I’m not sure about this specifically, but photos of Brian and Darian in the studio were posted back in October. I suspect something is brewing.

EDIT: HeyJude, was that in the new BeachBoysTalk interview with Carnie (that I haven’t yet been able to watch), by any chance?

I’m not Jude, but Carnie did talk about it. Wilson Phillips were invited to perform, but Chynna was in New York City and unable to get away.

Heck, I live in the same town as my dad (who is eight years younger than Brian). I haven't visited in three weeks. Not because of any issues but because we're both busy and it can be awkward to show up on someone's doorstep uninvited.

Pretty sure we’ve had several posts about it here.

Without more information, though, there’s not much to write about.

Something in me wishes that there was some independent confirmation of his death, other than from Echovita. It uses boiler plate language and does not list survivors, funeral services or a funeral home or crematory. Even if the famiily wanted to keep it private, there is usually some statement to that effect in the obituary. I did a search and found no newspaper obit, no articles in newspapers, magazine or online sources, nothing on his personal Facebook page. There was apparently a post on an alumni Facebook page for his high school, but I suspect it may have used the Echovita posting as a source. I don't know that for a fact, however, as it is a private page.

Anyone out there have independent, reliable confirmation of Rocky's passing?

This raised red flags for me, too. I find this all highly suspicious.

Folks should listen to this Carnie interview. It's great.

She does say that the touring is done, but she also notes that it probably extended her dad's life by decades. Even when he was just going through the motions, the love from fans really mattered. Stay tuned for lots of stories about Carl, x-rated versions of Hey Santa and what it's like to tour with Al (everything we've assumed as fans is true). She also notes that she has been urging BW to do a Sinatra tribute record.

The ending part about her dad is concerning. She suggests he has a lot going on, then corrects that to "a lot going on around him," and says she misses him and wishes that he -- and then she doesn't finish the thought. It wouldn't be the BBs without family drama, so who knows.

I don’t think anyone knows right now.

BW canceled the rest of his 2022 shows, but in an interview last month Al suggested they might play again this summer.

Brian was in rough shape for much of this year’s dates, so I suspect his team will be cautious before booking any more dates.

His affect deteriorated notably through the Landy years, to be sure. That entire situation became so fraught, and we really know so little about the 1989-1992 period. That’s when BW was almost entirely in the thrall of the surf nazi crew, and when I suspect lasting damage was done.

It’s remarkable how the solo tour came together, and really says something about the guys in the band, Joe Thomas, Melinda and Jeff Foskett as a support unit. They created an environment in which something magical could happen.

Ah, the Malibu Emergency Room show! That was one of the original solo Brian audio texts back in the early online days -- the mid- to late 1990s. At that point he hadn't toured as a solo artist, so there was only that audio and a handful of other TV appearances to listen to.

Of note about how he sounded here and into the early 1990s. I'm pretty sure Landy would pump him full of uppers before public appearances, so you would get this tweaking vibe, for want of a better word. You could even see it up to the IJWMFTT film. But it's not the same as saying Brian was healthy or cared for -- it simply means that a celebrity doctor knew how to make his patient look hyper-alert and aware. Most of BW's meds as of the mid-2000s had been switched to mood stabilizers, which likely improved his quality of life but made him quieter.

From what I recall, Half Moon Bay wasn’t given as a title until the NPP album was formally announced.

They recorded way more songs than appeared on the record, including one called “He Come Down” that explicitly wasn’t a remake, but a new tune with Blondie taking the lead.

I think I recall the title Metropolis…but I wonder if that eventually came out as half moon bay.

Different titles in the BMI database.

At the time, Rolling Stone reported that Brian was recording three separate albums. One with Beck, largely instrumental, one with female guest singers, and one with Al and Blondie. We ended up getting an album was was a mixture of the latter two, but nothing of the first.

Biggest surprise to me is seeing how much Brian is contributing instrumentally on all his tracks -- except for Sail on Sailor. He's basically all of Funky Pretty and the backbone of Mess of Help and Marcella, for instance. Forget the whole "Til I Die" was the last of Brian thing. He was pouring his soul out on really rocking tunes.

[In the last 30+ years, we've likely heard less than a third of what Brian has written with collaborators and recorded in the studio. Officially, at least.]

