Melody Maker, March 24, 1979
Front Cover: Picture of Dennis, "Dennis Wilson: 'God bless the Beach
Boys' (p.9)

"The Beach Boys love good karma – and Dennis Wilson loves Christina
McVie A-OK. Richard Williams picks up the nice vibrations."

Article:
Hold page nine! Rock'n'roll' s newest woosome twosome is – and you're
not gonna guess it! – Dennis Wilson and Christine McVie! Yes indeed
the Beach Boys' all american surfin', draggin bikin' drummer is more
than "just good friends" with the english blues thrush who went to
california and found a crock of platinium at the end of the rainbow!
Nevertheless, the man from the Daily Mail is not impressed. "They
didn't have much to say," he confides, in the hotel bar. "The pix
wont be much good, either. She grabbed his balls once, but the
photographer wasn't ready." Grabbed his balls?
The Beach Boys' image as goody-goodies, which persisted (to their
detriment) through the era of drugs and filth, was destroyed, in the
music industry, by a tale which went around a few years ago. While
in London, the story goes, one member of the group (not Dennis, as
it happens) was found in bed by an executive of their record
company. Whit the executive's wife (industry buffs go on to relate
the the executive was ordered to forget the incident, so as not to
upset the company's relationship with the group: the tale is used as
a kind of musicbiz parable.)
Dennis, of course, has never been a goody-goody. Why, back in 1965,
on the sleeve of "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!!)," he wrote: "I
love summertime most because we can get around to all the towns and
I can meet all the girls". Apparently he's requested my presence in
order to tell me that, for Christine and himself, this is the Real
Thing. I am more interested in talking about disco records. About,
in fact, The Beach Boys' new single, which is a full blown disco
version of their old album track, "Here Comes The Night". Dennis who
has a disconcertingly oblique way of reaching the point responds
thus: "You really want to know about the disco community? Well, the
gay community has made a tremendous mistake. Just like Hitler used
Wagner, it's unfair to take an art-form and use it…what do you
think?" I fumble for a cigarette and mutter that a disenfranchised
minority surely has a right to raise a flag for itself through the
appropriation for…."But some of your best friends are gay," says
Christine to Dennis. From the look on his face, it seems unlikely.
His further responses to questioning along this line are somewhat
confused. " I'm honored to perform disco," he says "On stage I
translate the percussion into a Puerto Rican or Latin Flavour…but I
can't stand regimentation or formula or planned obsolescence. I'm not
into disco." Then: "I'm not on the disco record. I don't perform on
it. I'm honoured that it's part of…it's nice to hear it. But you're
talking about one of the finest groups in the world. 'Good
Vibrations'…' God only knows'…Brian Wilson…it reminds me of the busy
signal on the telephone line." Whatever Dennis Wilson is doing in
London, he will not be promoting "Here Comes The Night."
He plays me a cassette of the new album, fiddling with the
fastforward and rewind switches, looking for a particular track. He
can't find it. "cocksucker!" he shouts, apparently to the machine.
Then: "Don't write that down!" Christine giggles"You get used to
it," she says. "He said it in front of my father the other day!"
Dennis finds the track, "Going South." His brother Brian's voice
comes in, above a whisper of harmonies. Dennis bursts into tears. He
goes to the bathroom to clear his head, and returns after a couple
of minutes with watery eyes and a red nose. He tells me he plans to
put together all the film he has made of the group since
1964: "Every live performance we're ever done. I filmed it all. It
could be a TV series – I might give it to CBS." CBS, as well as
being one of the three major America TV networks, is also the
group's new record company, and Dennis launches into a unsolicited
testemonial. "I want to support that company. They're the hippest
fucking corporation on the planet. The chemistry is alive again
between CBS and The Beach Boys. It's the same chemistry that
Christine has with Warner Brothers. You're looking at history
there" – he indicates Ms McVie – "to move that number of records
without a movie, without a John Travolta. It's historical as…as…as
Admiral Lemnitz!" Yeah right! Sorry, what's that again?

