Why didn't Van Dyke finish the lyrics in the 60s to "Child is Father of The Man"

[rab2591]

Didn't Van Dyke go on some kind of record years ago saying that he wrote lyrics for Child Is Father of the Man and that it was a "cowboy song"?

I think Dennis said that.

"I got a sneak preview of one of the SMiLE tracks the previous night, when Brian played me a piano version of one track, "Child Is Father Of The Man" - a cowboy song - and then gave me the throwaway line of the year: "And this is the prayer I'm working on for it"" - Dennis Wilson in a Hit Parader article

[Andrew G. Doe]

I've always thought it was strange that CIFOTM didn't have lyrics either, considering it was on the infamous tracklist, and IIRC every other song on that tracklist at least has SOME lyrics written (and I know that at this point we have pretty much concluded that Brian didn't write the tracklist. Still, I would assume that even if he didn't actually write it, whomever did showed it to him and he approved of it).

Peter Reum showed Brian the handwritten tracklist - the original - in the early 80s. Brian said he'd never seen it before.

Was that before or after Landy intervention number two? During that second Landy go-round, Brian's answers could be even more inconsistent than usual.

Before.

[A Million Units In Jan!]

I've always thought it was strange that CIFOTM didn't have lyrics either, considering it was on the infamous tracklist, and IIRC every other song on that tracklist at least has SOME lyrics written (and I know that at this point we have pretty much concluded that Brian didn't write the tracklist. Still, I would assume that even if he didn't actually write it, whomever did showed it to him and he approved of it).

Peter Reum showed Brian the handwritten tracklist - the original - in the early 80s. Brian said he'd never seen it before.

For cripes sakes, man- you of all people should know that you have to take what Brian says with a grain of salt! 

I make no comment one way or the other.

BTW, that should be "grain of salt".

"Thanks"

[A Million Units In Jan!]

Didn't Van Dyke go on some kind of record years ago saying that he wrote lyrics for Child Is Father of the Man and that it was a "cowboy song"?

I think Dennis said that.

"I got a sneak preview of one of the SMiLE tracks the previous night, when Brian played me a piano version of one track, "Child Is Father Of The Man" - a cowboy song - and then gave me the throwaway line of the year: "And this is the prayer I'm working on for it"" - Dennis Wilson in a Hit Parader article

Does that sound like the CIFOTM that we know?

[rab2591]

Didn't Van Dyke go on some kind of record years ago saying that he wrote lyrics for Child Is Father of the Man and that it was a "cowboy song"?

I think Dennis said that.

"I got a sneak preview of one of the SMiLE tracks the previous night, when Brian played me a piano version of one track, "Child Is Father Of The Man" - a cowboy song - and then gave me the throwaway line of the year: "And this is the prayer I'm working on for it"" - Dennis Wilson in a Hit Parader article

Does that sound like the CIFOTM that we know?

I thought for a second that Brian could have been trying to mix the Heroes and Villains theme with CIFOTM, but even the name 'Child Is Father Of The Man' is philosophical/spiritual and has nothing to do with cowboys.

[A Million Units In Jan!]

Didn't Van Dyke go on some kind of record years ago saying that he wrote lyrics for Child Is Father of the Man and that it was a "cowboy song"?

I think Dennis said that.

"I got a sneak preview of one of the SMiLE tracks the previous night, when Brian played me a piano version of one track, "Child Is Father Of The Man" - a cowboy song - and then gave me the throwaway line of the year: "And this is the prayer I'm working on for it"" - Dennis Wilson in a Hit Parader article

Does that sound like the CIFOTM that we know?

I thought for a second that Brian could have been trying to mix the Heroes and Villains theme with CIFOTM, but even the name 'Child Is Father Of The Man' is philosophical/spiritual and has nothing to do with cowboys.

Unless Brian told Dennis a bunch of different titles, and Dennis was confused, which is probably the case.

[Dunderhead]

As anyone from the band ever given a definite comment about smile? I don't think there's any information we have that can be taken at face value.

[Chris Brown]

Didn't Van Dyke go on some kind of record years ago saying that he wrote lyrics for Child Is Father of the Man and that it was a "cowboy song"?

I think Dennis said that.

