Did Brian ruin Heroes and Villains by adding the "Bicycle Rider" chorus?

[Jukka]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

[Rotat]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

Yeah I can't believe people would take off that "false barnyard" ending.. That is definitely one of my favorite parts of the original H&V.. The ending is absolutely perfect. It makes you realize what an epic song you just listened to. It's like a movie with the perfect ending. Those BB vocals (I can't remember if they were in the original mix or not) are some of the most gorgeous harmonies they've ever done! Up there with Our Prayer and the Whispering Winds tag from SS Wind Chimes to me..

[runnersdialzero]

Where did this "hero riding off into the sunset" theory come from?

[Jukka]

Where did this "hero riding off into the sunset" theory come from?

From my mind, as told by my ears. Hey, Imma genus too!

[runnersdialzero]

Yeah, well, I just picture a very fugly old woman dancing around.

[Jukka]

Yeah, well, I just picture a very fugly old woman dancing around.

Slightly sped-up, sepia toned crackly film... Yeah, I can totally picture it.

[Phoenix]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

That's a great theory.  It makes total sense and is quite possibly the reason Brian used it like that when he decided to.  I just still think any version but the one I picture as the full "mythical long version" sounds incomplete. 

[Jim V.]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

That's a great theory.  It makes total sense and is quite possibly the reason Brian used it like that when he decided to.  I just still think any version but the one I picture as the full "mythical long version" sounds incomplete. 

I'm being honest here, and not being dismissive of this at all, but what do you think the "mythical long version" would be. A version that would include "I'm In Great Shape" and "Barnyard"? What else? I for one think that like SMiLE, "Heroes And Villains" will always sound best in a version that we can only imagine, but never hear. However, to me, I'm totally happy with the single version. Still my favorite.

[Phoenix]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

That's a great theory.  It makes total sense and is quite possibly the reason Brian used it like that when he decided to.  I just still think any version but the one I picture as the full "mythical long version" sounds incomplete. 

I'm being honest here, and not being dismissive of this at all, but what do you think the "mythical long version" would be. A version that would include "I'm In Great Shape" and "Barnyard"? What else? I for one think that like SMiLE, "Heroes And Villains" will always sound best in a version that we can only imagine, but never hear. However, to me, I'm totally happy with the single version. Still my favorite.

From page 2 of this thread:

It's all the same.  I've said for years: Cantina version, minus the Barnshine fade = part one.  Single version, from first chorus on = part two.  Once Brian decided to trim things down to a standard length single, he combined the two by putting the opening of part one at the start of part two.  Voila!  Since hitting on that idea, every other version sounds incomplete or, in the case of the 2004 construction, wrong, to me.

Combine them and you have the "mythical long (album) version". 
Split it in half and you have both sides of the two sided single:  Side A = Part 1, Side B = Part 2

[Tricycle Rider]

This was a Spector thing too. There's a famous story out there somewhere of an engineer telling another engineer that he had seen Spector work, and knew the 'secret' to get the wall of sound, but he'd never believe him. So they make some kind of bet, and the first guy goes to the studio with the second guy to show him how to do it. Time was booked, musicians hired, etc.

So they start setting up and the guy starts setting up musicians all over the place, some of which are not even miked up. Engineer #2 starts freaking out ('is this a joke!?! I'm not gonna pay a guy who's not even being recorded!' etc.), and the session is cancelled.

I wish I could find this story online because I'm paraphrasing !!! probably just lore in any case, but I'd believe it.

Hey DonnyL,

Is this the story that you're thinking of?

"The late recording engineer Larry Levine (the inventor of the Gold Star WALL OF SOUND) told me this amusing story at breakfast one day a few years back. I think you will find it interesting.

One day this hot shot producer calls Larry up and sez: "Larry, I have this hot new singer (now quite famous) and I want her to be backed up with the Wall Of Sound type deal. Can you reproduce that in the studio for me?"

Larry said he could if the hot shot producer would let him have free reign and not interfere. The producer said he would. So, Larry booked a studio (A&M) and hired a bunch of great LA studio musicians and started recording.

First thing the hot shot producer did when he walked in was take a look into the studio. He stopped the session right there and said: "Hey, Larry, something is wrong here! There are two bass players, two drummers, three guitar players, two keyboard players and most of them ARE NOT EVEN MIKED!"

Larry said "I know, that's what I want".

The producer said "What is the good of having all of those musicians playing (and costing me a union fortune) if they are not going to be on microphone? This is costing me a great deal of money."

Larry said that if this guy wanted the WALL OF SOUND, this type of recording setup was essential. The hot shot producer said that if he needed two drummers, bass players, etc. he could just have his usual players overdub as many parts as they needed but at least they would be on mike.

