The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Outpost Cafe => Topic started by: westen44 on September 27, 2012, 11:09:00 AM
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/beach-boys-dump-three-members-public-statement-uk-tour_n_1916065.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment
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Exactly how does one think that kicking out Brian Wilson, no matter how screwed up the guy might be, makes any sort of sense.
As I recall, it's Wilson's name on all those hit songs, not Love's.
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Exactly how does one think that kicking out Brian Wilson, no matter how screwed up the guy might be, makes any sort of sense.
As I recall, it's Wilson's name on all those hit songs, not Love's.
I agree, but obviously Mike Love doesn't. It seems he thinks rather highly of himself, though.
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What a riot! He who owns the name, calls the tunes (and who plays 'em).
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This is no less coherent than Ringo kicking John, Paul and George out of whatever that outfit was called. Mike Love must have North Korean roots.
That said, the last Beach Boys album, Brian Wilson on board or not, was a very labored affair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmz_M0iWoA
But think of it that way: Brian Wilson won't have to play Kokomo ever again.
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My wife had to sit thru a recent BB show at a conference. She said it was obvious Mike Love was lip-synching and that none of them acted like they even wanted to be there. She didn't want to be there either :-\
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Geeze he's a regular Axle Rose!
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love is the least talented one of the bunch! plus he has a rep for being a dick. imo brian IS the beach bouys in any condition. :P
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Dennis Wilson living with Love's daughter at one point?
I think it's ironic that a guy named Love is such a tool.
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I saw the reunion lineup on late night TV, thought they were going through the motions. They should have hung it up 40 years ago.
OTOH Mike Love has been touring as the Beach Boys for years without the others, people still pay to see them so they must not care that much.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Dennis Wilson living with Love's daughter at one point?
I think it's ironic that a guy named Love is such a tool.
I think so
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The Beach Boys lineup has always been a little tenuous (fer Pete's sake even Glen Campbell was in the touring band) but I don't think anyone can argue that Brian Wilson was the heart and soul. To me Brian IS the Beach Boys regardless of who owns the rights to the name. And, yeah, Love is a dick.
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The Beach Boys lineup has always been a little tenuous (fer Pete's sake even Glen Campbell was in the touring band) but I don't think anyone can argue that Brian Wilson was the heart and soul. To me Brian IS the Beach Boys regardless of who owns the rights to the name. And, yeah, Love is a dick.
I guess all that TM didn't have any lasting effect.
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no, but the good doctor's drugs certainly did.
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It's relieving to see that a band associated with eternal carefree youth and happiness is such a dysfunctional bunch even at oldest age. In that way they indeed never grew up.
Too much happiness is always creepy.
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Now, if he could only kick everyone out of the Kings of Leon, he'd be onto something.
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Now, if he could only kick everyone out of the Kings of Leon, he'd be onto something.
This is hilarious. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
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I never really cared for the Beach Boys anyway...
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I never really cared for the Beach Boys anyway...
Before your time, IMO. A real band with a bass player who wrote great songs. Not a bad player either. Nailed insane harmonies playing live. Unlike the 'PreFab Four', Paul Revere and the Raiders, etc who rode the British Invasion thing using the Hollywood version of Tin Pan Alley and studio musicians. The first fully self contained American Pop Band. No Beach Boys , no vocal Surf music, ditto Hot Rod songs...you hadda be there. Their early stuff was a major part of my High School soundtrack.
http://youtu.be/FgDApIGvFxA
Note the Ampeg bass amp, everything else Fender. A bass player who knew his equipment!
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In their heyday they could have done the studio instrumental parts too, it just wasn't the way things were done in L.A. back then.
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I have never paid any attention to the BB's. AS Carlo stated, they were before my time. I had to take a Humanities class and took a course called "Rock music and it's effect on culture". There were several sections where they BB's were discussed in depth and I really learned quite a bit about their impact on music. Still not a fan, but I appreciate them for what they were and what they added to the development of rock music.
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No one denies that they forged a sound, sang well and that BW was a great songwriter and arranger. But after Pet Sounds all progression stopped, it was like The Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request" or Kiss' The Elder, they went back after it to what they had done before, Smile was sent to the dustbin.