A key point, and worthy of its own post.

In the last 30+ years, we've likely heard less than a third of what Brian has written with collaborators and recorded in the studio. Officially, at least.

Sweet Insanity, Paley sessions, Was sessions, Asher material, Thomas sessions (both late 90s and early 2010s), Kalinich material, Bennett sessions (pre and post TLOS), Griffin sessions, Bonfiglio sessions. These likely total more than 100 unreleased tracks (not all originals, of course, and some duplicates of material that was re-recorded and then released). Also, probably a couple dozen are versions of Proud Mary.

[Another writing method.]

As so often when talking about this subject, though, it's complicated! I have about five points to make here.

1.) Another writing method. I left out a fifth type of BW composition, and that's the one where he's essentially Ringo in the Beatles. That is, he says something wild and appealing (Eight Days a Week!) and someone else writes the song around that. Scott Bennett gave him a credit on the song "No Wrong Notes in Heaven" because that's a Brian line, for instance. I'm pretty sure that's how "That's Why God Made the Radio" was produced, too. Brian offers a small kernel that others develop. You can scarcely call this songwriting, but still. Miracle on the Wilsons album was also developed this way.

2.) The Usher accounts. I think too much can be made of these. Not because Gary was saying anything untrue, but just because however well-intentioned people are, Brian has a disease (and in the 80s a parasitic support system) that leads to wildly different outcomes at different times. There are times -- years, even -- when I suspect Brian can't really pull himself together to do much creatively. Then he gets on a wild tear and writes 20 songs in a month with Scott in the old-fashioned way -- bringing finished melodies for lyrics and arrangement ideas. His story isn't linear. He's with it sometimes and way out of it at other times. Sometimes he pushes through, sometimes he doesn't care.

3.) Collaboration issues. Brian's people shoved so many folks at him in the '90s as potential collaborators. The Jellyfish guys. Carole King. David Foster. Sean O'Hagan. Several of them would have created kickass music with Brian. But the truth of the matter is, BW only vibes with certain guys, and they're not the most obvious ones. Joe Thomas and Scott Bennett, for whatever reason, stick. Burt Bacharach didn't. I would love to hear a lot of guys write and record with Brian. But I suspect the alternative in many cases would be not getting the albums at all.

4.) Lack of information. For better or worse, Melinda has protected Brian's privacy and session tapes much better than folks did before. So while we have a fairly good idea of what BW created before 1996 or so, after that it all gets murky. He apparently wrote a bunch of songs with Tony Asher and later with Steve Kalinich. What do they sound like? Who knows. In the late 2000s, he recorded a couple of albums' worth of covers at Gary Griffin's studio. We have no idea what they sound like. Within the last five years, apparently he recorded over at Carnie's house with Rob Bonfiglio. Who knows what came of that. The point is, he's likely recorded many albums' worth of material, dozens upon dozens of songs, within the last quarter century that no one outside a small inner circle has heard. In the same way that Feel Flows and Sail on Sailor have reframed our understanding of Brian's creativity during that time, perhaps in five to 10 years we will learn that while No Pier Pressure was being recorded, Brian was sneaking off to Carnie's house and recorded endless variations of Shortnin' Bread with lyrics about Pizza Hut. We don't know!

Critically, I don't think anyone can be comfortable saying precisely what Brian was capable of in his later career without hearing much more of it. Session tapes, home demos, interviews with all the parties, you name it. (I suspect some ironclad NDAs have been signed.) I mean, who would have expected the Sunshine demo that showed up on his website sounding like a Paley sessions track! And that's a single tune.

5.) Everyone's intentions. Those around Brian want to protect him. That means, for better or worse, that they can smooth over these subtleties and knowledge voids. I know that some band members laughed at the Griffin sessions because they were so peculiar. They wouldn't dream of releasing the material. The Bennett TLOS demos sound perfectly fine, but the band added a lot of spit and polish to make them sound far glossier. The effect is make BW's latter-day creativity seem kind of distant, as though preserved in amber. But the man can't help but make music, one way or another. Someday, I hope, we'll have a fuller picture and appreciate the subtleties more.

Excellent points, Jude. But I'd suggest things are even more complex.