"I got a sneak preview of one of the SMiLE tracks the previous night, when Brian played me a piano version of one track, "Child Is Father Of The Man" - a cowboy song - and then gave me the throwaway line of the year: "And this is the prayer I'm working on for it"" - Dennis Wilson in a Hit Parader article

Does that sound like the CIFOTM that we know?

I thought for a second that Brian could have been trying to mix the Heroes and Villains theme with CIFOTM, but even the name 'Child Is Father Of The Man' is philosophical/spiritual and has nothing to do with cowboys.

Unless Brian told Dennis a bunch of different titles, and Dennis was confused, which is probably the case.

That's what I've always attributed the confusion to.  

[Chris Moise]

I wish someone would do an in depth interview with Al and ask about stuff like this. I still can't believe with the dozens of interviews and articles surrounding the 2004 Smile that not one person asked the participants about the Child lyrics. I naively thought at least one or two of the big Smile mysteries would be solved with all of the 2004 activity but we don't know much more than we did before.

[Dunderhead]

I think only Brian can answer most of these questions, so we'll never know. He's probably forgotten a lot of it, and the stuff he does remember he avoids talking about in his usual manner.

[bgas]

I think only Brian can answer most of these questions, so we'll never know. He's probably forgotten a lot of it, and the stuff he does remember he avoids talking about in his usual manner.

Ya know, Coach used to talk about this. Said Brian was sharp as anyone ever; and could, if he wanted to, tell you who played what instrument on  which track of what recording for everything he ever did. The problem is getting him to. 
 I think it's still there; But getting him on record is going to be tuff

[Roger Ryan]

The verse rhythm to "Child..." is essentially a slowed down version of the classic "Happy Trails"-style western rhythm. If Brian played this on the piano for Dennis, it's likely that he emphasized that rhythm. Coming off of PET SOUNDS and "Good Vibrations", Dennis would have suddenly been hearing things like "Heroes & Villains" and snippets like "Home On The Range" and "Who Ran The Iron Horse". In that context, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for Dennis to envision "Child..." as a cowboy song (especially if there were no lyrics to suggest otherwise). Even the recorded version of the track, with that harmonica line on it, evokes a western feeling.

[Julia]

I was always hoping against hope that lyrics were written, just not recorded, they'd turn up someday. Unfortunately, I think they were never written after all. Van says in the 2005 Priore book that "I think Child was supposed to be an instrumental" when asked why there were no lyrics. (He's clearly wrong but it's unclear if he genuinely believed this at the time or is misremembering, and if the former how could Brian allow him to be so wrong?) In another interview, regarding BWPS, he says "everything I worked on in the '60s is there" implying if he wrote stuff for Child it would've been there.

As for the reason, Im still trying to figure out. I think it's one of the greatest most overlooked mysteries of SMiLE, similar to the track itself. If I had to guess it's that Brian kept changing the song's structure (I've seen more variation in CIFOTM across fanmixes and bootlegs than any other besides Heroes and even then it's neck and neck) so he told Van "don't worry about this one yet, I'm still making up my mind." That, or the plan was for psychology lyrics (according to Brian's new book) with the title phrase expressing how a child's experiences shape the adult they become. I think Van was trying to write lyrics about psychiatric terms or whatever in his usual oblique, indirect, poetic fashion but it was just too much for even him, then over time he either buried this shortcoming or his mind blocked it out.

If anyone cared about this poor song as anything more than a glorified intro to Surfs Up, we'd have gotten to the bottom of this decades ago.

[BJL]

I was always hoping against hope that lyrics were written, just not recorded, they'd turn up someday. Unfortunately, I think they were never written after all. Van says in the 2005 Priore book that "I think Child was supposed to be an instrumental" when asked why there were no lyrics. (He's clearly wrong but it's unclear if he genuinely believed this at the time or is misremembering, and if the former how could Brian allow him to be so wrong?) In another interview, regarding BWPS, he says "everything I worked on in the '60s is there" implying if he wrote stuff for Child it would've been there.

As for the reason, Im still trying to figure out. I think it's one of the greatest most overlooked mysteries of SMiLE, similar to the track itself. If I had to guess it's that Brian kept changing the song's structure (I've seen more variation in CIFOTM across fanmixes and bootlegs than any other besides Heroes and even then it's neck and neck) so he told Van "don't worry about this one yet, I'm still making up my mind." That, or the plan was for psychology lyrics (according to Brian's new book) with the title phrase expressing how a child's experiences shape the adult they become. I think Van was trying to write lyrics about psychiatric terms or whatever in his usual oblique, indirect, poetic fashion but it was just too much for even him, then over time he either buried this shortcoming or his mind blocked it out.

