Rock legend Bruce Johnston recalls his buddy Terry Melcher & working on songs from Doris Day’s latest album “My Heart”

September 9, 2011 -> dorisdaytribute.com

We feel immensely privileged to be able to bring to you now an interview with Rock legend Bruce Johnston who is a member of The Beach Boys, an accomplished producer and solo artist, as well as a GRAMMY award-winning songwriter – best known for having penned “Disney Girls” and Barry Manilow’s #1 hit “I Write the Songs”. Johnston alongside his buddy Terry Melcher (Doris’ son) also produced the 1980s recordings which now feature on Doris Day’s new album “My Heart“.

Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here (Written by Alan Jay Lerner & Burton Lane) +
Daydream (Written by John Sebastian) +
Way I Dreamed It (Written by Bruce Johnston & Terry Melcher) +
Heaven Tonight (Written by Bruce Johnston) +
My One & Only Love (Written by Robert Mellin & Guy Wood)
My Heart (Written by Bruce Johnston & Terry Melcher) +
You Are So Beautiful (Written by Billy Preston & Bruce Fisher) +
Life Is Just A Bowl of Cherries (Written by Ray Henderson & Les Brown)
Disney Girls (Written by Bruce Johnston) +
My Buddy (Written by Walter Donaldson & Gus Kahn)
Happy Endings (Bruce Johnston & Terry Melcher) +
[Sung by Terry with introduction by Doris Day]
Ohio (Betty Comden, Adolph Green & Leonard Bernstein)
[+ previously unreleased song]

THE PUZZLE OF BRIAN WILSON’S SMILE

IN A RADIO PROGRAM broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in the early 1990s, Beach Boys band member Bruce Johnston was asked about the status of Brian Wilson’s legendary unfinished album Smile. This is what he said:

"It’s not far from completion. That could be completed if he wanted to put the energy into it. I don’t think I’d attempt to do it. ’Cause it’s not my work, you know. I’d rather he did it. It’s in fragments. It’s just a bunch of fragments. And they’re really good, really superb . . . fragments."

2005 Nov 11 - Rob C. Wegman
http://www.princeton.edu/~rwegman/lectures/smile.htm

JOHNSTON STILL ENJOYS BEACH BOYS’ ‘ENDLESS SUMMER’

Quote:

Surprisingly, however, Johnston says, “I blame myself for bringing Brian into a downfall in the studio.”

He suggested that Wilson move to a studio with eight-track recording, like what he had worked with at Columbia, instead of sticking with the four-track recording — three useable tracks and one for mixing — he had used to craft The Beach Boys’ biggest hits.

The move, however, ran counter to Wilson’s most productive and creative work habits.

“Brian had to make instant decisions and mix as he recorded because he didn’t have a lot of tracks,” Johnston says about four-track recording. “You get into multi-tracking, and you can put off mixing decisions, for a guy like Brian, or you don’t make your tracks as big, so you miss that leakage of the drum track going into the string track. … He’s the kind of guy who would have it totally together in the studio, he’d have it nailed, and then we’d do our singing.”

Johnston believes Wilson would have eventually followed the technology where it led, but he regrets pushing him into it.


ANDREW S. HUGHES, August 13. 2009
http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20090813/Ent/908139939/1043/Ent

+ http://www.thesmileshop.net/index.php/Anatomy_of_a_recording_session:_Cutting_Wouldn.

+ http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1701111

HE WRITES SONGS THAT MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD SING

EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO HE IS!

Bruce Johnston is a true musical lifer. The longtime member of The Beach Boys has been cranking out widely embraced radio fare since the early 1960s, scoring his first hit under his own name in 1963 with novelty number "Surfers' Pajama Party."

However, it is a d(?)itty that most people think Barry Manilow penned that's forever ensured his professional legacy, namely 1975's monster smash "I Write The Songs," which will performed and cherished in cocktail lounges and blasted by easy listening stations long after each of us are dust.

6/27/09 Sat Eye Candy
http://www.jambase.com/Articles/Story.aspx?StoryID=18651

Thulsa Doom - Tears In The Morning

2008?

1970 Written by: Bruce Johnston



http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHNkDmIfLI&fmt=18

FUN, FUN, FUN WITH REVIVED BEACH BOYS

WORCESTER— Surf’s up!
That was the watchword Saturday night at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts on Southbridge Street as The Beach Boys rode a wave of nostalgia into the venue.
It’s hard to believe that the original Beach Boys band was formed in 1961. It’s even harder to believe that internal squabbling over the years has led to at least three different bands playing Beach Boys material.

(2008 Dec 8 / Peter Landsdowne)http://www.telegram.com/article/20081208/NEWS/812080374&template=eworcester

(Photo Dwight McCann / Nov 2007?
http://dwightmccann.blogspot.com/ and http://dwightmccann.com/ )

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Beach Boys’ Mike Love has fond memories of Worcester

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were younger? You won’t hear Mike Love singing such a lament, although he does use phrases such as “back in the day” and “those were the days” once in a while. Instead, Love, 67, a founding member of the Beach Boys, looks back with satisfaction at the group’s successes and enjoys the fact that people are still playing Beach Boys songs to this day.

The other day he noted that his daughter, Ambha, had come home from her fourth-grade class where the children had voted the Beach Boys number “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (which continues “if we were older and we wouldn’t have to wait so long”) favorite class song.

(2008 Nov 30 / Richard Duckett)
http://www.telegram.com/article/20081130/NEWS/811300437/1110

END