Good Vibrations Success and Smile's Demise
Paul J B:
After all of the years and all of the theories about Smile collapsing, it seems to me that Good Vibrations being a monster hit had much more to do with the albums demise than perhaps anything else. This has been on my mind a lot since seeing L&M last June. It really dawned on me after watching the scenes with Brian and Mike first touching on the song. Mike's lyrics, after Tony Asher and Pet Sounds, and while Smile is already in the works with some of Parks lyrics, Good Vibrations becomes their biggest single ever, as the scene with Marilyn reiterates.
I pulled up a thread, really good one by the way, started by The_Holy_Bee from 2012. This comment below by Wirestone is great.
Wirestone:
"This feels right to me. I think I posted last year that something clearly changes in the sessions as 67 dawns. Brian stops making an album and starts fixating on individual tracks. And as he does that, the re-recording and shuffling problems become greater. And he begins to see that H&V and Veggies and Dada -- none of them are surefire follow ups to Good Vibes. At which point he's screwed, right? Because what did he spend the last six or seven months doing, then?"
So, I'm not saying no one has considered this, but what I find baffling is that it seems to get lost in the Smile discussions and I would think it's the KEY reason things went awry.
Drugs...Mike and Parks...too many chunks of music to try and piece together....the label release date approaching .....ect. Those reasons are not nearly as altering in the Smile timeline as Good Vibrations success. It's right there in front of us. In The_Holy_Bee thread he clearly lays out the FACTS that Smile was nearly ready in November, then this monster hit takes hold and things change. I think Brian got spooked by GV success and wanted Smile to be a number one album, (especially since Pet Sounds did not soar) and he became doubtful. Then all of the unraveling began.
See below if you want the other thread I referenced. I rarely start threads but this has really been on my mind and I felt it's worth looking at freshly.
Holy Bee returns with latest crackpot theory: SMiLE almost done in Nov 66
« on: March 19, 2012, 08:08:38 AM »
Andrew G. Doe:
Timeline doesn't seem to stack up: "GV" was released October 10th 1966, charted October 22nd and hit Top 20 November 5th, #1 December 10th, thus it was an obvious hit by mid-November. Yet Brian was still holding Smile sessions late November and into December before he started concentrating on "H&V" in January 1967.
Paul J B:
Quote from: Andrew G. Doe on December 18, 2015, 12:40:20 PM
Timeline doesn't seem to stack up: "GV" was released October 10th 1966, charted October 22nd and hit Top 20 November 5th, #1 December 10th, thus it was an obvious hit by mid-November. Yet Brian was still holding Smile sessions late November and into December before he started concentrating on "H&V" in January 1967.
Right as usual on your dates but it does add up to me. TSS book among other things, like the track list being printed on the sleeve show that even though there were vocals to cut most of the tracks were done and not all piece mail as Holy Bee pointed out. It was 90 some percent in the can then GV just grows bigger and bigger and by January it's all on hold and Brian starts pulling a GV on Heroes and Villians. It just makes total sense to me.
Andrew G. Doe:
90 % ? Think not - "The Elements" alone was 75% unrecorded... "Vega-Tables" was barely begun (the "cornucopia" early version).
Not saying that in January Brian didn't loose focus big time, but I don't think it was due to "GV" being a huge hit so much as the realisation that he couldn't do a whole album that way, i.e. modularly.
MikestheGreatest!!:
Only way I can think that Good Vibes led to Smile's demise was perhaps in convincing Brian that he could apply the modular concept to basically an entire album which seems to have driven him batty and unable to complete the job. Along with the numerous other factors.
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