Talk:The Beach Boys

2 biopic movies about the Beach Boys

Worth a mention in the article I think;

Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys - TV Movie (1990) - www.imdb.com/title/tt0100715/

Love & Mercy movie (2014) - www.imdb.com/title/tt0903657/

Feel free to add more biopic movies if there are some.

RfC regarding Wrecking Crew misconception

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

RFC withdrawn at the request of the initiator. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:50, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

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Should it be noted in the List of common misconceptions that the Beach Boys were not replaced by studio musicians for most of their albums and singles in the 1960s? (Further discussion here) ili (talk) 17:36, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Yes. The common misconception fulfills all four prerequisites for inclusion: the item is reliably sourced, current, and is mentioned in The Beach Boys (where there is an entire section devoted to the topic) and The Wrecking Crew (music). A detailed summary of this misconception is offered in Jon Stebbins' book. The misconception is also discussed on Pitchfork and Slate.

The only counterargument presented is the fact that contemporary American Federation of Musicians contracts (which ostensibly provide a list of players employed on select studio recording dates) are often inaccurate. But stronger and more definitive documentation does exist in the form of the surviving audio tapes of these recording sessions, which demonstrate that members of the Wrecking Crew were not present for most Beach Boys instrumental tracking sessions. These tapes exist for virtually every track the Beach Boys recorded from 1962–68 and excerpts have been made readily available on bootlegs, compilations, and expanded reissues. Example ili (talk) 17:36, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - I'd be happy to add this to the Common Misconceptions page, assuming the editors on this page accept it as part of the Beach Boys article. Joe (talk) 02:45, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  @JoePhin: I made this RfC in response to repeated objections from a single editor, Mr swordfish. If you restored the entry, that'd be much appreciated, and if no other editors object to the entry, then I would consider this RfC withdrawn. Cheers. ili (talk) 14:26, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  Note that the parent article was modified only yesterday to add this material. It is unclear whether that material will stand. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:38, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• No. We have several sources that conflict with one another. It's one thing to note the controversy, it's quite another to label one side or the other as a misconception when the material itself is in dispute.

The musicians' union contracts are most certainly not the only counteragrumment (although they do strongly support the notion that session musicians were used quite extensively, the problem being that the band members themselves were not paid under union contract so they don't show up in those records even when they were there).

There is an entire chapter devoted to the Beach Boys use of session musicians in the book "The Wrecking Crew". Consider the following excerpts:

By early 1965, Brian Wilson, like many of his fellow rock-and-roll producers, had been primarily using Pohlman on electric bass in the studio for several years. But that all changed once Wilson learned that Kaye was now available for gigs as a bass player, too. She had already played guitar for him on many of the Beach Boys’ records, and he liked having her as a part of his creative team. pg 195

...he (Hal Blaine) and Brian were close; in some ways, Blaine was like a second father to the sensitive young recording star, sometimes offering advice, always willing to listen. pg 196

By the mid-Sixties, the Wrecking Crew had become an indispensable part of one Beach Boys hit after another on songs like “California Girls,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.” And because these sessions were always painstaking affairs in terms of Brian Wilson’s creative yet agonizing producing style, the musicians—union members all—tended to rack up some hefty hourly wages along the way. pg 198

..while the real Beach Boys continued to travel America and the rest of the world on what seemed to be a never-ending tour, Brian and the Wrecking Crew stayed home and made studio magic. pg 208

...almost five years of Brian Wilson and the Wrecking Crew together in the studio night and day as a virtual musical family in creation of an almost unprecedented string of twenty-two Top 40 hits...pg 212

Our job as wikipedia editors is to present a synopsis of what the reliable sources say. "The Wrecking Crew" book by Thomas Hartman, published by Thomas Dunne Books is a serious reliable source published by a major publisher that won several awards. It should not to be simply discounted and ignored. Perhaps it is wrong or misleading, but without some better sourcing to determine which version to present, our only choice as editors is to present the controversy in a neutral manner. Since it's not the purpose of the List of Common Misconceptions article to "present the controversy" I don't see how this material is appropriate on that page. In other words, this is a gray area that we should simply avoid on the List of Common Misconceptions article. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:36, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mr swordfish: Everything in those Wrecking Crew excerpts, apart from one or two details, is factual.

