On September 11th, 1967, The Beach Boys grouped together at Wally Heider Studios in Hollywood in an attempt to begin re-recording tracks for an ill-fated live album. By doing so, they — unknowingly — linked two incredible eras together, juxtaposing the best of the group’s groundbreaking past onto their quickly evolving future.
Previously, on August 25th and 26th, 1967, The Beach Boys — with Brian Wilson but sans Bruce Johnston — recorded a pair of live concerts at Honolulu’s HIC Arena for a prospective concert collection to be named Lei’d In Hawaii. The shows marked Brian Wilson’s first full-scale appearances with the band in over two years. The drastically revamped setlist was in contrast to the group’s last set of dates, with Brian choosing not to perform as the band’s bassist, but to primarily play organ. With bassist Bruce Johnston sitting out of the shows, either Al Jardine or Carl Wilson assumed bass duties while tackling a predominantly new setlist carried by only one guitar.
After hearing the under rehearsed Hawaii performances, Brian Wilson decided the live recordings needed to be scrapped. Back in L.A., he corralled the band — this time including Bruce Johnston — to re-record a spotless version of the live set within the confines of the studio. Although completed and mixed, the final element of a canned live audience was never added, and the project was shelved. These live-in-studio sessions slowly morphed into The Beach Boys’ 1967 Wild Honey album.
In the ensuing years, nearly all the elements of the fabled Lei’d In Hawaii project have been issued over several Beach Boys archival sets. The Hawaii rehearsals, both concerts, Brian’s mixed, mono Lei’d In Hawaii unreleased studio album, and its outtakes have seen release across a trio of 2017 collections — 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow; 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow 2: The Studio Sessions; and 1967 – Live Sunshine.
Revisiting Lei’d In Hawaii
Howie chats with Beach Boys archivist John Brode, who along with fellow sessionographers Will Crerar, Joshilyn Hoisington and Craig Slowinski, head up the beachboyssessions.com website.
Howie: For me, it feels like the pre-show rehearsals are the best part of Lei’d In Hawaii.
John: In a lot of cases, yeah, for a lot of the songs.
Howie: When you listen to (Beach Boys’) Party! and the outtakes, they’re doing cover material. With the Lei’d In Hawaii “sessions” — they were revisiting their own material in a different, sort of, pre-Unplugged way. Brian’s taking the sonics and the vibe of Smiley Smile and injecting it into their repertoire, which is completely different music than anyone else was making. Looking at it now, they could have just released those run-throughs in new, mellow, mature versions — rather than having to drag it out into a concert situation. I’m curious, have you found anywhere any type of documentation about any pre-rehearsals, or pre-planning meetings for the Lei’d in Hawaii project? Was there anything done in California — musically — before they did those soundcheck rehearsals?
John: I haven’t found anything. From what I can tell, the plan was just to record as soon as they got there. But based on the dialogue from the tape, I can tell that they worked out a setlist and probably rehearsed these recordings this way in L.A., or at least before they started recording in Hawaii.
Howie: So, that would be sometime within that month between (the) Zuma (photoshoot) and the Hawaii gigs. Do you think there was just one, or do you think there was more?
John: I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I mean, I think that Brian would have had a lot of say in the setlist and obviously in the way that they were performing the songs. The arrangements are, as you know, completely different from what they were doing before and what they went right back to doing after that.
Howie: Billy (Hinsche) had told me about the great expense of bringing the Baldwin (organ) out there, and that was so important to the sound of the concerts. Apart from that, were those their personal instruments that they were playing? Was that Dennis’s drum kit? Was that Hofner their Hofner? You see they’re playing instruments in Hawaii that really weren’t a part of their live act. Not to mention they’re down a guitar and they’re changing the whole skeletal system of their performance. The keyboard has replaced one of their guitars and one of their lead vocalists is now playing bass.
John: Yeah, that was all their stuff.
Howie: And Dennis was playing a full drum kit?
John: Well, at times. Between the pictures, the video, and the audio it looks like Brian was removing parts of Dennis’s kit. In some of the pictures and video, you can see that he only has a couple drums in front of him and he doesn’t have a kick (drum). Brian was moving away… actually, by that point he already had essentially moved away from the drum kit. Smiley Smile features almost no real drums.
Howie: Dennis’ work feels very Moe Tucker (from The Velvet Underground). It’s this, almost, primal kind of caveman thumping.
John: Yeah, it feels like Brian was almost reining Dennis in, saying, “This is all you can do, I’m taking all these cymbals away.” But it’s cool because it makes for something that is totally different from their usual driving rock n’ roll sound. And it takes all those songs and puts them into a more atmospheric Smiley Smile kind of vibe.
