BEFORE: Let's check the scoreboard, David Letterman has been in the most docs so far this year (8), but he's still in second place overall. Right behind him with 7 doc appearances is Johnny Carson, then there's Stephen Colbert, Elton John, John Lennon and Paul McCartney with 5, and Dick Cavett, Carrie Fisher, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Donald Trump with 4. All other Presidents, talk show hosts and Rolling Stones are lagging behind with 3 each.
Janis Joplin carries over from "Love to Love You, Donna Summer" via archive footage.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road" (Movie # 4,193)
THE PLOT: A celebration of the legendary band that revolutionized pop music and created the harmonious sound that personified the California Dream.
AFTER: I've watched a few docs in previous years that had the Beach Boys in them, like "The Making of Pet Sounds" and the one about Brian Wilson, but so far there hasn't been THE definitive documentary about the band. So when I heard there was a new one available on Disney Plus, I thought "Well, sure" and "Really, it's about time..." and "Which two films in my documentary chain will this fit between, without me disassembling it?" Maybe finally I'll learn who this Al Jardine fellow is and how he hooked up with the Wilson Brothers.
Well, in terms of personnel, I got so much more than I bargained for - it turns out there were a bunch of Beach Boys that I never knew about - the band changes never quite matched the number of replaced "Spinal Tap" drummers, but there were at least four I'd never heard of. David Marks? Who's that? Oh, he was in the band for two years when Al Jardine decided maybe he should finish college before going out on tour. Bruce Johnston? Who's that? Oh, he replaced Brian Wilson on stage when Brian decided he just wanted to produce the albums and also never leave his house ever again. But Bruce blended right in, he fit the costume on stage and more importantly, didn't call attention to himself, he just sang the high parts, played the bass and cashed his check each week.
But then there's Blondie Chaplin and Rikki Fataar - what? Two musicians of color who were from South Africa, when did THEY join the group? I thought the band was just white surfer dudes from California, that was kind of their whole schtick, wasn't it? Well, from 1972 and 1973 the band tried something a little different, tried for a more adult sound or fell in love with world rhythms, or something. Also they couldn't get Brian Wilson out of bed and even the hired gun, Bruce Johnston, had quit the band. Blondie was the lead singer on "Sail On, Sailor" if that helps - but then after quitting the Beach Boys in 1973 he made a whole career out of quitting many other bands, like the Rolling Stones and The Band. Really, he and Rikki are the Beach Boys that nobody seems to talk about.
And for one brief two-week period in 1968, cult leader Charles Manson actually played tambourine for the Beach Boys on tour, and nobody even noticed. I'm kidding, but hey, funny story, drummer Dennis Wilson met a couple of Manson's followers and they seemed very friendly to him, so he made a connection with Manson, who fancied himself a songwriter, or at least a poet. The Beach Boys rewrote one of his songs and called it "Never Learn Not to Love", and it was released as a B-side to "Bluebirds Over the Mountain", because it was exactly the right length, and also Brian was still in bed and couldn't get up to arrange music that year.
Really, I'm surprised that this doc included the Manson connection, because this film generally paints a very rosy picture of the Beach Boys career, except for this and when they had to fire Murry Wilson, father of 3 Beach Boys, as their manager. Awkward... And then Murry cashed in and sold the publishing rights to their whole catalog of songs, without telling them he was going to do that - he screwed Mike Love out of some money by not crediting him for the songs that Mike co-wrote with Brian. Oh, but Charlie Manson still got a royalty check every month, you can believe that. You didn't want to make Manson mad by stiffing him on music royalties...
The film also sweeps a lot under the rug regarding Brian Wilson - musical genius, for sure, there's no disputing that. You don't arrange and produce "Good Vibrations" or "Wouldn't It Be Nice" or even "Sloop John B" without being a good producer, and a master of your craft. I used to arrange music for a cappella groups, that was very difficult, and no instruments were even involved. But Brian also had a lot of problems, anxieties and sure, substances were involved, but if you believe this documentary, then he took LSD maybe once and that was just to open up his creative mindflow. Nah, he didn't have a drug problem, what's that?
It's kind of a shame, for several reasons - the whole American culture changed during the 1960's, and while the Beach Boys were at the forefront of new American surf rock in 1962, by the end of the decade the counter-culture had taken over, you had Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, drugs were all over and protests were fashionable, and the hippies were poised to take over, but the Beach Boys just kept being the Beach Boys - respectable men with nice haircuts and matching uniforms who sang about sun and sand and surfing, and oh, God, we really missed the boat on this new rock thing, didn't we? The band hired a new manager who got them booked in a guest spot at a Dead concert, but it was really too late. The band remained uncool for the next decade until they were so uncool that they somehow became cool again. Or maybe people straightened out and sobered up and wanted to hear those songs again that they liked when they were younger.
But somehow that happened, by 1974 they were the number one touring act in the U.S. again, probably because their record company released a compilation of their Greatest Hits, and the Beach Boys went from opening for Crosby, Stills Nash & Young to co-headlining a tour with Chicago. And people wanted to hear the early hits, because they were evergreen, like summer itself, and fans wanted to go to see them in Central Park, Giants Stadium, or anywhere sunny, really. But then Brian fell under the care of a psychologist / personal guru / scam artist whose solution to keeping him drug-free was to keep him from leaving his house, which also had kind of been the problem for the last few years, but Brian was happy to keep on doing that.
