Beach Boys Backing Tracks: putting the pieces together

Hi, this is my first blog entry on my new Blog. I plan to write on music I love. Hope you enjoy it. 

On Which Album did the Beach Boys start using the Wrecking Crew, and when did they go back to playing on their albums themselves? 

The simple answer would be that they started regularly using the Wrecking Crew on 1965′'s Today and started playing for themselves again on 1967’s Smiley Smile.

But with the Beach Boys nothing is ever that simple, actually. They started using session players earlier than 1965 and they continued to use the Wrecking Crew sometimes after 1967; while in the 65–66 period, the Beach Boys continued to play on some of their records.

Also there were members of the Beach Boys touring band in the late sixties and seventies who were de facto members of the band but not official who also played on their records alongside the official share-holding members. Which must have seemed pretty normal for all involved but is confusing when you are trying to figure it all out fifty years later.

The incredible complexity of the Beach Boys story is hard to unravel, so this will be a long post, and, upon looking back at what I've written,  a bit academic. Way to start a new blog, Lance!
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Beach Boys’ music can be split into phases:

• The early “surf and turf” phase
• , the mid-sixties "baroque” period,
• the “indie rock” phase of 67–70,
• the “classic rock”phase of 71–74
• the “last artistic gasp”period of 75–79
• the Endless Summer irrelevant nostalgia band of the eighties and nineties and 00’s (and today)
• and the “last album and tour ” period of 2012–13.

First the “Surf and Turf” phase. 1961–1964.

This is the phase that all Americans know, the songs we have all heard so many times we really never have to hear them again. "
Surfin’ Safari”, "Surfin’ USA," "Surfer Girl," "Shut Down", "Little Deuce Coupe", "In My Room", "Catch a Wave"….all the way up to and including All Summer Long album and the “Dance Dance Dance” single in late 1964.

On all of that stuff, you can pretty much bet that the Beach Boys ( Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, along with Alan Jardine and/or David Marks — but not Mike Love, other than a couple of tracks) played on every song.

Now, what few people seem to know is that concurrently to the Beach Boys’ career, Brian Wilson had another career as a producer for Capitol Records. That was part of the Beach Boys’ record deal: that Brian Wilson be allowed to produce other artists.

He wrote and produced a couple of dozen singles (at least) by a variety of artists (including one of Glen Campbell’s earliest singles). None of the singles really hit big but they are all big, dumb, fun early sixties pop stuff and worth hearing if you like that kind of thing.

(“Thinkin’ ’Bout You Baby/Story of My Life” by Sharon Marie is probably the best of these singles along with Campbell’s “Guess I’m Dumb" (which features the Wrecking Crew plus Brian Wilson on piano and Carl Wilson on guitar.)

For these extra-Beach Boys singles, Brian Wilson used the Beach Boys as a backing band for the singers he was producing at first; but he very quickly discovered the joys of working with the Wrecking Crew. They picked things up faster than his brothers and friends in the band; which made things cheaper and slowly but surely he started turning to them more.

Most of the Beach Boys’ records were recorded on 3 track, with occassional 4-track studios being used. He could have gone the route of George Martin in the UK and just overdubbed things, boucing them down, but in order to get the massive echoey Phil Spector sound he craved, he needed to have lots of music playing at once so he could record the echo of it all. It’s not that he didn’t do overdubs: he did. But he typically liked recording with big groups.

So gradually he started augmenting the band with session players: not replacing them, but adding more players. At first saxophone players or additional percussionists or flute players but eventually, by late 1964, he would be recording with the band + some members of the Wrecking Crew.

