Beach Boys Sail On Sailor with Carl Wilson lead!!

Former Beach Boys engineer Steve Desper has a series of Beach Boys study videos and he just completed Recording the Beach Boys part 2- Surfs Up. About two hours long. Lots of behind the scenes and technical info. The music part includes the SU album as heard on CD, his playback matrix version, a demo recording of Fourth ofJuly, a different mix of Wouldn't It Be Nice to Live Again and a Capella versions of Til I Die and Surf's Up. He also confirms Brian sang part of the end of A Day in the Life of a Tree and Surf's Up. The big bonus here is the Carl Wilson lead on Sail On Sailor. And it doesn't sound that different from the Blondie Chaplin lead, as he followed Carl' s phrasing very closely. I can't post a link but Google "Stephen Desper" and "study video." Worth your time!

 

Can't wait to hear that!

 

It's close to the end of the video and is almost a capella.

 

I did a search and don't see it (although I do see links to other forums discussing his work). Can't you copy/paste it here for us?

 

I appreciate the link to the Desper material. However, the consensus of the Beach Boys fanatics on the Pet Sounds Forum -- as well as my own ears -- say that it's actually still Blondie Chaplin singing lead on that acappella mix. The mix is apparently slowed down a bit, so maybe that's where the confusion came in. Still, it's great to hear.

 

Hate to be a party pooper but that is absolutely, unquestionably, Blondie's vocal from the final recording. The video in question also discusses "Dennis's vocal" on "4th of July", which are Carl Wilson's, so while I hate to question a guy who was there, I trust my own ears. On the Smiley message board, people have pointed out that it sounds like Blondie (because it is) and Steve is adamant it's Carl on "Sail On Sailor" but... it's not.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great video, and the information in it is gold, but when obvious mistakes like this are made and denied, it throws all the other information into question. Here's his website with the videos (it's not secret or anything as far as I can tell):     Stephen  W.  Desper    Study Videos

The Surf's Up video is Recording the Beach Boys Part 2.

 

When are we going to hear more about upcoming Beach Boys archival projects? I was hoping to get the Friends era follow up to the Sunshine Tomorrow set this year, but that's looking increasingly unlikely at this point. Sounds like there are still more treasures in the vaults. . .

 

Just played it. It's absolutely Blondie, not Carl. That's the vocal take from the album. No question, I would bet my house on it.

 

To me it sounds close to Blondie but not quite. And the thing is, how would Desper have access to this tape as he was not involved in the Blondie vocal session. There are also some answering vocals that I don't think are on the Holland version. Also, Steve says it's from his personal cassette copy he made before the Holland trip happened.

 

There's a Fourth of July on there with mock operatic vocals and someone, likely Dennis, yelling "go!" It's called "development demo."

 

Where are the answer vocals not on the final version? You can hear in the last verse there's Carl doing the response vocal just like on the final, and his voice and the voice singing lead are not the same person - because the lead vocal is Blondie These are the final version's vocals, there's no difference.

The song wasn't even finished until after they returned from Holland, if I recall. They submitted Holland to WB, with "We Got Love" rather than "Sailor", and Warner requested a single, and so "Sailor" was finished and recorded. In other words, the final lyrics were not finished before the Holland trip (lots of co-writers on that one), so Desper's story of it being recorded prior doesn't really make sense. As for how he got the tape, there's a vocals only version available, I've had it for years (since at least 2012, looking at the file date of when I added it to iTunes.) It's the same recording Desper posted. Maybe he got confused, I have no idea. Not saying he's lying or trying to deceive at all, I think he's just gotten some information mixed up along the way.

Thank you. I feel the same. It's not even close. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone that it's even being debated!

 

Yes, but the text in question is before the "regular" version (labelled "Demo version" in the video), not before the "Development demo." It's referencing "Dennis's vocal" in the version with Carl singing. The text is at 2:00:44 and then it plays the version we know from the boxed set, with Carl on vocals. I only pointed it out to show that Desper is not infallible (and if someone tries to claim that's DENNIS singing that version of "4th of July" and not Carl, then I just give up!)

 

Is there any end to the stuff in the Beach Boys vaults? Not that I'm complaining...

 

Absolutely NO WAY is that Carl's lead vocal!
That is Blondie all the way overdubbed over Carl's original vocal, as you can hear
Carl's previous vocal comes in at 2:10:54 ish, where a punch out was made from Blondie's take.

