make it work, the group definitely lost a cohering factor without him.  The vocal blend for sure suffered...the band got much more into counterpoint vocals as opposed to harmonies.  Without Bruce to shuffle around finishing this or that idea and to play his politically ambiguous role, the band basically splintered, and the Flame guys never fully integrated, which is a shame, because there's no question the early '70s live band was phenomenal.  I love the albums, they really sound like nothing else, but it's not surprising they weren't big hits.  They're quirky and they're spotty, and they're kind of sterile, particularly HOLLAND.  That's part of their charm, but it wasn't gonna make for a breakthrough situation.

I think where Carl was going with the group, Blondie and Ricky were the right guys to make it happen, but the band really became Carl-Ricky-Blondie with the other guys hovering around the margins doing their own thing.  I don't get the sense that there was any hostility from the other guys toward Ricky and Blondie, but it's too bad we didn't get more stuff like "Carry Me Home", "Out In The Country" or the "California Saga" where what Al and Dennis and to some extent Mike had to offer could gel with what was going on with the band.  The group was moving towards a hippie-roots sensibility that suited them, I think.  If they could have gotten further along that road by '74, and were able to raise their songwriting game, who knows how the history of the band would have changed.

Anyway, Blondie and Ricky, first rate players for sure.  You don't have the careers they've had otherwise.  You could argue they were a little too "good" for the Beach Boys' sound, but I think it's more a question of not having had an opportunity to really gel, and not enough unity of direction between all these different factions of the band.  It worked great live, and it could have worked better on record with more time and focus, I think.

[Mike's Beard]

Another point I'd like to make is when Carl stepped up his creativity in the early 70's he did so largely through the piano and moog synth. "Trader", "Feel Flows" and "Long Promised Road" all seem to have been composed primarily through these instruments, with the guitar more decorative than grounding.

[Magic Transistor Radio]

  You tend to look at your own playing in a bigger context at that point, and it's clear that all the Wilsons had a "less is more" philosophy towards playing...in that whatever their technical limitations were, they deliberately underplayed on tracks even relative to what they COULD do (e.g. Dennis would choose to not play a lot of fills or cymbals, even though he was perfectly capable of doing so). 

I immediately thought of Smiley Smile and Friends as extreme versions. All the individual parts seem fairly simple, yet most people would not be able to come up with that combination. Especially on Friends.

[guitarfool2002]

The simplicity by choice point is valid, but I might disagree slightly in why they played such simple parts. Dennis was a great stage drummer, very high-energy and loud, but his time wasn't as solid, and his groove felt best, in my opinion, on the shuffles like Help Me Rhonda which he could just ace.

The simplicity of individual parts becomes a necessity when your arrangements are as full of parts as those coming from Brian Wilson. A specific part in a specific section of a song you want to emphasize cannot be crowded out of the arrangement by supporting parts which are too complex or too busy. It's actually better to underwrite your arrangements to benefit the "big picture" of the full song than it would be to show off with flashy parts that start bumping into each other.

The thing Brian had going on was his ability to manage this in both his vocal and instrumental arrangements, which reached the climax around 1966. None of those arrangements sounded cluttered, yet the orchestrations were thick and the vocals had more than the average 4-part voicings. Brilliant.

Smiley Smile and Friends, minus the more full studio bands of Pet Sounds, Smile, and Good Vibrations, stripped away much of the instrumentation. So you still heard the thick vocal arrangements front and center, but instead of three guitar parts and two bassists playing simple single lines, you only hear one or two, and it does sound quite bare compared to 1966.

But I don't think it's the musicians choosing to underplay as much as the musical arrangements dictating that they underplay.

[adamghost]

Everything you write is true, guitarfool, but I'm also going by people who worked with them.  You've got Ricky Fataar, for example, saying in an interview that Dennis encouraged him to lay back and play more simply.  That's a philosophical thing.  You can't really say that arranging parts to interlock necessitated playing simply and then say that it wasn't a conscious decision.  You can always do something else!  I do agree that the Wllsons were all brought up with a certain way of putting records together through Brian that certainly influenced them moving forward.  Kind of a chicken or egg deal.

