T2580 - The Beach Boys finish Smile

[oberdada]

Hard to guess, Big Sur the landlocked version of California Saga: Big Sur
Monterey is mentioned in California Saga: California, so I'd guess that
Pacific Coast Highway can't be the 2012 song, or was it written decades earlier?
Disney Girls could work as a song named after a place, since Bruce grew up in Beverly Hills, I will say Hollywood
Hawthorne sounds like a song with childhood memories, so maybe Brian is back? But that was from '75 or later

 

[Guajolote]

Disney Girls will be on the next album

 

[danmartin73]

Loving the TL so far, but just curious about a few things. Does Brian tour regularly with the group ITTL or does he still stay at home. Bruce mentioned that drug usage within the group was the main reason for his 1972 departure. With that gone as far as I can see, will he still stay in the group? I'm guessing there is no 1971 Beach Boys album, in that case the six members can a have a bit of a year off, or they could have been recording California.

When do you think the 4 Monkees solo albums you mentioned earlier would be released? When would they break up officially? Also I'm presuming that The Beatles' Blades is released in 1970 along with For Life. For the most part, it seems everyone you mention has a better outcome than IOTL. Keep up the great work, loving it deeply!

 

[Guajolote]

Brian still stays at home. Dennis and Carl are still doing drugs, but they don't do them around Brian (as much out of fear, Brian's better mental health means he's more willing to fight his ground and, well, he's 6'3"). It's less of a problem for Bruce and there's no Jack Reiley, who was reportedly another problem for Bruce.

Davy's solo album comes out in the first half of 1969. The other three come out in 1970 with diminishing promotional effort.

Blades is the Beatles' 1971 album.

I'm a sentimental sort, I can't help giving people better outcomes. At certain points in the TL, the people involved aren't going to think the outcome looks so great, the Beatles are certainly feeling a backlash post-Abbey Road. One idea I had but didn't really have the will to pursue is that Syd Barrett gets caught up in the psychiatry/therapy boom...and quits music. Better for him, but the other members of Pink Floyd wouldn't see it that way. I'm not really passionate enough about Pink Floyd to go there. This TL will be mainly Beach Boys and Beatles (though we haven't seen the last of The Monkees) up until 1982. Seems like a strange place to end, but if I do come up with updates after that, they'll be far less regular.

 

[Guajolote]

I might as well reveal the OTL analogues for the tracks on California

Hawthorne (Don't Go Near The Water)
Monterey (Add Some Music To Your Day)
Big Sur
Topanga (All This Is That)
Sierra Nevada (Beaks Of Eagles)
Hollywood (Long Promised Road)
Big Bear (Feel Flows)
Pacific Coast Highway (California Saga:California)

 

[Guajolote]

John: 1972, what a fantastic year!
George: I can't imagine where this lazy Beatles image came from.
John: Have we already done the "faulen vier" joke.
Paul: Yeah, I did it. But seriously…
John: But seriously, folks, tip the waitresses.
Paul: Seriously, how is taking 1972 off lazy? How many albums had we put out since 1962? 15? We should have done it before, really. Like in 1968.
John: We definitely should have taken 1972 off in 1968.
Paul: We even got it in the neck for putting out a singles collection.
John: Eh?
Paul: Yeah, we were greedy for making it a double album, apparently. It was meant to complete everyone's collections. All the stuff that wasn't on the albums. Issuing four sides of hits without including the ones that were on the albums anyway was seen as some as a kind of con trick.
John: [bleep]

Paul: Seemed like we couldn't please anyone.
George: Not even the Irish?
Paul: Ouch!
John: We had to do something, say something.

