The Beach Boys.

[Mook]

Do you mean the serial killer, Charles Manson? Or is there another guy with this name with a more gentle lifestyle?

The serial killer, him and his 'family' lived with Dennis Wilson for a period.

[VladimirIlyich]

The serial killer, him and his 'family' lived with Dennis Wilson for a period.

Didnt they live in a house they owned before they moved on,or were evicted or something?

[Mook]

Didnt they live in a house they owned before they moved on,or were evicted or something?

I think they all stayed in his house and lived off his money for a few months before they fell out.

[cloggypop]

Pet Sounds is one of the finest albums of all time. If Forever Changes didn't exist it may even be the finest.

[Pureblood]

Hidden gemtastic.

 

[Pureblood]

Best live version.

 

[Mook]

Hidden gemtastic.

 

I need to get that album, 'been after it for ages.

[Pureblood]

That's by far the best song on it.  I had a copy on vinyl but flogged it.

[Pureblood]

The Beach Boys meets Sub Pop.

 

 

[Mook]

That's by far the best song on it. I had a copy on vinyl but flogged it.

You can get the CD as a twofer with the next album, Holland. They've been on my to do list for ages.

 

I still reckon 'A Day in the Life of a Tree' on Surfs Up is one of the most underrated songs ever written.

[Pureblood]

I will check it out and report back.

[stringvest]

The BB were fab.  God Only Knows has every right to be regarded as the most beautiful pop song of all time, and you could make a 40 track playlist without a dud on it.

 

Here's my current obsession covering one of my favourite BB tracks.  

 

[Mook]

Our Prayer from 20/20 is like having some sort of religious experience, just an acapella track with no words as well.

 

Stupid levels of genius going on there & I don't use that word lightly.

[Pureblood]

I will check it out and report back.

 

Got something in my eye...

[Mook]

Got something in my eye...

It's a mad one eh, quite lo fi for Brian Wilson but when it kicks in at the end... Imagine writing a song like that about being a tree.

 

Apparently it's one of Neil Young's favourite songs.

[Pureblood]

 

 

It's a mad one eh, quite lo fi for Brian Wilson but when it kicks in at the end... Imagine writing a song like that about being a tree.

Apparently it's one of Neil Young's favourite songs.

 

It's very "of its time".  They don't make 'em like that anymore etc.

[Mook]

[Mook]

Managed to pick this live album up at the weekend, which I've been after for ages. Recorded in 1973, it's got a storming set list & after years of thinking that Beach Boys live albums would be crap I've been more than surprised with this effort. My only complaint is it could've done with one or two lead vocals from Dennis.

 

[Mook]

How good is this tune? The Beach Boys go prog...

 

 

 

[Paul]

On 6/9/2017 at 5:21 PM, Mook said:

The serial killer, him and his 'family' lived with Dennis Wilson for a period.

Look At Your Game Girl by him is amazing. 

[magicrat]

7 hours ago, Mook said:

How good is this tune? The Beach Boys go prog...

 

 

 

Bought Holland back in the seventies and played it incessantly . Great album

[Mook]

 

 

 

[Mook]

Loving this tune today...

 

 

 

[Pidge]

Took my Dad and rest of my family to see Wilson & Co play pet sounds at Glastonbury Abbey a couple of years ago.  Possibly the most middle class gig experience I've ever had, but they were excellent. The old man loved it too.  Always been his favourite band.

[Sugar Ape]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/22/beach-boys-dennis-wilson-buried-at-sea-ronald-reagan-help?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Pacific Ocean coup: how Ronald Reagan helped bury a Beach Boy at sea 

 

The US president had promised the band that if they ever needed his help, he would be on hand. So when Dennis Wilson died, he started making some calls

 

Minutes after sunset on 4 January 1984, the body of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilsonentered the Pacific Ocean from the deck of a US Coast Guard ship.

 

For civilians, burials at sea happen only with approval from a vice admiral or higher authority. That authority, in Wilson’s case, was also one of the biggest Beach Boys fans in America: the former California governor and then US president Ronald Reagan. His intervention appears to be the only time a president ever waded into funereal matters, and now, for the first time, unpublished records obtained from the Reagan Library, the National Archives and the Coast Guard provide a glimpse into the president’s unprecedented overture.

 

As the band’s lone surfer, Wilson in his prime had embodied the spirit of the California coast on some of the biggest hits of the 60s. He was also the first Beach Boy to release his own album. In 1977, Pacific Ocean Blue traded upbeat surf-pop for haunting, gospel-tinged ballads – and it became a cult masterpiece following Wilson’s drowning in 1983. A reworked version of an instrumental track from the album, Holy Man, was released on Record Store Day last month. In the vault since 2009, the song features Foo Fightersdrummer Taylor Hawkins singing over Wilson’s piano, with guitar and drums by Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen. Their reinterpretation is a “magnificent contribution” to Wilson’s legacy, says executive producer Jim Guercio.