Anyway, it's certainly an approach I've internalized as a musician and let me tell you, not only does it really help in laying solid tracks and getting your overall sound to cohere, but it's very, very rare in a world where everyone just wants to shred.  I esteem the Wilson approach very highly....you'll find that when you get to the really top echelon of players, they will also tend to play more simply.  My two favorite drummers in the world are Dennis Wilson and Al Jackson, Jr. (Booker T/Al Green)  Technically, they are at polar ends of the spectrum...Al J. had more finesse in his little finger than Dennis had in his whole body...but the theory to their drumming is the same; respect the fundamentals.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I've always wondered exactly how Dennis learned to play. Did he take lessons? If not, where did he practice?

There's a big leap from being delegated to drums by your Mom over the rest of your band's objections to the guy playing in this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lVfrQpGDMI

The clip is from 1963. Dennis was assigned to drums cold in 1961, right? I've been playing drums for over 20 years, and two years into it, I still pretty much sucked...... badly! How many players were as solid and professional as Dennis a mere two years or less into their playing lives?

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I'm on the fence about how appropriate Ricky's drumming was for the Beach Boys.  He overplays a lot on IN CONCERT.  It kind of works in the way Stewart Copeland kind of works, and it doesn't bug me the way one of their future drummers did when he reinvented the parts on the songs and kinda killed the groove on 'em.  Conversely, what Ricky played on record really wasn't all that different than what Dennis played on record, but I'd argue that Dennis did the dumb drummer thing better than Ricky.  Ricky just sounds bored, and who can blame him really, whereas Dennis could hit a tom and make it sound like the end of the world.

Ricky's drumming on "In Concert" has always perplexed me. He's obviously an immensely skilled player but he kills a bit of the fun for me by laying down these great rhythms with great feel and then it comes time for a fill and he does this boring, lazy, rudimentary "dah da-da" on the snare almost every time.  Of course, on some songs be purely rules, but my little complaint just always makes me think of Dennis because Dennis never did anything on the drums that didn't sound like he absolutely meant it. He didn't have a stockpile of practiced/over considered fills and pick-ups that he tossed out. He always seemed to do something different with each song and each part. There was an unpredictability in his playing that was really exciting. Check him out in the Olympia clips and see

[Wirestone]

Great example -- Paul Mertens gathered a lot of players together for Brian during the BWPS sessions, so Brian could pick and choose instruments and parts. And in "Nothing But Love," BW told Gary Griffin to play a single, sustained note on the organ leading up to the chorus. And that was it. (You can actually hear it in the record, although Gary seems to add a bit of a slide at the end).  GG can clearly play more complicated parts. But BW thought of that one note, and that's all the song needed.

[adamghost]

Side note on Dennis' drumming:  Earle Mankey recently told me that when Dennis was in the studio and he would blow a cross-tom fill, he would just keep pretending to play the fill all the way down to the ground until he fell over!

[runnersdialzero]

Side note on Dennis' drumming:  Earle Mankey recently told me that when Dennis was in the studio and he would blow a cross-tom fill, he would just keep pretending to play the fill all the way down to the ground until he fell over!

Hahaha - I love it.

[Mikie]

I've listened to "In Concert" in its entirety about 400 times. I bought it the day it came out, and I never once ever thought that Ricky Fataar overplayed on it. I thought he played fantastic on that album as well as on CT&P and Holland. I saw him live in the early 70's and I thought he was very good back then. And I still think he played very well on P.O.B. and on the Flame album. I also think Carl Wilson's assessment of Ricky was on the money. Real nice guy, too.

