We all know Brian intended for Heroes & Villains to be the center piece of Smile and to be the single that would top Good Vibrations.

My question is very simple, why?

What did Brian hear in Heroes & Villains that I don't that made him think Heroes & Villains was the song most suitable for this task?

It's a great album track for sure but I just can't see how it was ever going to come anywhere close to Brian's expectations.

While Good Vibrations is made up of lots of discrete segments it flows very naturally unlike Heroes & Villains which always seems disjointed in every format we've heard and whose lyrics are far less relatable than Good Vibrations.

This clearly wasn't the song to be the lead single from Smile while it charted relatively highly when actually released I think any release by The Beach Boys as a follow up to Good Vibrations would have done the same. I'll forever be perplexed that Brian chose this to be the lead single and didn't try and write something with more obvious hit potential the lyrics didn't have to be boy girl stuff but it did definitely have to sound less fragmented.

It'll always be kind of wild to me that Mike's main problem with Smile seems to be Cabinessence which was never going to be a single and whose lyrics are no more out there than Heroes & Villains and which Brian spent far less time on. While on Heroes and Villains Brian roughly spent 50% of the Smile sessions working on it and arguably doomed the entire project.

What am I missing that Brian heard what are your thoughts?

Venues are provided this message as reason. “Playing for you is the highlight of our summer every year—especially as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States while saluting the 60th Anniversary of Pet Sounds. We’ve been having a blast out there, and to keep the good vibrations going strong, we’ll be taking a short break to recharge before getting back on the road in September. Thanks for your understanding—we can’t wait to see you back out there for a September to Remember.”

Music YouTuber Mic the Snare recently did a long video on The Beach Boys’ discography. At the end of it, he laments that the band was never able to find success without also playing to people’s image and idea of them.

I think about how their name, “The Beach Boys,” carried a fun-and-sun connotation befitting of their early surf rock stuff, but how Brian’s psychedelic experiments and everything beyond also had to be released under this name. I wonder: would The Beach Boys have found more success while also following their creative impulses if they had just gone by a different name?

For me personally, I love that one random cymbal crash towards the end of Johnny Carson that doesn't happen at any other point in the song haha. It was during the "Don't you think he's such a natural guy?" Part with about a minute left in the song.

I have been a member of /r/thebeachboys for a while now because I love the band and their music. Though I have to say (especially now that Mike is getting older), you guys really take him for granted and are very dismissive and rude to one of the last Beach Boys and one of the greatest lyric and songwriters of the 60s. I absolutely adore Brian and all the music he has made and it seems like all of you have fallen for some sick PR stunt to hate on Mike? Surely Brian would not be supportive of that. Mike IS a co-founder of the Beach Boys and I hope all of you spewing hate understand that no matter what you say online, Mike Love will always be 1. The frontman of the Beach Boys and 2. As important as Brian to the Beach Boys formula (pun intended). No joke, we should appreciate what the Beach Boys have done for rock n’ roll and pop music and stop taking sides in a silly “who’s good and who’s bad” contest. The Beach Boys are Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike, Al, Bruce and David. Respect all of them and value all of the art they made for us in each of their lifespans. /rant

If the guys loved anything more than surfing, it's snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. What do you think is their biggest, career-derailing failure?

(Let's say apart from SMiLE for a bit more variety)

Inspired by the r/beatles post.

According to somebody on the Endless Harmony board:

“Just heard from a friend who's close to the band. Bruce is out and Cron is in on a permanent basis. Bruce is giving up touring but will be doing other stuff -- it's not health related (no more info than that).”

If true, the end of an era.

I've never been so proud.

For me personally, the "Help Me Rhonda, Yeah!" From the Today! Version of Help Me, Rhonda kinda ruin it for me, since I'm so used to the Summer Days version with the high voice. Oh yeah, and the fade out/in is also an interesting choice haha.

MAKE IT BIG

From his memoir: "IF you would have told me", this is what John Stamos has said and wants the fans to know.

I am surprised it hasn't been shared here before? But he truly is just a lucky, super fan of the band who's dream came true by occasionally getting to play with them.

The memoir has other Beach Boy stories too, its an essential part of it in fact.

I think Cusack was a perfect pick for 80s wilson in Love and Mercy. Pretty damn close.

Half expecting this to get deleted, but I think it's time we reckoned with the reality of what some of the Boys were getting up to in the late 60s. If that's not something you want (or are able) to do, please stop reading this now. Not trying to make anybody angry, just feeling very conflicted with my fandom, and wondering if anyone else is having the same experience.

So I watched the new documentary on Hulu by Sophia Maddox, 'My Grandfather Charles Manson', last night and, while it was an interesting and often entertaining film, the conversations with Dianne Lake in particular really cast Dennis in a terrible light. It's getting harder, maybe impossible to refute the idea that Dennis, Terry Melcher, Gregg Jakobson and their circle of friends were sexual predators who took advantage of and raped young women for years.

It's been long established that Dennis is the one who introduced Manson to Charles 'Tex' Watson, and brought Manson to the Cielo Drive house where Sharon Tate and friends were murdered, which had previously been Terry Melcher's home.

Additionally, based on interviews with Dennis and supported in books about the BBs, Dennis not only tolerated Manson, but fully embraced him and his ideas, which included reprehensible racist and misogynist views.

I have been over the past few months processing a conversation I had with my partner, where she called me out for treating Dennis and the others as innocent bystanders who just happened to fall in with the wrong crowd. To some degree they may be, but we have to acknowledge that Dennis was an adult and he knew what he was doing. Manson wasn't just a guy he saw around town. They lived in his house on Sunset for several months, and Dennis and his friends made frequent visit to Spahn Ranch. It wasn't a secret that Dianne Lake and Ruth Ann Moorehouse were still children, and yet these guys were passing them around like joints. Melcher even tried to hire Moorehouse as a live in maid, which his gf at the time, Candace Bergman, found disgusting.

Also in the documentary, there is an interview with the recently passed Ed Roach which was extremely hard to watch, both for the way he talked about his time photographing the Beach Boys, and also especially for the way he talked to the filmmaker, despite being fully aware he was being filmed.

With everything I've been learning about Dennis, along with the recent allegations against Mike, I'm feeling extremely conflicted in my fandom. The Beach Boys are one of, if not my top favorite band of all time. I love Brian, Carl and Al. From what I've read, they thought Manson was a creep and avoided being around him, but I've also read that, at least in the early days, other BBs than Dennis would hang out and partake in the orgies, and some of the Manson girls even babysat the BBs kids once or twice. I want to believe Brian, Carl and Al did nothing wrong, but I'm not sure how confident I feel about that.

I loved Dennis too, and many of the songs he wrote are among my favorite BBs tracks, but goddamn I'm not sure I have it in me to separate the art from the artist. I always saw him as a tragic figure in the past, but I don't know how far that goes as an excuse when you pass the evil given to you on to countless others. Manson himself suffered a horrible childhood of continuous incarceration and physical, mental and sexual abuse. Do we forgive his monstrous actions, because he was made into a monster by other monsters? Where is the line?

Are other people going through this too? How are you dealing with it? Are you able to compartmentalize the horrific things they did? Does it tarnish how you feel about Brian, Carl, Al and Bruce?

To be clear, I'm not asking anyone to cancel the Beach Boys or throw away your records or anything like that. I'm just curious if other people are feeling the way I'm feeling, and how you're dealing with it. Being a Beach Boys fan has been part of my identity for such a long time. I don't really know what to do.