I ask him to tell me about his solo album, the thoroughly
outstanding "Pacific Ocean Blues," which appeared a couple of years
ago to an unjustifiably cool response. "It was a self-indulgent one-
man band thing, and I had fun doing it," he replies. "I was waiting
for The Beach Boys to come down to Brother Studio and make an album.
I'm there in this beautiful studio which Al and Mike and Brian tell
me is losing money…so I used it. I kept it alive." He tells me that
the studio has sold its equipment – which was originally
transported across the Atlantic to make the "Holland" album, before
being shipped back to Brother Studio – now in the possession of
saxophonist Tom Scott.
I asked him about their final release on Warner Brothers, "The
M.I.U. album," named for the Marahrishi Institute University. "They
told me they were going to build a studio there, so i quit the
group. I don't believe in that album. I sang a song on it, which my
dear brother Brian wrote about Diane Rovelle" – Brian's sister-
in-law, in case you wondered - "but I feel that album…well, I hope
that the karma will fuck up Mike Love's meditation for ever. That
album is an embarrasment to my life. It should self-destruct. " Whew!
Thank goodness I gave it a bad review! So why did he return to the
fold for the latest piece of product, which is rather tweely
titled "The Beach Boys' LA. (Light Album)"? "Because I stood in a
room with my family, around the piano, and we shared something
together. That brotherhood is so loving and important that I'll
stand behind this album with my absolute being. And god bless The
Beach Boys. And I've done talking".
Well, not quite. He tells me that the group runs democratially,
which means that all five members have a vote, and that Brian's vote
has been given to his wife, Marilyn, when she took over his power of
attorney a year or so back. She had apparently voted with Love and
Al Jardine against Carl and Dennis on a couple of crucial occasions.
But then Dennis says: "Look out for Brian Wilson!" He seems to be on
the brink of giving me the standard Brian's-on-the-mend line when the
telephone rings. Its Brian, calling from Hollywood. The karma folks.
Dennis goes to the phone. "Brian I just want to tell you that I love
you and I miss you, Brian…and tell Carl he's a fuckhead…and tell the
rest of the guys to start supporting each other!" He bursts into
tears again. "Why don't you come over to England, Brian?! He enquires
through the sniffles. "I'll send you a ticket! Hey, Christine, Brian
wants to talk to you!" Christine takes the receiver, while Dennis
returns to his chair and tells me that Brian just loves Christine.
He never liked Karen, Dennis' last wife…wouldn't talk to her. Dennis
seems to think that this is significant. And then, quite suddenly,
he declares that the interview is over.
We all get up to leave, Dennis and Christine taking an elevator to
their room, me taking another one to the ground floor. The last
thing I hear, as the elevator doors close, is Dennis' voice: "Hey
baby, those jeans make your butt look flat!" I could tell that
they're ascloseasthis, but I didn't have the courage to ask if
they're infanticipating.

Thanks GoogaMooga for the article. Dennis was a trip. Sure would love to see the films he mentioned.

Rick A.

The lure of the beach
Jude Rogers

Published 12 June 2008

A new generation of US bands cites the Beach Boys as a huge
inspiration. Why now?

Ten years after Oasis soaked up the multicoloured madness of the
Beatles and Blur updated the woozy whimsy of the Kinks, a very
different kind of psychedelia is on the tip of every cool musician's
tongue. Step forward, the harmony-drenched sounds of new American
psychedelia, and its own generation of alternative rock groups. This
scene, led by bands such as Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear and Animal
Collective, shares one inspiration: the more experimental sounds of
the late-career Beach Boys. But why the Beach Boys and why now?

Robin Pecknold of Seattle's Fleet Foxes, the hirsute, baroque pop
quintet that Mojo magazine recently called "America's next great
band", has one theory. "The Beach Boys' music soaks up all of
America, from the sunny sound of Hawaii to the folk songs of the
south to the intelligence of the north-east. In hard times, it's
about remembering the romance of the country, and also about the
power of the human voice to convey those emotions."

