SMiLE release thoughts from a returnee and some questions for the scholars

[buddhahat]

I was just re-reading DPs book that came out after the release of BWPS and he seemed quite certain that the Elements section was "not right"

He seemed to be saying that Wanna Be Around/Workshop was supposed to have gone after MOC - has this any substance??

I think I may be the only one, but I totally buy this theory. Put them together and judge for yourself, but make sure you use an edit of Fire that actually has the last drum beats (that sound like crashing timbers). The way these move into the first notes of IWBA was a revelation to me.

[Roger Ryan]

A wild guess... Argue away!!Show me what you got!

http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs67.html

What I see, starting in Feb. '67, is a series of sessions designed to finish "Heroes & Villains" as a single. Whether or not he has admitted it to himself or others, it appears that Brian effectively stopped working on SMiLE the album (as conceived by himself and Van Dyke Parks) in January. By April he gives the news to Derek Taylor regarding the "scrapping" of the album and decides to re-record/complete "Vegetables" as the next single in place of "Heroes & Villains". After several sessions that don't produce a result Brian is happy with, he cancels some subsequent sessions and decides to work on a new track that he plays around with the arrangements on ("I Love To Say Dada"). At this point, there is now pressure for both a single and some kind of album. Brian believes building a home studio could be the answer to his creative conundrum, but while that's being built, he goes back to Western to re-record "Vegetables" once again to get a usable version. Happier with the stripped-down arrangement he has chosen, and with his home studio in operation, he moves forward to complete "Heroes & Villains" and determines that a stripped-down home-made approach will work for the next album.

I don't think that even in '67 Brian thought only in terms or recording albums. Certainly he intended PET SOUNDS to be an album project, but it still comprised material that he had written or recorded up to a year-and-a-half earlier along with a track primarily considered a single. "Good Vibrations" was thought of only as a single, but like with "Sloop John B.", Brian agreed it could be part of the next album, the one he conceived of with Van Dyke Parks. That collection of material was worked on from August '66 until Jan. '67 at which time Parks left. Knowing he already missed a deadline for the album itself, Brian attempts to move forward and complete a single which he assumes he can get out quickly. When that proves to be problematic (and I'm not even mentioning the Brother Records/Capitol dispute), a seemingly simpler track is chosen to be the next single. At some point around here, Brian decides he won't be able to finish the album as he thought.

In my mind, we call the sessions from mid-January '67 to May 18th, '67 SMiLE sessions and they are certainly from the SMiLE era, but it really could just be Brian working on two different singles.

[desmondo]

I was just re-reading DPs book that came out after the release of BWPS and he seemed quite certain that the Elements section was "not right"

He seemed to be saying that Wanna Be Around/Workshop was supposed to have gone after MOC - has this any substance??

I think I may be the only one, but I totally buy this theory. Put them together and judge for yourself, but make sure you use an edit of Fire that actually has the last drum beats (that sound like crashing timbers). The way these move into the first notes of IWBA was a revelation to me.

Just done it - sounds good to me thanks

[Mooger Fooger]

Speaking of IWBA, did the band (or anyone for that matter) ever clarify what possesed them to add the hammering effects to the end of Do It Again LP version?

[Andrew G. Doe]

Speaking of IWBA, did the band (or anyone for that matter) ever clarify what possesed them to add the hammering effects to the end of Do It Again LP version?

Yeah. They figured it would a fun thing to do, according to Carl.

[Ron]

Can somebody confirm for me that one of them added the "OUCH" in the background, years later when they added it on Do It Again? 

[Roger Ryan]

Can somebody confirm for me that one of them added the "OUCH" in the background, years later when they added it on Do It Again? 

It's there on the boots of "IWBA/Workshop". I doubt they would have dubbed the "OUCH" in on those multi-tracks just to add it to the end of "Do It Again".

[Ron]

Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate it!

[Bicyclerider]

I think Brian told Taylor he'd had enough and was canning Smile then - being Brian - changed his mind while the band were touring Europe and had another crack. And then gave up. Twilight's last gleaming.

or, alternatively - because I damn well say so !

I Love to Say Dada is one of the great mysteries of Smile - what did Brian have in mind for it?  An album cut for a post- Smile album, an attempt to finish The Elements for Smile, a single B side to go with either Heroes or Vegetables?

The first linkage of Dada with the water section of The Elements that I know of was Carl's list circa 1972, where he listed "I Love to Say Dada (incorporating Cool Cool Water)" as a track.  Subsequently Preiss also identified Dada as the water section of The Elements, but when he described it it's clear he's describing the water chant rather than what we know as Dada (if I remember correctly).  Project number same as Smile, recorded with studio musicians in a proper studio like the rest of Smile . . .