[Mikie]

I always wondered where Dennis learned to play drums too. I forgot - is it in the Stebbins book? Maybe David could tell us through Carrie. I know he started out playing Audree's pots and pans. He played pretty well starting on the original 3 or 4 songs submitted to Capitol (such as Shut Down) and throughout the Surfin' Safari album. Unorthodox way of playing, but he could keep the beat! So he only played a year or two before playing on records! When/how did he learn so fast? Was he self-taught or did somebody show him? Did he learn the drums during the time he was lighting farts with David on W. 119th street?

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I've listened to "In Concert" in its entirety about 400 times. I bought it the day it came out, and I never once ever thought that Ricky Fataar overplayed on it. I thought he played fantastic on that album as well as CT&T and Holland. I saw him live in the early 70's and I thought he was very good back then. And I still think he played very well on P.O.B. and on the Flame album. I also think Carl Wilson's assessment of Ricky was on the money. Real nice guy, too.

I probably came off as being way more critical of Ricky than was the intention. My point was to express fondness for little touches that Dennis brought to many of the songs Ricky drums to on In Concert. I picked at a specific thing Ricky does on that album which I'm not partial to in order to make my point, which makes me exactly the sort of music fan I dislike, so I stand humbly corrected 

As for Dennis picking up the drums so quickly, I don't have my copy of Stebbin's book anymore, so I can't go take a look

Speaking of, I'm partway through The Lost Beach Boy and it's by far my favorite book on the band! I mean, what better perspective on the subject could you ask for then David? Stebbins writes as neither a rabid fan-boy nor a cynical rock journalist but someone simply telling a story that has historic significance as well as being a hell of story!

A Mike bio next? ............. Please! 

[Mikie]

Not sure you need to stand corrected.......it's a matter of opinion, I guess.

Highly recommend the book on Dennis - "The Real Beach Boy". Jon will hopefully release another one; maybe next year(?)

[busy doin nothin]

What a fantastic thread.  Thanks to all for their insights.

As to Dennis learning the drums so quickly, it seems to me that all three Wilsons just had a tremendous innate musical ability that must have made it easier for them to play than for mere mortals like myself.

Speaking of which, in the Olympia concert thread there has been some discussion of Mike's onstage antics, which I have always found grating.  Even back in the very early striped shirt days he would do the goofiest little dances.  I always wondered why he didn't just try to learn guitar and use one on stage.  He could have just played a basic rhythm part -- he must have had the proficiency to do that.  (He couldn't have written "Big Sur" without knowing how to play some instrument.)  Hell, the thing wouldn't even have had to be hooked up, but it would have given him something to do instead of flailing around like an idiot.

Personally, I would never want to be onstage without an instrument.  Mike always looks awkward -- he looks like he feels awkward too.  An instrument would've given him something to hide behind.

[guitarfool2002]

How many players were as solid and professional as Dennis a mere two years or less into their playing lives?

Micky Dolenz from the Monkees. He was a guitarist and singer when he got the role on the TV show, and took the role of the drummer when no one else wanted to, since they didn't want Davy Jones stuck behind the drum set when he was the teen idol of the group.

So Micky, in a matter of months, learned a few beats from Peter Tork and others and practiced his butt off in the middle of all the "Monkeemania" to become competent enough of a live drummer to perform in front of thousands of fans on the first Monkees tours.

And in early 1967 - not much more than a year after he started drumming, he recorded songs like "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" and "Cuddly Toy" in the studio and did quite a good job considering the beats were a bit more than a basic rock rhythm, and he had been drumming about as long as he had been a Monkee - that's it! They realized they had to get someone like a "Fast Eddie" Hoh in the studio to cut tracks more challenging like Pleasant Valley Sunday, but Micky did his job.

I'd say Micky is the closest to a Dennis Wilson in learning the drums so quickly and being able to play live shows and not have them totally collapse on poor drumming and time-keeping.