As you write, we can't ignore the primary change in Brian's work. As he grew older and more affected by his illness, he required collaborators to pitch in more musically than simply lyrically. But that process shifted over time. In the 1970s, he was often able to finish songs (or get them close to completion) and do vocal arrangements, but producing and mixing a final product posed the main challenge. In the 1980s, he still would finish songs on his own, but the idea of bringing in an Usher or Paley to "prime the pump" and generate new songs came up. What Andy found, in particular, was this sometimes really inspired Brian to write a middle eight, or jot down some lyrics.

This continued with Joe Thomas, who I believe was one of the first to actually play chords to Brian and have him sing over the top as a way of generating material. This is used by a lot of singers these days (Sia among them) but was new to BW. He could still do the vocal arranging, but the songs were now generated in four entirely separate ways. 1.) He wrote the whole thing himself. Say Cry, on the Imagination album. 2.) He wrote a tune and had someone else write lyrics. This happened with Right Where I Belong, where he handed a piano demo to Jim James. 2.) He added lyrics and vocal melodies to chord patterns by someone like Joe. I'd suggest something like "Whatever Happened" on NPP sounds like that. 3.) He would contribute a chunk to a song largely written by someone else. Let It Shine or some of the Paley material.

Those first two methods have happened throughout Brian's career. The latter two are newish. But even his most recent albums, as mentioned above, have examples of all of these methods. Then you have discoveries like "Rooftop Harry" on the Sail On Sailor set, which shows up in "From There to Back Again" and proves it wasn't simply a Joe Thomas creation.

(Oddly, as Brian managed to coalesce a consistent band around him, he moved back into production more consistently. Part of that was the band being able to simply conjure up head arrangements, of course, but it's pretty clear that between TLOS, the Christmas record, the Gershwin record and and the LPR soundtrack that he found a consistent and satisfying sonic vocabulary.)

Interesting note about Rio Grande and TLOS: Both were created in a similar way. Brian had a number of songs or song fragments laying around. Then someone wanted a suite. In the case of Rio Grande, Lenny W. wanted a single long track. For TLOS, the Royal Festival Hall wanted a follow-up to Smile.

In each case, Brian couldn't write the suite from scratch. He doesn't work that way. For Rio Grande, he and Andy wrote a couple of extra pieces, then bolted everything together. For TLOS, Brian and Scott wrote nearly two albums' worth of music over a summer. They had no specific project in mind, and great material from that project remains unreleased (I've heard multiple people talk about a track called "Angles in Love"). Then the commission came in, and Brian for a brief time considered doing a musical version of the Little Prince (it's true! He said it in an interview). But that didn't happen, so they ended up roping in Darian and Van Dyke. Darian sequenced and Van Dyke wrote the segues. Then Brian and Scott wrote (I believe) Midnight's Another Day and Southern California to pull the whole thing together.

More alike than you might think!

Actually, one thing has always been true: no collaborators, no Brian output.

This is so important. The need to work with someone, to prove himself to them (and also have a buddy) is so important to Brian. I remember once being told by a non-musician friend of Brian that BW asked him to sing backing vocals on a track (or produce it or something). The friend was aghast and turned him down. But that social drive really motivates the man's creativity.

But... no Brian, none of all these works.

And that's the other point. You take someone like Joe Thomas or Andy Paley or Scott Bennett. Talented guys, sure. Able to write songs on their own, sure. But where else in their careers did they manage anything like their work with Brian? The fact is, whatever his contributes in a collaboration (and sometimes it might be a few lyrics and a bit of vocal melody), it creates something totally different and special. It creates a Brian Wilson song. They're not all great, but almost all of them, in some way or another, represent him.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, but they're kind of disjointed.

On one hand, yes the Smiley Smile through 20/20 period features consistently great material, released and not. On the other hand, because that material is consistently great we've seen it parceled out as bonus tracks and in special releases for the last 30 years. The Brother material is so much fresher, at least to my ears.

Are physical releases even that big of a deal anymore? Do they earn new fans? Or do they simply resell largely familiar material to the same audience that has bought BB/BW product for ages?