Yes, the Wrecking Crew augmented some Beach Boys records in the early 1960s, but only for auxiliary instruments such as saxophones, strings, and additional percussion (tambourine, timbales, and so forth). The band members usually provided their own bass, guitar, and drums, not unlike the Beatles.

Yes, the Wrecking Crew were used extensively by Wilson in the mid-1960s. Specifically, between late 1965 and mid-1967 (i.e. Pet Sounds and Smile sessions).

Both of those claims are supported by the other sources. What isn't supported, however, is that Wilson "had been primarily using Pohlman on electric bass in the studio for several years". That's exaggerating. Wilson did not start regularly employing members of the Wrecking Crew until the 1963 Surfer Girl album, and it would not be until early 1965 that he began producing tracks for the Beach Boys that heavily featured studio musicians

[E]verything that came after [December 1964] was a change, definitely, because after that I started to use the studio differently. I tried to take the things I learned from Phil Spector and use more instruments whenever I could. I doubled up on basses and tripled up on keyboards. That made everything sound bigger and deeper.

I Am Brian Wilson (2016)

It is very difficult to obtain reliable and authoritative sources that prove this statistically (I'm not sure if any exist – you just have to trust the word of authors and journalists who are familiar with the facts compiled by the band's own archivists [which have been published online through various avenues]) so the best I can do is direct you to the articles for each Beach Boys single released over 1961-69. [ read this instead ]

Look at the personnel sections for the 1964 singles Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, When I Grow Up, Dance, Dance, Dance, and Man with All the Toys. Notice a trend? The fundamental set-up (bass, guitars, drums) is credited to the Beach Boys on all records. Then, after 1965, we see that the Wrecking Crew takes on a bigger role on with Do You Wanna Dance, California Girls, Help Me, Rhonda, and The Little Girl I Once Knew, but not on Barbara Ann.

All three '66 singles heavily featured the Wrecking Crew (Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Good Vibrations), but by 1967, the band had reverted to playing their own instruments on every single (Darlin', Gettin' Hungry, Wild Honey). This remained the case for every subsequent '60s single except Friends. ili (talk) 17:52, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment This RFC is predicated on the assumption that the edits of the last few days are acceptable changes to the Beach Boys article. That has not been adequately addressed on the talk page, and until it's settled here this RFC is premature. I'm going to revert the recent changes pending further discussion.

Note that this RFC discussion shows up on the talk pages of the Beach Boys (the parent article) and List of Common Misconceptions. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:57, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment Here is the text of the entry in question:

  • The Wrecking Crew did not play on most Beach Boys albums and singles in the 1960s. The vast majority of those recordings featured the Beach Boys themselves playing their own instruments, with the only notable exceptions being Pet Sounds (1966) and Smile (recorded 1966–67).

This does not seem to be supported by the reliable sources cited. For instance, the Slate article has this to say:

However, fans and critics have perpetuated the idea over the years that the band stopped playing their own instruments in the recording studio. While this was largely true for Pet Sounds and Smile, most of the band played instruments on every preceding album.

I'm not seeing where it says the Wrecking Crew did not play on them as well. Brian Wilson adopted the Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" approach where every instrument was doubled or tripled, usually necessitating a dozen or more musicians in the studio. So, with the band being composed of only half of that number, it's obvious that session musicians (i.e. The Wrecking Crew) were used extensively.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2022 (UTC) Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

References

• No. This YouTube video cannot be considered a reliable source. The Stebbins book is a good source for the Beach Boys side of the dispute, but the Slate piece by Grant Wong admits that plenty of session musicians were involved, as does the Pitchfork piece with no named author. We must tell the reader that the literature doesn't prove the issue one way or another—that there are contradictory opinions and contradictory proofs. Binksternet (talk) 18:03, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Binksternet: WP:FALSEBALANCE: Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. [...] We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit this information where including it would unduly legitimize it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in their proper context concerning established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world.