But other than working on the potential singles (Heroes, Vegetables, Wonderful and probably With Me Tonight, all possible A or B sides) Brian stopped work on Smile in January.  After the "crow cries uncover the cornfield" debacle in December.  Press reports in March indicate Brian was still working on Smile but having "problems" with one track The elements.  But in May everything is scrapped.

BWPS would indicate that Brian planned Dada as part of water all along - or was that a convenient 2003 construct based on the prior association of the track with Water by Preiss and Carl?

I'd like to hear what Anderle and Vosse would say about Dada, if they remember it . . . Van Dyke wasn't around and has said he wasn't involved with The Elements.

[bossaroo]

the "wa wa ho wa" section of Da Da is basically "cool cool water" with different lyrics.

I really think
VegaTables = Earth
Wind Chimes = Air
Fire = Fire
Da Da = Water

whether Brian intended to do an all-instrumental Elements suite or not, I think this is what the Elements would probably have ended up being.

at the same time, i hope the new release proves me wrong.

[Jeff]

the "wa wa ho wa" section of Da Da is basically "cool cool water" with different lyrics.

I really think
VegaTables = Earth
Wind Chimes = Air
Fire = Fire
Da Da = Water

whether Brian intended to do an all-instrumental Elements suite or not, I think this is what the Elements would probably have ended up being.

at the same time, i hope the new release proves me wrong.

If Brian really was trying to record for Smile in May '67, AFTER the announcement that Smile was scrapped, why would he focus on one part of a track that he hadn't worked on for 6 months, especially when he already has a minute-long "water" chant in the bank?  And if DaDa was supposed to be water, why was he recording a second part (bird noises), and even a third part?  It makes no sense.

Seems to me that anyone who actually believes DaDa to be water would also have to believe the second section of DaDa to be air.  Because why would he record a section specifically to be an element, and then record a second section that isn't anything?

Really guys, I just don't think the DaDa = water thing has ever been well thought out.

[Cam Mott]

Vosse did describe it didn't he. Was his description anything like ILTSDD or the whadoo chant?

[Jeff]

Vosse did describe it didn't he. Was his description anything like ILTSDD or the whadoo chant?

Vosse wasn't even around in May '67, was he?

[Cam Mott]

Vosse did describe it didn't he. Was his description anything like ILTSDD or the whadoo chant?

Vosse wasn't even around in May '67, was he?

No.

[Dunderhead]

Alright, in the other thread I talked about how Vega-Tables is really a thinly-veiled drug song.

Now I'd like to mention that, Wind Chimes is not about wind. It's seemed really weird to me how so many insist that Wind Chimes is "air", yes Win Chimes has the word wind in it. But that's just a coincidence. Wind Chimes have a long history in the east, and they are often used to symbolize the passing of time.

Consider the line,
"In the late afternoon you're hung up on wind chimes."

Now consider, the definition of Hang Up from How To Speak Hip:
"There are all types of hang ups, in fact talking about hang ups is a hang up, and the more you talk about it...it could become a drag. If you say Max is a very hung up cat, the meaning is different, because you're saying he's got psychological problems-he's very twisted-he's blocked. Anything that can command your attention-your attention exclusively-is a hang up."

Or how about this bit from Goodbye Surfing:
"A person who thinks of himself as understanding would probably interpret this episode as an example of perhaps too-excessive artistic perfectionism. One with psychiatric inclinations would hear all this stuff about someone who actually believed music could cause fires and start using words such as neurosis and maybe even psychosis. A true student of spoken hip, however, would say hang-up, which covers all of the above."

Now what are wind chimes?...
...well, I know many will disagree and say "wind chimes are just wind chimes" but I'll go ahead and say it, the Wind Chimes in the song are Death

The lyric, "in the late afternoon you're hung up on wind chimes", in this case the "late afternoon" is, well, the late afternoon of life, old age, the twilight years. Being hung up on Wind Chimes means your preoccupied with your own death, with mortality. "Though it's hard I try not to look at my wind chimes".
Our own mortality is what we're all so often hung up on. And the acceptance of death figures into many eastern religions and new age beliefs. Check out this passage from the book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. Brian read this book, and I believe it had a major influence on SMiLE:

Individual feelings about death are conditioned by social attitudes, and it is doubtful that there is any one natural and inborn emotion connected with dying. For example, it used to be thought that childbirth should be painful, as a punishment for Original Sin or for having had so much fun conceiving the baby. For God had said to Eve and all her daughters, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." Thus when everyone believed that in having a baby it was a woman's duty to suffer, women did their duty, and many still do. We were much surprised, therefore, to find women in "primitive" societies who could just squat down and give birth while working in the fields, bite the umbilical cord, wrap up the baby, and go their way. It wasn't that their women were tougher than ours, but just that they had a different attitude. For our own gynecologists have recently discovered that many women can be conditioned psychologically for natural and painless childbirth. The pains of labor are renamed "tensions", and the mother-to-be is given preparatory exercises in relaxing to tension and cooperating with it. Birth, they are told, is not a sickness. One goes to a hospital just in case anything should go wrong, though many avant-garde gynecologists will let their patients give birth at home.
Premature death may come as a result of sickness, but—like birth—death as such is not a sickness at all. It is the natural and necessary end of human life—as natural as leaves falling in the autumn. (Perpetual leaves are, as we know, made of plastic, and there may come a time when surgeons will be able to replace all our organs with plastic substitutes, so that you will achieve immortality by becoming a plastic model of yourself.) Physicians should therefore explore the possibility of treating death and its pangs as they have treated labor and its "pains."
Death is, after all, a great event. So long as it is not imminent, we cling to ourselves and our lives in chronic anxiety, however pushed into the back of the mind. But when the time comes where clinging is no longer of the least avail, the circumstances are ideal for letting go of oneself completely. When this happens, the individual is released from his ego-prison. In the normal course of events this is the golden opportunity for awakening into the knowledge that one's actual self is the Self which plays the universe—an occasion for great rejoicing. But as customs now prevail, doctors, nurses, and relatives come around with smiling masks, assuring the patient that he will soon get over it, and that next week or next month he will be back home or taking a vacation by the sea. Worse still, physicians have neither the role nor the training for handling death. The Catholic priest is in a much better position: he usually knows just how to go about it, with no fumbling or humming and hawing. But the physician is supposed to put off death at all costs—
including the life savings of the patient and his family.

Wind Chimes is not a song about Wind or Air at all. It has nothing to do with the elements. That connection is just the result of the title. Wind Chimes is about death, it's about how we as a culture are hung up on death, and how we need to let go of our hang ups and flow with life, and recognize the beauty and necessity of death.

[Jeff]

Wow, Fishmonk, this is great.  Maybe someone can dispute what you're saying, but you make a very strong case.

[bgas]

Fishmonk is trying to make a lot of good cases. But I think he's reading way too much into all the lyrics.
Still, I think he probably needs a "time out" to meditate. maybe some time getting in touch with his lost soul/inner being.
Something to keep his mind off SMiLE and this board

[Jeff]

Fishmonk is trying to make a lot of good cases. But I think he's reading way too much into all the lyrics.
Still, I think he probably needs a "time out" to meditate. maybe some time getting in touch with his lost soul/inner being.
Something to keep his mind off SMiLE and this board

Nah, I think fishmonk is doing a great job at finding some of the hidden meanings.  Smile is multi-layered both in the music and the lyrics.  No reason to think we're going to understand it all without exploring it, which is what fishmonk is doing.

[pixletwin]

I don't mind it at all. I think reading his ideas and interpretations has proven quite interesting to read.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Please don't take offense, but I think many of you are seriously overthinking the lyrics.

[Jeff]

Please don't take offense, but I think many of you are seriously overthinking the lyrics.

Smile ain't no surf music.

[bgas]

Please don't take offense, but I think many of you are seriously overthinking the lyrics.

Smile ain't no surf music.

That's a revelation.

[Dunderhead]

So you guys think Wind Chimes was just about Wind Chimes?
Considering we're all here because we think that Brian was some kind of genius on the cutting edge of psychedelia, you guys aren't giving him much credit. You just want to play it safe and assume that there was no depth, no metaphorical or philosophical content of any kind, and that everything about SMiLE was right on the surface. Brian wasn't about literalism. He's not a straightforward, easy to understand, direct, practical person. He hired a lyricist that was a master of word play and pun.

I dunno, I think you SMiLE literalists are underestimating Brian.

[Dunderhead]

Please don't take offense, but I think many of you are seriously overthinking the lyrics.

Smile ain't no surf music.

That's a revelation.

What are your smile theories bgas? You seem to be the one guy around here who doesn't take the bb or their discussion very seriously.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Never said Smile was surf music. Please hear me out on this...

I think those meanings can be attributed to the music, but more after the fact, sort of. I don't think the songs started out that way. I think it happened more on an unconscious level. Most genius is like that.