I'm still left with one big question after watching this documentary, because I've watched those other docs and also, I know stuff. The documentary called "The Wrecking Crew" went into great detail about how the Beach Boys didn't play instruments on their own records, they just sang vocals, and the music was arranged by Brian Wilson and performed by studio musicians, those known collectively as the Wrecking Crew. So it almost seems like this doc went out of its way to explain that process, because finding out that the Beach Boys didn't play on their records is maybe kind of a big deal, like Milli Vanilli got kicked out of the record industry when it was revealed they were just front-men, who couldn't sing at all.
But wait, this new Disney doc tries to explain it all by focusing on Brian and his desire to NOT tour with the band, but to stay in Los Angeles instead and work on song-writing, arranging, and producing the albums. So it was maybe just a timing thing, he'd compose and write and arrange while the band was out on tour, and then the band members would learn the songs and record the vocals when they were back in town, that way there wouldn't be like a whole year of down time between the tours, during which most bands are in the studio recording. But I still have questions - like I know the band's been around since 1961, and that's a lot of time that they could have spent learning to play their own music. But, did they?
Like, if you went to an early Beach Boys concert, say in 1964 or 1965, were they any good on stage? It seems like they faced the same problem as the Beatles did, that the songs were getting so complex that they couldn't perform then on stage. Now, the Beatles solved this problem by just never touring again after 1966, but the Beach Boys kept going out on tour. We know that the music on the records was performed by professional musicians, and then the famous Beach Boys would have to learn the music to play it on stage - but, come on, how good were they? Were the live concerts half as good as the records? A third? A tenth?
The doc doesn't help me understand this, because there's no sound from the concert footage - every time they show an older Beach Boys concert, there's narration, I can't hear the music. Oh, sure, there's plenty of footage of the band performing on American Bandstand or similar shows, but we know that those could have been lip-synched, many bands on those shows were only pretending to sing and play along with a track, which was, duh, the record that they wanted everyone to go out and buy. So I really want to know if the early Beach Boys concerts sounded anything at all like their records. Supposedly there were so many young girls screaming at these shows that it maybe didn't matter, but I still want to know if you bought a concert ticket back then, did you get your money's worth?
Look, I'm sure that over time and with practice these guys became fine concert performers, but if they couldn't re-create the sound from those well-produced records, then there's something hinky that went on, some form of fraud perhaps. I'll have to try to find a live Beach Boys concert from 1964 or 1965 to investigate further. But Wikipedia mentions that between 1965 and 1967, there was a huge difference in sound between their albums and their stage performances. When the band toured Europe in 1967, they wanted to bring four extra musicians from the U.S., but the British musicians' union wouldn't allow it. Critics then described their performances on that tour as "amateurish" and "floundering". So yeah, I think I'm on to something here.
The "story" of the Beach Boys is really only half-told here, though, because the narrative really ends with the band's resurgence in popularity in the mid 1970's. The late 70's were very turbulent, though, with the band split into two camps with Dennis and Carl on one side, Mike and Al on the other, and Brian caught in the middle. Then at a show at Wembley Stadium, Mike attacked Brian with a piano bench in front of 15,000 people. And then after Carl died in 1998, there were different groups touring as the Beach Boys, and lawsuits over which musicians got to perform under that name, and so on. Relationships were tense until 2011 when the band got back together for their 50th Anniversary tour, only to start fighting again.
Let's keep it real, that's all I ask. Don't tell me there's no trouble in paradise when that's clearly not the case.
Also starring Al Jardine (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Mike Love (ditto), Brian Wilson (ditto), Hal Blaine (ditto), Blondie Chaplin (ditto), Don Was (ditto), Bruce Johnston, David Marks, Lindsey Buckingham (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?"), Carol Kaye (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Don Randi (ditto), Josh Kun, Janelle Monáe (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Ryan Tedder, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford
with archive footage of Tony Asher, Frankie Avalon (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Chuck Berry (ditto), Jack Benny (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), the Byrds, Glen Campbell (last seen in "Albert Brooks; Defending My Life"), Dick Clark (last seen in "McEnroe"), Nat "King" Cole (last seen in 'Listening to Kenny G"), Dick Dale, Roger Daltrey (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Pete Townshend (ditto), Doris Day (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Belushi"), Keith Richards (ditto), Ricky Fataar, Keith Fordyce, the Four Freshmen, Annette Funicello (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - the Don Rickles Project"), Jerry Garcia (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), George Harrison (last seen in "LennoNYC"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Keith Moon (ditto), Phil Spector (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Elvis"), Bob Hope (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Mick Jagger (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Virginia Jardine, Jefferson Airplane, Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), the Kingston Trio, John Lennon (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Charles Manson (last seen in "We Blew It"), Terry Melcher, Joni Mitchell (last seen in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Van Dyke Parks, the Ronettes, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Sharon Tate, Derek Taylor, Nick Venet, the Ventures, Carl Wilson (also last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Dennis Wilson (ditto), Audree Wilson, Murry Wilson, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
RATING: 5 out of 10 attempted "comeback" albums
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