Howie: There’s no cymbals, no crash, no true “rock n roll” in the show. That’s the thing that’s so absurd. First of all, it’s an extremely large venue they’re playing in, and they’re scaling back the sound. It’s such a big room — and it’s ’67. Granted, it’s not mainland America, so undoubtedly the crowd is a little out of touch with the major cities, but by August ’67, the girls really wouldn’t have been screaming like that. It really feels forced, y’know, these teenaged girls screeching. I mean, even in the middle of “God Only Knows” Brian snaps: “Cool it!!! He’s singin’!!!”
John: (Laughs) Yeah, I love that part.
Howie: The Beach Boys are doing this really intimate, personal take on their music in this inappropriate situation. And the band really doesn’t remember much about these shows or the planning behind them. I asked Bruce (Johnston) about why he didn’t make the trip, and all he remembered was, “Brian was gonna do it, so I didn’t. I didn’t need to be there.”
John: Mm-hmm.
Howie: Now, you think about what it would have sounded like had they had that extra pair of hands and Bruce handling the bass. All of these things could have been smoothed out and it would have made for a much better performance. I’m just fascinated by whose idea this was. I mean, I think all of this stems from Monterey, correct?
John: Yeah, well, I think musically, when you ask whose idea was this, I think a lot of it was Brian. I think that him coming back into the fold and his muse having changed so much is what led to the arrangements being so radically different. And you bring up a good point about having an extra set of hands because that’s what they ended up doing right after this — they added Ron Brown (on bass) and then (keyboardist) Darryl Dragon to the touring group.
Howie: But also, when they went to Wally Heider’s to re-record the (Lei’d In Hawaii) material, Bruce was there.
John: He was, yeah.
Howie: In regard to Monterey, knowing what I know about the period, I don’t think they would have been able to get their set together for the festival because Brian was in the process of downshifting and just trying to get his head straight as to what The Beach Boys actually were in June ’67. Y’know, time moved both so fast and so slow for them, that August ’67 is a world away from what happened for them in May and June. It just was. And from what I had heard over the years, they believed that Lei’d In Hawaii could be their own Monterey.
John: Mm-hmm.
Howie: It’s always been embedded in my mind that this was basically a full concert version of what their set at Monterey would have been.
John: Yeah, I think you’re on to something when you say that Brian didn’t really know what The Beach Boys were at that time — or at least he hadn’t really figured it out. I think that really had to do with the (band’s) cancellation (of Monterey) — just not knowing. And I think that with Smiley Smile, he found something really, really, really creative. I think it was maybe his most creative era as an arranger just because it was so different from not only the rest of The Beach Boys’ music but the rest of music at that time. And that’s what he landed on — not in time for Monterey — but in time for later in life.
Howie: And when people talk about rock and “bringing it all back home,” nowadays the rock world does include Wild Honey with (Bob Dylan’s) John Wesley Harding and (The Beatles’) “Lady Madonna.” Now they will, but for eons they didn’t. It really goes back to “With Me Tonight”; it goes back to Smiley Smile, where it’s like, “We’re ignoring all of the sitars and backwards sounds. This music is going to be a heartbeat and voices.” I think with SMiLE, what happened was Brian realized that he needed his hands on this music. He needed their hands on this music.
John: Right.
Howie: Brian had told me, that Van Dyke (Parks) filled the void and enabled him to compete with (John) Lennon, (Bob) Dylan, and (Pete) Townshend. That’s what he had with Van Dyke lyrically. But SMiLE progressed and the music being recorded that spring had real whimsy and was smaller in so many ways. There’s not many moving parts. It’s very melodic, and it’s just a whole different beast than January — or December. It’s lighter. And I think he was, like, “I can use my own thoughts — but I need to use my own hands, too. It can’t be Tommy Tedesco — it needs to be Carl. It needs to be me.” I know people believe SMiLE was left unfinished and he was never the same; but I think, and I know you feel this too, that there was a morph. He morphed into Smiley Smile then into Lei’d In Hawaii, then Wild Honey, and right into Friends.
John: Well, like you said, even within the “SMiLE period,” which is a massive stretch of time, his music changes radically. And I actually think that a lot of the SMiLE music, arrangement and songwriting-wise, has sometimes more to do with Smiley Smile than it does with Pet Sounds. But I want to go back a little bit to what you said about John Wesley Harding and about “Lady Madonna” and Wild Honey fitting into all that. I think that the way people used to perceive Brian Wilson at this time is that he was out of step with the times, and I think we can agree that that has some truth to it, but I think people characterize it incorrectly. I think that Brian was unknowingly ahead of the times, which he talks about in the song, “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” But he anticipated all these trends. He just was not creating music in a way that he might call competitive or trying to make commercial for people. And another thing that you said about how all these eras blends into the other; I think that with Lei’d In Hawaii, if you listen to that rehearsal and to that show, it’s almost like an exact middle ground between Smiley Smile and Wild Honey.
