r/thebeachboys • u/Ok-Interest-7293 • 22h ago
Carl & mike realationship
What was their dynamic in the group since other then Brian they were both the leaders of the group did they clash over that role Did they clash over leadership cause we know Dennis & Mike clashed over the years but no one seems to dig deep into mike & carls dynamic.
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u/Night_Hawk_13 15h ago
I found it interesting that Carl usually referred to Mike as Michael. I think he's the only one who referred to him as Michael so I think they had a unique relationship. Due to their age difference Carl probably looked up to Mike when he was younger and respected him as an older relative. Carl usually praised Mike's talents in interviews for his ability as a songwriter and as a frontman. Carl even sang God Only Knows at Mike's wedding in 1994.
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u/Brangarr 13h ago
Yeah I’m sure in the very early years he must have looked up to Mike respectfully, maybe even seen him as one of the leaders of the band. Carl was 14 and Mike was 20 when they recorded Surfin. That’s pretty huge. It wasn’t until Carl was well into his 20s, that I would imagine he’d start feeling like he could lead Mike.
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u/Agile-Acanthaceae-97 Wild Honey 13h ago
It honestly could just be that old habits die hard. When I was a kid my brothers were always called by their full names by my mom and I still can’t bring myself to call them by their nicknames at 40 years old, even if it bothers them haha
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u/Some_Affect713 22h ago
I get the sense that it was professional but that they didn't really associate much outside of work. There's the stories about the 1970s tours where "the meditators" (Mike and Al) went one way whereas the Wilson brothers went another. Then there was the big airport tarmac fight where Dennis and Carl got pissed off that Brian went with Mike and Al
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 22h ago
Oh for sure Dennis carl & Mike Al were on opposite ends of the spectrum they’re
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u/Some_Affect713 22h ago
Interestingly it seems like Al changed his mind at some point in the 1990s. He was adamant that the group should have hung it up after Carl's death, didn't participate in the Nascar thingy, became tighter with Brian (I think Al and Brian were always on good terms though; in that batshit 1990s interview where Brian says he's mad at all the other Beach Boys and wants to beat them all up, he specifies that him and Al are cool)
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 22h ago
oh definitely Al & Mike realationship got pretty bad at a certain point i don’t know the details but it seems like they didn’t like each other very much towards the end of
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u/Some_Affect713 22h ago
This is purely speculation, but I get the sense Al always liked Brian's more Brian-y music (look how much he's been championing Love You), but deferred to Mike's more commercially-minded judgement thinking it would ensure a financial safety net for the band (not that it did for most of the 1970s lol). It seems pretty clear he's never enjoyed the nostalgia-act direction the Beach Boys' touring camp has went in the last 30-odd years, and "no Carl" was evidently his final straw
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u/Brangarr 13h ago edited 13h ago
Al’s championing Love You now. He did not previously. He has said as much in (very) recent interviews where he admits he always thought it was weird. In the earlier shows on this tour which I saw, he seemed a bit, very slightly embarrassed introducing the songs at the show
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u/Agile-Acanthaceae-97 Wild Honey 13h ago
Al admitted even on his tour that he didn’t remember most of the songs from Love You. Thank god for Darian and co. that they were able to convince him to do it.
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 22h ago
Oh definitely & him & mike seemed to have more in common then the rest of the band being TM guys but then when Al drifted from that they didn’t have anything in common to like each other anymore & they’r was no Dennis or Brian to clash with it became mike & Al who fought endlessly they’re realationship is pretty fascinating when you think about this whole band is fascinating
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u/AscoyneDAscoyne 13h ago
Al was also willing to do sillier songs with Brian. Good Time he says was them goofing off, as was At My Window. Brian skipped around on the roof for sound effects for Take a Load Off Your Feet.
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u/Blend42 Love You 21h ago
Apparently after Mike's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech, Carl walked over to Paul Schaffer and said "Well our career is finished". During the tarmac dust up in 1977 Mike and Carl were on opposite sides.
The only story I recall where Carl and Mike were on the same side of something is when they reduced Brian to tears over him working on Time to Get Alone with Redwood in late 1967.
I think contracts from 1965 for the live band were "Carl Wilson plus four other musicians" , not sure when that changed (maybe when Carl left in 1981?).
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u/gishingwell 16h ago
Sorry what is the contesr of the Time to Get Alone story?
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u/naomisunderlondon 15h ago
Brian wanted to record some songs with Redwood and the other boys were upset because they didn't want him to give away potential hits to other groups so they bullied him into letting them record them. I've always heard this story about Darlin but it very well could be about both songs
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u/Agile-Acanthaceae-97 Wild Honey 13h ago
Darlin was actually a rewrite of a song that Brian wrote for Sharon Marie earlier in the sixties. I had never heard that he’d had the same pushback about that one.
