SMiLE Sessions box set!

[Matt Bielewicz]

Andrew, I'm always mindful of confusing what we definitely KNOW with what we'd LIKE to be true, as you are... but surely it is fair game to say that SMiLE MIGHT have been in a more complete state in January 1967, or May 1967, than it is on the surviving tapes today? Brian did say many times over a long period that 'he junked the tapes', and whilst he clearly DIDN'T, as Mark Linett and Alan Boyd have been working from said tapes this year, it is surely a workable possibility that Brian erased some tracks from the multitracks after failing to finish SMiLE?

This would still be consistent with the documented findings of everyone whose looked at the tapes since 1967 (Carl in 1971, Bruce in 1978, Mark Linett from 1987 onwards, etc) - that there are a lot of missing vocals. But it doesn't mean they were ALWAYS missing, right?

We know Brian did this on *some* tapes, I thought... Dennis's Old Master Painter vocal isn't on any surviving multis, if memory serves me right... and yet there ARE multitracks for that song, but they just have the backing track on them. Or am I getting confused again?

Wasn't the idea therefore that Brian might have recorded Dennis's vocals, done a mix for acetate of The Old Master Painter (which is where the mono version with the Dennis vocal comes from), and then erased the vocal from the multi? Thus leaving the acetate as the only place where those vocals exist? That would leave a multitrack for Carl and Bruce and Mark Linett to find that answered to the description 'doesn't have vocals' - and yet there WERE some, once...

Plus there's the deleted clarinets in 'Look/Song For Children', which Darian restored for the 2004 SMiLE... they were only audible in headphone bleed on the multitrack, but they must have been there once...

And then there's Brian's absolutely definitely documented examples of erasing things prior to this, during the recording of Summer Days and Pet Sounds. The SOT tapes show backing tracks for 'Do You Wanna Dance' with a different guitar solo that was later re-done at the mix to produce the ones on the master, and on the finished album. And there are all those one-time-only, done-at-the-mix overdubs for the version of Help Me Rhonda that was released on the Endless Harmony soundtrack. And there's Mike's lead vocal on the bridge of Wouldn't It Be Nice, and the vocals on the opening line of the tag of God Only Knows that are only on the mono mix (if I remember rightly, Carl's vocals on the opening of the tag on the stereo mix are so much 'softer'... because that's all that's left on the multitrack to mix from now, and not the slightly more forceful vocal that opens the tag on the mono mix).

Admittedly, in the latter two cases, the Mike vocals and the GOK tag opening line aren't on the multitrack now because Brian *replaced* them with something else, unlike in SMiLE, where it would appear he erased at least some things and *never* replaced them. But isn't that part and parcel of SMiLE being unfinished in 1967? Maybe he erased earlier attempts at the vocals, intending to replace them with later attempts, but never made the later attempts. Or maybe he didn't like the vocals and erased them to make it impossible for the band to finish SMiLE (although if so, there are many SMiLE vocals he left in situ that are still on the multis today, so he didn't make much of a job of that plan if that was his intention).

I admit, all of this fails 'the Doe test': it's great speculation, but there is not a shred of evidence for it, so it ought to be discounted from serious consideration.

But I felt it was worth pointing out that there is, at least, a way in which things could have happened that would result in everyone who has listened to the tapes post-1967 thinking 'there are a lot of missing vocals'. EVEN IF vocals were recorded once. And it's consistent with Brian's documented mid-to-late-60s working methods.

And if my uncle were 'differently configured', she'd be my aunt. I know, I know...

MattB

[hypehat]

I'm not sure Brian ever erased things maliciously. It doesn't seem very him, and not in keeping of his behaviour before or since. I think he was dodging the issue when he said things like 'I burnt them'. Like, a total blanket statement in order to get journalists to shut up about Smile.

Terms like 'deleted' are quite loaded. Maybe Brian decided he didn't like the clarinet melody in 'Look' after he recorded it, and mixed it down? Like the chorus' in GV, for example. Did Brian 'erase' instrumentation in the chorus because he was trying to delete his work, or was he simply mixing things down to get the sound he wanted? Maybe he decided OMP/YAMS would work better if it were a purely instrumental homage?

In about '87, which is the last time they've kepy us abreast of what's been found Smile-wise in the tape library iirc, it was supposed to have been a mess. And since then Boyd and Linett have been cataloguing things, listening to every single tape and returning things to proper boxes, filing things properly, stuff like that. Like they found a mono mix of Trombone Dixie that Brian had made in '66, and hadn't been filed properly which is why it didn't turn up on the box. I think that's why anyway. I'm sure they've been finding new things in there since BWPS, and that their work is mostly done, which is why they've started digitally archiving everything recently if I remember rightly.