If you watch Micky Dolenz drum, like in the film Head, he has his kit set up backwards, as if he were a left-handed drummer when he is actually right handed! His snare and hi-hat are set up for a lefty. Interesting fact.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Yeah, Micky's awesome and is one of my favorites! I had no idea he learned so quickly and on the spot!

It's funny how my favorite guys play pretty much "wrong"

Ringo's a lefty but plays a right handed set-up! Dennis plays his hi-hat and ride with his left hand and snare with his right. This isn't "wrong" so much as it makes it a tad more difficult to go from the hi-hat snare into any across the toms fills.

Charlie Watts removes the hi-hat on each up-beat. This is a somewhat common technique but he just looks like he means it more than anyone I've ever seen!

Ok, enough drum nerd talk! 

[adamghost]

Count me as well as a huge Micky Dolenz fan -- BUT -- not taking ANYTHING away from Micky, Dennis was a much more solid drummer.  What Micky accomplished was amazing because: 1) he had to play the kit wacky because of a deformity in one of his feet; and 2) the guy hardly had any time to practice.  Those guys were working 22 hours a day at that time.  So I'm not taking anything away from the guy at all, what he managed to do with what he had was just incredible.  But Dennis was just a much more solid timekeeper, just sayin'.  They did have more than a little in common, though...Dolenz was an AMAZING raw talent.  He's one of the great underrated singers of the '60s, all the more interesting of a vocalist because he was basically untrained and sometimes went off into the ether in ways that made you go "wha....?"  As a songwriter, he was quirky and imaginative, and he also was the first person to play a Moog on a rock 'n' roll record.  Dolenz...man, genius.

I have to take a little issue about Ricky Fataar.  I don't doubt he's a nice guy and I give him FULL props as a musician.  It's just a question of how appropriate his drumming style was for the Beach Boys and whether his talent was ever fully utilized in the band.  As I said, I think you can make an argument either way.  I'm not dissing the guy.  IN CONCERT is one of my favorite Beach Boys albums.  The drumming grooves well and it's compelling.  But it is much busier and more polyrhythmic than that music was before or since.  Good or bad?  Who's to say.  I don't mind it.  I would have liked to have heard a little more of that on record, for sure....and as I've said, I think Ricky is at his least compelling when he's doing a basic 2-4 beat in the studio.  Give me Dennis every time for that.  So as for playing busy, Ricky didn't ruin anything, as I would argue maybe one or two more technical drummers had done on occasion.  I love the guy's work with the Surf Punks, but I've heard boots of Dennis Dragon playing drums with the BBs as a young man and to my ear, it was just crap.  Way too overexcited (he was a young dude after all) and it screwed up the groove on nearly every song.  Bobby F., on the other hand, is a much more technically accomplished drummer than Dennis but for the most part I don't really "notice" him when it's his playing and not Dennis'.  Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view, but I think it respects the basic group sound.  Ricky definitely brought his own flair to it, and it was different from the tradition of the group's sound.  I don't mind it, but you can ask the question whether it was appropriate or not, and that's all I'm doing -- it's purely a matter of opinion, and it works for me mostly.  I definitely think Blondie and Ricky could have been integrated better into the group's sound, given more time and a different political situation.

Anyway, Ricky was what he was, and did what he did.  I have no beef with the guy.  I like that era.  I'm just thinking and listening critically and asking questions.

What someone said upthread about the Wilsons having a basic innate ability to play is what I've had people who knew them tell me.  They all just could pick something up and in a short while make it work, apparently.  

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I love Bobby F and I think the fact that you don't notice him that much is a mark toward his talent. Watch him on the Knebworth DVD and it's clear him and Dennis were something of a spiritual pair.

Bobby's drumming on POB and BAMBU is frankly amazing to me. He perfectly compliments and sounds of a pair with Dennis' own drumming but is still different. I love the way he uses the hi-hit as color and to basically compliment the beat rather than something to keep time with..... It also should be noted that Dennis himself hired Bobby.

