BEACH BOYS MASTER TAPES RETURNED AFTER 45 YEARS

The new Beach Boys collection due out on May 19th, called Summer Love Songs, was made possible by a longtime fan coming forth with previously unknown session tapes for such classics as "Don't Worry Baby," "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" and others. The reels -- which contained the discarded multi-tracks from the Beach Boys' 1964 Shut Down Vol. II album -- enabled the group's production team to create the first true stereo mixes for some of the Beach Boys' most beloved tracks. After the success of the reissue of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue album, Wilson's biographer Jon Stebbins told us that an article in a Northern California newspaper about his work on the project led to the long lost Beach Boys tapes: ["The article was published in the local entertainment weekly and I got an email subsequently from a singer-songwriter named Lance Robison who lives here on the central coast, and he said that he had some Beach Boys tapes that I might be interested in. I hear that thing a lot in my line of business. But, anyway, I emailed him back and asked him a few pertinent questions about it. And his response to my initial email was pretty astounding."] SOUNDCUE (:26 OC: . . . was pretty astounding.) • Stebbins admits that he was speechless at his first sight of the 45-year-old master tapes: ["He pulled out three tape boxes, and they were original multi-track masters from the Beach Boys' Shut Down Vol. II album. I also knew that the Beach Boys had been missing the master tape -- the multi-track masters. So whereas before, all you had was a 'left' and a 'right' two tracks for a stereo mix; now you could turn it into, y'know, 6, 8, 10 tracks (and) spread it across the spectrum. So, true stereo mixes of these things."] SOUNDCUE (:28 OC: . . . of these things.) • From there Stebbins brought the tapes directly to the Beach Boys' official archivist, Alan Boyd. Boyd, who has spent years cataloging the band's session masters and live tapes, had never thought these multi-tracks had survived. Prior to 1965, it was not Capitol Records' standard policy to have artists deliver session tapes along with the finished masters to the label. It's not that the tapes were thought to be "missing" or "lost" -- they were never expected to still exist. • Alan Boyd recalls hearing the session tapes as being an incredible personal and professional moment: ["I have been somewhat fanatical about this music since I was about five years old. Y'know, I may have found my way into this job as some deep-seated desire to figure out what made this music tick. It never gets old. When you find something like this for the first time and you really get to hear the creative process, and the boys are getting comfortable with the song and working their way through it. Uh, no, it was a definite 'Whoa, hands are shaking' kind of thing."] SOUNDCUE (:24 OC: . . . kind of thing.) • The missing master tapes enabled Boyd and engineer Mark Linnett to make the first true stereo mixes for "Don't Worry Baby" and "Why Do Fools Fall In Love," both of which lead off the upcoming release. • The full tracklisting to Summer Love Songs is: "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" (new stereo mix), "Don't Worry Baby" (new stereo mix)," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows," "Surfer Girl," "California Girls," "Please Let Me Wonder," "In The Parkin' Lot," "Your Summer Dream," "Kiss Me, Baby," "Hushabye" (new stereo mix), "I'm So Young" (new stereo mix), "Good To My Baby" (new stereo mix), "Fallin' In Love" (new stereo mix of Dennis Wilson solo track)," "Time To Get Alone" (new stereo mix), "Our Sweet Love," "Help Me, Rhonda," "Keep An Eye On Summer," "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)," and "Girls On The Beach." • Jon Stebbins wrote the groundbreaking books Dennis Wilson: The Real Beach Boy and the David Marks biography The Lost Beach Boy. • Alan Boyd directed the Beach Boys' 1998 official documentary, Endless Harmony.