 

Reagan’s contribution to that legacy dates to April 1983, eight months before Wilson’s death. The Beach Boys had traditionally headlined 4 July celebrations on the National Mall in Washington DC, until interior secretary James Watt banned rock groups from performing that year. Claiming the Beach Boys attracted “the wrong element” to the event, Watt recruited crooner Wayne Newton to perform instead. The decision triggered a wave of bitter protest among fans and those closest to the president – including first lady Nancy Reagan, who phoned the band to apologise.

 

Two months later, the Reagans invited the Beach Boys to play a Special Olympics benefit at the White House. They raised $300,000 for the organisation, records show. Following the concert, Reagan offered more than his thanks. “The president said, ‘If there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know,’” says Beach Boys guitarist Al Jardine in a phone interview.

 

Six months later, Wilson was dead. At 39, drug and alcohol addiction had consumed him; both were reported in his system when he drowned three days after Christmas. “It was just a few days before he was supposed to get involved with some serious rehabilitation,” says Gregg Jakobson, Wilson’s co-writer and producer. “And he never made it.”

 

That afternoon, Reagan was at home for the holidays in California, taping his annual New Year’s Eve radio address. When he learned of Wilson’s accident, “the president requested that we do whatever was possible for the family”, Craig Fuller, assistant for cabinet affairs, wrote to a constituent.

 

So, when Wilson’s wife and mother requested the burial, a plan was immediately set in motion. “The president and Mrs Reagan asked us to help the family achieve their goal as rapidly as possible,” recalls Fuller today. His cabinet affairs staff accomplished the task in one week. First, the Coast Guard was contacted for “discreet research of facts”, according to an internal memo. Then the department of transportation formally asked top officers at the 11th Coast Guard District in Long Beach, California, to proceed with the burial.

 

On New Year’s Eve, Commander Jack Stumpff was on call when he received a rare Saturday page. “We seldom got calls after hours for administrative matters,” says Stumpff. He was directed to contact Fuller, who was travelling with the president. “I called and was given the assignment to bury Dennis Wilson.”

 

“It was very out of the ordinary,” remembers Gill Goodman, the base commanding officer in San Pedro. He inspected Point Judith, the 82ft patrol boat assigned to the burial. Goodman was direct with the vessel’s commanding officer: “Don’t screw this up.”

 

The following Wednesday afternoon, the Pacific was calm and visibility was good. Point Judith’s crew of 17 picked up Wilson’s family at Marina del Rey, where he had been diving from a boat slip the previous week. Aboard the ship were three of his children, his wife of five months, Shawn Love, and his younger brother, Carl Wilson. The ship travelled for 45 minutes before reaching international waters 600ft deep – the minimum that US federal law requires for full-body burials.

 

“All I could visualise was my dad’s body disappearing into the water forever,” Wilson’s son Scott wrote in a 2016 memoir.

 

Brian Wilson, who did not attend the ceremony, told the Guardian in 2002 that his younger brother’s burial “seemed wrong to me”. People magazine reported that the arrangement had also upset Carl, who wanted him buried next to their father in Inglewood, near where the boys grew up. But Love insisted her late husband had wanted otherwise.

 

“Wherever he is,” she once said, “I know he’ll be glad that we’re doing it.”

 

Letters of appreciation from the White House later commended the Coast Guard for its “outstanding performance on very short notice”. But not everyone in uniform supported Reagan’s involvement.

 

“This ranks a close second to President Carter’s granting of amnesty to draft dodgers of the Vietnam era,” a retired air force major argued in a letter to his congressman. “Wilson was not worthy of this honour.”

 

“The accidental and untimely death of Dennis Wilson came as a saddening shock to the President and Mrs Reagan,” W Dennis Thomas, deputy assistant for legislative affairs, responded by mail. “The Coast Guard was able to accommodate the request; they were not ordered to do so.”

 

The California connection that first united the Beach Boys and the president began with his 1981 inauguration, and persisted long after Reagan’s death. On what would have been his 100th birthday, in 2011, the surviving group members reunited with the first lady to honour the man who had helped the consummate Beach Boy realise his dream of retiring eternally to the Pacific.

 

“The entire career of the Beach Boys is engulfed by Dennis’s love of the ocean,” Jardine says. “And it was only fitting that he return to the ocean.”