If "Heroes & Villains" had been a smash...

[Mr. Cohen]

Seriously, let's say "Heroes & Villains" goes on to be as big "Good Vibrations", and people are saying Brian is mixing opera, classical music, and pop into 3 1/2 minute singles. Would Brian have eventually released the original Smile material by the end of '67? I think so.

If you ask me, Smiley Smile was Brian being self-conscious. By purposefully underachieving, Brian could put a wall between himself and the criticisms of the Smile material. Sure, few praised "Wonderful" on Smiley Smile, but then again, that wasn't the real version.

Smiley Smile was finished in mid-July (right before "Heroes & Villains" was released), but it wasn't in stores for another 2 months. Yes, I understand that it takes time to press records, but I personally believe Brian was in part waiting to see how "Heroes & Villains" performed. If it's a big hit, people are ready for Smile. If no one likes it, then roll out Smiley Smile.

Jack Rieley said Brian took the failure of "Heroes & Villains" really badly. Yes, obviously, the criticisms from within the group did a lot to hinder Brian's confidence. But I think it was the public's failure to latch onto "Heroes & Villains" that ultimately killed Smile for good. It was our fault, not Mike's. It led Brian to believe that Smile was too far out ahead of it's time, and that the public wasn't ready for it.

And can you say that assessment was inaccurate? If they didn't like "Heroes and Villains", was "Child is Father of the Man" really going to blow their minds?

[Mr. Cohen]

I'm not saying that Brian deliberately set out to record Smiley Smile as a replacement album. It's just that he had a home studio now, and he got into a groove playing around musically with the group. After a few weeks, he saw he had enough for an album, and at that point, decided it was a viable replacement for Smile if "Heroes & Villains" failed. Smiley Smile wasn't go to be a hit, but it also wasn't something Brian would be embarrassed to have associated with his name.

[puni puni]

But I think it was the public's failure to latch onto "Heroes & Villains" that ultimately killed Smile for good.

thats exactly what jack said

[Mr. Cohen]

True, bakabaka. I'm just trying to illustrate his point.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Seriously, let's say "Heroes & Villains" goes on to be as big "Good Vibrations", and people are saying Brian is mixing opera, classical music, and pop into 3 1/2 minute singles.

Which version of H&V have you got? I'm sure Mark and Alan would have been very interested in a version with opera and classical in it

[Austin]

Well, that's complicated -- Jack Rieley has both a spotty record and, by that point in his interview, was recalling a conversation that happened probably 25 years ago. But for the sake of debate, let's assume that Jack Rieley is correct in his statement, that Brian told him the poor performance of H&V was the reason for scrapping Smile.

I still don't think that's true, and I don't believe the success of the single would have made much of a difference.

Obviously, we'll never really know, but just because Brian says H&V was the problem does not make it so. I think that, from Brian's perspective, blaming chart performance was the most convenient -- and qualitative -- way to see the problem. Issues like this are immensely complicated enough to explain, let alone understand in your head. Even the people at the heart of them can have clouded memories.

And just look at the sessions. They are numerous, immensely complex, and still incomplete. If the single did really well, it still took months to finish it, and very little of the rest of the album could be considered truly done. Even if he was granted the time, do you think Brian -- in the midst of drug abuse and still struggling to piece together one single -- could pull off an entire album without losing his sanity?

Given the rest of the issues in his life at the time, I think Brian knew he was in over his head, put out Smiley Smile because it would be easy, and decided to recede and play the rest by ear. Not scrapped, but instead some gray, fuzzy middle between in progress and shelved. The fact that H&V wasn't a hit certainly didn't help, but it would not have turned the tides.

[Mr. Cohen]

So you really think, if "Heroes & Villains" goes to #1 across the world, Brian still releases Smiley Smile? For some reason, I can't envision it. We know that there was at least a little talk of Brian completing Smile in late '67, but considering that "H&V" tanked, his continued lack of enthusiasm was understandable.

[Austin]

So you really think, if "Heroes & Villains" goes to #1 across the world, Brian still releases Smiley Smile? For some reason, I can't envision it. We know that there was at least a little talk of Brian completing Smile in late '67, but considering that "H&V" tanked, his continued lack of enthusiasm was understandable.

No idea. Maybe they still would've put it out, just because it would still be easier than completing Smile. I just don't think a smash hit and shelving Smiley Smile automatically means Smile would have been completed.

Heck, for a band that shifts gears that quickly, it would have been no less bewildering to just shelf both, then skip right to Wild Honey.