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In the 1961–1963 period all of the Beach Boy backing tracks were played by the Beach Boys:

• Brian Wilson: piano, organ (and other keyboard-type instruments like chimes or xylophone) and bass guitar, occasional drums live numbers which Dennis sang lead)
• Carl Wilson: lead and rhythm guitars or bass guitar
• David Marks: rhythm guitar or bass guitar eventually replaced by
• Alan Jardine: bass guitar and occasional rhythm guitar (he played strictly rhythm guitar live after he joined hte band; in early 1963 he played bass live occasionally as a replacement for the sometimes absent Brian Wilson)
• Dennis Wilson: drums

• On “Surfin’ USA” the drums were played by Frankie DeVito, who consciously imitated Dennis Wilson’s brutal, pounding style. Dennis had sprained his ankle and was unable to play.
• “Our Car Club” features drums by Hal Blaine: Dennis might be playing too, but the main drum part is by Hal Blaine. There are also a couple of Saxophonists on that.
• “In My Room” and “Catch A Wave” feature a harp play by Mike Love’s sister, Maureen Love.
• “Hawaii” — Hal Plane plays some additional percussion. (the fast "swishing” parts.)
• “Be True to You School” has a couple of tenor/baritone saxes, a flute and most likely some extra snare drummers to give it that “marching band” sound.
• There are strings overdubbed on “Surfer Moon”.

From 1964 things start getting more complicated and Wilson started adding more and more session members on top of the Beach Boys, who continued playing on the record. (Exeption being side two of the Christmas album which is traditional pop arranged my Nelson Riddle.)

Still on most of those songs in 1964 it was mainly the four Beach Boys playing, usually with a couple of saxophonists (Wilson liked big fat beefy saxes playing root notes in the background on his records ) and with Hal Blaine on additional percussion.

But on the big singles of 1964: “Fun, Fun, Fun”, “I Get Around” and “Dance Dance Dance” he would add sometimes up five or six session players playing in addition to the four Beach Boys.

“Dance Dance Dance” from late 1964 is an example. ON “Dance Dance Dance” the studio line up was:

• Carl Wilson: lead 12-string guitar
• Al Jardine: rhythm guitar
• Brian Wilson: bass guitar
• Dennis Wilson Drums.
• Bruce Johnston: celeste (he was not officially a member, yet)

But there is a LOT going on in that record, which is very dynamic and features a weird, mad key change in the middle of the third verse.
 In addition to the Beach Boys (above) there was:

• Hal Blaine (various percussion instruments)
• Glen Campbell: Acoustic guitar (playing Carl Wilson’s chugging riff a third or a fifth higher)
• Ray Pohlman: additional bass guitar, probably playing the riff with Carl and Campbell
• Carl Fortina: accordion
• Jay Migliori: baritone sax
• Steve Douglas: tenor sax
• (perhaps) Bruce Johnston: additional percussion.

So that is the four instrument-playing Beach Boys playing with 6 members of The Wrecking Crew plus Bruce Johnston. (Who was a Columbia records producer and keyboardist who produced many “surf” records and eventually joined the Beach Boys on bass and keyboards.)

(An instrumental track of this has been released, but I can't find it on YouTube.)

he Baroque Phase

1965 was a real turning point in the Beach Boy’s career. The ever nervous and stage-shy Brian Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown from all the work he was doing and he retired from touring to make records full time…while the Beach Boys continued playing concerts without him, replacing him with Bruce Johnston in concert, who also played and sang on the albums and eventually became a share-holding member of the band.

This way the band could be making thousands of dollars per concert, thus paying for the production of the records, which were also becoming increasingly expensive to make; and maintain the lifestyle that had gotten used to from a very young age.

You can kind of count on the fact that anything recorded in 1965 or 1966 was the Wrecking Crew…That includes about half of the Today! , most of the Summer Days (and Summer Nights!”) album, all but one song of Pet Sounds and the unfinished SMiLE.

However, confoundingly, Brian Wilson still continued using the Beach Boys on some tracks, when they were available and in town. And even more confoundingly, even on tracks where it was mainly the Wrecking Crew playing, Carl and/or Brian Wilson still often played on those records, especially Carl Wilson, who usually sat in the production booth with his guitar directly plugged into the mixing board to give it a “direct” sound. Carl seems to have been a bit of an uncredited “apprentice producer" — like Brian Wilson he had perfect pitch and a fine-tuned ear so he could give feedback to Brian while playing next to him.