  We're not disputing that the Wrecking Crew were involved. We're disputing that they played on most Beach Boys records released in the 1960s. This has been thoroughly debunked by the band's reseachers since around the late 2000s (The Wrecking Crew was published in 2012). The myth persists because of the outdated sources and because some people never bother to verify the claim with basic arithmetic. ili (talk) 18:42, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment, Binksternet. I agree that the proper approach is to address the controversy, rather than treating it as settled. However, the article in its current state does the latter. I'm not going to edit war, but leaving the current version in place seems to violate the NPOV standards. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 20:05, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

ILIL, is that the royal "We"? 'Cause it looks like you alone are making this an issue.

The mistake you are making is in calling this issue a "common misconception". It is nothing of the sort. The public began to learn about the Wrecking Crew's contribution in very small morsels over the decades, but the largest change to the standard assumption arrived in 2008 when the Wrecking Crew documentary came out. Prior to 2008, the "common misconception" was that the Beach Boys played their own instruments. The idea that the Beach Boys were totally replaced by session players has never taken hold. Only 14 years have passed since the first common misconception was punctured; it's too soon for the opposite misconception to be widely held.

The "we" refers to myself, the band's biographers, Beach Boys archive manager Alan Boyd, and his assistant Craig Slowinski, who is responsible for figuring out who-plays-what-and-where for the liner notes on various reissues. What happens is that Slowinski listens to the tapes, hears someone saying something like "Dennis! You're playing drums too fast!", and that is how we know who is playing drums on that particular track, despite the fact that Hal Blaine might remember differently. It is infinitely more authoritative than the 50-year-old memories of session musicians who can't reasonably be expected to remember if they played on an original recording or merely a cover version.

And you are absolutely wrong about the timeline of these "popular misconceptions". There are many articles and biographies from the 1970s that acknowledge the fact that Wilson began using Spector's musicians on Beach Boys records. They all suggest that the session musicians completely replaced the Beach Boys on their instruments, especially on Pet Sounds, and it wasn't until the release of The Pet Sounds Sessions that the record started getting corrected (that was when the tapes were properly analyzed and it was revealed that the Beach Boys actually did play on some of Pet Sounds after all). The Wrecking Crew documentary and book only muddied things further.

As Brian began experimenting with new sound textures, he found that the instrumental skills of the Beach Boys were inadequate. While the voices were always those of the band, from 1963 through 1966 Brian used studio musicians on those instrumental tracks. —The Beach Boys and the California Myth (p. 72)

45 years have passed since that text was printed. We know now that the claim is true... But highly misleading. Later, in 1997, the story becomes more nuanced:

Starting in 1963, Brian had begun regularly employing them on his outside productions. By early 1964, Brian began calling them in for Beach Boys recording dates, and in 1965, when Brian quit the road to concentrate on record production, the session musicians essentially became the in-studio Beach Boys, playing the backing tracks for most of the band's biggest hits...from "California Girls" through Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains." [Carl played 12-string guitar on many sessions.] —Pet Sounds Sessions liner notes

ili (talk) 21:50, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

And here's Slowinski himself backing me up...

In 1978, David Leaf wrote "from 1963 through 1966 Brian used studio musicians on the instrumental tracks." That one statement has done more to distort reality than just about anything else in Beach Boys land. For, somewhere along the line, this was repeated and repeated and blown up into the extreme myth that, beginning right at the start of 1963, Brian (in his role as producer) only used professional "outside" musicians on all the instrumental tracks, and used the Beach Boys just for vocals. [...] But as any good historian can attest, a myth perpetuated is tough to deflate: "If a lie is told enough times, it will become the truth." Recollections of the participants can't always be relied upon either...many of these pro studio musicians were playing multiple sessions, day-in and day-out, for numerous clients, for years on end. They can hardly be expected to remember the fine details of any given session with crystal-clear accuracy some 30, 40, or 50 years later! In reality, however, once the vaults were opened up and the tapes were studied, the true situation became clear: the Boys themselves played most of the instruments on their records until the Beach Boys Today! album in early 1965. Up to that point, they would occasionally augment their playing with percussion, horns, or an extra bass, and a couple of times Brian cut an entire Beach Boys backing track with outside musicians, but that was the exception, not the rule [...]

