All these competing Svengalis! They’re going to have to go to Family Court to fight over custody of Wilson’s talent.
Yeah, Landy was who I was thinking of.
Landy’s been out of the picture for some time now. Melinda Wilson is pretty much the person “in charge” of Wilson’s life, and has been for about 10 years or so.
I meant Landy was supposedly the wedge that originally divided Brian and Mike.
If you listen to their earliest records from 1963-1964, they’re all playing. Think of the drumming patterns in “Surfin’”, “Surfin’ USA”, “In My Room”, “I Get Around” and “Surfin’ Safari”. That’s Dennis. That’s the sum total of what Dennis knew how to do on a drum kit. It was about May of 1964 that Brian started using The Wrecking Crew. On songs like “All Summer Long” and “Little Honda”, some of their first work with Brian, the texture of the sound changes. Now they have a xylophonist, a sax section, percussionists, more than one keyboardist, and the drums become a centerpiece of the recordings. That’s Hal Blaine. If you don’t hear a hi-hat or cymbal crashes, it’s Hal. If you hear stuff that you wouldn’t have thought to play if you were drumming on the session, it’s Hal.
That was before Brian had his nervous breakdown, but he still hated touring. They could definitely rock when they were on, but this was winding down to the end of TBB as a unit. After the breakdown, Brian went off the road for good (so he said). He stayed home and worked at Western with TWC. To replace Brian, they first hired Glen Campbell, then his star began to rise; he left and they hired Bruce Johnston. The group learned the records and took their versions on the road.
If you could only hear the concert recordings they made in 1967-1969, and compare the musicianship to other groups on the concert scene at the same time,
The Beach Boys were severely outclassed by just about everybody. They could not replicate the sound of their records. You can’t emulate a 15-piece band overdubbed several times, and The Beach Boys singing multiple tracks of harmonies with just five guys live on a stage. It could not come out any other way but lame. In their defense, these guys could sing! They may have been emulating '50s harmony groups when they started out, but by gawd, they turned singing on tape into a higher art form that few people have ever been able to copy. (Todd Rundgren was one who could.)
Actually in the 1976 concert DVD I thought they did a good job on their more recent songs like Good Vibrations, God Only Knows, and Sloop John B. But they were truly appaling when trying to sing their early hits like Surfin’ USA, Fun Fun Fun, and most especially I Get Around. Mike Love’s lead vocals were sloppy. It seemed like he really didn’t care - he was more pre-occupied with prancing around the stage pretending to be Mick Jagger. And they seemed to use every session musician very heavily on what were supposed to be simple songs.
I first watched the 1976 concert after having been impressed with their 1964 ‘Lost Concert’. It opened with a barely recognisable version of Fun, Fun Fun. My first thought on hearing it was ‘what the hell is that?’.
It was just a complete mess.