Songs from this period that feature the all or most of the band (now augmented with Bruce Johnston) include:

• Then I Kissed Her.
• Girl Don’t Tell Me.
• You’re So Good For Me. (above three from Summer Days)
• That’s Not Me from Pet sounds. (Carl on 12-string guitar and bass, Brian on organ, Dennis Wilson on drums, a couple of additional percussionists who may or may not have been band members. (Bruce Johnston says he did not play on this one, though.)

he entirety of the acoustic, live-in-the-studio Party! album was played by the Beach Boys, though Hal Blaine played percussion on it so Dennis could sing.

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The Indie Phase:

In 1967, the Beach Boys had a then state-of-the-art studio built in Brian Wilson’s living room. Designed by Beach Boys engineer (and sound genius) Stephen Desper, it allowed the Beach Boys to record music practically for free. At this point, the other Beach Boys started contributing more to writing and producing the records on their own, with Brian Wilson wandering down from his bedroom to suggest bits or do a bit of arrangement and production and then leaving his brother Carl to finish the records off.

Most of the songs from this period (Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, 20/20 andSunflower feature the Beach Boys and only the Beach Boys.

For example:

The lineup on the number above, "I Can Hear Music" is likely:

Carl Wilson: on acoustic guitar.

Alan Jardine: on acoustic guitar and/or bass.

Bruce Johnston: on guitar and/or bass.

Dennis Wilson:  on drums.

Tambourine Unknown.

But, on records on which Brian Wilson was the exclusive producer (i no matter what the credit read), especially most of his songs off Friends, he continued to use the Wrecking Crew, although the music he made with them at this point was quieter and gentler compared to the bombastic sounds of the mid-sixties.

This song that follows, Busy Doing Nothing, a sort of joke about his public imagine , is basically a Brian Wilson solo track (the only other vocal is his wife, Marilyn Wilson) features the Record Crew. Other songs on the album are played by the Beach Boys OR the Wrecking Crew. (The track above has pieces edited out, sadly.)

On other tracks from this era,( usually produced by Carl Wilson with Bruce Johnston, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Dennis Wilson and concert sideman Darryl Dragon all contributing)  the other five Beach Boys played with some of their live band occasionally augmenting, though Bruce Johnston seems to have also used the Wrecking Crew sometimes for his songs, especially "Disney Girls."

This is a good example: Slip on Through. It uses the Beach Boys plus a few members of their touring band, produced by Carl, Dennis, and Brian Wilson. There is a backing track out there. It’s on my hard drive, but I couldn’t find it on Youtube…not the version I want, anyway.

The Classic Rock phase:

aka The Era of the Big Beard.

This songs from this short phase seems to have been played almost entirely by the Beach Boys (who added South African musicians Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin to the lineup) with some support from Darryl Dragon and Dennis Dragon and a few others from their touring band. The Wrecking Crew was rarely, if ever used in recordings from these years.

Most of the Carl and the Passions and Holland albums seemed to have been played by exclusively by  Carl Wilson, Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin. This is the backing track of “Sail On, Sailor” played by those three band members.

The Artistic Last Gasp phase: This phase saw the band continuing to play on their records, along with members of their touring band as back up.

By this point it’s probably useful to look at the studio band as having developed into a group of producer/singers working together rather than a band in the classic mold. They produced the songs that they had written themselves, maybe with the input of one or two others and they would use themselves and session players to make the backing tracks: in effect, they had all become sort of mini-Brian Wilsons (with Dennis, Carl and Bruce being the most consistently talented producers.) Their music at this time had progressed, at its best, to a mellow soft rock sound…and at it’s worst, to a transparent attempt to recapture the joy and commercial success of the early "surf ’n’ turf" sound. Here’s an example of the former. Dennis, Carl and Bruce are probably the only Beach Boys on this Carl Wilson -penned and -produced track, with members of their touring band helping out.

And then there was Love You. The entire Love You album was played almost entirely by a briefly resurgent Brian Wilson, with a little guitar and drums added by Carl and Dennis. Weird stuff.

In the end, the Beach Boys seemed to have a very open approach to making music: capable of playing many of their tracks themselves, but utilizing other musicians freely. There are a lot of myths about hte Beach Boys, including the pervasive one that the Beach Boys played on none of their records and were, instead, merely a vocal band sock-puppeted by Brian Wilson. It's a simple narrative, and thus popular: but not true. The truth, as is so often the case,  is far more interesting.