Howie: Mm-hmm.
John: Because you can hear the R&B creeping back into the music. It’s still ethereal, and floaty, and very much organ based. But during one of the rehearsal sessions, I think the last bit on the tape, you can hear him start to play “Can’t Wait Too Long” as if he’s writing it there in Hawaii.
Howie: And speaking of those little found moments, when he breaks into “All Day All Night”…
John: Oh yeah.
Howie: It’s the piece of music that fits most perfectly for that moment. And that’s why when you listen to the project in its entirety — the rehearsals, the shows, the studio sessions — you see how the concerts miss the mark. Even though they’re trying to be mellow, they can’t ignore the fact that it’s still a concert. They’re yelling, they’re louder, they’re faster.
John: It loses…
Howie: …once they break a sweat, it starts to lose that magic, that Zen.
John: …and they, kind of, can’t help it.
Howie: Yeah, you can’t. It’s impossible with all that adrenaline. It’s such an interesting snapshot of The Beach Boys. And it could be served so much better in the future. I mean, I knew it when we were making Sunshine Tomorrow. I was just thrilled that it was all getting out there.
John: Right.
Howie: But the way that it was put out — there’s a piece here and a chunk here… and then, this is digital download, but this portion is on CD — and these songs are separate and buried on Disc 2… It made it so hard for the listener to conceptualize it all. I think with something like Lei’d In Hawaii, it needs to be made easy for the listener. I’ve broken it down on my own playlist as the rehearsals, the shows, and then (Wally) Heider.
John: Yeah.
Howie: And when you listen to it like that, when it’s been curated to make sense, to be linear, you get the full picture and you understand it. I mean, it’s a brilliant box set waiting to happen.
John: I think it’s a brilliant LP waiting to happen. I would love to have a Lei’d In Hawaii album on vinyl.
Howie: Of what? What would you want?
John: The studio stuff all sequenced, or the shows. I don’t know, but I agree that it being all in one place labeled under its original title would be helpful.
Howie: I think if the Heider sessions were going to be re-released, they would have to be in stereo.
John: Yeah, by the way, speaking of the Heider recordings, what’s your favorite?
Howie: “Help You, Rhonda” and “California Girls” are my favorites. I pushed for those to be on Made In California — and to be in stereo.
John: For me, I would say “God Only Knows” and that one take of “Surfer Girl” with the bridge in past tense. This is me, kind of, psychoanalyzing the music — which just may have meant nothing — but it feels like Brian looking back and seeing how different things are.
Howie: The Lei’d tapes on the Sunshine Tomorrow sets were presented pretty much raw. I mean, yes, things were evened out a bit, but I’d really be interested in revisiting those live shows with a keen ear.
John: Yeah, you could do a lot to them.
Howie: I think it’s a box set waiting to happen.
John: Yeah. I love that moment on the second day rehearsal when they start doing “Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring” and you can hear Dennis clapping in the audience.
Howie: Yeah! And what’s crazy is, they’re laying this stuff down and there’s no guitar tech, there’s no keyboard tech, you’ve got their cousin and maybe one other dude.
John: Yeah.
Howie: And they’re putting on an entirely new show. And it’s just… it’s such an odd experiment. And The Frogmen’s “Underwater” creeping into “Surfin’” — having that, doing that song, doing it in Hawaii, they’re doubling down on The Beach Boys’ image. And this is a month after the Zuma photo shoot, which was, what, six months after they’re photographed at Lake Arrowhead in their winter garb trying so hard not to be that! Now they’re doubling down in this weird way, which would all come to beautiful fruition with “Do It Again,” where it’s like: “Yeah, this is what we are, and you know what, no one else is it. We’re this, don’t forget, we’re this.” Brilliant. Brian never forgot what they were and that nobody did it better than them. That said, it was such a left-field way to redefine one’s image. They travel so far away from home, redesign their entire act, and with “Gettin’ Hungry,” introduce a new song that is in no way is appropriate for an arena gig. I mean, how could you not think this guy was absolutely groundbreaking all throughout this period? It was never not groundbreaking, right?
John: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Totally agree.
Howie: When you’re listening to this stuff, what is the moment for you where Smiley Smile becomes Lei’d In Hawaii, and what is the moment where Lei’d becomes Wild Honey?
