I come from an alternate universe where SMiLE was released on May 20, 1967. AMA

I come from an alternate universe where SMiLE was released on May 20, 1967. AMA

cool

Who's the president over there right now

Trump. Honestly the world isn't that different

is Brian Wilson still alive?

Did they replace The Beatles as the most influential/iconic band of all time?

Was it as groundbreaking as it could've been?

The fact that so many books still name the Beach Boys as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beach Boys sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beach Boys did anything worthy of being saved.

How did SMiLE and Sgt. Pepper's compete? If they came out within a little over a week of each other.

Before anyone asks, here's a history lesson on what basically went down.
Brian pretty much flat-out refused to do LSD, which proved to be essential to the album's completion. He was already in a somewhat fragile mental state following his nervous breakdown in 64, so he decided it to use common sense and not do it. He still smoked a ton though. Mike was still a dick. VDP would become an official member of the band following the album's success. The tracklisting is very similar to Sessions (I'll give the tracklisting if anyone wants), albeit with a few changes and removed parts. For example, The Elements aren't on the album in full, though Wind Chimes (which was originally supposed to be Air) was put on there alongside Water, which is a minute long interlude. The Elements would later be released as a full album in 1969, with one song per side.
Yup, though he developed SAD in his mid-60s.
Pretty much. However, they didn't fully swap roles. I know in this universe The Beach Boys are still mostly seen by the public eye as a cheesy surf band. The Beatles are still recognized as highly influential, but The Beach Boys are considered the most influential.
As it could have been? I'm not sure. BWPS is definitely a more realized and cohesive idea, though what they released still extremely impressive given the time they had to do it.
Sgt. Pepper was seen as The Beatles' response to SMiLE by the public (even if they had no way of being influenced by it). They were both massively successful, and their rivalry would continue until The Beatles' breakup in 1970. Funny enough, The White Album is seen as the "greatest unfinished album" in my universe.

you actually took the time to think and type this out

Even in an alternate universe Scaruffi has to spoil everything

Anyway this is an AMA thread so did The Beach Boys share the stage with The Beatles at The Monterey Pop Festival. And more importantly did Jimi Hendrix have an appreciation for what the Beach Boys achieved with Smile?

talk more about this Elements album, and other future BB releases

did the beach boys ever decline in quality or did they break up before they could suck

I don't have enough room to finish this post, so here's part 1 of 2, i assume
>Did The Beach Boys share the stage with The Beatles at The Monterey Pop Festival?
As a matter of fact they did. Brian was in a good mental state at the time, so even he performed. As you said, The Beatles performed as well (I know they didn't in your universe).
>Did Jimi Hendrix have an appreciation for what the Beach Boys achieved with Smile?
He didn't like the Heroes & Villains single, but he did speak positively towards the album.

I'll start with talking about The Elements. This is by far my favorite Beach Boys album, so sorry if I get too carried away describing it. Its full title is "The Beach Boys Present: The Elements", and, though it wasn't as successful commercially as their previous releases, it proved crucial to psychedelic and progressive music as a whole. It was essentially Brian and VDP's brainchild, and the other band members had minimal input. Though he had sense warmed up to Brian's formula-fucking, Mike Love considered this the last straw and temporarily left the band, though he would return in 1971. The tracklisting is as follows: Part I: Earth, Part II: Wind, Part III: Fire, and Part IV: Water. Earth starts off with wordless vocals similar to Our Prayer, though while this happens instruments slowly fade in. It's all cut off with loud drums (and a quick snippet from Fire), moving right into the chorus. The track is rather slow-paced, and is somewhat influenced by Eastern music. I've heard people call it a precursor to New Age music. Air is essentially three songs scrambled together. The first part is quite a bit faster than Earth tempo-wise. It's filled to the brim with vocal harmonies, and is the closest the album gets to sounding like SMiLE. Think of it as proto-Yes. The second part is very similar to All I Wanna Do in that it's essentially Chillwave before Chillwave. It's the shortest of the three.

Thank you, O Traveler.

What became of Mike Love?

I'll ask a few essentials:

Is your brian happier than ours?
how did their career end up being in the long run?
does your version of Sup Forums hate the beach boys?
did dennis end up living longer?
how different is pop culture over their?

I know this thread is probably a joke but it's fun to pretend sometimes.

How bad did it flop. in US.? The was is raging, The protest movement is in full swing. The Beach Boys are so squeaky clean no one will listen to them who is rebelling against the establishment. And the Beatles irk my folks so much because of their long hair. This album will bomb here in the startes just like Pet Sounds did.

war is raging*

I swear to god my computer ran out of batteries while I was writing this long write-up on The Elements and now i'm really pissed

In the meantime, let's answer some more questions:
They did decline in quality, starting in 1977 (though they never got nearly as bad as your universe's Beach Boys). They broke up in 1982, and they each went in their separate ways mostly.

He quit the band temporarily in 1968, returned in 1971, and then quit again in 1977. He had a pretty shitty solo career, but he isn't nearly as hated as he is in your universe. In fact, he is quite respected, considering he opened up to Brian's formula-fucking after a while.