As AGD is fond of saying, just because we haven't heard it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, lurking in some unmarked box somewhere in the vault, which is why bootleggers passed it over and made for the tapes with recognisable song titles on them or w/e. I wouldn't be surprised if there IS Dennis' vocal somewhere in a box in that vault. They were kinda cavalier about naming tape boxes back then....

[Andrew G. Doe]

They were kinda cavalier about naming tape boxes back then....

Which is why Alan Boyd's participation in the archival process these last few decades is so crucial. He knows the alternate titles. He knows his stuff and more importantly, when he comes across something he doesn't know, he'll ask around those who might. Without his presence, the reissues woudl be that much poorer.

[Matt Bielewicz]

Hey hypehat, you say it's not like Brian to erase things maliciously... but he definitely did. Didn't Steven Desper say that he erased more Brian Wilson lead vocals than ever made it to finshed product, or something like that? And think of all the alternate vocals that don't survive on multitracks today: the 'at three score and five' verse of H&V, the aforementioned Mike bridge vocals to Wouldn't It Be Nice and the first line of the tag to God Only Knows. And there are alternate split Mike/Brian verse vocals for an early version of H&V on the SOT discs, aren't there? They didn't make it to release either.

Of course, if you were trying to replace something that was already recorded in the 60s, you USUALLY had to erase it to fit the new part on the multitrack. Even with eight-track tape, which Brian didn't get until 1965, there weren't enough tracks to keep (say) old unsatisfactory vocal attempts and record new ones; you had to overwrite the old ones. Nowadays, with gazillions of tracks and virtual tracks to record on, we forget that. So it wasn't just malice - there were good reasons to trash overdubs from the multitrack permanently if you wanted to record new ones.

Point is, Brian sure did record over stuff. No doubt about it. And it wasn't an accident.

MattB

[Mikie]

Wait, the "three score and five" line does exist - you're saying it just doesn't on a multi-track? Should everything have to exist on a multi-track to sound good? Just wondering. Is the "Cantina" section on multi-track? 'Cause when it came out on the 2-fer in 1990 the sound quality was a little inferior to the rest. Is that what you're saying, Matt?

Sorry to intercede here - just wanted clarification on that part......

[Matt Bielewicz]

Yeah, what I'm saying is, if Brian recorded the 'three score and five' verse of H&V onto an H&V multitrack tape, then mixed that down to mono, then you'd have a mono mix with the three score and five vocals in. But if he then deleted those vocals from the multitrack, possibly replacing them (say) with the 'stand or fall, I know there shall be peace in the valley' vocals, then THE ONLY place you'd have 'three score and five' would be in that old mono mix. You'd never be able to create a new mix with that vocal performance of the 'three score and five' verse again.

If I remember rightly, that's EXACTLY the situation we have with H&V. The 'three score and five...' vocals are gone from the multitrack, but they still exist in the 'Cantina' mix that Brian made in, um... February 1967, was it? The one that's on the end of the Smiley Smile twofer.

But imagine the Feb '67 Cantina mix had subsequently been lost, or itself erased. Then all we'd have was a multitrack with different vocals, and no sign of the 'three score and five' verse. But that wouldn't mean they were never recorded... see?

Or, perhaps more pertinently to the discussion we were having here, imagine the Cantina mix had never been found by Mark Linett and released on the Smiley twofer, and was only in the hands of an arch-collector. And imagine that said arch-collector kept putting hints into circulation among the BB fan community about a version of H&V with a 'lost' verse. Alan Boyd and Mark Linett might scrutinise the surviving multitracks, and conclude that the 'three score and five' verse never existed, or that if it was written, it had never been recorded. But the arch-collector would know differently.

So now imagine that THAT is the situation with - oh, I don't know, take your pick from the world of SMiLE lore. Child Is Father Of The Man with verse vocals? Look with vocals? Barnyard with vocals? Maybe said vocals were recorded, mixed down, then the mix made its way into the hands of a hardcore BB collector, and in the meantime, the vocals were erased from the multitrack by Brian, either maliciously, or with a view to re-recording the vocals one day, but that never happened. Then you'd have what we've got now... a multitrack tape in the vault with no vocals, and no sign that any were ever recorded. EVEN IF these vocals were actually out there in the hands of some collectors, in mono or reference mixes made before the deletions from the multitrack.

Everyone still following me...? If so, you'll see how something could have been recorded, and still exist in a mix somewhere, even if the tapes in the vault don't feature it any more... And this, of course, is why some people go crazy over the idea of the Durrie Parks acetates, because they think those acetates might contain old reference mono mixes made with earlier vocals or overdubs that were subsequently erased from the multitracks. I hope so too, but I'm VERY prepared to find out that they contain the same old stuff we've all been listening to for years! If we even get to find that out at all, of course.