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I believe if you dig around, you'll find that Paul McCartney admired Brian Wilson's songwriting, and vice-versa. I understand that there was an unspoken competition between them. They fed off each other and pushed each other. And both "Good Vibrations" and "Eleanor Rigby" remain as part of my top 5 favorite songs of all time.
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But after Pet Sounds all progression stopped...
And that was when Brian fell apart. Without Brian the Beach Boys had no original ideas.
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I believe if you dig around, you'll find that Paul McCartney admired Brian Wilson's songwriting, and vice-versa. I understand that there was an unspoken competition between them. They fed off each other and pushed each other. And both "Good Vibrations" and "Eleanor Rigby" remain as part of my top 5 favorite songs of all time.
And "Sloop John B" and "Lovely Rita Meter Maid" have genius bass lines.
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And "Sloop John B" and "Lovely Rita Meter Maid" have genius bass lines.
They both do, though I would be surprised if Brian wrote the bass line on "Sloop John B". Carol Kaye played the studio recording and it's an old folk song, not one of his compositions.
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One thing for sure (from reading comments by Carol Kaye on her site) is that she thinks Brian Wilson is utterly brilliant.
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I saw them in July. For full disclosure, I am a huge Beach Boys fan, and am the guy besides Mike Love who bought Looking Back With Love.
The real truth is this is probably as complicated to understand as the Gibson raid. Firstly, the current reunion band is a pretty tight and very impressive show. I highly recommend it. But it is really an amalgamation of several bands - Mike Love and Bruce Johnston's band that has been roaming the earth for the past decade, Al Jardine's band, and Brian Wilson's band which is a mutation of The Wondermints. And mostly the reunion band is the latter. So in "firing" the Beach Boys, Mike Love is really reverting back to the touring band he had for the last several years, which is obviously most lucrative for him, so who can blame him?
Live, the real thing you are hearing is largely the Wondermints, and you get to see Brian Wilson, who is pretty ramshackle at this stage. He barely plays. He can't sing anymore. His piano is a large white plywood and veneer thing that holds a keyboard and a teleprompter for lyrics. All his high parts are really sung by Jeff Foskett, who is doing a dual role of covering both Brian and Carl Wilson's parts - and very good at it. Brian comes out at some point with some junk import bass with his name painted on it, and he kind of plays something on it and gets to stand up, but the Wondermints are doing the bass parts - they trade off a lot, and play a 5 string a lot, which has no place in Beach Boys music. I editorialize, so indulge me. As far as the "real" guys, Mike Love does sing live, no lip synching, and he is as good as he ever was. That is just ok. He can sing his songs fine, and he is in great physical shape. He has been proclaimed an asshole for decades, but he never boozed or doped, and was into physical fitness, TM, and yoga from the get go. It shows. I've met the guy, talked to him, and he has no problem telling you what he thinks, but he has all his marbles for sure. They are disfunctional as a group. Mike Love's brother made them fabulously wealthy in real estate deals. Then they fired him. And sued him and each other. Fun.
The most prominent musician currently is David Marks, who plays a respectable lead here and there. He was kicked out as a kid and side-stepped the dope and booze period that sent Brian into the looney bin. That shows on him as well, as he is also in great shape. All these guys are in their 70s, so the fact that they cranked out a two hour show with loads of hits and non-hits, was great. Al Jardine strums like he is playing an acoustic, and both he and Bruce Johnston can sing fine.
In his day - pre psychotic and almost positively some level of stroke - Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Carol Kaye may have played a lot of fun bass parts, but there is no question that Brian Wilson wrote them out, and often played them. His bass parts were always fascinating - off beat, playing away from the root, simple (Vegetables - played by Paul McCartney), intricate. The guy had a really unique ear - singular, as he is deaf in one. That is why they never bothered stereo mixing Pet Sounds for years. He was just as involved in the band post-Pet Sounds as he was for that, but it began to taper off. The Smile debacle was too much for a frail mental state. After that, Smiley Smile was a major bomb and very confusing to the pop world, but one could make a pretty strong argument that he was ahead of the curve there in rejecting the psychedelic studio stuff he helped create. The later 60s and 70s lps that supposedly were not progressive were all made with his involvement. He just wasn't writing anything that was current pop. Except Sail On Sailor. They didn't have a lot of top 10 hits for the first couple of years either, although you might think they did from Endless Summer and Spirit of America. In his old age, he seems to be more interested in the 50s rock n roll and doo wop that he listened to as a kid, so in that respect he is more animated for that stuff, but that is an old story for a lot of musicians. I still love his Johnny Carson song.