 

There's so much more they should/could be releasing. You can find a lot of good stuff from the Brother years just on youtube. I made a few really good cdrs a few years back and there's still more stuff available there. So who knows just how much they're just sitting on.

 

Carl had bunches of early 70's concerts recorded to pick from to form the 'in concert' album.

 

For what it's worth, here's what Desper wrote on the Smiley Smile thread.
"COMMENT: The Sail On Sailor version you hear is from a cassette copy of a mix of vocals I did at the house studio long before anyone thought of going to Holland. The a cappella vocals you hear were recorded before Surf's Up was released. Be assured, it is Carl Wilson. I was working with Frank Zappa in Australia when Blondy added his voice to SOS. The a cappella of vocals heard in Part Two of my book was already recorded and part of my cassette collection before the Beach Boys returned from Holland and finished SOS for release.

As I said in the comments preceding SOS, Blondy followed Carl's phrasing and intonations in his re-singing of the lead. If you think you hear Blondie, maybe that's why Carl thought he would be good at singing the lead for that song and gave the position to Blondie when they returned from Holland. At that time Blondie was being considered as an addition to the group. SOS gave him a song he could identify with and showcase his vocal abilities in concerts. Before Holland (the album) SOS was Carl's song. After Holland, it became the signature performance for Blondie, thus binding his front-line position with the group. ~swd."

 

Yeah I read that too some time back, but the ears just don't buy it. The vocal phrasing doesn't even seem Carl like.
In the track presented on swd's site, Carl is easily heard in the opposite channel, can't fault him at all there.
Stephen says he doesn't remember some things often also....

 

Yeah, he’s just plain mistaken. They couldn’t have recorded the basis for the track during Surf’s Up, because Ricky is on drums on the final version, and he wasn’t even in the band during Surf’s Up. The lyrics weren’t finished yet either, as that didn’t happen until after Van Dyke Parks helped resurrect the song, and the lyrics were finished off by whoever (Rieley I assume?) Just compare the vocals to the final version, backing vocals and all, it’s identical. It’s literally just a vocals only mix of the final version, you can hear the track leakage and everything. Even the backing vocals are the same, and those vocals feature, surprise, Blondie and Ricky. None of it adds up. And even if I didn’t know all these details about their recording history, I have ears, and I know Carl’s voice and I know Blondie’s voice and I definitely know the final version of “Sail On Sailor”, and that’s all that recording is. It’s awesome to hear it in great quality, but it ain’t Carl!

Desper may very well have a cassette of an early version of the song, but that recording is not it. They did not start what became the final version of the song during the “Surf’s Up” sessions, and they certainly didn’t record everything except Carl’s vocal before Blondie and Ricky were in the band as his story says. Perhaps he’s gotten things confused over the years, lord knows we’ve all done that. For example, I have the CLEAREST memory of seeing Wilco perform “Another Man’s Done Gone” outdoors at a show in Nashville... but it never happened. I saw Wilco in Cincinnati in a theater, and THAT’S where they did “Another Man’s Done Gone” that I saw, but my memory has mixed the two shows into one. It happens. And something along those lines has probably happened here.

 

Blondie recently moved to San Pedro and in an interview with the local monthly (San Pedro Today) he said Dennis first tried the song but had bought a new surfboard and didn't hang around to finish it. Carl then tried it but said he didn't have the right timbre so he asked Blondie to do it. So there could be a tape somewhere of Carl trying it.

 

Maybe Desper will post here at some point...

 

Correct, there could be. No one is disputing Carl tried out the lead vocal, or that Blondie based his phrasing on a Carl Wilson guide, as he absolutely could have. What is being argued is if this particular recording is Carl singing on an early, pre-Holland version of “Sail On Sailor”, and it simply isn’t.

And there are plenty of live recordings with Carl singing it, even a great quality one on Made in California, if one is so inclined to hear it (it’s awesome, Carl was the best!)

 

Speaking of having a bad memory.... Didn't Alan Boyd have a copy of the Carl
version of SOS that he used in a lecture some years back?......

 

Without directly comparing, this vocal sounds more laid-back than the released version. However, I think it would be hard for Carl to antipate the inflections of Blondie’s accent so well. This tells me it’s Blondie.

 

You need to compare, it’s the exact same vocal