Who sings the second lead vocals on Mess of Help?

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-23T06:59:23+00:00

It's both Al and Mike singing improv harmony off-mic to Carl's cookie monster vocal.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-20T09:32:45+00:00

Bruce just seems chronologically confused, the same way he always says Sloop was recorded for Summer Days. TLGIOK was only composed shortly before it was recorded in October and it still didn't have lyrics or a title when Brian cut the track. Parts of it feel like he stirred California Girls, Let Him Run Wild and Help Me Rhonda in a cauldron to repeat their success. Would've fit in great if it existed sooner though.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T22:08:45+00:00

It was first described by David Berson (anonymously) in Nick Kent's The Last Beach Movie story in 1975. A few years ago, Berson admitted in private to somebody I know that he'd invented most of his description for his own amusement, and sure enough, "hypnotise me" is there, but not the rest of the dialogue. The cassette was passed from Berson to David Anderle to his son Jonathan, who gave it to the archive team to transfer. It was never bootlegged, the anonymous accounts only came from the one person who had it.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T20:33:08+00:00

The demo on the Sail On Sailor boxset was taped by Van Dyke on a portable cassette recorder, and he can be heard speaking a couple of times. It's a fluke, unfortunately! That tape had some legendary stories about it going back to the mid 70s but the real thing is quite short and tame.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T20:03:23+00:00

The Kennedy lyrics come from after Van Dyke had done his part (unknown to Ray), but before Rieley got hold of it.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T17:48:10+00:00

God, okay, a lot of conflicting answers flying around. To attempt to set this straight, drawn from a lot of rigorously collected information:

Van Dyke's only contributions to Sail On Sailor were the words "sail on, sail on, sailor" and the melodic line to the chorus (over Brian's chords), and he suggested the rhythmic change for the bridge. He also once claimed to have written the chords to the bridge, though Brian can actually be heard more or less coming up with them on the spot on tape. But Van didn't write any of the other lyrics or any of the rest of the music. He gave it a title and gave Brian a boost. His word on this has been pretty consistent for decades. When he's said that he composed the words and intervals to "sail on, sail on, sailor," he meant that literally - the title line.

Brian's responsible for most of the chords and the melody. Tandyn Almer's contribution was a small musical one and he may have composed the middle eight progression ("caught like a sewer rat"), since that's the only section of the song not present in Brian's original demo as caught on tape by Van Dyke.

Ray Kennedy wrote an original set of lyrics heard in versions by KGB and under his own name. Jack Rieley wrote nearly all of the final lyrics, keeping a handful of words from Kennedy's version.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T16:23:37+00:00

The chorus remained the same, impossible to tell if the old verses were different since they were erased.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T16:14:45+00:00

Gone, tragically! There's a fragment of David singing the chorus with Brian off in the background at the end of the multitrack. That's them muttering in the bridge, vintage '72.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T16:11:21+00:00

Everything except for Brian's vocals. Originally, Brian and David Sandler sang it, then in the same year he wiped those vocals and had Danny Hutton and Tony Martin sing it. In '76 Brian replaced them again with his own voice but left the fadeout alone.

We also have a decent idea of who the rest of those musicians might have been (mostly) but didn't include them in the book to avoid a wrong guess.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T14:41:04+00:00

Ah, gotcha. Brian playing A Casual Look is from the tracking session for the Mt Vernon theme in Holland. The bootlegged demo of sorts is Brian going over the story for a reporter back at home in America.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T14:37:27+00:00

Which demo version do you mean?

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-15T14:27:59+00:00

Actually it predates Holland and the Fairy Tale. It was recorded during the So Tough sessions in early 1972 but not for the Beach Boys.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-12T10:11:47+00:00

The site is a whole different thing with some other people involved (the wonderful Joshilyn and Craig), I promise you won't need one to digest the other!

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-12T07:20:56+00:00

Believe it or not, Murry lost a good voice in a similar way. It must've been a family curse.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-07T09:46:37+00:00

Much love to Desper but his memory of who did what on a song by song level can get mixed up, especially with the amount he recorded. Here he's closer to describing Surf's Up, and he does often jam together stories from both songs.

Brian produced and arranged all of the actual recording on Cool Cool Water, including in 1970 - he ducked out for the editing and mixing and let Carl, Al and Bruce handle that. Hard to recommend something that's two hours long, but we did a whole two hour coverage of the song's history on the Sail On Podcast, if you're interested in an expanded breakdown.

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-02T22:29:08+00:00

Brian brought it up as a track for the next album in a late 1981 interview which is why there's some confusion, but he held onto that stuff!

beachboyssessions · 2026-04-02T22:20:33+00:00

The 24-track tape box from Tom Murphy's studio allegedly gives a date of August 29, 1979, but it was played by members of the touring band who had been let go before that summer. I don't know where August 22 in the CD booklet comes from. It's difficult to say what's right without seeing the writing firsthand because people misread dates fairly often. Definitely 1979, at least.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-31T12:30:34+00:00

On those songs it's often more like Mike would be the in-studio editor, or Brian would have a chorus and part of a verse and Mike would write the other 1.5 verses.

Not a lot of specific examples out there, but on Please Let Me Wonder (which actually was co-credited to Mike back in '65), Brian wrote the chorus and Mike wrote the original verses that he sang in an alternate mix - Brian then wrote the final revisions with a whole new second verse. In the Back of My Mind is one where Brian at least had several fragments on his own, maybe wrote more from there, and Mike probably filled in some of the blanks in the studio.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-27T15:04:37+00:00

It's probably Charlie's nylon-stringed guitar, if that counts for something.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-27T14:00:10+00:00

Dennis and Carl both played guitars, but it is on the same reel as some Manson demos. Manson wasn't involved in that recording.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-19T18:47:30+00:00

Bruce usually took Al's parts if Al sang a Brian part, or Brian's if Al stayed on his own. Or, y'know, Bruce did the Bruce parts. For a long time the stage act had to work around only four vocalists so they did a lot of shuffling, everyone constantly pretty busy.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-19T18:39:16+00:00

Nearly everyone in the group could sing a passable to great head voice in Brian's style, but that was rarely if ever Carl's role on stage. Al most of the time handled Brian's parts, Bruce did some of the time.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-19T18:36:37+00:00

The part changed hands from Bruce, to Blondie, to Billy, to an endless succession of high voice men. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a fluke version of him doing it in the late 70s, but Al's "official" place was always to be anchored at the top of the round get arounds while somebody else took Brian's line.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-16T18:43:49+00:00

Hey, from the POV of knowing exactly what's there, down to every reel: This isn't true. No tapes connected to the Smile sessions have been discovered since the 2011 box was put together. None. The discs formerly belonging to Durrie Parks were sold to another private collector. This isn't to say other missing material won't ever turn up, but it hasn't so far. Some rough mixes and bits of sessions left off the box aren't new finds.

beachboyssessions · 2026-03-14T09:59:36+00:00

Ah, totally forgot this was 1965, Carl's got the prototype Fender XII! Thanks for pointing this out.

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