So, spin is spin. The reunion band may be out on the road or in the studio again. But the Mike Love / Bruce Johnston band wasn't making any bread for a year, so back they come. The guy who may lose out is David Marks, but then maybe he isn't losing anything.
Also, Paul Revere and The Raiders may have sold out to Dick Clark and started acting stupid on Saturday afternoons, but they were a REAL band before that, and a dang good Pacific NW garage/frat band to start. And they were all decent musicians. So, cut them some slack. Plus they gave us Freddy Weller.
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NSFW and not meant as anything other than a song that has made me laugh from the first time I heard it. Not much variety until the break down part in the middle. ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKGjv1Y6Zsg
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Holy crap, I'm glad I looked up that Hogpig video. Lookie what else I found! I just wanna know what they were smoking to come up with that bit. This is surreal. It's so dumb it circled right back around again to being funny just because it's so weird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fviwc3YeG8
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Jim, thanks for elaborating. Regardless of the reasons behind Mike Love's actions, aren't people who bought tickets expecting the reunion band? I expect many will be disappointed if they can't see the lineup they expected when they bought tickets. In this day and age, it wouldn't surprise me if class action lawyers get involved.
Re bass parts, there's no question that Carol Kaye played many of them, and that's never been disputed by the band. It's also a matter of record. No idea how many were written by Brian; AFAIK Carol still has good relations with the band and I would take her word for who did what.
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"Then they fired him. And sued him and each other. Fun."
Shouldn't that be Fun Fun Fun?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FOiVM4bQc
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One would hope it was Fun Fun Fun, but you know what happens when lawyers get involved. ;)
The 50th anniversary tour was booked through last week, and that was it. I suppose some people would think they were seeing the reunion band in the future, but I suspect a lot of people went to the reunion gigs hoping to see John Stamos. I don't suspect that, actually, as I heard at least a half dozen people wondering if he (AKA Uncle Jessie) would be there. So who knows. In a weird way, the Mike Love / Bruce Johnston band is really the Beach Boys, as that band has a continuous link back to the 80s band and always stayed on the road. Kind of the way you could go see the Glen Miller band in the 70s, and a handful of the guys were in the band before the war. I bet the tickets are cheaper.
This is amusing (go about 4 min mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjLl-afq6IE
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Sounds like he did write the bass parts pretty much as recorded.
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That clip from the Jack Benny show is pretty classic Benny stuff. Both he and Bob Hope were along in years at that point (Benny was 71 and Hope was 62) which to me makes it funnier. I cracked up when Benny started ad-libbing near the end of the clip.
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That's what made the clip so cool to me. Two aging legends of the entertainment world playing along with the kids for laughs.
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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-brian-wilson-al-jardine-respond-to-mike-love-on-beach-boys-flap-20121008,0,6270223.story
An update.
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That does put things in perspective.
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Can't open it, what does it say?
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By Brian Wilson
October 9, 2012, 7:01 a.m.
The Beach Boys recent 50th anniversary tour reunited original members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks and longtime member Bruce Johnston for the first time in almost two decades.
Near the end of the tour in London, and the day before the band was saluted with a new 50th anniversary exhibition at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Love announced that he and Johnston would continue touring under the Beach Boys’ name in his pre-anniversary edition of the band, minus Wilson, Jardine and Marks.
His announcement, which he said was issued to avoid confusion in smaller markets where the Love-Johnston band had been booked, caused a firestorm of publicity as some media outlets interpreted the move as Love firing Wilson, his cousin.
Love's response to the reaction, published exclusively in The Times on Saturday, stated among other things that he never fired Wilson and does not have the authority to do so, adding that even if he did have the authority, he never would fire the man considered the group’s creative leader.