MattB

PS It should go without saying - but I'll say it anyway - that I have no inside knowledge of any 66-vintage multitracked CIFOTM verse or Barnyard vocals. I live on the wrong continent to where SMiLE was recorded, and wasn't even born until over four years after Brian gave up on SMiLE. I wish I knew more, but I don't.

PPS And Mikie, to answer your final question - I'm not sure if the BB's tape archive has a multitrack recording of the Cantina section. Maybe not. So that might be another section that only exists in the Feb 67 mono mix.

[bgas]

Yeah, what I'm saying is.... 
Everyone still following me...? If so, you'll see how something could have been recorded, and still exist in a mix somewhere, even if the tapes in the vault don't feature it any more... And this, of course, is why some people go crazy over the idea of the Durrie Parks acetates, because they think those acetates might contain old reference mono mixes made with earlier vocals or overdubs that were subsequently erased from the multitracks. I hope so too, but I'm VERY prepared to find out that they contain the same old stuff we've all been listening to for years! If we even get to find that out at all, of course.

MattB

Makes perfect sense to me! 
And I agree it's one  possible scenario for Smile. It's a good bet that even Brian doesn't know definitively what he may have saved or erased; other than going by what is now known to exist.

[Wrightfan]

Had a dream about SMiLE last night. Heard Child is the Father of the Man in crystal clear mono...only Brian was talking over it and the box labeled it as "I Ran/Look."

[Roger Ryan]

Hey hypehat, you say it's not like Brian to erase things maliciously... but he definitely did.

I think "maliciously" is too strong a term to use to describe what we know. All of the examples sited show Brian getting rid of vocals he dislikes with the (probable) intent of replacing them with new vocals. As opposed to backing track sessions, Brian and the other band members could record a new vocal relatively quickly. With SMiLE, it's possible that replacement vocals were simply not recorded before the project was dropped. Since Brian was fixated on reordering the backing tracks in different permutations, I can see him wanting to have the backing tracks in place before committing to recording the final vocals, so there's a logic to why some of these vocals are missing. If Brian wanted to "maliciously" destroy SMiLE, he would have trashed the backing track sessions which could not be easily replicated.

As to "Heroes & Villains", the "peace in the valley" verse is also missing from the multi-tracks which is why Mark had to fudge that portion of the stereo remix. I believe the majority of the "cantina" bridge is on the multi-tracks given their appearance in stereo on the SOT set (not so sure that the laughter was recorded on it's on track or added live during a mixdown).

[desmondo]

This latest part of this thread only highlights how much we don't actually know about the 66/67 Smile despite the great work done by scholars here and elsewhere and the issue of 'Smile' tracks over the years and even if we think we know something, someone is always ready to say it ain't so.

We actually have no idea what tracks would have been on Smile and in what order or arrangement - possibly with the exception of GV and Prayer although where they were in the running order is anyone's guess - because we haven't heard them/it apart from on BWPS

In fact I don't believe we have ever heard any completed (and I Mean completely finished) original Smile tracks with the possible exception of GV if that counts

[juggler]

In fact I don't believe we have ever heard any completed (and I Mean completely finished) original Smile tracks with the possible exception of GV if that counts

One could make the case that "You're Welcome" is the only track started and finished within the Smile era that was completed and released by Brian Wilson.

Of course, "You're Welcome" isn't on the famous 12/66 tracklist, and we don't know (and may never know) if Brian ever planned to work it into the Smile album in some fashion.

[desmondo]

In fact I don't believe we have ever heard any completed (and I Mean completely finished) original Smile tracks with the possible exception of GV if that counts

One could make the case that "You're Welcome" is the only track started and finished within the Smile era that was completed and released by Brian Wilson.

Of course, "You're Welcome" isn't on the famous 12/66 tracklist, and we don't know (and may never know) if Brian ever planned to work it into the Smile album in some fashion.

Vive L'Uncertainty

[The Heartical Don]

45 pages... it's getting quite boring, friends, and we prolly still got 6 months to go.

Count me out. I won't buy that darned box monster after all. Too much of a good thing. I'll spend the $$$ on booze.

[Shady]

45 pages... it's getting quite boring, friends, and we prolly still got 6 months to go.

Count me out. I won't buy that darned box monster after all. Too much of a good thing. I'll spend the $$$ on booze.

Hang in there Don, hang on.

[SurfRiderHawaii]

45 pages... it's getting quite boring, friends, and we prolly still got 6 months to go.

Count me out. I won't buy that darned box monster after all. Too much of a good thing. I'll spend the $$$ on booze.

Ditto on the boredom (though I will buy it,as you will too Don  ).  Thought this thread might turn into a great discussion of what might be in the box.  I thought wrong 

[rab2591]

45 pages... it's getting quite boring, friends, and we prolly still got 6 months to go.

Count me out. I won't buy that darned box monster after all. Too much of a good thing. I'll spend the $$$ on booze.

