The "Cocaine/Hamburger Sessions" (partially lost Brian Wilson recordings; 1981)
Album cover for the bootleg.
Status: Partially Lost
The so-called Cocaine Sessions are a series of recordings made by Brian and Dennis Wilson of the American rock band the Beach Boys along with UCLA music professor Garby Leon in 1981.[1]
Background
Brian Wilson founded a band known as the Pendletones with his brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine in Hawthorne, California in 1961. Dennis' hobby of surfing inspired the band to write and perform songs centered around the California myth. The Pendletones became the Beach Boys after their first single, "Surfin'", was issued under that name. As Brian led the band to produce more sophisticated sounds he suffered a decline in mental health with him beginning to experience auditory hallucinations in the early 1960s and suffering abuse from Murry Wilson, the Wilson brothers' father and the band's manager until he was fired in 1964. Later in 1964, Brian experienced a panic attack on a plane after a television appearance and subsequently remained in California to write and record his masterwork, tentatively titled Our Freaky Friends or Remember the Zoo, while the rest of the band continued touring with Bruce Johnston taking Brian's place (and later becoming a full-fledged member of the band).[2]
The album was met with disappointing sales and lukewarm reception upon its 1966 release as Pet Sounds despite a later reputation as a masterpiece and Brian, now dubbed "a genius" in a press campaign by the Beach Boys' publicist Derek Taylor, began work on his "teenage symphony to God" entitled SMiLE. This album would be canceled in 1967 after over 50 hours of recording costing tens of thousands of dollars, with a hastily-produced, stripped-down version entitled Smiley Smile being released in its stead, and remained mostly unreleased for decades as Brian's worsening mental illness led him to largely retreat from the public eye. Brian wouldn't have major involvement in the production of a studio album until 1976's 15 Big Ones, which was promoted with a controversial "Brian Is Back!" media campaign. Despite the optimistic message, however, Brian was hardly in any state to be thrust back into the spotlight and he was becoming increasingly dependent on cigarettes, alcohol, and a variety of drugs while also overeating daily.[2]
The sessions
Most of the known tracks from the sessions were recorded at a Venice, California beach house belonging to Garby Leon, a friend of Dennis, with later recordings being made at a studio in Santa Monica, California as Dennis' final productions. The title of The Cocaine Sessions popularly used on bootlegs is based on a rumor that Dennis convinced Brian to record the sessions by enticing him with cocaine and McDonald's hamburgers, Leon proposing the more tame title of The Hamburger Sessions as he claimed there was no cocaine use during the sessions proper. A variety of dates ranging from 1980 to 1982 are given for the sessions, but Leon has confirmed they took place in 1981 with January being most commonly cited as the month. Author Jon Stebbins reports that "many hours" of music were recorded, however only 22½ minutes of this has ever surfaced with all but one of the tracks in question coming from the Venice beach house session. Most of these were originals, however, there is also a short rendition of the song "Heroes and Villains" which was originally intended for the SMiLE album and is seen as a microcosm of the project's collapse as well as being a sore spot for Brian for decades.[3][4][5][6]
Further developments
On January 25th, 1981, Brian's former caretakers Stan Love (brother of the Beach Boys member Mike Love) and Rocky Pamplin caught wind that Dennis had been giving drugs to Brian and busted into Dennis' house posing as police officers to subject Dennis to a savage beating which they were later fined a total of $1,000 for. Brian's condition continued to suffer with his weight ballooning to over 300 pounds and him nearly dying from a drug overdose in late 1982 which prompted his bandmates to fire him and push him to volunteer himself to the care of Dr. Eugene Landy (who previously treated Brian from 1975 to 1976 before being fired for nearly doubling his fee) where he would remain until the state intervened due to Landy's abusive practices nearly a decade later. Dennis drowned off the coast of Marina del Rey, California at the age of 39 on December 28th, 1983, and was given a U.S. Coast Guard burial at sea personally authorized by President Ronald Reagan.[3][7][8][9]
In 1986, Steven Gaines' book Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys included a sensationalized account of the sessions claiming that "Dennis would lay out the entire gram of cocaine on the piano top and Brian would snort it all in one long, noisy inhalation" without revealing the source of such information and in direct contradiction to Leon's later account. According to Stebbins, the sessions featured arrangements that would later be used for the song "Rio Grande" on Brian Wilson's self-titled debut solo album released in 1988. By 1990 the bootleg and its backstory had become infamous enough that the television movie Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys, an adaptation of Gaines' Heroes and Villains, featured a scene dramatizing the anecdote of Dennis coaxing Brian into recording music with cocaine and fast food. A track entitled "I Made a Prayer" on bootlegs was rewritten by Brian as "This Isn't Love" and recorded by actor Alan Cumming for the 2000 movie The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. Brian rewrote "City Blues" with Scott Bennett and released it on his fourth studio album Gettin' In Over My Head with a feature by Eric Clapton in 2004. "Stevie", an ode to Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and the sole track recorded at the Santa Monica studio session to be released (albeit unofficially), was considered for inclusion on the Beach Boys' 2013 Made in California box set but ultimately failed to materialize. Leon passed away from cancer at age 66 in 2014. The whereabouts of the original tapes since the 1980s and how (or even when) the recordings ended up on bootlegs is unknown.[1][3][10]
List
| Song | Status |
|---|---|
| "Yeah" | Found |
| "Oh Lord" | Found |
| "City Blues" | Found |
| "I Made a Prayer" | Found |
| "Why Don't You Tell Me Why" (Parts 1 and 2) | Found |
| "I Feel So Fine" | Found |
| "Be My Baby" (snippet) | Partially Found |
| "Heroes and Villains" | Found |
| "Stevie" | Found |
| "Bobby, Dale and Holly" | Lost |
| Early "Rio Grande" sequences | Lost |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Stebbins, Jon (2011). The Beach Boys FAQ: All That's Left to Know About America's Band, p. 221. Backbeat Books. ISBN 9781458429148. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Paese, Megan. "The Beach Boys". The History of Rock and Roll Radio Show. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Gaines, Steven (1986). Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306806479. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ Stebbins, Jon (2011). The Beach Boys FAQ: All That's Left to Know About America's Band, p. 221. Backbeat Books. ISBN 9781458429148. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ Leon, Garby (September 29, 2008). "Comment by Garby Leon on Linear Zap's Blog". Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ [1] Heroes and Villains. (2024, March 6). In Wikipedia. Retrieved 31 Mar '24
- ↑ Flanary, Patrick (22 May 2019). "Pacific Ocean coup: how Ronald Reagan helped bury a Beach Boy at sea". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ CineMontage. July/August 2014 issue. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ Donnelly, Gabrielle (2 July 2015). "I nearly went the same way as Jacko: Beach Boy Brian Wilson on overdosing, his greedy guru... and the girl who saved him". The Daily Mail. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ Clip from Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys (April 29, 1990). Retrieved 13 March '24