🎶Long Promised Road🎶

Music sideblog. Currently obsessed with The Beach Boys. RPF Posts other music related things.

[carlwilsonappreciation]

The Beach Boys onstage at Gröna Lund in Stockholm, June 3, 1980. Photos by Michael J. Nordström and Richard Cahlén, © Premium Rockshot.

“It was a nice feeling to find out that Carl Wilson was as warm a person as his music and just as special, too.” - Debi Fee, Tiger Beat (1980)

[queenofratz]

guys… liking the Beatles can happen to you at any time. it’s literally happening to me rn. you can’t escape it. Beatlemania comes for us all eventually.

[pressure-machine]

THE KILLERS perform live at the 2026 UEFA Champions League Final kick off show

[longpromisedroadmp3]

I picked up Beach Boys Party with a complete photocard set!

Making tough choices, the collector in me wants to leave it complete but another part of me wants to cut them up and use them😭😭.

[carlwilsonappreciation]

The Beach Boys with French singer-songwriter Alice Dona in Paris, 1964. Photos by Bob Lampard.

[ghosthorse-tracks]

jokes that never get old to me:

the group? the beach boys 🏖️☀️

the album? surf’s up 🏄‍♂️🌊

the opening track? don’t go near the water 🚫🙅🏼

[bobbyhasstardust]

please do not bring up the beach boys around me... i will start crying.

[ghosthorse-tracks]

carl wilson 🎶🥰

(x)

[sealtrick]

i think “band wives” should yuri it up. if my husband was fucking another man on tour id simply fuck that mans wife

[deanwinchesterapologist]

"free thinkers" when bruce springsteen starts rolling

[fairycosmos]

music songs and lyrics. its just unbelievable

[bedupolker]

genres of surf rock:

Halloween

Arabic

Desert (Californian)

Desert (Australian)

Indie rock in disguise

Beach Ken

Belongs on the Spongebob Squarepants S1 Soundtrack

[carlwilsonappreciation]

Photo credits as known: Rich Zimmermann, Larry Hulst, Leo Gozbekian, Anwar Hussein, Henry Diltz.

“Carl’s Nudie cowboy outfit — Nudie was the gentleman that made all the beautiful rhinestone cowboy suits for all the country western artists at the time, and my sister [Annie] developed and designed several for Carl, and he wore them regularly on this tour [1974] and many of the other tours.” - Billy Hinsche, On The Road With The Beach Boys

[longpromisedroadmp3]

Favorite version of Here Comes The Night?

Here Comes The Night (1967) from Wild Honey

Here Comes The Night (1979) from the LA Light Album

Voting ended onMay 29

I can't help but be captivated by the 10 minute disco version.

[bbdelurkr]

Bruce at the Draft Board (Artist's Rendition)

@xenichz I have done the deed. Sources and ramblings undercut

I volunteered my services to illustrate Bruce pretending to be gay to avoid the draft, so we have a version for each of the differing descriptions given by Bruce and Mike (quoted below) as well as a little comic panel squeezed onto the page and an impeccable photoshop job demonstrating Bruce as a tv show dancer, because the Shindig! bit is the funniest part.

Here is Bruce's description of events, sourced from here:

I went down to the draft board two weeks and two hours late. You were supposed to be there at seven. I got there at nine. Also, that weekend I went to a department store and bought some corduroy pants, blue Top-Sider deck shoes, and a nice button-down short sleeve shirt that I promptly shrunk in hot water. I put powder on my face and some perfume, and drove down for my interview. Since I was late, I was the only guy there, and they were starting to give me crap. They asked me all kinds of questions and eventually sent me up to the psychologist. He started interviewing me and was actually very cool. During the interview, he said “And ah, Bruce, what business would you like to be in?” and I replied “Well, I’d like to be a dancer on the Shindig! show.” The psychologist said “Okay. I don’t think we need you, but thank you for coming by. Follow the red line out.” [...]

And here's what Mike wrote in his autobiography:

[Bruce] too strongly opposed the war, though he took a more creative path to avoid service. He had a slender surfer's body, and he bought a pair of jeans, washed and dried them several times so they were extremely tight, and wore them when he went to his draft board for induction. He also borrowed a girlfriend's blouse, applied a touch of makeup, and found opportune times to bat his eyes and shake his hips.

Even if Bruce really did borrow a girlfriend's blouse I know we don't live in the blessed timeline where he went with pink + a bow, but how could I resist 🎀

And also for completion's sake, here is the full impeccably photoshopped image (link to og photo) with the circa-1970 pic I got his face from (because look at what he's wearing, I mean yeah obvsly):

And I may as well drop some (pre-Bruce) BB performances on Shindig! to wrap this up, featuring the dancers on some of the songs and more tight pants on all of the Boys:

[olivagina-blog]

finding $10 on the ground > the beatles

[carlwilsonappreciation]

Ad in Cash Box (1971).

On May 24, 1971, "Long Promised Road" (composed by Carl Wilson, with lyrics by Jack Rieley) was released as a single. It was Carl's first solo composition, and he also played all the instruments on the song. “‘Long Promised Road’ was the first song I ever wrote. And I — I had thought, you know, a few years before, well, I, you know, feel like I might want to be writing a song. But I didn’t want to push it. I just wanted to let it be a real pure inspiration thing… you really wanted to be able to create from inside yourself. And so I… it was just a really great experience to just let my hands fall on the keys where they did. You know, that was just kind of what — the way it happened. And I would just hum the melody, you know; that’s the way I did it.” - Carl Wilson, Rock Influence “’Long Promised Road’ is a classic spiritually searching song. It tells of the struggle between weakness and strength… It is as timeless as ‘My Sweet Lord.’” - review by Danny Goldberg, Hit Parader (March 1972) “‘There was a time,’ remembers Carl without a trace of bitterness, ‘The Beach Boys were an uncool thing to be into.’ […] The Beach Boys tried to refashion their public image to conform with their private one. They even joked about changing their name to Beach, short and pretentious. In 1971 and 1972, Jack Rieley, their manager at the time, worked to get them FM airplay and attract the college audience, and the group itself showcased its newer, more difficult material at concerts, reserving the oldies for the second half of the performance. ‘We wanted people to think we were good now,’ says Carl, ‘instead of looking at us as inferior to what we used to be. But the audience had different expectations.’" - The New Times (April 2, 1976)