Ringo: You've never forgiven us for not getting involved, have you?
John: Water under the bridge, Richie. I dunno. Maybe if we'd done it as The Beatles, it might have made a difference. Maybe it would have made things worse. I dunno. The Beatles was no longer a name to conjure with in 1972.
George: Did we have one of our "extraordinary board meetings"?
Paul: I think we did, yeah. All that came out of it was a plan to renegotiate with EMI.
George: Before and after every 70s album, except maybe For Life, there'd be a secret agreement that this was IT, we were splitting up. I think Paul's to blame for us not splitting up after Blades.
Paul: Every time we did anything, the press would say "are they going to be any live shows?". Is it fair to say we'd all developed stage-fright?
John: Beatle-stage-fright. I could go out onstage as John Lennon, but yeah, there was a mental block on the idea of walking out onstage as The Beatles.
Paul: I had a plan.
John, George and Ringo: Paul always has a plan!
Paul (giggling): Apple was being very businesslike by this point. No investing in hip boutiques or any of that. Eppy was putting our money into normal things, but nothing we'd object to. He turned down some very promising investments in some very dodgy companies. Long story short, Apple had a stake in London Weekend Television. What's more, as the name implies, they were only responsible for two-and-a-bit days of TV, so their studios weren't in use as much as the other companies'. So, I thought we could do a TV concert. No touring, but we could reach the world and prove we could still play live. We put that on the 'things to do' list for 1973.
John: I still needed the rest of 1972 to get off heroin. I hadn't been able to shit for three years.
Ringo (facepalms): Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!

(Anthology, 1995)

 

[NyQuil]

This thread made me wanna do a music one of my own.

 

[Guajolote]

I look forward to seeing it.

 

[NyQuil]

I look forward to seeing it.

I already am doing it.

 

[Guajolote]

THE BEATLES - LIVE (TV SPECIAL 1973)

The Night Before
Rock And Roll Music
Boys
Savoy Truffle
Old Brown Shoe
Lady Madonna
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
For No One
Don't Let Me Down
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Two Of Us
Six O'Clock
Yes It Is
I'm Down
Revolution
What Is Life
A Hard Day's Night
Jet
It's All Too Much
Twist And Shout

John: You know when you play a show and there's a pause between the end of the song and the audience applause and it's AGONY? This was that.
Ringo: How do you mean?
John: We put out the special and the initial reaction in the press was "That's it?". For a couple of days there was a big shrug from the critics and then suddenly everyone seemed to say "That was good". Sweet relief. A Beatles thing that didn't have the whole world's happiness hinging on it. I don't know about you lot, but it was nice not to be the messiah anymore.
Paul: It was the turning point in the whole backlash we'd been up against since For Life. The BBC did a news report about the "Beatles revival" because young kids were playing our records in discos. They interviewed a young DJ and he said "Beatles records are good for dancing to" and I thought THAT'S IT!
John: Everyone remembered we were a rock 'n' roll band.
Ringo: So how come our next album was a big AOR double album thing?
George: We're Beatles. Beatles get to be perverse.

(Anthology 1995)

 

[Guajolote]

THE BEACH BOYS - SUNBURST (1973)

Side One
Sound Of Free
Marcella
Out In The Country
Disney Girls (1957)
Sail On, Sailor

Side Two
You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone
Sweet Mountain
My Solution
Funky Pretty
Radio Kingdom

"Things had started to sour during the California sessions and the first few shows of the tour that year were tense. Mike and I could read the room and the audiences were clearly affected by the atmosphere onstage. We all got our heads together and agreed to just do the shows as best we could. Leave the egos in the dressing room. We started putting more oldies in the setlist and very soon we were really enjoying ourselves.

"When that was over, we had to face doing an album of new stuff. Brian was pushing for us to get back in the studio as soon as we could. Having a good time playing all the old songs was one thing, but for an album of new material it wasn't a proper way of doing it. We managed to keep peace, but the recording of Sunburst was…efficient. Nothing more. We did another tour full of oldies and loved every moment, but after that we started looking for excuses not to record together. We were all trying to avoid confrontation and in doing that, we couldn't create anymore. Just as we finished the sessions, Dad died and we all reacted to it differently. So for a while, we drifted apart."

- Carl Wilson

 

[Guajolote]

The Beatles - On The Run (1973)

Side One
Band On The Run
Mrs. Vandebilt
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
Only People
Six O'Clock

Side Two
The Light That Has Lighted The World
I'm The Greatest
Bluebird
One Day At A Time
Try Some, Buy Some

Side Three
Mind Games
Jet
Tight A$
Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)

Side Four
Meat City
Out The Blue
Don't Let Me Wait Too Long
Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five

"People say it's Paul's album, but it's not as simple as that. You look at one way and he'd taken the lead. Look at it another way and he was doing the hard work while the rest of us put our feet up. I confess that for a while there, I was down on Paul and his…his…NICENESS. Paul needs people to like him and I thought I was better than that. I thought I was brave by upsetting people and…I was in a way. But Paul has a point. Y'know if we want world peace…world love, we have to be nice sometimes. Paul keeps doing these granny songs, but grannies need songs, too.