[cablegeddon]

Didn't the smile project fall apart almost six months before the H&V single was released?

I mean if H&V went no.1 and then Smiley Smile bombed then BW would've been "crushed" anyway? Just the fact that Pet Sounds sales were underwhelming depressed him.

[harrisonjon]

It's kinda redundant because H&V didn't fit the pop culture of 1967 and could never have been a smash. I just don't see how you can reconcile H&V (or Smile) with Monterrey, Hendrix, Sgt Pepper, etc.

What Brian would have needed commercially was another Good Vibrations, i.e. a single that had the Smile method but connected with pop culture.

[cablegeddon]

It's kinda redundant because H&V didn't fit the pop culture of 1967 and could never have been a smash. I just don't see how you can reconcile H&V (or Smile) with Monterrey, Hendrix, Sgt Pepper, etc.

What Brian would have needed commercially was another Good Vibrations, i.e. a single that had the Smile method but connected with pop culture.

Definitely agree with the latter but there was one band that could pretty much release anything and it would go no.1 and that was the Beatles. So you can reconcile H&V with Sgt Pepper.

[UK_Surf]

H&V owes more of its overall feel to River Deep, Mountain High, more of a Spector thing. Its more diverse than anything on Pepper, compositionally, and that's where its strength resides. Melodically, it's not as strong as good vibrations, and there's nothing as immediately 'hooky' in it that competes on similar terms with GV. H&V is fab - incredibly clever, bumps along just fine, lyrically is kind of sauve (if a little self-consciously hokey here & there) and is modular in the extreme, but it's not the cohesive masterpiece that GV is.

I was watching a Simon and Garfunkel doco on the beeb last night, where the producer for BOTW actively backed the title track as the big single. What if a producer or exec had pushed BW to focus on Surf's Up instead? What if it had been released as a double a-side with H&V, Cabinessence, or (as on TSS) Vega-tables?

Ultimately, I think BW backed the wrong horse. Had SU followed up GV, the BBs may have completed the leap that the press was looking for. It's got the sublime pop ethos that Day in the Life & BOTW has...it makes a statement that people (even Leonard Bernstein) were absolutely ready for, even if they didn't know it yet.

[UK_Surf]

Of course, that's a pretty big If amongt an absolute forest of the critters!

[Quincy]

It's kinda redundant because H&V didn't fit the pop culture of 1967 and could never have been a smash. I just don't see how you can reconcile H&V (or Smile) with Monterrey, Hendrix, Sgt Pepper, etc.

What Brian would have needed commercially was another Good Vibrations, i.e. a single that had the Smile method but connected with pop culture.

Music survey Boston July 27 1967..

1    All You Need Is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man    The Beatles
8    2    Light My Fire    The Doors
2    3    Words/Pleasant Valley Sunday    The Monkees
3    4    White Rabbit    Jefferson Airplane
5    5    Society's Child    Janis Ian
10    6    Mammy    The Happenings
6    7    A Whiter Shade Of Pale    Procol Harum
8    8    To Love Somebody / Close Another Door    Bee Gees

[Quincy]

 No song by them would have been a smash hit in the summer of 67 ..there time had come and gone

[harrisonjon]

The best comparison to H&V is probably Arnold Layne or See Emily Play: great records but not likely to be US hits in 1967 (See Emily Play made number 134).

[puni puni]

Music survey Boston July 27 1967..

1    All You Need Is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man    The Beatles
8    2    Light My Fire    The Doors
2    3    Words/Pleasant Valley Sunday    The Monkees
3    4    White Rabbit    Jefferson Airplane
5    5    Society's Child    Janis Ian
10    6    Mammy    The Happenings
6    7    A Whiter Shade Of Pale    Procol Harum
8    8    To Love Somebody / Close Another Door    Bee Gees

jesus christ thats some competition

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Yeah, just to reiterate what people have said here: Heroes and Villains in its stages of being recorded during the Smile Sessions never really seemed to have the hook required for it to be a smash hit. It's funny because Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations", "I wish they all could be California Girls" "Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda - get her out of my heart!" etc.) but he doesn't seem to trying to do that with H&V - and, of course, he doesn't have to, it's a brilliant and great song but to me doesn't have enormous hit single potential. What would have worked in its favour would have been if it had come out soon after Good Vibrations, to capitalize on that appeal and make sure it got a wide audience, many of which could grow to appreciate it. Had that happened, it may reached rather high in the charts. I think Brian knew that, which is probably why he was obsessing over the song come January 1967.