In 1966, the Beach Boys had entered a strange phase in their career.
While political and sexual revolutions were empowering the group's
contemporaries, Brian Wilson had begun an intense collaboration as a
songwriter with the songwriter and arranger Van Dyke Parks. The plan
was to make a lush concept album called Smile, one that Wilson
described as "a teenage symphony to God", inspired by the band's
single "Good Vibrations". Back then, the album never materialised.
Under the weight of Wilson's mental illness and drug abuse, and the
band's internal wrangling, the recording sessions fell apart,
leaving a mysterious trail of songs that would be revisited by
Wilson only years later. His version of Smile was premiered at the
Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2004, and finally released
the following September. Not surprisingly, its influence quickly
bubbled into the mainstream.

Pecknold, the son of baby boomers who themselves grew up in the late
1960s, remembers hearing bootlegs of Smile long before 2004. As he
talks about the effect they had on him, his voice glows with
happiness. "They just blew my mind. They were so inventive and
committed - the product of a man who just couldn't do anything else.
There was also an incredible honesty to it, which we and other bands
relate to. Because in American music today, it's almost like there's
a trend against irony."

Today, as in the late Sixties, America is a country whose reputation
has been battered by an unpopular war. Perhaps this is why bands
have been driven towards the innocence and purity of their musical
roots. This is certainly the case with Fleet Foxes, who mix Beach
Boys-inspired, spiritual harmonies with folk and hymnal flavours
that suggest something deeper in their cultural make-up. And it
doesn't matter to these bands that such influences were deeply
unfashionable until recently.

Other harmony-loving, influential young American groups such as
Midlake and Band of Horses take another Beach Boy, Brian's little
brother Dennis, as a huge inspiration. Though best known for his
early death in 1983 and his brief friendship with Charles Manson,
Dennis Wilson was also a cult solo performer. After sharing a tense
childhood with his brother in the shadow of their controlling
father, Murry, he made his classic debut album, Pacific Ocean Blue,
in 1977. It is a long-deleted LP full of heartfelt, psychedelic soul
songs. Fans have clamoured in recent years for its re-release, and
it at last emerges this month.

The upbringing of Brian and Dennis Wilson has another link with the
new generation of psychedelic groups: almost all of them have had
intensely musical childhoods. Take the influential Brooklyn quartet
Grizzly Bear, whose electronic take on the Beach Boys' late-Sixties
reverb has resulted in two gorgeous albums, Horn of Plenty (2004)
and Yellow House (2006). Their frontman, Ed Droste, another huge fan
of Brian Wilson, has talked proudly about his late grandfather being
a professor of music at Harvard for 40 years, his mother being a
music teacher who plays the autoharp, and the constant singing he
enjoyed at home as a child.

Elsewhere in New York, the avant-garde Animal Collective are one of
the most fashionable groups around, a shifting band of musicians who
all met at school in Baltimore and learned classical instruments. To
date, they have made eight experimental albums that warp Beach Boys
harmonies into unsettling shapes, but only recently have they
penetrated the mainstream press.

Animal Collective's biggest related success has been Person Pitch
(2007), the third solo album by one of its members, Panda Bear,
which the critic Simon Reynolds described as sounding "like the
Beach Boys if they'd joined Hare Krishna". It earned five-star
ratings in the Observer and the Independent and made the top tens of
end-of-year polls, all for a record inspired by the birth of
Lennox's daughter, Nadja, and a wealth of deeply spiritual, innocent
harmonies.

Perhaps it is a result of the Beach Boys' influence on pop culture
that this summer you can't get away from them. Besides the critical
adoration being heaped on the Dennis Wilson reissue, it is
encouraging that Brian Wilson himself has become as industrious as
he was in the mid-Sixties. On 19 May, he announced his return to
Capitol Records, where the Beach Boys made their first album,
Surfin' Safari, in 1962. On 1 September, he will release his latest
solo album, That Lucky Old Sun. Like Smile, it was written and
recorded with Van Dyke Parks, who is experiencing a career
renaissance of his own after arranging the folk harpist Joanna
Newsom's hugely acclaimed Ys and collaborating with the British
psychedelic group the Shortwave Set.