"So, we'd done Blades and you've got George saying 'beware of darkness' but it was us. We were there spreading the darkness around. After that, we were in a similar place to where we were with Abbey Road. Abbey Road was meant to serve as a Last Beatles Album, if we needed it. As it turned out, we didn't need it at that time. On The Run was the same thing again. We couldn't have Blades as The Last Beatles Album. We needed to go out on a high note. We needed optimism and if it's optimism you want, you hand the reins over to McCartney. So we let him write most of the album.

[interviewer says something off-mic]

He didn't? It felt like he did. We all did these demos at home and he kept putting them in different orders to get the "shape" of the album right.

[interviewer says more off-mic]

Ah, well. The reason Linda's on the front cover and none of the other Beatle wives are is because Paul and Linda were still on good terms and the rest of us were on the outs with our wives. Sorry you were saying something. What? No we weren't upset. Why? We were adults. Maybe if it had been the four of us an Linda, maybe that would have been different, but we had James Coburn and Michael Parkinson and the rest.

It was the reverse of Blades, really. On Blades, we were all depressed, but we were huddled together. We were closer than we'd been since Sgt Pepper, but it was a bond of mutual misery. With On The Run, we were all on board with making a positive Beatles album and not getting too territorial, but we were all looking past each other."

- John Lennon, Anthology, 1995

 

[Guajolote]

BRIAN WILSON - HOME AND AWAY (1975)

Side One
Come To The Sunshine (Parks)
I Think I Can Make It (Wilson)
Neon Christine (Wilson/Wood)
I'm Sorry I Apologized (Wilson/McCartney)
The Yankee Reaper (Wilson/Parks)
The Two Of Us (Wilson/Argent/White)

Side Two
A New Tradition (Wilson/McCartney)
It's Trying To Say (Wilson)
Always At Home (Wilson/Parks)
In Town Tonight (Wilson/McCartney)
Pick Me Up (Wilson/Love)
Say Farewell (Wood)


Bob Harris: Brian, there hasn't been a Beach Boys album for two years and now you're writing material here in the UK with other people. Have you quit The Beach Boys?

Brian: No. I don't think The Beach Boys have quit me either. We'll do something together soon, but it's not the right time. I want to be Brian Wilson for a while. Like, if I get together with the guys next year, I have to still be able to do it, right? If I wait for The Beach Boys to be ready, I might not be able to do it anymore. So I'll write an album without them and then I'll know what missing. What I need from them.

Harris: So you're not trying to prove anything?

Brian: I'm trying to prove that I'm still a Beach Boy. I'm in training. I'm keeping fit as a songwriter.
Harris: You've been working with Paul McCartney. Are you going to do a whole album together?

Brian: No, we couldn't get a whole thing done. We had six songs and they don't fit together. Paul is doing something very delicate right now and I wanted to do something more rock and roll. I love England and I you have some interesting stuff happening here now. Paul want me to bring my Pet Sounds feel to it. So we wrote three Pet Sounds-type numbers and Paul said he found what he wanted and could continue by himself, so I got him to help me with three English rock numbers.

Harris: I understand your brother Dennis is also working on a solo album. Are you helping with that?
Brian: No. He wants to show everyone what he can do by himself and I think that's the right thing to do. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

(The Old Grey Whistle Test BBC 2, 1975)

As The Beach Boys to ground to a halt after the death of Murry Wilson, Brian received an invitation from Paul McCartney to assist with his first solo album. Brian demurred at the prospect of producing the album, but was eager to write with new people. Brian became fascinated with how Britain's Glam Rock scene grew out of a lack of glamour in its everyday life. Wilson later said "I saw a different group every night. It was really different. All the small, gray streets. Small cars. No one was pretending during the day and then at night these groups would look like superheroes." Collaborations with McCartney, Roy Wood and Argent [2] ensued and Wilson even felt comfortable enough to cover a song written by Wood solo.