If anyone cared about this poor song as anything more than a glorified intro to Surfs Up, we'd have gotten to the bottom of this decades ago.

I get why, but I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, here. Not in terms of how great the song is, or how sad it is that it was never finished—on those counts I agree completely. It’s a major (and gorgeous!) Smile track, and has been robbed of its deserved place in the history of the project because verses were (probably) never written and therefore (almost definitely) don’t exist, and because unlike, say, Worms, the song appears to have been conceived of in such a way that it’s really begging for a verse melody to pull it all together.

But the way I see it, in the 60s, when the project was happening, the fact that those verses didn’t get written is nothing, is no big deal. It’s not a mystery that needs to be explained. And I *really* don’t think it can be taken as evidence of some kind of personal or professional or creative failure on the part of Van Dyke Parks.

Brian usually collaborated on lyrics before the tracking stage, but not always (see Let’s Go Away for A While and You Still Believe In Me). He sometimes wrote alone, and occasionally brought in someone random to work on a song, like Terry Sachen or Russ Titelman. Brian was the producer—and a hands on, dictatorial producer, at that! It was his job to make lyrics happen. On Child, he could have asked Mike to do it, he could have done it himself, or, of course, he could have given Van Dyke Parks an acetate and said, hey, can you come up with something for this? And of course it’s possible that he *did* do that, and that Parks got stuck or couldn’t make it work. But there’s no evidence for it, and it seems just as likely to me that Brian just didn’t give Parks the assignment. It’s not like Parks could read his mind, or write lyrics for a song he hadn’t properly heard or didn’t understand.

And maybe lyrics didn’t happen because Brian was uncertain about what he wanted to do with the song. But again, there’s no evidence for it. And given the trajectory Brian was on, I think it’s just as likely that figuring out the verses was simply, uncomplicatedly on Brian Wilson’s to-do list. If the project hadn’t gotten derailed, he would have simply gotten to it. He’d have enlisted Van Dyke Parks, or Mike, or done it himself, or maybe even found some random person from the band’s circle who he thought would be a better fit if he wanted a different kind of trip for this song, like he did with Hang On To Your Ego or Guess I’m Dumb. And because he was Brian Wilson and it was his album and he was the producer, the lyrics would have been written, probably within the week. And if Brian had scheduled a session for the lead vocals, he would have handed the lyric sheet to Dennis or Carl or Mike or Al, and they would have sung it exactly the way Brian told them to. Or he would have done it himself.

None of it happened, like so many things didn’t happen. It’s a tragedy—but it’s not a mystery.

[BJL]

I had to guess it's that Brian kept changing the song's structure (I've seen more variation in CIFOTM across fanmixes and bootlegs than any other besides Heroes and even then it's neck and neck) so he told Van "don't worry about this one yet, I'm still making up my mind."

I think this is a risky assumption, and that the variance in mixes across bootlegs and fan mixes is a result of how the tapes were left and how fans conceptualized Smile in the 80s and 90s, and not an indication of Brian's process or thinking in the 60s. After all, we do have a 3 minute vintage mix of the instrumental track that sounds pretty damn finished, and no evidence I know of that Brian didn't intend to use it.

[Julia]

All good points, BJL. I was just speculating but you're probably right

[BJL]

All good points, BJL. I was just speculating but you're probably right

Last thing I would ever want is to discourage that kind of speculation! Just sharing my reactions where I think they might be interesting or valuable

[WillJC]

I can't keep up with all 300 of these threads but I'm enjoying them and appreciating that discussion is still being generated! On the structure of Child, there's nothing from the 60s indicating that Brian ever conceived of it any differently to his rough assembly edit. That chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/half-chorus track mixdown put together at the original Western session is the only time he spliced it into the form of a song. Otherwise, there was a rough mix two days later with a single splice from the verse to the chorus to see what it would sound like, and that's all.

Nothing to add to BJL's take on why it didn't get finished, which I think is dead on the money.