John: I almost have like a non-answer for that because I feel like Brian’s muse was changing so fluidly and thoroughly that this whole era to me is kind of between two places. I think that doing the live show where he had to be part of this performance for the first time in God knows how long, is what brought him back to more basic R&B-based music and out of the Smiley Smile ethos; which is what I think of when I think of the word that Brian came up with — “psychedelicate.” When he came up with that word to describe SMiLE, to me that really means Smiley Smile. I think that’s a perfect description of what that music is. But I think “The Letter” for me is a bridge to Wild Honey. I think doing a song like that after they had just been doing that weird version of “Wonderful,” and “With Me Tonight,” and “She’s Goin’ Bald,” For me, I think that’s where you can really see the bridge.
Howie: And what’s fascinating about “The Letter” was it was a unanimous and inescapable hit. It shows that even though while Brian was doing, “Fall Breaks And Back To Winter,” he was still glued to Top 40. So, it wasn’t as though he lost his love and desire for hit parade music. He just wasn’t making it.
John: No, he was just in an era where he was extremely creative and really doing things that nobody was doing, but he was still in-tune, like you said, and he was not forgetting his roots in commercial pop music and surf music.
Howie: Let me ask you something with SMiLE. Just in terms of a percentage, how much of that material do you think has Brian hands-on playing an instrument?
John: Ooh… I don’t know, 30 to 40 percent, because I’m just thinking of all those pieces… Those mostly vocal arrangements with a piano or a little bit of percussion to keep them going. And that’s coming off of Pet Sounds, where he was mostly just sitting in the booth producing an ensemble of musicians. I think that, like we were saying, you don’t see this sudden change in his approach to music. You see it actually change throughout the SMiLE period. He, kind of, starts as a producer and overseer with “Good Vibrations” and everything. Then he gets more involved when the music becomes smaller and becomes about stacking instruments on top of each other just as a basic bed for vocals. And then comes Smiley Smile — he’s doing almost everything.
Howie: What’s interesting though, when he returns live in ’67, he comes back as a keyboardist, where he could have come back as a bassist and let Bruce handle the keyboard, but he needed to be the one physically in control of that set — and he is. One might say to their detriment, because they’re down an instrument.
John: And to their detriment on “Sloop John B.” where he actually does pick up the bass and…
Howie: (Laughs) Yeah, a mess.
John: You could tell he hadn’t been practicing. He’s in the wrong key the whole time.
Howie: But I mean, that’s what I loved about the sessionography is seeing what was specifically going on at the Heider sessions.
John: And here’s another bridge to Wild Honey, where some of the songs were recorded without Brian at first. Like, that version of “Good Vibrations,” Brian wasn’t there when they did that track. That was Bruce on organ, and Carl and Al.
Howie: There were two days without Brian, right?
John: Yeah, so you also see, of course Brian’s there and he’s commandeering this whole thing for the most part, but you also see him letting go a little bit. And I think part of the reason why he was so comfortable with that was because he wasn’t really in charge of the live band. That was Carl’s thing.
Howie: And before, there are parts during the rehearsals where Carl is essentially saying “no,” or where they’re clearly not listening to Brian the way they would in the studio…
John: …Nor is he asking them to because he needs suggestions and some of them get shot down.
Howie: Yeah. This is such an important era. I think everything that they say about Monterey is incorrect. First of all, I think they would have killed at Monterey. I think it would have been a similar, albeit abbreviated, type of set. I think they would have worn those same outfits, which again was doubling down on the stripes. They were the biggest stripes they ever wore — and I think they looked pretty cool. You look at the bands that were there and it was not as if Janis Joplin came out and set the world on fire that day. It didn’t happen. And there were acts there, like, Lou Rawls, or The Association that went over fine. Simon & Garfunkel were on the folk side but hardly played a hipper-than-thou set. There’s no way that The Beach Boys would not have been huge. If The Mamas And The Papas were regarded as “stars” of Monterey, The Beach Boys most certainly would have been. And I think it’s been overstated how that handful of San Francisco bands changed the playing field right out of the gate immediately after that. I always thought the backlash for backing out of Monterey was simply an excuse to dump on The Beach Boys by people who felt like they were taken for a ride by the SMiLE myth.
John: Yes, I think that it is an overstated part of the story.
Howie: Getting back to what we were saying about Brian Wilson in June ’67. With the specter of SMiLE hanging over them, he would’ve had to play with them at Monterey and he was in no position to helm a live show then.
John: Well, that’s when he was just trying to figure out what everything was. That was after the SMiLE collapse and before he really found something with Smiley Smile.
Howie: This is the link to the last period of him leading the group. And I never look at this era as an apology or as an asterisk. I personally always felt this was the best part of The Beach Boys. I always thought ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70 — I always thought all of that through Holland, that’s when it got good for me.
John: You know I’m with you. I would say that behind Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile and Friends are my favorites.
For in-depth information on the Lei’d In Hawaii concerts and sessions, log on to beachboyssessions.com.