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u/naomisunderlondon 11h ago
Yeah, thinkin bout you baby, which he later recorded with spring, great song. I could be wrong but I seem to remember this story being about darlin
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u/Brangarr 13h ago
I’m on team Carl & Mike on this one. Sorry! I’d rather hear Carl sing that song than Three Dog Night!! Brian’s obsession with Redwood/Danny Hutton always seemed weird to me.
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u/AscoyneDAscoyne 21h ago
A land of contrasts
When asked about the covers on Summer in Paradise in 1992, Carl said, "I prefer to go for the originals, but the other guys are not encumbered by that attitude. I think we at least brought a newness to (the remakes), a new energy."
Before everything went to hell in 1977, there is a Florida concert that's on YouTube where Mike starts talking about the Maharishi to the audience, who get a little restless. Carl tells the audience to "quit fucking around and throwing that stuff," which happened to be at least in part, coins. Carl wasn't into TM at this time or wasn't in nearly as deep. In 1977, Carl's thing was est.
Then there's the 1980 Knebworth show where Carl is clearly mad at Mike and Dennis quickly and quietly intervenes. Al noticed and while Dennis turns holding Carl back into embracing him, Al slyly offers a quick handshake to Dennis, which he accepts.
The tarmac incident was also about Stan and Rocky handling Brian at the Central Park concert, which Carl mentioned in 1978. Carl also apparently had a problem with Stan potentially being Brian's conservator. That's probably less about Mike, though, as Stan and Mike didn't have a good relationship then. (Mike had shaky relationships with his brother Stephen and his dad at that point.)
Carl left the group in 1981 because he thought they were stagnant and not take live shows seriously. Reviews were universally awful of the group without Carl's presence on stage. When Carl came back he demanded some changes, including personnel. Mike was running the live show in his absence. Carl also hated the casino and Vegas-y gigs and demanded those stop in 1982. Carl didn't have that same fire later as the band drifted more and more in that direction - with corporate gigs rising, too. Whether he was fine with them or didn't feel like fighting them is unknown.
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 21h ago
Oh definitely Carl & Dennis were always fighting mike over what was right for the band
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u/Definitelynotatwork1 I'm the pied piper 22h ago
I can’t think of a single cowrote between them outside of All this is that.
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 22h ago
Yea true but I feel like they’r more to they’re realationship then meets the eye
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u/Definitelynotatwork1 I'm the pied piper 22h ago
I think Dennis and Mike had more in committed and could have made better music for it
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 22h ago
True they definitely had a friendship at some point but it was to violate
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17h ago
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u/Ok-Interest-7293 17h ago
Oh ok definitely I’m using an iPhone 16 which idk if that’s the problem but yeah for sure i definitely gotta do better on the typing but thanks for the advice on how to not run into these problems again
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u/shutdownvol2 Shut Down Volume 2 13h ago
Both strongly business-minded individuals. Carl got along with Dennis and both Blondie and Ricky, but other than that I don't think he was close friends with anyone in the band.
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u/jojoebake 13h ago
To me it seems like their relationship was mostly cordial, outside of times where Carl percived Mike to be disrespecting his brothers e.g. the Knebworth incident.Â
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u/nohorsesjustangels 21h ago edited 21h ago
They seem to have been professional... most of the time. Obviously during the great Alan & Mike vs Dennis & Carl custody battle of the mid 70s things were less than fantastic and Carl really didn't like Student Demonstration Time and he did lunge at Mike at Knebworth (lol) and we know Carl was less than happy with the cheerleaders and playing in Vegas and everything from Still Cruisin' onwards...
Mike talks about Carl in his book like he talks about the other Wilson brothers, condescendingly. He seems to vaguely admire his talent and him stepping up as a leader and he does love him, that's obvious when he talks about his death... but he's very judgemental about his drug use and mental health issues and seems genuinely perplexed by Carl much of the time. I don't think they were ever super close (despite knowing each other 51 years but then again Alan said he knew Mike 60 years and never actually got to know the guy so 🤷)
I think a lot of it comes down to Carl being the youngest and probably the one Mike hung out with the least + Carl seems to have been extremely guarded even around family and friends and there were only maybe 10 (?) people he was actually willing to open up to and Mike obviously wasn't one of them....
Mike did say Carl looked like a Greek deity at one point in his book though lol... of course he called him fat about fifty times as well but I thought it was a nice compliment