Coming back to LA, energized, the collection of songs was completed with help from Van Dyke Parks [2] and Mike Love [3] and, as he had done with Roy Wood, Brian took on a Van Dyke Parks solo number to round out the set. [4]

The album was a decent size hit in the US, but after his constant round of media appearances in the UK (including a cameo in The Goodies), the album was a colossal hit with British audiences. This relationship was finally solidified when Brian decided to make his debut as a solo live act in London's Hammersmith Odeon.

- Andrew Barbicane - The Beach Boys: A Comprehensive Overview

[1] I don't really have anything in mind for how the McCartney numbers sound. Neon Christine is a laced with Roy Wood's rock and roll nostalgia, Wizzard perspective. The Two Of Us is just a reference to the fact that Rod Argent wrote the theme tune to a sitcom of that name in the 80s. This was an early attempt at this timeline on the "Rock albums from alternate timelines" and I was trying to avoid too much parallelism. I'd figured the further we get from the POD of Smile coming out, the less likely we are to see songs that we know IOTL. But on the later written stuff, I knew that the quickest way to give an idea of a work was to use things from OTL.

[2] But then I have to let some obvious parallels creep through. Brian has rewritten the OTL title track of Van Dyke's 1975 album.

[3] Probably something similar to Airplane from Love You. Half written by Brian on the plane back to the US and finished by him and Mike in the car home from LAX.

[4] IOTL Brian wanted Come To The Sunshine to be on 15 Big Ones, a version was recorded in October 1975, but there's some debate as to what happened to the master tape.

 

[danmartin73]

Another brilliant update! Pleasantly surprised to see Brian have a solo career, but considering the butterflies, this is definitely a possibility. When do you think the Dennis and Paul albums would be released?

 

[Guajolote]

I see Paul in the first quarter of 1975, Dennis in the last and Brian in the Summer. This chapter is a little different to the others as it was in response to a request on the "Rock albums from alternate timelines" for a collaboration between Brian and Paul. Brian's side of things was the one I wanted to talk about, so Paul's album is just sketched in. I inserted the stuff about a Dennis solo album because I thought of all the Beach Boys, he was the one most likely to throw himself into recording if there was a lull in the main band.

 

[Guajolote]

"In 1975, the four of us had a meeting about a possible reunion. It was all very friendly, but it stalled. We had an offer for a McDonald's commercial, Peter was vegetarian, so that was out.[1]

"Peter, Davy and I, we were the victims of the Monkees success. We weren't doing too badly, but the Monkees was the most famous thing about us. Nez, on the other hand, was a victim of his solo success. He was smarting from the criticism of his book-plus-soundtrack album. He kept saying 'People expect hit albums from me. If I was more famous or less famous, I could get away with personal stuff like that, but the audience just won't take it'.

- Micky Dolenz

"The Monkees reunion came at just the right time for me. I was looking at two options after The Prison. One was to claw my way back with something commercial. The other was to take a risk. Doing a new album with the Monkees was both risky and commercial. You can always trust the Monkees to save the day."

- Michael Nesmith

"So the one guy who was richer and more successful than the rest of us, was the guy who needed this the most. He reached inside his bag and pulled out a tape machine. He'd done some research on songs that we'd recorded as The Monkees but had never released and included a couple demos of his own stuff.

"It was good stuff. Peter had started the meeting being kind of uninterested. I could see the tape was changing his mind and by the end of it, he was getting agitated. When it ended he asked me if I had a guitar and once we got him one he just had to start playing us the songs he wanted to be on the album.

"The production style on that album went out of fashion pretty quickly, but it was good album for us to be putting out in 1976.

"We got a TV special and a tour, but when the dust settled, it turned out we'd spent more money than Arista wanted us to. They weren't in any hurry for a follow up. It mattered to the four of us and all our fans that we could be a 'real band' who made satisfying art. But there were enough executives who didn't care to stop us in our tracks. At least for a while."