I think that adding in the Bicycle Rider theme for the chorus on the Smiley Smile version probably helped it later on - that gave it a bit more of a hook but by then the scene had changed.

[Austin]

Yeah, just to reiterate what people have said here: Heroes and Villains in its stages of being recorded during the Smile Sessions never really seemed to have the hook required for it to be a smash hit. It's funny because Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations", "I wish they all could be California Girls" "Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda - get her out of my heart!" etc.) but he doesn't seem to trying to do that with H&V - and, of course, he doesn't have to, it's a brilliant and great song but to me doesn't have enormous hit single potential.

Bingo. That's always been my problem with H&V, too -- brilliant song, but not great hit material. Maybe the right fragments are in there somewhere, but I think the released version was doomed.

[cablegeddon]

Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations",

Didn't Mike Love write that part?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations",

Didn't Mike Love write that part?

Not the melody, I don't think.

[guitarfool2002]

It's kinda redundant because H&V didn't fit the pop culture of 1967 and could never have been a smash. I just don't see how you can reconcile H&V (or Smile) with Monterrey, Hendrix, Sgt Pepper, etc.

What Brian would have needed commercially was another Good Vibrations, i.e. a single that had the Smile method but connected with pop culture.

Music survey Boston July 27 1967..

1    All You Need Is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man    The Beatles
8    2    Light My Fire    The Doors
2    3    Words/Pleasant Valley Sunday    The Monkees
3    4    White Rabbit    Jefferson Airplane
5    5    Society's Child    Janis Ian
10    6    Mammy    The Happenings
6    7    A Whiter Shade Of Pale    Procol Harum
8    8    To Love Somebody / Close Another Door    Bee Gees

Read between the lines of this survey excerpt...I've collected and gathered quite a few of these and it adds up in several markets throughout the US. "Heroes" was a top-10 single, in Boston it showed up stronger than some other places, even Brian's home market of LA. And it's hard to suggest Brian wasn't getting airplay in later '67 because I have aircheck recordings of stations in LA playing pretty deep Pet Sounds album cuts like "Here Today" in the latter half of '67, alongside other BB's singles. Playing an album cut from Pet Sounds...they would not do that if there were not a market for it.

Back to reading between the lines, look at the song sitting at #5 for that week and the previous week in July '67:

Society's Child by Janis Ian.

This record went nowhere until Janis was featured on a show called "Inside Pop" in April '67. Leonard Bernstein lavished praise on the song and the artist, and after the song was featured on the show it caught a second wind commercially and became a "hit", which in turn put Janis Ian on the commercial landscape which she probably would not have seen had it not been for that CBS special and Bernstein's high praise for the tune.

Brian was on that same program singing "Surf's Up". Imagine the letdown of many folks who watched Brian perform a song which was again praised in a voiceover on the show, only to find they could not buy the song and would not be able to for several years. Unlike "Society's Child", which changed Janis Ian's career from being on that show, no one could buy "Surf's Up" yet many people were talking about it and wanting to grab a piece of what Brian was doing.

The timing...it's a shame it didn't work out. The Smiley Heroes was good, but I doubt it lived up to what many saw Brian doing at the piano that night on CBS. And Smiley had nothing remotely close to Surf's Up, to be blunt about it.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

This record went nowhere until Janis was featured on a show called "Inside Pop" in April '67. Leonard Bernstein lavished praise on the song and the artist, and after the song was featured on the show it caught a second wind commercially and became a "hit", which in turn put Janis Ian on the commercial landscape which she probably would not have seen had it not been for that CBS special and Bernstein's high praise for the tune.

My understanding was that the special led to Ian's record company promoting the record more, which led to radio stations playing it more, which led to it being hit rather than all the viewers of the Inside Pop went and bought the album and turned it into a top 10 hit.

[Aegir]

Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations",

Didn't Mike Love write that part?

Not the melody, I don't think.

Brian came up with the bassline that Mike sings that line over, but it wasn't the hook until Mike wrote the words for it. see the Tony Asher version, for example.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations",

Didn't Mike Love write that part?

Not the melody, I don't think.

Brian came up with the bassline that Mike sings that line over, but it wasn't the hook until Mike wrote the words for it. see the Tony Asher version, for example.

In other words, what I said was perfectly true. Regardless, there is more than one hook on that song - "Good good good good vibrations", "gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations a'happenin' with her", "na na na na na na na na" and the theremin all count. Man, that song is loaded with them. It's no surprise that that would be their biggest.