(read more)

ili (talk) 22:03, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Warning: math time! The Beach Boys released 15 albums and 28 singles from 1961 to 1969. The first ten albums and 17 singles were largely self-contained efforts; the band members always played their own instruments, with less than a dozen exceptions to the rule before 1963 (the exceptions are enumerated in the Stebbins source).

From mid-1963 to 1965, the group were occasionally augmented by studio musicians for select tracks. Eight albums and 13 singles were released in this timespan. Only four (or five?) of those singles were dominated by session players ("The Little Girl I Once Knew", "Do You Wanna Dance?", "Help Me, Rhonda", "California Girls", and possibly "Be True to Your School"). The album that relied on studio musicians the most to date, The Beach Boys Today (1965), had the band playing their own instruments on 6 out of 11 tracks (in other words, "more than half").

From 1966 to mid-1967, Wilson was largely producing tracks without his bandmates. Two albums (Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile) and four singles were released in this timespan. (Smile, an album that did heavily feature session musicians, was not released. Smiley Smile was a self-contained effort.)

From late 1967 to 1969, the band released another couple of albums and singles that were largely self-contained.

In total, only one studio album (two if we count Smile) and less than half of the singles were dominated by session players in the 1960s. Every other record featured the Beach Boys playing their own instruments or the Beach Boys playing their own instruments while augmented by studio musicians. ili (talk) 18:42, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

ILIL, this is a standout example of a violation of WP:No original research, with you taking it upon yourself to decide whether the Wrecking Crew's contribution was major or minor by way of statistics.

Plenty of authors have said that the Beach Boys began to rely on studio musicians more and more after 1963, until the session players "played virtually every instrument" according to Kent Hartman writing in 2012's The Wrecking Crew. Session guitarist and singer Glenn Campbell even graduated from the Wrecking Crew to become a Beach Boy on tour. Ken Sharp's 2016 book Sound Explosion!: Inside L.A.'s Studio Factory with the Wrecking Crew also goes into detail about the session musicians. Brian told Ken Sharp, "I mainly worked in the studio with the Wrecking Crew to achieve what I wanted... They inspired me to reach higher ground and really helped make my music come alive in the studio." Bassist Carol Kaye has been called the "Beach Girl" because her contribution was so influential on Pet Sounds.

It's not really a "misconception" that session musicians were a large part of the sound of the Beach Boys. They certainly contributed to the group's success on many songs. Rather than being a "common misconception", the depth of involvement by session musicians versus the Beach Boys themselves is an ongoing debate. The jury is still out. Binksternet (talk) 20:06, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

@Binksternet: Again, you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying whether the contributions were "major or minor". That is an opinion. I'm saying that they did not play all of the instruments on most of the albums and singles. That isn't an opinion, it's a statistical fact. WP:CALC: Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources..

My "original research" goes only as far as proving that one source is more credible than another. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS: The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content.

Kent Hartman did not listen to the session tapes. He did not consult anyone who did. What he did consult were AFM contracts, which have been proven unreliable, and the people who were there, who have also proven unreliable. He should not be considered an authoritative source.

We have authoritative credits for the band's 1965–69 albums, which can be gleamed from their respective articles, and which indicate that the Wrecking Crew were overwhelmingly featured on Pet Sounds, but not the four '67-69 albums. I cannot provide complete credits for the seven '62-64 albums, but we already know, based on the sources, that Wilson did not use these studio musicians until after mid-1963 and that he did not use them on Beach Boys records until early 1964. That means we can automatically rule out the band's first four albums from '62-63. And so we're left uncertain about three albums (All Summer Long, Shut Down Volume 2, and All Summer Long), which is less than the number of albums that we are certain were not dominated by session players (Christmas, Today!, Party!, Summer Days, Smiley Smile, Friends, Wild Honey, 20/20).}}

In light of these immutable truths, Wikipedia should be able to state definitively that the Wrecking Crew did not replace the Beach Boys on most albums. As for singles, that's another can of worms... ili (talk) 21:50, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Forget my convoluted analysis, just read straight from the horse's mouth, lest I be accused once more of "original research". ili (talk) 22:38, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

That source is from Craig Slowinski, written in 2006, two years before the big Wrecking Crew documentary, and before a bunch of new sources were published talking up the contributions of session musicians. I don't dispute that Slowinski thinks there was a "myth" started in 1978 by David Leaf, who wrote that the Beach Boys were replaced on instrumental tracks. The problem with Slowinski's assessment is that plenty of authors embrace the Leaf description to at least some degree, and the later descriptions by Wrecking Crew members. It was only Slowinski who was saying in 2006 that there was a myth. Slowinski is an outlier. Binksternet (talk) 00:06, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm incredulous. An "outlier"?