That said, the drum track for River Song is Ricky and is one of my favorite drum parts ever. I just think he was different enough from Dennis to make me miss Dennis on a lot of Beach Boys songs live.

[adamghost]

I love Bobby F and I think the fact that you don't notice him that much is a mark toward his talent. Watch him on the Knebworth DVD and it's clear him and Dennis were something of a spiritual pair.

Bobby's drumming on POB and BAMBU is frankly amazing to me. He perfectly compliments and sounds of a pair with Dennis' own drumming but is still different. I love the way he uses the hi-hit as color and to basically compliment the beat rather than something to keep time with..... It also should be noted that Dennis himself hired Bobby.

That said, the drum track for River Song is Ricky and is one of my favorite drum parts ever. I just think he was different enough from Dennis to make me miss Dennis on a lot of Beach Boys songs live.

Well said.  I may not have made this clear but I meant the fact that I didn't notice him as a compliment.

[adamghost]

Oh vis a vis Micky's drumming...check out the live "Circle Sky" from HEAD.  His drumming is a brilliant trainwreck, in that it's all over the place, the beat is just cast hither and yon, yet it's also fricking amazing.  Just total backwards genius, and an amazing band performance.  It makes me realize why Zappa asked him to play in the Mothers of Invention.

[Jon Stebbins]

A few comments...
I too am a Micky Dolenz fan. His singing on songs like As We Go Along and Porpoise Song might be some of the most ethereal and sensitive ever. Just otherworldly. Carole King has said that Micky was probably the best at singing her material and I agree. As a drummer and songwriter he's a total savant. He only played drums on a dozen or so Monkees tracks, but they are some of the coolest, Girl I Knew Somewhere, Randy Scouse Git, For Pete's Sake, Cuddly Toy, You Just May Be The One, You Told Me, Door Into Summer...that list is classic.

Ricky Fataar. Great drummer, great musician. If he'd only recorded the drums to River Song and nothing else I'd consider him one of my favorites. Add Holy Man, Sail On Sailor and so many others to that...wow! But I also agree that he did not do justice to the early Beach Boys tunes in concert like Surfin USA, Fun Fun Fun, I Get Around etc... Those songs and other early gems just sound so much more passionate and organic with Dennis pounding them out. His heart just jumps out every time, and its always a fun ride. I think the more people see/hear Dennis as a drummer the more they appreciate him. From TAMI Show '64, to Olympic Paris '69, to Knebworth '80...his ability and style evolved but one constant was the fact that the music becomes a living breathing character with a pulse, a heartbeat, a nervous system, and an emotional core when Dennis is laying it down.

He was self taught by all accounts. He had a couple of lessons, a few friends showed him a little bit, but the same as with his piano playing, he went from novice, to a truly unique and dynamic presence on his own. He instinctively knew what felt right.

Thanks for the words about my books, Mikie I have a new book titled The Beach Boys FAQ due out from Backbeat Books next year. If you've seen any of the FAQ series from Backbeat then you'll know what the format is. The Smiley board and its regulars get some props from me in this one. The Real Beach Boy revised edition is still a work in progress, and will surface at some still undetermined point.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Oh vis a vis Micky's drumming...check out the live "Circle Sky" from HEAD.  His drumming is a brilliant trainwreck, in that it's all over the place, the beat is just cast hither and yon, yet it's also friggin' amazing.  Just total backwards genius, and an amazing band performance.  It makes me realize why Zappa asked him to play in the Mothers of Invention.

I freaking love that segment of HEAD. Micky with his hi-hat right there in the front between his two rack toms is pure insane awesomeness! Micky's one of those drummers who seems to have an especially deep understanding of the different drum kit components and their relationship with each other. He's playing all over his kit on Circle Sky but his feel is extremely consistent the whole way through. He really understands the sounds each drum makes and he has a reason for hitting each one when he does and it all works beautifully. While still indeed being a glorious train wreck.