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 suggested the band write and perform songs centered around the California myth inspired by his own hobby of surfing. 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 continued abuse from Murry Wilson, the Wilson brothers' father and the band's manager until he was fired in 1964. Later in 1964, he experienced a panic attack on a plane after a television appearance with the band 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 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 Dumb Angel then, later, SMiLE. This album would infamously 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. He wouldn't have principal 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 songs 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, by the two Wilson brothers and Leon 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, although 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 new compositions by the Wilsons and Leon, 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 nature and collapse as well as being a sore spot for Brian for decades.[1][3][4][5]
Tracks
The introduction to most bootlegs of the sessions is "Yeah" which features Brian performing vocal and piano warmups. This is followed by "Oh Lord", a seven-minute, organ-driven ballad with deeply emotional lyrics somewhat reminiscent of the SMiLE track "Surf's Up" (later rerecorded by the Beach Boys for their 1971 album of the same title). "City Blues" is (predictably) a blues number about city life which Brian later rewrote with Scott Bennett and released on his 2004 album Gettin' In Over My Head with a feature by Eric Clapton. "I Made a Prayer" (a.k.a. "I Search This World") is another ballad that was repurposed by Brian as "This Isn't Love" and performed by actor Alan Cumming for the 2000 movie The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. " Why Don't You Tell Me Why" (a.k.a. "You've Been"), a two-part playful love song, is most notable in that it was rewritten as two different songs which also remain unreleased: "Sweetie", a version of which was recorded by the Beach Boys in a later 1981 session and by Brian in a 1986 demo, and "Love Ya", a further development on "Sweetie" that was intended for release on Brian's rejected solo album Sweet Insanity in 1991.[6][7]
A lounge-style rendition of "Heroes and Villains" is followed by "I Feel So Fine", another lounge-style tune that seems to have been taped over a recording of Brian performing the Ronnette's "Be My Baby" based on a barely audible snippet at the end of the track. "Stevie" is an upbeat ode to Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and the sole track recorded at the Santa Monica studio session yet to see the light of day (albeit only unofficially). It seemingly reiterates lyrical themes from the Beach Boys' 1966 hit "Good Vibrations" in a similar way to "Oh Lord" and was considered for inclusion in the band's 2013 archival box set Made in California but ultimately failed to materialize. According to Stebbins, the sessions also featured another ballad titled "Bobby, Dale and Holly" and concepts that would later be used for the track "Rio Grande" on Brian Wilson's 1988 self-titled debut solo album.[1]
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 involved in a drug deal with 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, although it is unknown if this was directly related to the Wilson-Leon sessions. 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 by manager Steve Love, also Mike's brother, for 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][8][9][10]
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. By 1990, the sessions 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 and the two of them taking drugs and recording music in a beach house. 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.[3][11][12]
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 1.2 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
- ↑ Leon, Garby (September 29, 2008). Comment by Garby Leon on Linear Zap's Blog. Retrieved 4 Feb '24
- ↑ "Heroes and Villains" (Section: "Impact on Wilson's decline"). Wikipedia. Retrieved 31 Mar '24
- ↑ Doe, Andrew. "From the Vaults...". Bellagio 10452. Retrieved 13 Aug '24
- ↑ Doe, Andrew. "UNRELEASED". Bellagio 10452. Retrieved 13 Aug '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
- ↑ Barnes, Mike (May 1, 2014. "Fox Story Analyst Garby Leon Dies at 66". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 13 Aug '24