Larry explained that the entire idea of the Wall was to create a literal WALL OF SOUND and that to put all the musicians on their own microphones would ruin the effect. The idea wasn't to hear all of the musicians, the idea was to obscure the detail of individual instruments and instead feel the total sound in your gut, the adding of detail would ruin the illusion.

The hot shot producer immediately canceled the session and that was that. No WALL OF SOUND for that guy. He just couldn't believe what Larry Levine was telling him. It was the impact of the group as a whole that was important, not the details of what the glockenspiel player was doing, etc."

I got this from here:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/pet-sounds-and-beach-boys-new-stereo-mixes-why-did-brian-wilson-change-his-mind.156267/

Post #1

[Fall Breaks]

What are you saying? The cantina version's fade is perfect! The song goes through all kinds of hoops and loops, all kinds of craziness going on... Then it ends with a BANG (the explosion), and the fade represents our hero riding to the sunset after his big adventure. I say it's no placeholder. It just makes sense. Kind of like end credits, you know?

Are you sure the sunset hero thing "only" comes from your mind? Because that's the way I've always heard the ending as well! It's not in a book och lner notes or so, is it?

[Jukka]

Don't remember reading it anywhere... But it's kind of obvious, innit? Goes to show you that Brian knew what he was doing and he did it well. Putting images into peoples heads with his music.

[Julia]

This is a great thread topic about a topic that's still very mysterious--what would the "best" version of Heroes be? We have the single, but the song changed SO MUCH almost certainly more than any other in the entire canon. From what little we've heard of that lost May '66 version, it included variations of My Only Sunshine, which seemed like a piece always intended as a theme of the American Gothic trip, juggled between the Barnyard suite and Heroes before going off on its own. (But maybe not, as the Dec tracklist handwritten note put it in parentheses then crossed them out.) Alan Boyd says basically all the '66 work for it is lost, but Anderle says it was chosen as the single in Dec '66 "because it was the closest to completion." So there was a near complete version made without the drawbacks of commercialism (since an album track doesn't have to "sound like a hit" and have a hook) lost to time. That's not even getting into the two-sided version floating around on acetates we've never heard, that Mike and Vosse attest to, from 1967. Or the 12 minute version Leaf claims exists, which I personally doubt.

Rambling. It's what I do. Anyway, I don't think the BR chorus ruined Heroes but I do think it changed it and removed its identity. We can assume May '66 and Fall '66 it would've been part of a pastiche of Americana segments, like IIGS, Barnyard, OMP, etc. Then by Dec on it was distinctly its own track and had to stand alone, as a single. I think, just speculating, Heroes in early '67 still would've foregone traditional song structure conventions like choruses in favor of "disconnected asides" such as IIGS, Barnyard, Cantina and who knows what else bookended by its verses and bridges. (There's SO MANY missing sessions! Yes, mostly vocals, but you don't think Brian couldn't have played new melodies or variations thereof on piano while the boys harmonized?)

I also think at one point the lead vocal would've jumped back and forth between Brian and Mike, with some alternating dichotomous flourishes* and "lots of talking between cuts" (like "You're Under Arrest!" as a spoken word line by the sheriff, and "That One's For You, Punk!" by the outlaw). It's a fascinating concept, though admittedly somewhat muddled. As other posters have pointed out in other threads, who's actually getting arrested in Margarita's cantina and why? Where does the song's narrator, who seems removed from the binary and victim to its endless feud, fit in with all these musical asides? How can you rectify these narratively removed segments about farm life with this very intricate yin-yang structure? I think there WAS a way to rectify these issues if some additional lyrics and conceptual focus, but it feels like Brian opted to go verse-chorus and abandon what makes the song unique in favor of traditional pop structure. The fascinating possibilities the theme allowed for, and which we get tantalizing glimpses of in the outtakes, was sacrificed for a chorus that sounds better in Worms anyway if you ask me.

*Good example: Track 23 of TSS Disc 2, "H&V Part 2 (Revised)" at about 0:50 with the silent film antagonist piano riff "is that villainous enough, Brian?" https://youtu.be/et-LJ7I9m3A?list=PL4jIq7wqF8Qe9-mMfvmSCloXvhSw1l67S

I don't know what the best version of Heroes is, but I'm certain the single we got ain't it. Just about every other version I've heard, official or otherwise, blows it out of the water. Chuck Britz, Michael Vosse and Mike Love felt similarly that the 5-6 minute two-sided cut was better (to the snarky white knight earlier in the thread). By shoehorning Heroes into a pop standard template, Brian took what could've been a great unconventional narrative album track and made it into an underwhelming, lyrically confused single with a slow section which kills the momentum for teens wanting to dance. He should've picked almost anything else as the single--CE, CIFOTM, WC, Look, ANYTHING.