Wilson and Jardine submitted the following response to Love’s letter, in Wilson’s words:
I've been asked to respond to a letter that my cousin Mike wrote to the L.A. Times regarding the circumstances of the last couple weeks and the confusion of the future of The Beach Boys. Normally I wouldn't respond to something like this, but because I love what the 50th has done for the band's image and its legacy, I feel I need to.
First, I want to say that the last few months have been some of the happiest in my life. Recording "That's Why God Made The Radio" was a dream come true, to be able to co-write and produce an album for the boys and have it so well received by fans all over the world was the best!
The tour that followed blew away all my expectations. We had a blast, the fans were so supportive and I loved being able to record and sing with the guys. My only regret was that Carl and Dennis were not there to share this experience with us.
INTERACTIVE: Hollywood Walk of Fame - Beach Boys
Now on to the rumors: As far as I know I can't be fired--that wouldn't be cool. The negativity surrounding all the comments bummed me out. What's confusing is that by Mike not wanting or letting Al, David and me tour with the band, it sort of feels like we're being fired.
What's a bummer to Al and me is that we have numerous offers to continue, so why wouldn't we want to? We all poured our hearts and souls into that album and the fans rewarded us by giving us a No. 3 debut on the Billboard charts, and selling out our shows. We were all blown away by the response.
Al and I would like to be included in the continuous promotion of "That's Why God Made The Radio." That's what I've been doing for over a decade: making records and going out and supporting them. It's what I do. Capitol Records has been so cool to us this year in terms of supporting the 50th and I personally want to say thanks.
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Mike kept saying throughout the tour "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," and both Al and I agree, which made us all think that he wanted to continue. We originally started out with 50 shows, but the success and the demand kept growing and we obliged. No one knew in the beginning that this was going to be so rewarding and popular with our fans. Once we got cooking we were all stoked!
After Mike booked a couple of shows with Bruce, Al and I were, of course, disappointed. Then there was confusion in some markets when photos of me, Al and David and the 50th reunion band appeared on websites advertising his shows.
At that point my attorney merely suggested to Mike's attorney that a possible press release in those markets might be appropriate to stop the confusion, which was in no one's best interest. That's it, plain and simple, and a strategy was open for discussion, which never happened.
That’s why I was completely blindsided by his press release. I had no idea that it was coming out, since it was crafted by Mike's personal PR firm without my knowledge or approval. No one in my camp would have approved it or the timing.
I'm disappointed that Mike would now say that the release was done at the request of my representative. The first I heard about it was at the Grammy Museum event. We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows.
Al and I just assumed based on everyone's enthusiasm we would at least want to take those offers into consideration since we all knew about them. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the Hollywood Bowl again, Madison Square Garden and Wrigley Field? And what better way to celebrate New Year's Eve than with the 50th band? That would have blown the lid off things.
There were also offers for more shows in the U.K. and markets we weren't able to play during the tour. As I said before, it's my opinion that we should all go out together as the Beach Boys in support of all our new releases. We really weren't out on the road that long for an anniversary of this magnitude and I actually think we should make one last record together.
It's Al and my opinion that all of us together makes for a great representation of the Beach Boys.
While I appreciate the nice cool things Mike said about me in his letter, and I do and always will love him as my cousin and bandmate, at the same time I'm still left wondering why he doesn't want to continue this great trip we're on. Al and I want to keep going because we believe we owe it to the music.
That's it in a nutshell, all these conversations need to be between the shareholders, and I welcome Mike to call me.
In any case happy anniversary, I loved it and I think we knocked it out of the park for what it's worth.
Love and Mercy,
Brian Wilson
ALSO:
Will Beach Boys reunion end on a sour note?
Mike Love sets the record straight on Brian Wilson' 'firing'
Brian Wilson fired? No, but Beach Boys will tour without him
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Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
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Dee-dee-dee-dysfunctional
Dee-dee-dee-dysfunctional
Dee-dee-dee-dysfunctional
I wish they all could ...
somehow get along!
I'm picking up bad vibrations, diminishing expectations ...