- Micky Dolenz

THE MONKEES - ONCE MORE WITH FEELING (1976)

Side One Lead vocal
Rio (Micky and Mike)
Of You (Davy)
Good Looker (Peter)
Moonfire (Micky)
Cantata And Fugue In C&W

Side Two
You And I (Davy)
Sunny Side Up (Micky)
While I Cry (Mike)
Time And Time Again (Davy)
The Other Room (Mike)
God Given Right To Be Wrong (Peter)

[1] As was proposed IOTL and foundered for the same reason

 

[Guajolote]

This is inspired by this great promo image from Capitol in 1974

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1104807129007951878

THE BEATLES - SOLID BOOM (1976)

Side One
You Can't Catch Me
Rock Show
Whatever Gets You Thru The Night
This Song
(It's All Da-Da-Down To) Goodnight Vienna

Side Two
Ya Ya
Steel And Glass
Crackerbox Palace
I'll Still Love You
Night Out

"Every time The Beatles are lucky, people assume we're clever. When we did Solid Boom, we didn't know about The Damned or what was happening in London or any of that. [1] We were a bunch of old rockers who'd gone completely Hollywood and were too off our faces to think about whether we were speaking to the world's youth. But we owed EMI a record, Paul had used up all his big ballad ideas on his own record and I'd been sued by Morris Levy and Apple's lawyers had managed to talk him into settling as long as two of his songs appeared on a Beatles album. [2] We had to rock hard, it was all we had left in the tank."

- John Lennon, The Late Show, BBC2 1989

"I was upset that they didn't ask me to produce the album. They'd tried that before, recording an 'honest' album with no overdubs. That dissolved into bickering and recrimination, so Brian Epstein sent them all home cool off . I thought that's what was happening this time. No sooner was there talk of a new Beatles album, the next thing I heard it was going to come out with the credit "Produced by The Beatles". I felt a little betrayed, until Paul told me why."

- George Martin, Arena, BBC1 2011

"Somehow, we recorded a good album when we didn't really want to work together. But I think the difference between Solid Boom and The White Album and the Get Back sessions was that in the last two, we resented each other. On Solid Boom we were all on good terms, but we resented…working really. We decided to be good boys and get some stuff demoed in LA and halfway through we thought "this is good enough as it is". So we recorded everything at Brother Studios [3] and just sent that to EMI. People say "The Beatles invented New Wave". No they didn't. The Beatles just released their demos."

- Paul McCartney, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, VH1 1997

"It wasn't sloppy by any means. We did overdubs and everything, but not of outside musicians, just ourselves. We'd get a basic track down with guitar, bass and drums and then we'd go back and add my guitar and John or Paul would add an extra bit of guitar, so it was four musicians doing the work of five. It came out sounding a bit like Revolver really. [4] Except we didn't bother with any reverb, that gave the whole thing a really nice punch or "Solid Boom" as Ringo called it. Anyway, it was a laugh to record. We hadn't been that close for a long time. Close enough that John sang one of mine and I sang one of his. [5] Paul was all written out, his own fault for doing a solo album. But we felt sorry for him and let him have one of the covers, so apart from Ringo's one, we all got three vocals each."

- George Harrison, Anthology, 1995

"I loved that one, even though I only got one song on it. I was heartbroken when the reviews came in. The critics hated it. I think because it was only half an hour long. You weren't a serious musician in those days if you didn't release the longest album you could. Didn't matter to us in the end. It sold and sold and sold."

- Ringo Starr, Wogan, BBC1 1983

[1] I've avoided using the word "punk". The Beatles accidentally releasing a starkly stripped-down rock album will have bent the timeline somewhat. I'm not saying punk wouldn't happen, but I tried to sidestep answering the question.

[2] Confession, I just didn't want to clutter this album with three covers, so I used the change in timeline as an excuse. I know John Lennon still didn't manage to get all three agreed upon songs released IOTL, but I just thought I'd tidy it up completely.

[3] Paul and Brian working together has resulted in an invitation to take advantage of Brother Studios if Paul or his friends were in the neighbourhood. I know Brother Studios was in Santa Monica, not LA. Paul is either misremembering or just using the name of the city people are more likely to have heard of.

[4] So while I've used Beatles solo numbers from OTL, the recordings sound very different ITTL.

[5] I just love the idea of John singing Crackerbox Palace in a more acidic tone. George takes Steel And Glass in return. Paul sings Ya Ya.

 

[NyQuil]

We gotta get a new wave/synthpop era of Beatles?

 

[Guajolote]

Stay tuned.

 

[oberdada]

Recorded at Brother Studios

I love it


I assume the equipment did not have to travel to Holland and back in this TL.