>Is your brian happier than ours?
I'd think so. Though he still has SAD, he was able to get the help he needed, and thankfully never ran into Eugene Landy.
>how did their career end up being in the long run?
They had a solid streak of great albums from 1966 to 1975, but in 1977 things started going south with Mike and Bruce leaving the band, and cocaine abuse becoming more frequent within the band.
>does your version of Sup Forums hate the beach boys?
They aren't competely despised, but contrarians do often trashtalk them. Scaruffi gave 3 of their albums 6.5s.
>did dennis end up living longer?
Sadly, he did not.
>how different is pop culture over their?
Honestly, it's not all that different. Even musically it's mostly the same. A more obvious effect is that considerably less bands cite The Beach Boys and The Beatles as influences, as they both remain very popular, and hipsters tend to dismiss them.
It did considerably better than Pet Sounds, enough so that Capitol let them take their time with their next album (which took around 2 years to make).

>I swear to god my computer ran out of batteries while I was writing this long write-up on The Elements and now i'm really pissed

Take ur time, OP

upload these for us please?

Part 2 of 3. That's right, there's more, i guess.

The third movement of Air is entirely instrumental, and is played by the Wrecking Crew. It starts off with wind instruments layered upon each other, primarily a flute. The tune is lighthearted at first, though it slowly devolves into an abstract piece played with mostly brass instruments, a sign of what's to come in Part III: Fire.
And now on to Fire. This is where the album gets conceptual. It begins with an acoustic ballad, with lyrics about the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone. This goes on for a few minutes, and is interrupted abruptly by a mostly drum-oriented piece, though it is accompanied by woodblocks and vocal harmonies. These slowly becomes more and more evil as the song progresses, the vocal harmonies decreasing in pitch, the drums slowing down to a close, and slowed down, reversed voices screaming and laughing as it transitions into what you guys know as Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, representing the descent into hell. If SMiLE was a "teenage symphony to God", perhaps this is an adult symphony- one of chaos and fear, of maturity and warning, rather than one of innocence. This goes on for nearly the rest of the song, until the acoustic ballad returns, albeit with tweaked lyrics describing the return of Persephone reuniting with her mother, and ascending from the underworld. As it happens, the sound of birds chirping fades in, ending the song on a positive note. Finally, the final side of the album, Water, continues with those exact bird chirps, which transforms into the familiar Water chant from my version of SMiLE. After the chants stop, a triumphant tune emerges, one of victory against all odds, one off Water, the inverse of hell's Fire, and something we all need to survive. The lyrics describe just that, the phrase 'We're gliding, going home, the bridge that feeds the water's tranquil tumble" repeated over and over.
To be continued

SMiLE songs would never have been written without lsd, brian himself has talked about how much it increased his creativity
4/10 premise needs work

Part 3 of 3
...The lyrics describe just that, the phrase 'We're gliding, going home, the bridge that feeds the water's tranquil tumble" repeated over and over. After this, a spoken word piece by Van Dyke Parks is spoken over the water chant from before, this time accompanied by a harp. Not only does it describe water but it describes all of the elements as one whole, the giver of life, and how we must appreciate the miracle that these elements have given us, or something like that. Yeah, you can tell they smoked way too much. Anyway, over time, the spoken word is overlapped by the chanting, interrupted yet again by other part of Water (or "Love To Say Dada") that you guys have on The SMiLE Sessions (the "wa was ho wa" part). This flows into the final section of the album- a lengthened version of the wordless vocals from Earth, bookending the album. As you'd expect, the album was panned by some critics as overblown and pretentious, though it sold well. It's probably the most divisive of the "golden era" Beach Boys albums, but it is by far Sup Forums's favorite. I'll continue with the rest of their discography after this.

sent ;)

this

He wrote california girls on lsd too

yeah I was gonna say I thought Smile was in large part due to his taking of acid...

RIP immersion

Well, let's continue anyway. After the difficulty of making both SMiLE and The Elements, the band took a bit of a cooldown, and released Wild Honey in 1970. Unlike the last 2 albums, it is not a concept album. Don't be fooled by the album's name- it is very different from your universe's Wild Honey. It is mostly in the same Baroque Pop/Progressive Pop style as Pet Sounds and select songs from SMiLE, and was much more band-oriented than previous releases (Dennis' "Forever" and Carl's "Feel Flows" are specific examples). Despite this, Brian and Van Dyke continued to lead the band.
After that, The band released the final album of their "golden era"- a self-titled album. This was the final Beach Boys album with Van Dyke Parks, and has songs written by Brian, Carl, Dennis, Van Dyke, and Mike Love, who was unable to contribute to Wild Honey due to not being in the band. His songs are by far the worst, but he had the rest of the band to help him, and as such most of them are co-written with other members. It sold better than The Elements and SMiLE, and was seen as a return to form of sort by critics. Their discography only gets worse from here, so I might as well stop. To sum it up, they released 2 alright albums that sold well but weren't received well, then 1 mediocre album that neither sold well or was received well. The rest of their discography isn't great, but isn't terrible either (not nearly as bad as late Beach Boys in your universe), but I haven't listened to most of it yet. Instead of going out with a bunch of shitty albums, they faded into nothingness, officially breaking up in '82. The end.

thanks man it sounds great

Muchos grassyass

>It did considerably better than Pet Sounds, enough so that Capitol let them take their time with their next album (which took around 2 years to make).

You know this wouldn't have happened right? Pet sounds didn't get accepted because of the the social climate of the times. Despite them leaving the surf sound and branching into the psychedelic rock genre The Beach Boys were still considered too milk toast during a tumultuous time. Every teenager in US had to either consider the very real possibility of being drafted, or fleeing the states and going to Canada. Young women of the time had to consider supporting the men in their lives with those options. From 66 til the end of the war was a time of serious rebellion of the youth. And trust me...no one rebelled against the establishment listening to The Beach Boys.

Did Brian end up doing any solo stuff?

I love the Imagination album