"It's a great honour to be here," said Wilson at the press
conference to announce That Lucky Old Sun, rocking gently on his
feet like a child. Bright yellow banners like party decorations
welcomed him home. Then he spoke some words that said everything
about his past, his present and the effects of his legacy on the
young generation: "It's a very sentimental time in my life."

from brianwilson.com:

Hello everyone: Quick note to let you know a brand-new website for
Brian is being worked on and will be up by August 26. The site will be
state-of-the- art and will include some great new features that were
not even around when this current website debuted over four years ago.

We plan on having a number of dynamic media modules including video,
audio, photos and more interaction with Brian's fans - and other
surprises. The new website will launch with an exciting contest that
we're working on. We'll add more info as we go prior to the launch.
Let us know what you'd like to see with the new website - we'll be
reading the board for your comments

See you soon!

The Beach Boys' dark underbelly
August 7, 2008 4:18 p.m. by Jim Allen

How many degrees of separation are there between the most
squeaky-clean, all-American band of the 20th century and one of
the most depraved, evil, psychopathic killers of all time? Zero.
This fact and others are amply underlined on the new DVD The
Beach Boys and the Satan, set for release on September 30.

Originally seen on German television, it details the way in
which Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson got mixed up in Charles
Manson's world and wound up bringing him into the Beach Boys
circle (they even recorded one of his songs) in the days before
Manson's homicidal tendencies went public.

It also unveils Brian Wilson's involvement with notorious
Satanist Anton LaVey, though unfortunately, no LaVey tunes ever
made their way into the band's repertoire. It all sounds
perfectly juicy, but we just have one thought: wouldn't it have
been much simpler to make a film about the evil side of the
Beach Boys by simply following Mike Love around for a few days?
[Aversion]
Posted in: BEACH BOYS

http://www.prefixma g.com/news/ the-beach- boys-dark- underbelly/
20512/

Film Explores Beach Boys' Evil Side
Aug 07, 2008

When the Beach Boys weren't busy confronting the evil that was
Murray Wilson, they were flirting with dudes whose souls were
almost as black: Charles Manson and Anton Le Vay.

Beach Boys and the Satan gets past the white-bread image of sun
and surf pop music so associated with The Beach Boys to look at
the dark undercurrents that surrounded the band in the late
'60s. Drummer Dennis Wilson's brief pre-massacre fling with
Manson's Family and front man Brian Wilson's flirtations with Le
Vay and Kenneth Anger are explored in the hour-long video.

Originally produced for German television, the film features
interviews with Brian Wilson, Don Was and Anger. It arrives in
stores Sept. 30 from Zeit1.

http://www.aversion.com/news/news_artic ... s_id=11161

If you missed Orange Crate Art the first time around, Rhino is going to reissue it now.

Just posted this upstairs, but should add it to our official BBs thread here too ~ I had no idea that Brian had ever performed with Mike Love's Celebration!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wftYCgkwrUw[/youtube]

The five surviving Beach Boys get together on the rooftop of the Capitol Records tower to receive their platinum record awards for sales of two million units of the "Sounds of Summer" comp, 6 13 2006. A proper reunion is mooted.

I corrected the previous post to 2006, here's a 2005 reunion of Mike Love, Glen Campbell, and Bruce Johnston. I wonder if Glen and Bruce ever shared the same stage before as Beach Boys, Bruce was Glen's replacement in The Beach Boys.

Comprehensive Beach Boys discography at this site, including a vital list of "odds and ends" for those of us who are completists:

http://www.btinternet.com/~bellagio

Imagine a full Beach Boys reunion with all seven surviving Beach Boys, eight if you count Glen Campbell. Justyn Wilson or Jeffrey Foskett can do Carl's vocals maybe, and John Stamos can do Dennis' vocals. Or maybe get Christopher Cross to do Carl's vocals.