I've presented the strongest sources possible that prove that The Wrecking Crew book and documentary contains virtually nothing that the world didn't already know about who played on the Beach Boys' records in the '60s, contradicting your assertion from earlier. Hartman himself said,

Though [Brian Wilson] had for several months brought in various session players on a sporadic, potluck basis to supplement things, the other Beach Boys generally played on the earliest songs, too. [p. 59]

Even if there was any damning new non-anecdotal evidence, we do have three sources, two of which were published post-Wrecking Crew documentary (Stebbins, Slate, Pitchfork), that are essentially in agreement with Slowinski's findings. And it's already been demonstrated that there's not really anything in the book and documentary that contradicts Slowinski. It's just a matter of timespan – did Wilson use the Wrecking Crew almost exclusively between early '64 and late '67 (Shut Down Volume 2 through Smiley Smile) or mid-1965 to early 1967 (Pet Sounds through Smile)?

Any serious historian today would take any claims sourced from a Wrecking Crew musician with a grain of salt.

I think, in general, what we really need is a clearer, more empathetic understanding of what it meant to be a session musician back then. We need to have a sense of what this job was like. This was a complicated job, where they were playing in a studio, three or four sessions a day, Monday through Friday. They were probably recording hundreds, if not thousands of songs per year, right? They were busy, and it was complicated. And the music industry treated them solely as hired guns, so they weren’t involved in what happened to a recording after they left the studio. —Brian F. Wright, historian at the University of Texas who published an article about Carol Kaye's controversial claims for the Cambridge University Press in 2019

[1] [2]

You're now reduced to arguing that Wikipedia can't note something as a "common misconception" if it's been supported by "plenty of authors". In other words, "no 'common misconceptions' until the misconception stops being 'common'" – are you even aware that the List of common misconceptions only includes misconceptions that are considered "current"?

WP:OLDSOURCES: Especially in scientific and academic fields, older sources may be inaccurate because new information has been brought to light [...] Be sure to check that older sources have not been superseded, especially if it is likely that new discoveries or developments have occurred in the last few years. [...] newer secondary and tertiary sources may have done a better job of collecting more reports from primary sources and resolving conflicts, applying modern knowledge to correctly explain things that older sources could not have, or remaining free of bias that might affect sources written while any conflicts described were still active or strongly felt.

I'm going to add more sources in this article that support the fact that the Boys played most of their own tracks pre-'64 and post-'66. If you revert it again, I'll have to reboot this RfC, further wasting everyone's time, as it would be unfair to expect other editors to read all this back-and-forth in order to get the real facts. ili (talk) 17:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

So is this the hill you have decided to defend to death? The list of common misconceptions? It doesn't seem that important to me.

I have no problem with telling the reader the known extent of session musician contributions to Beach Boys songs, with a healthy dose of uncertainty because of contradictory sources, but to say that there is a current common misconception is going too far. Is there confusion out there? Sure. But not a common misconception. Binksternet (talk) 18:00, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I have a handful of reliable sources that refer to this topic as part of a common misconception. Do you have any reliable sources that state it isn't a common misconception? No? Cool. Thanks for playing. ili (talk) 18:39, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

(summoned via RfC bot)

No, per Binksternet and Mr swordfish. To add to their points:

• While Stebbins' book may be factually reliable, it's also worth keeping in mind that it appears to be written from a highly emotional fan perspective - witness this passage (which introduces the assessment that ILIL quoted in their "Yes" vote above):

The Beach Boys' vocal sound at its best is nothing short of pure pop bliss. If aliens ever land on Earth and we need to impress them quickly, just shoot a little "Our Prayer" their way and they'll immediately understand everything worthwhile about the human race. Brian found the good or the God within us all, the indescribable spiritual chord that connects us. But he wasn't alone in his discovery. He created the genius body of work along with his brothers, his cousin and his friends. ..."