My local record retailer sounded a little burned by the last couple of big boxes. He couldn't move Feel Flows sets and ended up not ordering as many of the Sail on Sailor. I had to special order the vinyl box from him (this is a college town with an active music shop).

At a certain point, the train does run out. There's a Brian's Back set out there for sure, and something mopping up the odds and ends from the late 70s through the soundtrack work of the 80s. Obviously live sets, including the '93 unplugged shows, could follow. But that's not a lot of material, and it appeals to a narrower and narrower slice of the fanbase.

Perhaps at some point the archivists will double back and start doing ultra-deluxe reissues of the '60s albums with session material and stack of vocal mixes and 78s tossed in.

I remember getting my hands on the Good Vibrations box back in 1995 or 1996. I also remember thinking at the time that you could easily tell Carl was all over those early records -- the guitar solos just sounded like the same guy. Likewise, the backing tracks up until Pet Sounds or so sounded very much like a basic rock band with occasional odd accents (what BW did with a simple harp part in "Catch a Wave," for example).

But then I spent years hearing from folks online that the band played practically nothing after the first couple of albums. I even believed it for a time. All the better to build the myth of Brian the auteur. And to be fair, no one in the band every made a big deal of their instrumental prowess one way or another. Once the session information began to come out, however, thanks to Craig and others, we all could finally know the truth. And it was that the music sounded like was what it was. A solid, professional group doing their part to bring great songs to life.

This is most excellent. Thank you, Adam.

I think “Mowg” isn’t quite right. What I recall hearing is more “Moag.” Or, the name of the stooge with a hard stop. Super picky, I know. 

I bet people are searching for Hall and Oates' "Maneater" with the phase "Here she comes."

I realize that I contributed to this thread months earlier, but I hadn't taken the time to actually watch footage from that last show. In large part, good-quality video and audio wasn't being regularly posted at the time. But yesterday my curiosity got the better of me.

More than anything else posted of Brian since the Landy years and immediately before, this is difficult stuff.*

As someone who cares about Brian and all the guys, I want them to be well and happy. Brian has from time to time let band members pick up missed lines, and he has pointed at Al to take lead vocals. But what I see in these videos is BW randomly shutting down in the middle of lines. He's not just quiet and reserved onstage, but withdrawn and morose. His range and pitch seem pretty much the same as the last 10-15 years, but that doesn't make up for the rest.

I agree that it's remarkable everyone gave Brian a sympathetic reaction. The headlines could have been vicious. For that matter, I wrote about the 80th birthday show I saw, but I don't know that I could have managed a piece about those later performances. I'm sure someone somewhere has heard rumors, but I've been reluctant to bug people because it seems tacky.

However, this does get me to a point I've never been to before.

Unless BW and his folks level with folks about what's going on -- and something clearly is -- he should not tour again. I don't think it's fair to sell tickets without more clarity about the role and capacity of the lead performer. This isn't part of the debate we've had for 23 years now about Brian touring. This is different. I think we all understands this, and I just wish everyone the very best.


* To be crystal clear, I do not believe BW is being manipulated or abused. This footage is difficult in other ways.

Just watched videos from the last BW show — Pine Knob — not sure what to say. I appreciate everyone’s discretion, but now that a new months have passed, I wish we had a better understanding of what was going on. The show I saw a month and change before had rough moments, but it was recognizably part of the same continuum of shows I had seen dating back to 1999.

This was something else entirely. Love to all.

Also, regarding a previous comment about wanting alternate takes of songs, I'm not sure how much of that stuff there is once you get into the later era, particularly the 70s. I don't think there's the same kind of full hours of take-after-take of backing tracks like with a lot of the 60s stuff, with an engineer calling out "Take 37!" So unless there's something notable and different about it, I'm not sure if there's much value in putting like a half-finished, aborted backing track take of "Hold on Dear Brother" that sounds just like the finished backing track, only with some stray note and then the whole take stopping. At that point, it makes much more sense, if one is inclined to present a backing track (or backing track with backing vocals) to use a finished take.  

I suspect, given that by this point they were recording and paying for the sessions themselves, they might not even keep aborted takes. They may well have taped over them.

That being said, it's surprising to me that we haven't had full-length instrumental / vocal mixes of albums other than Pet Sounds. Would love to hear Sunflower that way, for example.