Ditto on the boredom (though I will buy it,as you will too Don  ).  Thought this thread might turn into a great discussion of what might be in the box.  I thought wrong 

I think that was 30 pages and a thousand headaches back.

I'll buy both the booze and the boxset - I need something to do in the next few months.

[pixletwin]

In fact I don't believe we have ever heard any completed (and I Mean completely finished) original Smile tracks with the possible exception of GV if that counts

One could make the case that "You're Welcome" is the only track started and finished within the Smile era that was completed and released by Brian Wilson.

Of course, "You're Welcome" isn't on the famous 12/66 tracklist, and we don't know (and may never know) if Brian ever planned to work it into the Smile album in some fashion.

Vive L'Uncertainty

I have always felt that "You're Welcome" would have been tagged on the end, uncredited, like the train whistles with Banana and Louie barking at the end of Pet Sounds.

[bgas]

45 pages... it's getting quite boring, friends, and we prolly still got 6 months to go.

Count me out. I won't buy that darned box monster after all. Too much of a good thing. I'll spend the $$$ on booze.

That's OK. Makes it more certain there'll be enough copies for me to keep one sealed and open the other.

[tansen]

I suggest we go back to talk about hos much drugs influenced Brian's songwriting - and particularly on Smile. Definitely an interesting subject.
I was reading earlier how someone seems to suggest that songs like Salt Lake City and Girl from New York City were not products of Brian on drugs, but I have to say I disagree. The complexity of the chord progressions, the instrumentation, the melody- and counter melody-lines and not to mention the harmonies themselves definitely speaks for a man influenced
Lyrically, not so much perhaps, but nobody said drugs would make you a better lyricist.

[Shady]

Lyrically, not so much though, but nobody said drugs would make you a better lyricist.

Well, Mike wasn't using drugs and we have him to blame for those lyrics

[18thofMay]

The boys are back in town

[rogerlancelot]

I've been avoiding this thread for some time but I guess I will finally speak.

How did the drugs influence Brian's music? I'm not even going to discuss the hash or acid here. Speed will cause mental illness. Period. Seen it happen many times. Same with cocaine. How did those influence his music? It turned him into a junkie. Look at him in the '76 footage in his bathrobe in bed. Listen to his voice. That is an (at the time) ex-junkie. Nothing pretty about it at all. There is a lesson to be learned there. Then you have the years of thorazine and other anti-psychotic drugs (thank you, Landy) and now we're lucky to have this guy alive at all (and still making worthwhile contributions to 21st century music)!

That was my rant and I will step off of my soapbox now.

 

[hypehat]

I agree. Sometimes I'm not sure that the people glorifying Brian's drug use like to think of what happened to him.

If you think Salt Lake and Girl From NYC are complex, acid fuelled chord progressions, you need to be schooled in both acid and music!

[Bill Tobelman]

There's an entire drug layered matrix in SMiLE but deny its existence & concentrate on the Americana matrix if it makes you feel better because that's there as well. Since ego and humor are related this process of solving the riddle may cause you to lose your ego.

The two matrices form the riddle which when perceived is on the vibrational level and causes the explosion of laughter at which time you may have a spiritual experience.

[Jason]

I'm not for or against drugs, though I do believe they should be legal and regulated with the stipulation that those who use them are responsible for the effects of those uses.

But the recent trend of glorifying Brian's drug use has become a disgusting and stupid happening in a fanbase already over-encumbered with ridiculous behaviors. And how ironic that those same idiots who glorify Brian's drug use are the same idiots who supposedly love him and his music the most. Bottom-feeders, the lot of them. I'm by no means saying I'm some kind of white knight who has never criticized Brian, as anyone who has read my postings on here should damn well know I'm probably the most critical and opinionated fan of both the man and his music.

These same sons of bitches who go on and on about "Brian made his best music while using drugs" should stop and take a hard look at the man nowadays. The same drug use that these alleged "fans" glorify have left a permanent mark on the man. To say he's lucky to be alive nowadays is a major understatement. I wonder if half of these alleged "fans" even know the extent of the damage said drug use did to Brian. He was already diagnosed with brain damage from the illegal drugs at the beginning of Landy's second term, and everyone knows how much worse Landy made it.

And you all sit back and say Brian should go back to the days when he was using coke and overeating because it led to stuff like Love You and Adult/Child yet piss and moan and whine and bitch and complain and drone on and on like a bunch of mindless drug-addled morons that Brian doesn't do anything worthwhile anymore. That same drug use is a contributing factor to his lack of consistent output, along with his general ambiguity towards his career now.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as brash or insulting but I think this needs to be said in these not-uncertain terms. I think if half of you so-called fans truly loved the man's music and the man himself (as so many of you probably erroneously claim), you'd reconsider and rethink these ridiculous posts you make on the topic of Brian's drug use.