(Btw, I just listened to that song and can't quite see what's so special about it in the Beach Boys' oeuvre. I suspect that Stebbins' book contains other judgments and assessments that are likewise highly subjective.)

• The misconception is also discussed on Pitchfork ... - it seems that this refers to the following passage in the Pitchfork article, which is about a much narrower claim:

  ... drummer Dennis fell victim to the common misconception that session player Hal Blaine manned the skins exclusively in the studio at Brian's behest. In actuality, Dennis made sporadic but dramatic contributions during even Brian's creative peak, ...

Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:04, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@HaeB: I'd like to withdraw this RfC but I'm not sure how to do it. I concede that this issue is, unexpectedly, way too nerdy and nuanced for most people to understand.

In terms of getting the facts straight, this RfC has been an utter failure. The only contradicting source given by Mr Swordfish and Binksinternet was The Wrecking Crew book, which has many of its own factual errors, such as listing an incorrect release date for Pet Sounds. In turn, I've sourced biographers and journalists who support the findings made by one of the few individuals in history who have analyzed the Beach Boys' session tapes, Craig Slowinski.

It's common for music biographies to contain opinions and critiques in addition to the hard facts. Stebbins' superlatives have nothing to do with his coverage of the technicalities involved with the band's recording sessions, a topic that he clearly handled in an objective manner. Alas, I give up. ili (talk) 01:11, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

My understanding is that the bot was supposed to close the Rfc once the template was removed. But it didn't do that. I'll look into closing it manually. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:44, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Timeline

Hi all,

I have noticed that there have been some fairly recent updates to the timeline, some of which I feel are misleading. Brian is given thinner lines for periods of time he wasn’t on the road, including post-February 1998 (except 2012). The same is true for Carl when he was off the road from mid-1997 until his death from cancer in February 1998. Likewise, Al is marked similarly for post-February (or May, when his last pre-2012 “full band” show was; I’ll have to double-check) 1998.

I understand the reasons for marking Brian and Al like this from 1998-2011 and 2013-present, because of BRI. However, I think that marking Brian (and even Carl) like this before 1998 is mostly misleading. I’d like to propose that we only give Brian these thinner bars from mid-1990 through 1994 and 1997-2011, since he was contributing in the studio (to different extents depending on time) from December 1964 to 1976, late 1982-1989, and 1995-1996. Only from 1991-1994 and 1997 onwards (other than 2011-2012) does Brian contribute very little, if at all.

I also think we should consider adding a bar for David Marks in mid-2018 for the SiriusXM interview/reunion. (I’d also propose his time touring with Brian in 2013 and occasional guest appearances with Mike in 2014 and 2015, but I doubt that’s go over well.) I also think thicker lines for Brian, Mike, Al, and Bruce (and David if we give him any bar here) should be considered for the mid-2018 SiriusXM interview/reunion.

Thanks!!

EPBeatles January 15, 2023, 5:13 PM EST EPBeatles (talk) 22:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

California sound section: Manson

It says: "Drawing from the Beach Boys' associations with Charles Manson …" But wasn’t it Dennis Wilson alone who had that association? Boscaswell talk 20:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Ok, in the Dennis Wilson article, it says: "Manson recorded numerous songs at Brian's home studio,[53] although the recordings remain unheard by the public.[55] Band engineer Stephen Desper said that the Manson sessions were done "for Dennis [Wilson] and Terry Melcher".[56] In September 1968, Wilson recorded a Manson song for the Beach Boys, originally titled "Cease to Exist" but reworked as "Never Learn Not to Love", as a single B-side released the following December."

But does that necessarily mean that there was "an association"? Boscaswell talk 21:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Top 40

The Beatles had more top 40 songs. 2600:1700:5401:2F40:A161:CC55:22CD:F082 (talk) 22:53, 10 February 2023 (UTC)