Brian Wilson (vocals plus a little bass)
Mike Love (vocals, tambourine, theremin)
Al Jardine (vocals, guitar)
Bruce Johnston (vocals, keyboards)
David Marks (vocals, guitar)
Blondie Chaplin (vocals, guitar)
Ricky Fataar (vocals, drums)
Glen Campbell (vocals, bass?, guitar)

John Stamos (vocals)
Adrian Baker (vocals)
Mike Kowalski (drums)
Billy Hinsche (keyboards)
Darryl "Captain" Dragon (keyboards)
Jeffrey Foskett (vocals, guitar)

Say, that's fourteen Beach Boys on stage! They could play the stadiums with that line-up!

4th of July Concert in Washington D.C., where they once played for an audience of 500,000, I think.[lilred][/lilred]

Mike is wrong about Beach Boys being so exclusive a harmony band. Millennium, Association, Free Design, Spanky & our Gang, need I go on?

from http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs ... /907160311

Beach Boys singer still riding wave
Love: New songs could come soon

By MELANIE PLENDA For the Monitor

July 16, 2009 - 11:26 am

While the upcoming Beach Boys show at Hampton Beach will feature mostly classics, lead singer Mike Love is not ruling out the possibility of some new music in the next few years.

Though bandmates Al Jardine and Brian Wilson no longer tour with Love and Bruce Johnston, Love said in an interview yesterday, there has been talk of a reunion of sorts.

"There's been some dialogue (about new material) between us," Love said. "In a couple of years it will be our 50th anniversary as a band, and I think it would be really cool if we all did something together to mark that."

In the meantime, Love, Johnston and backing members are making a stop at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on Wednesday. Love said Hampton audiences can expect to hear all the band's original hits, from "Surfin' Safari" to their 1988 hit "Kokomo."

The band will also throw in a few more recent songs such as one that Love wrote and recorded for the Beach Boys compilation of summer love songs called "Cool Head, Warm Heart," as well as at least one lesser known doo-wop song the Beach Boys recorded on their first album.

Though other surviving original members Wilson and Jardine will not be joining them on the tour, it's not for lack of love between the band members, despite several lawsuits between the mates over the past several years.

"I think (our relationship) is pretty darn good," he said. " . . . We haven't really done anything together in the past several years, but there's no law against it. The lawsuits were an issue, but they are all resolved now, and there's no reason other than conflicting schedules for us not to get together.

"As far as my feelings for Brian, we go back so far, and I feel like our chemistry together is very good. I really have an enjoyable time whenever we get together."

Regardless of the changes though, Love said that the Beach Boys are still relevant even nearly a half century later and pointed to the Beach Boys hit, "Wouldn't it be Nice," which found a resurgence in popularity a few years ago when it was featured in the film 50 First Dates.

"It's a song about young people who are attracted to one another, who wish that they were older so they could spend the night together," he said. "That's a theme that is age appropriate for whatever age you are. For adults, it's nostalgic. For children, teens, pre-teens, it's right on for how they feel. . . Plus the harmonies just make you feel good."

Despite a resurgence of sorts for surf music in the past decade, Love contends there still aren't many, if any, bands out there doing what the Beach Boys set out to do so many years ago. The reason, he said, is their signature four-part harmonies.

"We are kind of our own genre," he said. "There are great musicians and great art out there and there always will be, but I don't think that anyone else has done what we have (with harmonies) The Beach Boys kind of stand alone there."

The 68-year-old Love, who's been doing at least 150 shows a year for the past 45 years, quickly dismisses the idea of retirement.

"The audience is everything," Love said. "It's really amazing when you look out at the audience and you see a child singing "409," which was on the flip side of a single released in 1961. It's pretty remarkable.

One Love!

Lovely Beach Boys poster from 1978:

Same set list as in Gothenburg, and what a mighty set list!

Doesn't Brian look great in the photo that Linda posted from NME? God Bless him, you STILL can see the inner child in him.

Rick A.

seen on ebay: