Was there any evidence "Wind Chimes" was Air?

[wjcrerar]

.

[BBs Footage Saga]

I'm Sure that AIR is not wind chimes.

I'm also sure that Love to say dada wasn't part of the album.

[The Old Master Painter]

It has been two or three years since I created this thread, and I took a break from visiting this forum a few months back. I was so surprised to see this thread come back. I do not believe “Wind Chimes” was conceived as the “Air” section of the “Elements suite.” “Vega-Tables,” before being re-recorded in April 1967, might have been. The concept of “Air” is also expanded on during the comedy-sketch session in November 1966 where the bulk of the “Psychodelic Sounds” bootleg originate from; including breathing chants and discussions about climate change and air pollution in Europe. “Water” included ‘water sounds’ found in “Bob Gordon’s Real Trip.” “Earth” might have also been “Workshop,” although that up for debate. I have been working on a ‘Smile’ compilation using only recordings from 1966-68 with a 12-track running order for a long time, partly due to the nature of Side Two and vocal isolations of the “Surf’s Up” piano demo. The running order is: “Our Prayer,” “Good Vibrations,” “Do You Like Worms,” “Cabin Essence,” “Wonderful,” “Child is The Father of The Man,” “Vega-Tables”/“Heroes and Villains,” “The Old Master Painter,” “The Elements,” “I’m In Great Shape,” “Wind Chimes,” and “Surf’s Up.”

[Julia]

This thread is so insanely long and I both love and hate that, haha 

[Don Malcolm]

A key quote from this thread that gets to the root of what likely happened at the band meeting in May 1967:

The quote, Brian Wilson 1968: "Early 1967, I had planned to make an album entitled SMILE. I was working with a guy named Van Dyke Parks, who was collaborating with me on the tunes, and it the process, we came up with a song called ‘Surf’s Up’, and I performed that with just a piano on a documentary show made on rock music. The song ‘Surf’s Up’, that I sang on that documentary never came out on an album, and it was supposed to come out on the SMILE album, and that and a couple of other songs were junked…because…I don’t know why…for some reason didn’t want to put them on the album…and the group nearly broke up, actually split up for good after that…”.

Take it all into consideration, my two posts above, the one with the May 67 quotes, and you see band members saying they want to give the public a good product on their terms, not be rushed, etc., some answers specific to the Heroes single, maybe implications for the Smile album too even though Bruce is the one most openly enthusiastic about "Smile" in his answers. The band is in Europe on tour, Brian holds sessions in line with "Smile" working methods he had been using. Band returns, does about a week of sessions, one at Sound, others at Western, mostly focused on Vegetables (which was where they left off immediately before the tour in mid April) and also With Me Tonight and Cool Cool Water.

If Taylor's July '67 PR piece is accurate, *something* happened between when the band returned to the US, did the week of "pro studio" sessions, then began recording at Brian's home.

Now this suggests that some of the key tracks were being shelved--and the reaction to this decision was not good. (As in, almost broke up.)

A situation that had been created via a series of events triggered by MOLC and radiating into every aspect of the SMiLE project. An internecine thunderstorm that escalated into a tsunami--art and commerce in a scenario like the drag race in "Don't Worry Baby".

SU and CE set aside, the two centerpieces of the two original themes--along with most of the Americana side.
As Julia said, the decision-making process for what wound up on SS is one of the sketchiest aspects of the entire saga.
But somehow Brian had a plan that he was able to make convincing enough to everyone--refashioning bits and pieces, recasting songs (MOLC-->Fall Breaks, WC, Wonderful, HGS-->SGB, VT) and finally settling on a format for HV, plus two new tracks (LP, GH) to fill out the LP. It was not as easy a process as was later claimed, but they got it done and crossed their fingers that HV would see them through (It didn't.)

As I look over all of this earlier wrangling again, the path to an April SMiLE seems more tenuous--the lawsuit is an out-of-the-blue collision that throws another wrench in things (commerce again rearing its ugly head). But to me the best path to it would be if Brian decided that the Elements was a bridge too far for the LP and set aside the idea for another project. The art vs. commerce compromise--set aside the Elements, put GV on the LP. HV could be a single but could have a more elaborate version on the LP.

The ultimate art v. commerce compromise--the single could be HV, but the B-side could be...MOLC! (The ultimate one-off...)

That would track with VDP's insistence to AGD that the LP was going to be 10-12 tracks, banded normally. Of course there could be many modular edits within tracks, a la GV.

AS for WC, I can live without vocals on the tag, but if it's on April SMiLE I don't think we get CWTL--which, if its non-existence had spared Brian the twenty-five year nightmare that followed, would have been a good thing--but I would miss it terribly (along with the SS versions of WC and Wonderful).

What a thread this was--thank God I managed to stay out of it!  But yeoman work from GF throughout...

[guitarfool2002]

Thank you Don - The info, quotes, and article citations represented a lot of research and digging that I did out of pure curiosity and trying to get closer to the truth of these issues, and I'm glad it's still here for new viewers to read and other members to access. It's probably the great unanswered question of the saga, what did happen during that exact period in May-June 67...because it was a seismic shift in nearly every aspect of making an album. And you can see how some of the actual direct quotes, dates, and article citations were sometimes met with hostility or outright ignorance of the evidence presented in that discussion. Even now, almost 10 years later, a lot of these points remain unanswered.

The segment you clipped from my posts is on page 13 for anyone interested in reading more.

Just a new addendum: I think the MOLC/Fire situation is tending to be overstated as a benchmark event in the Smile saga. If such great work had not been done *after* that track ran its course, I might agree more that it was a benchmark. As such, just look at the music created and recorded after "Fire" and it may be scattershot at times (various Heroes sessions), but some of the greatest music and individual studio session work I've ever heard (my opinion) was made after Fire had burned out in '66.

[Don Malcolm]

Thank you Don - The info, quotes, and article citations represented a lot of research and digging that I did out of pure curiosity and trying to get closer to the truth of these issues, and I'm glad it's still here for new viewers to read and other members to access. It's probably the great unanswered question of the saga, what did happen during that exact period in May-June 67...because it was a seismic shift in nearly every aspect of making an album. And you can see how some of the actual direct quotes, dates, and article citations were sometimes met with hostility or outright ignorance of the evidence presented in that discussion. Even now, almost 10 years later, a lot of these points remain unanswered.

The segment you clipped from my posts is on page 13 for anyone interested in reading more.

Just a new addendum: I think the MOLC/Fire situation is tending to be overstated as a benchmark event in the Smile saga. If such great work had not been done *after* that track ran its course, I might agree more that it was a benchmark. As such, just look at the music created and recorded after "Fire" and it may be scattershot at times (various Heroes sessions), but some of the greatest music and individual studio session work I've ever heard (my opinion) was made after Fire had burned out in '66.

GF, I didn't mean to suggest that the quality of Brian's work was compromised by MOLC--more that it triggered a series of situations that (accompanied by the uncanny, unfortunate timing of the Capitol lawsuit) cast a lengthening shadow over the project that ultimately sent it into a death spiral. Let's remember that Mike sang the lyrics to the "Grand Coulee Dam" section of "Cabinessence" in October seemingly without incident; but by December (after MOLC and the escalating unease about the direction of the project) we have the ambush of VDP over the "over and over" lyrics, resulting in what proved to be a fatal pause in the progress on the two songs that are arguably the greatest of the SMiLE tracks.

Brian's response to the escalating frenzy/furor swirling around the project was to escalate his efforts to make HV into a bigger extravaganza than GV. There is incredible genius strewn across all of that, but it was never integrated into a version of the song that he could release to the world--until he re-cut it for Smiley Smile. The difference behind that great but still somehow "lesser than" track and what could have stood with GV and "Cabinessence" as pinnacles of Brian's studio wizardry is still palpable to us nearly sixty years later.

I'd argue that Brian peaked with GV and "Cabinessence"...there is merely a week between the final mixdown of GV and the instrumental sessions for "Cabinessence"--two labyrinthine musical creations that have an unprecedented compositional dynamism. "Surf's Up" is (IMO) more beautiful than either due to its incomparable melody, but it suffered from the contretemps that overtook the project and isn't on the same level as a studio achievement.

Assuming that my occasional theory that Brian was actually going to rework SMiLE after Smiley is wrong (which many suggest was just his way of appeasing Karl Engemann), then we might want to speculate a bit on why he singled out those two tracks for oblivion (after all, MOLC does make an "appearance" on Smiley). I think there are a myriad of reasons, but which ones carried the most weight in the decision process is something we will never know. (More confounding to me is the revisit of "Surf's Up" during the Wild Honey sessions...how truly strange it would be if it had somehow wound up on that LP.)

[BJL]

GF, I didn't mean to suggest that the quality of Brian's work was compromised by MOLC--more that it triggered a series of situations that (accompanied by the uncanny, unfortunate timing of the Capitol lawsuit) cast a lengthening shadow over the project that ultimately sent it into a death spiral. Let's remember that Mike sang the lyrics to the "Grand Coulee Dam" section of "Cabinessence" in October seemingly without incident; but by December (after MOLC and the escalating unease about the direction of the project) we have the ambush of VDP over the "over and over" lyrics, resulting in what proved to be a fatal pause in the progress on the two songs that are arguably the greatest of the SMiLE tracks.

Brian's response to the escalating frenzy/furor swirling around the project was to escalate his efforts to make HV into a bigger extravaganza than GV. There is incredible genius strewn across all of that, but it was never integrated into a version of the song that he could release to the world--until he re-cut it for Smiley Smile. The difference behind that great but still somehow "lesser than" track and what could have stood with GV and "Cabinessence" as pinnacles of Brian's studio wizardry is still palpable to us nearly sixty years later.

I'd argue that Brian peaked with GV and "Cabinessence"...there is merely a week between the final mixdown of GV and the instrumental sessions for "Cabinessence"--two labyrinthine musical creations that have an unprecedented compositional dynamism. "Surf's Up" is (IMO) more beautiful than either due to its incomparable melody, but it suffered from the contretemps that overtook the project and isn't on the same level as a studio achievement.

Assuming that my occasional theory that Brian was actually going to rework SMiLE after Smiley is wrong (which many suggest was just his way of appeasing Karl Engemann), then we might want to speculate a bit on why he singled out those two tracks for oblivion (after all, MOLC does make an "appearance" on Smiley). I think there are a myriad of reasons, but which ones carried the most weight in the decision process is something we will never know. (More confounding to me is the revisit of "Surf's Up" during the Wild Honey sessions...how truly strange it would be if it had somehow wound up on that LP.)

Personally, my sense (subjective, obviously!), is that the situation with MOLC was more symptom than precipitating event; an early sign of an underlying problem that was going to come out one way or another.

I agree with you on Good Vibrations and Cabinessence in a sense, but disagree in another sense. Where I agree completely is that the intense run of sessions that immediately followed finishing Good Vibrations, between Oct. 3 and Oct. 20th or so, represent the apotheosis of Brian's studio experimentation, and lie at the heart of one of the most thrilling bursts of creative activity in music history. But personally, I think the reason Cabinessence stands so tall amongst the songs worked on at that moment is less inherent to the composition and more simply the fact that it was finished (and that in 1968!). I think if Cabinessence had been left in the same shape as Worms (which, in 1966, it probably was?) - that is, not assembled or mixed, missing a final layer of sweetening sessions to pull everything together, and of course without a lead vocal... it would be viewed similarly to Worms. And I think if Worms had been finished, whether in 1966 or 1968, it would be Cabinessence's equal. (A subjective judgment about a song that doesn't exist, obviously, but I believe it nonetheless). Likewise, Wonderful and Child is the Father were worked on in that same burst of activity, and I think if they had been finished, though each individually is shorter and less elaborate a creation than Cabinessence, taken together they would have been easily its equal. But Brian wasn't working one song at a time, he was thinking of the album as a whole and working in pieces that were at once larger than and smaller than a single song... which was not a mistake, by any means, except insofar as the way things in fact turned out...

[Julia]

This makes no sense.  Brian and Derek are in L.A.  Mike is in the UK, POSSIBLY giving tour reports to Derek Taylor.  He tells Derek Smile is scrapped maybe.  Derek wouldn't call up Brian to confirm that?  He would go with what Mike says, with no additional confirmation?  Does Capitol understand it's scrapped?

The next illogicality is, why would Mike say it was scrapped?  Whether Mike wanted it scrapped or not, how does making a public statement that it's scrapped help the Beach Boys PR or help the bottom dollar, his primary concern?

None of it adds up.

Im slowly making my way through this thread because I have no life, and yeah this more or less sums up my thoughts on this tangent.

Earlier, Cam cited Derek Taylor's book ("As Time Goes By") which until just now I never knew existed. I assume the book doesn't spell out an answer for us or he probably would've quoted it, right? (Isn't it funny how this info that means so much to us is often so inconsequential to the principals they don't even bother to mention it in their tell-all books??) There's a limited preview on Internet Archive and doing a search within the text it seems that what Cam quoted is the only significant discussion of the BB--the focus is on the Beatles it's not an all-encompassing autobio.

I have a lot of trouble believing Taylor would just go with something Mike said on the matter. 1) The only proof I've ever seen for this claim is Priore, whom I don't trust as a source at all. 2) The overwhelming impression I get, which admittedly could be wrong, is that Taylor was hired by and worked primarily with Brian. Plus, everyone knew Brian *was* the Beach Boys at this time. It stands to reason Taylor would be deferential to Brian's instructions and most likely run any memos he got from other BBs by the big guy. 3) Taylor knew about the inter-band drama and Mike's tiff with VDP as referenced in quotes from that same Priore 2005 book. More reason he'd want to double and triple check an "announce it's cancelled!" command especially coming from Mike.

I think, probably, the decision just came from Brian or it was a group consensus. I lean towards the former because there's quotes from at least the Badman book (and Im pretty sure at least one other source) that the BB fully expected SMiLE to come out during their second European tour and were surprised it wasn't released yet when they heard as much from the press. I think either this was another misguided legal maneuver to bargain against Capitol or, more likely, evidence of Brian's erratic behavior at a time when all acknowledge he was mentally unwell. This is the guy who wouldn't come out to see Anderle and caused him to quit BRI as a result, the guy who'd rather remake the album in the least commercial style possible than just record the damn vocals and rush out what was already in the vaults. (Finishing some form of the SMiLE songs couldn't have taken that much longer than Smiley.) I think he felt he needed to take that weight off his shoulders even if it wasn't a rational decision for the reasons I just described.

Otherwise, if Brian really was blindsided by the announcement, maybe Taylor was hoping that the outcry might light a fuse under Brian's ass and get him to stop farting around recording Jasper Dailey garbage. Taylor seems to be at least a little snarky towards the group and VDP in his quotes I've seen. VDP accuses him of being a spy for the Beatles and I've never seen Brian or anyone else in the group speak particularly highly of him. Unlike Anderle, Vosse & Paul Williams, Brian didn't keep in touch with Taylor as far as I know. So, something sneaky and potentially ruinous may not seem too farfetched if you look at it that way. But if Taylor did this, he deserved to be fired as that was not his call to make and such an announcement could and arguably did have serious ramifications. That might have even been grounds for the BB to sue him, and certainly blacklist him in the industry--would he take that risk just for a lame, desperate gambit or to burn some clients he may not've particularly cared for? Color me skeptical. 

There's still a tendency to want to blame everything bad on "outsiders" or Mike and absolve Brian of his shortcomings. While I totally understand where that sentiment comes from, Mike and even Taylor are easy to dislike looking at interviews, it just doesn't ring true to me without some clear evidence. And even then, I'd have to believe Brian was aware the order came and would have countermanded it or whined about it over the years. Other BBs I think would've pointed the finger at Mike if he'd taken so active a hand in sabotaging an album which they all must've known years later was their commercial/critical turning point. No, I say it was Brian and we're trying to make sense out of a person who, by all accounts, wasn't acting fully rationally at this time.

[BJL]

This makes no sense.  Brian and Derek are in L.A.  Mike is in the UK, POSSIBLY giving tour reports to Derek Taylor.  He tells Derek Smile is scrapped maybe.  Derek wouldn't call up Brian to confirm that?  He would go with what Mike says, with no additional confirmation?  Does Capitol understand it's scrapped?

The next illogicality is, why would Mike say it was scrapped?  Whether Mike wanted it scrapped or not, how does making a public statement that it's scrapped help the Beach Boys PR or help the bottom dollar, his primary concern?

None of it adds up.

Im slowly making my way through this thread because I have no life, and yeah this more or less sums up my thoughts on this tangent.

Earlier, Cam cited Derek Taylor's book ("As Time Goes By") which until just now I never knew existed. I assume the book doesn't spell out an answer for us or he probably would've quoted it, right? (Isn't it funny how this info that means so much to us is often so inconsequential to the principals they don't even bother to mention it in their tell-all books??) There's a limited preview on Internet Archive and doing a search within the text it seems that what Cam quoted is the only significant discussion of the BB--the focus is on the Beatles it's not an all-encompassing autobio.

I have a lot of trouble believing Taylor would just go with something Mike said on the matter. 1) The only proof I've ever seen for this claim is Priore, whom I don't trust as a source at all. 2) The overwhelming impression I get, which admittedly could be wrong, is that Taylor was hired by and worked primarily with Brian. Plus, everyone knew Brian *was* the Beach Boys at this time. It stands to reason Taylor would be deferential to Brian's instructions and most likely run any memos he got from other BBs by the big guy. 3) Taylor knew about the inter-band drama and Mike's tiff with VDP as referenced in quotes from that same Priore 2005 book. More reason he'd want to double and triple check an "announce it's cancelled!" command especially coming from Mike.

I think, probably, the decision just came from Brian or it was a group consensus. I lean towards the former because there's quotes from at least the Badman book (and Im pretty sure at least one other source) that the BB fully expected SMiLE to come out during their second European tour and were surprised it wasn't released yet when they heard as much from the press. I think either this was another misguided legal maneuver to bargain against Capitol or, more likely, evidence of Brian's erratic behavior at a time when all acknowledge he was mentally unwell. This is the guy who wouldn't come out to see Anderle and caused him to quit BRI as a result, the guy who'd rather remake the album in the least commercial style possible than just record the damn vocals and rush out what was already in the vaults. (Finishing some form of the SMiLE songs couldn't have taken that much longer than Smiley.) I think he felt he needed to take that weight off his shoulders even if it wasn't a rational decision for the reasons I just described.

Otherwise, if Brian really was blindsided by the announcement, maybe Taylor was hoping that the outcry might light a fuse under Brian's ass and get him to stop farting around recording Jasper Dailey garbage. Taylor seems to be at least a little snarky towards the group and VDP in his quotes I've seen. VDP accuses him of being a spy for the Beatles and I've never seen Brian or anyone else in the group speak particularly highly of him. Unlike Anderle, Vosse & Paul Williams, Brian didn't keep in touch with Taylor as far as I know. So, something sneaky and potentially ruinous may not seem too farfetched if you look at it that way. But if Taylor did this, he deserved to be fired as that was not his call to make and such an announcement could and arguably did have serious ramifications. That might have even been grounds for the BB to sue him, and certainly blacklist him in the industry--would he take that risk just for a lame, desperate gambit or to burn some clients he may not've particularly cared for? Color me skeptical. 

There's still a tendency to want to blame everything bad on "outsiders" or Mike and absolve Brian of his shortcomings. While I totally understand where that sentiment comes from, Mike and even Taylor are easy to dislike looking at interviews, it just doesn't ring true to me without some clear evidence. And even then, I'd have to believe Brian was aware the order came and would have countermanded it or whined about it over the years. Other BBs I think would've pointed the finger at Mike if he'd taken so active a hand in sabotaging an album which they all must've known years later was their commercial/critical turning point. No, I say it was Brian and we're trying to make sense out of a person who, by all accounts, wasn't acting fully rationally at this time.

I've said it many times before, but I really and truly think people way overthink this aspect of the Smile saga. Derek Taylor was a publicist working for the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson was the leader of the Beach Boys who was producing their new album Smile. Taylor published that Smile was scrapped because Brian Wilson told him that Smile was scrapped, there's no other explanation that makes any sense, and that explanation makes *perfect* sense. And Brian *didn't finish* smile for a million reasons, obviously, but he almost certainly declared it scrapped at that moment because he was frustrated and demoralized, had obviously totally lost the thread of the project, and wanted to start over working in a different way. Which is exactly what he did. No shenanigans from anyone else are required to make sense of that decision. Did Mike and the band's resistance play a role, sure, but it almost certainly played its key part in the drama in December, when the idea that Brian would respond to Mike criticizing his direction by scrapping the whole fucking album would have, in light of the band's entire career dynamic up to then, seemed like absolutely the least likely thing that could possibly happen. Which isn't a defense of Mike, just the obvious interpretation of what was going on if we resist the temptation to read what happened later back into the time before it happened.

[Zenobi]

I have to "chime in" at this point... with some points of mine.

1) Firstly: the thread's title itself.
Many years ago, after watching a movie together, a person asked me what I thought would happen after the movie's ending. I answered that she was free to choose any followup, provided it was not blatantly unreasonable, because any movie's "truth" ends with its ending: afterwards, there is no longer a "truth" to which one has to adhere. Within reason, you are free to imagine whatever you like best.
Same for "Wind Chimes": would it be "Air" in a completed SMiLE in 1967, like it is obviously in BWPS? Personally, I think not, but it is just my very worthless opinion. Fact is, there is NO completed 1967 SMiLE, and we are sure of that, and of preciously little else, regarding SMiLE. Could Brian, in an alternative world where the album was released in 1967, have decided that Wind Chimes was Air in an Elements suite? Possible, who knows? Not probable imho, again, but stranger things have happened, even in the Beach Boys world itself.
What really irks me is dogmatism, and the self-appointed "authorities". "Wind Chimes was NOT Air! This just shows your ignorance! Don't you know the 421 documents proving that?"
Ok, strawmanning a bit for laughs, but not SO much. And this leads me to the next point.

2) Julia does not seem to trust Priore a lot, lol. I agree, but go further.
I am a born skeptic, but a REAL one. Though it may seem paradoxical (but it's not), I'm particularly wary of the "professional" skeptics, the "debunkers" who plague the Web with imbecilic YouTube videos "proving" that whatever steers away even a 0.01% from the current majority view is obviously false. Good job, debunkers, according to your method science would have never developed whatsoever. Their method: set up a straw man, bore the watcher to tears for about 15 minutes with a barrage of non-sequiturs and then proudly put the DEBUNKED! stamp, when in reality they haven't managed to debunk even their own straw man, if one knows anything about logic. One of their most frequent fallacies, among the straw man itself and many others: ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE. Obviously, logic says the opposite, and I am proud to state that the people in this forum are among the few around who know this very simple fact.
Sorry, I got carried away.
Well, as a real skeptic I normally trust practically nobody, and regarding SMiLE doubly so. I have read a bit about it, and the result of all this is that I am more and more confused. The matter started obfuscated, and all these years and all this "lore", at least for me, have obfuscated it even more. The subject is objectively extremely hard to unravel, and add to it the wealth of crisscrossing agendas by so many people... it's positively maddening. So, what do we know, REALLY, about the raveling and unraveling of SMiLE? WHO KNOWS?

3) Well, let's stick for a little while to the existing music, the only anchor of truth in this mess. Namely, much as Cabin Essence is awesome, Heroes and Worms are, too, though they never have been released in the '60s. Yes, Heroes was released, but sorry Brian... that H&V is little more than a travesty of what could have been. But we got lucky: both songs WERE released in BWPS, and awesome they are. Prayer, then Heroes, then Worms, finally Cabin Essence. The Americana Suite: music does not get better. Of course, no Beach Boys. But there they aren't in Cabin Essence, either, and removing the heavenly voices of the BBs from the picture equalizes the stage and shows that those 4 songs are equally majestic. Or so I think...
Of course, too many people seem to have forgotten BWPS, and their own tears of joy when they first listened to it. Well, so goes the world... badly. And I say this while saying myself, in another thread, that my favourite Beach Boys albums are Smiley Smile and Love You.
But... wait... no problem! BWPS is NOT a Beach Boy album!
Whew!

P.S.
Of course I don't want, in any way, diminish the fantastic work of the Wondermints and the other great guys (and gal... and gals if you include the Stockholm). But, vocally, the Beach Boys they ain't. No one is. And Darian and C. would be the first ones to admit that.

[Julia]

He may be, unless he did also play bottles in April. Did some of the April sessions end up in the Smiley version?

Still he would be putting both the April and June sessions as post-SMiLE, which I believe is true.  As I said, Taylor, reporting on these very sessions published April 22 (and in the following week's April 29 column), is warning that the album is not complete, there are delays because Brian has re-evaluated the music, and things have changed over the music.

Also, Marilyn has been quoted as saying regarding the purchase of the Bellagio house: "“I think the move may have had something to do with what happened to Smile. You know, new house, new things.”  Brian and Marilyn signed a Joint Tenancy Deed for the purchase of the Bellagio home on March 28, 1967 and the April 8 issue of New Music Express reported that "Brian Wilson transferred his crew from a rather small, newly built house to a 1937-built, two-storey Spanish mansion.” which probably would be info from April 4 to March 28 or earlier) . All of which I take as another evidence that SMiLE was in the past even as early as March 28 (or even earlier).

Also the SMiLE track was titled "Vega-Tables" with the probable master number of 56728. The April single and June Smiley versions have the non-SMiLE ("post-SMiLE") title of "Vegetables" beginning April 4 and have a different master number of 57450.

Quick point about the name change from Vega-Tables to Vegetables.

This is total speculation, I have no real proof.

I think the SMiLE track names were supposed to have double meanings--references (Cow, LtSD, Wonderful as a private name for Marilyn, CIFOTM to Wordsworth & Meninger, the Elements, Second Day) & puns (Cabin Essence a play on "Cannabis" as Holmes attests, Worms, Surf's Up) & just regular titles LOL (Prayer, Wind Chimes, arguably H&V though that could be a reference to yin/yang and binary moralist philosophies). Vega-Tables, with the spelling that emphasizes Vega, is an astrology reference. I think Brian wanted to pay homage to everything on his mind if he couldn't directly make a song about it. Speaking of which, I slightly suspect some of these weirder unconventional titles might've been an excuse to "fudge the numbers" and make the songs fit numerological meanings or something. It's not too far fetched a theory though there's no proof.

I dont think Cam is too off-base using that (and the different master # which is more significant) to delineate when "SMiLE Veggies" became "Smiley Veggies." I see that as when the "work in a bunch of alt-spirituality to present a grandiose statement on personal enlightenment and social reform" ethos of SMiLE became the "don't think you're God, just be a cool guy and make a fun album with your pals" that is Smiley. Brian preserved the humor, the off-beat touches and a lot of the songs but he sacrificed the pretensions of profundity, Wrecking Crew & modular editing. That's what separates SMiLE from Smiley. 

What tour did Al leave for the next morning?

Also Al put the end of SMiLE pre-April Veg.

This really, really stands out to me.

Think about the RE-recording of Vega-tables AND Wonderful AND Child is Father of the Man...VT with it's significantly simplified instrumentation compared to the rest of the SMiLE tracks, it was also just the BB's on those sessions (sans the tag), right? It was that simplified production technique that led towards Smiley Smile. 

Al has the big picture points right but maybe confused some fine detail.

Decades ago there was a brilliant younger man from Kansas, I forget his name, who pointed out evidence that SMiLE was cancelled long before the May announcement, before the April Veg sessions, and even before the 3rd week in March when the Wilson's took a contract on the Bellagio house.  It's nice (for him, whoever he was, I mean) to see further confirmation.

I believe this too. It fits with some of the quotes I've seen Van say in my studies--that when Brian moved, that's when he stopped seeing him and things fell apart. It coincides roughly when he is said to have left the second time. It tracks with Brian's mind and how it worked--new stimuli, new focus, if it couldn't happen immediately he lost interest. It tracks when any lingering Vosse Posse sycophants would've been barred from coming over anymore. It tracks with the home studio (or rented 8-track but still) when the Wrecking Crew were gone. Everything fits roughly with that timeline, that late March-early April is when the album died in Brian's heart if not officially.

This is another reason why Im not 100% a believer in Dada as definitely water. I mean, I sort of use it as such (and/or air as Second Day/Air Dada) and refer to it in that context out of convenience, but that's just because it's the best thing we have to plug that conceptual hole among what's in the vault. But it's at least as likely or more so in fact that Brian wanted to start fresh (singles aside) and pull out an old half-forgotten "feel" that never really got pinned down before as something to play around with, since it wasn't connected with SMiLE's grand designs and therefore there was no pressure for it to be "perfect." (Like if he were to work on Surf's Up or something.)

Really, Im of the opinion "Elements" was the Nov 4 "fitness elements" demos, then frustration with that track's difficulty to nail down, plus tensions with the Boys led Brian to write the scary anxious Fire as an emotional-musical release. Then the troubles with that track and it's "bad vibrations" killed whatever was left of his enthusiasm for this concept. Everything beyond that, like CCW, Fall Breaks and maybe Country Air are Brian recycling old themes he didn't think would see the light of day otherwise as he was prone to do. We can quibble over "was this an element" but really the answer is "who cares, it's a good standalone song and not released as part of any element suite then or now so just let it go and move on."

The idea of a 4-part orchestrated elements we can find out of Brian's recorded material has always been something of a red herring to me--like, it's possible but nowhere near as probable as many think, not worth the hassle (EVERY elements reconstruction I hear is very flawed, ESPECIALLY what Brian did in 2003) and ultimately the best music should just be put in a 35~45 minute playlist without worry of "is it element-y?" Like it's kinda fun to think about, but it dominates so much of SMiLE discourse and people get so bent out of shape about it that I get annoyed sometimes. The only reason it gets such focus is because that careless liar Priore decided to argue it was half of SMiLE, with NO EVIDENCE as I can now prove, and it caught on with info-starved fans in the 80s & 90s. It's way past time the conversation moved on and the fanatics arguing that Wind Chimes & Surfs Up are Air/Water because they have vaguely air-water related words in their titles get over it and just enjoy the music as it is, on its own terms, stop trying to force things in a box.

[Julia]

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg556151.html#msg556151
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg556121.html#msg556121
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg556129.html#msg556129
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg557316.html#msg557316

^These posts by Matt Bielewicz (which Im not quoting due to their length) are the best summations of why WC isn't Air I've seen. Couldn't have argued it better; perfectly said. So well-reasoned, that in 30 pages no one even tried to dispute them, instead arguing about...when and if SMiLE died for some reason  

I think the matter is settled--WC was not Air. There's no proof except Priore wanting there to be an easy "air" among the songs available to him, so he picked a song with "wind" in the title and then BWPS retroactively justified it. (But even then, Brian and Darian have gone on record saying this wasn't a vintage idea, just they knew people expected an Elements suite after decades of hype about it, and WC was "good enough" to fit that slot.) WC was the very first SMiLE song not counting GV and whatever the first session of Heroes was, when SMiLE was still Dumb Angel and there was not yet an Elements to speak of. I think the evidence bares out that the Elements was the very last SMiLE track, certainly the final one to be tried in the studio (unless you count IWBA/FN as an independent song and not the Earth element or part of an IIGS/Barnyard suite) and therefore significantly post-dating WC. Elements may be the only SMiLE song that was written/conceptualized AFTER the changeover from Dumb Angel to SMiLE, with the new focus on humor skits that came at the same time (late Oct, early Nov). That explains why it's so ingrained in chants and comedy sketches, unlike any other song in the tracklist (sans arguably Heroes & Veggies and even then, that only happened to Heroes in '67 when it was radically reworked).  

Speaking of which, I loved seeing these two posts that agree with me on the significance of the Nov 4 skits with regard to the Elements; this is so vindicating to come back to 10 years later, like I was driven off the board but my arguments lived on:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg559385.html#msg559385
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,23292.msg634624.html#msg634624

Plus AGD's perfectly succinct response, the first in the thread: "None whatsoever," with no further explanation necessary. And the person that gave me the most grief for saying all this in 2015 (when these were controversial opinions) suddenly has no problem with such statements as long as Im not the one saying them... It's been an interesting thread I almost didn't read due to the length. I feel it has restored some of my faith that SMiLE discourse can evolve with well-reasoned arguments and that old, commonly held Priore superstitions can be felled given enough time. Back in 2015 I felt like I was talking to a brick wall.

I want to address another few tangents I saw crop up in this thread before I let it go...

It seems significant to me that we have SMiLE era lead vocals only for those songs that were reworked for Smiley: H&V, Vegetables, Wind Chimes, Wonderful. Obviously there was no problem with those lyrics. The unused tracks - CE, SU, DYLW - all have no 1966 lead vocals, maybe because those were the questioned lyrics.

It would seem like those three, however obscure the lyrics may be, are the ones that seem to paint American history in an unflattering light. Uncovering the worms, as it were. Might that be what BW called "inappropriate"? Could be with VDP gone he lost his nerve?

I agree, I think it was probably something like that too; either too political or preachy or old timey or something like that for Brian (whatever he considered "too sophisticated" or artistically selfish).

I agree emphatically with all three comments in this quote chain. I think the changeover between "Dumb Angel" and "SMiLE" was actually pretty significant and some of the old VDP collaborations no longer fit the "hahaha embedded comedy, make you smile!" aesthetic Brian now wanted. That, I think, is an understated reason the album came undone and Brian lost interest in the Fall '66 music. And to the hardcore VDP defenders, it's not that Brian didn't like VDP's contributions--I think he loved them and was blown away as they worked together, it's just suddenly his muse was telling him to go in a sillier goofy direction that this really somber "genocide of the Indians, exploitation of the coolies, eat the rich, overthrow the broken society" music no longer fit. I'll say again, it's not that Brian thought Van's contributions weren't good enough, just no longer right for the album he now wanted to release. This doesn't mean Brian suddenly wanted Van gone, it means he probably wanted him to rework old songs or write new ones at the same time Van was pulling back, due to feeling unwelcome & getting his own contract. (Which I don't blame him for taking, I'd get off this sinking ship too were I him.) This explains why Brian felt he needed VDP around despite having lyrics to an album's worth of songs already.

Far from being extraneous stoned distractions, the Nov 4 recordings (plus Taxi Cabber, Veggie Fight, George Fell, Smog and to a lesser extent Liferaft) are pivotal to understanding the album and its undoing. They coincide exactly with the change in title and therefore in aesthetic. You can add goofy humor segments ("lot of talking between the pauses / talking and laughing between cuts / somebody might say something between verses") to an homage of campy '60s cowboy shows, or fitness-themed elemental collages, or a joke PSA to eat your vegetables. You can't add it to something like Cabin Essence or CIFOTM without undercutting the emotions of the song. And yet, Brian recorded GFIHFH for SU and I'd argue Wonderful is diminished by that goofy bridge in SS, so I'll admit this isn't a perfect theory or Brian wasn't totally consistent. But I think it's fair to say, anything to do with race, making America look bad, any concept that couldn't be made funny without accusations of bad taste, that's what didn't make the jump to Smiley Smile. 

Another thought on Brian using "Vegetables" and "Wind Chimes" on Smiley Smile. I'm not just saying this to bolster my argument (though I'm not really arguing with anybody ), but I always felt that, like "Good Vibrations", "Vegetables" and "Wind Chimes" were the most un-SMiLE-like songs, mainly because of the lyrics. In Vegetables" you have the lines "my tenny flew right off" and "...when you send us in your letter". And, as we know, Brian's inspiration for "Wind Chimes" wasn't some brilliant Van Dyke Parks' lyric; it was Brian staring at his wind chimes and deciding to write a song about them!

This is how I've always felt too, unless you use Veggies as a song about the Mid-West breadbasket, a "part 2" to Barnyard. But even then, as I recall, Veggies is the major SMiLE song that shares the least amount of chords with the other SMiLE songs, which was very surprising. It's almost an island to itself. However while Veggies fits the fitness/element/humor and arguably Americana themes despite its musical isolation, WC is just kinda out by itself in terms of subject matter at first glance. You could look at it as a song about death (chimes are used that way in Eastern cultures) "dust in the wind" and joy in the simple things, maybe isolation, of the day/life passing you by, to fit the Cycle of Life but it's not as seamless a fit as the other tracks in that group. What it does have is the "crying horn" leitmotif I feel the CoL/Innocence songs share: with Wonderful's being the girl crying at her bad encounter with a "non-believer" boy, CIFOTM with the baby crying, SU with the "broken man too tough to cry" finally sobbing after his revelation, and WC has the pivotal lyric "now and then a tear rolls off my cheek." (In this context, I wonder if the horn part in WC' chorus isn't meant to be the speaker weeping with beauty at his chimes.)

So in short, WC and VT do have some things that tie them to the rest of SMiLE but it's not as clean as the other major songs. GV has absolutely no connection at all besides modular recording and lush arrangements. That's the true odd one out, and while it definitely would've been included at Capitol's insistence, in our circumstances where commercial panderings are no object, I think it makes more sense to leave it off nowadays. (Somewhere a crotchety old boomer just felt a twinge of loathing and doesn't know why.)

The funny thing is, and not to diminish your own feelings in this discussion, but the things you mention: using sarcasm to discredit someone, and dropping out because someone made you feel emotionally drained... Those seem to very closely mirror what Brian seemed to experience in 1967 via some of his bandmates. I cannot understand why some people wish to diminish those items as they straw-grab and search for reasons why they were irrelevant to Brian's state of mind. Just as they are relevant factors in how you feel in this discussion, so were those feelings surely relevant to Brian.

Honestly I get this. I lost interest in SMiLE for years after my experiences in the fan community. I thought I'd never speak of it again in 2019 when I made my last fanmix, and even that was done purely out of obligation no longer for the love of the subject. If Brian had not sadly passed away I'd have been content to leave this "field" in my past, where it was once like a religion to me and now has more or less become so again. So it really does go to show how, as much as a person may like something and know it's good, if they're bombarded with people shitting on it (or people associated with it shitting on them) it can absolutely kill enthusiasm. This does give more weight to how damaging the BB criticisms of Brian's music really was, and how the awkward dynamics with the Posse (as captured on the Lifeboat tape and somewhat less so on Nov 4) wasn't helping his confidence either. (I should say though, I think Brian brought at least some of this on himself for how he didn't present his ideas well and lacked general people skills.)

[Don Malcolm]

Think about the RE-recording of Vega-tables AND Wonderful AND Child is Father of the Man...VT with it's significantly simplified instrumentation compared to the rest of the SMiLE tracks, it was also just the BB's on those sessions (sans the tag), right? It was that simplified production technique that led towards Smiley Smile. 

Decades ago there was a brilliant younger man from Kansas, I forget his name, who pointed out evidence that SMiLE was cancelled long before the May announcement, before the April Veg sessions, and even before the 3rd week in March when the Wilson's took a contract on the Bellagio house.  It's nice (for him, whoever he was, I mean) to see further confirmation.

I believe this too. It fits with some of the quotes I've seen Van say in my studies--that when Brian moved, that's when he stopped seeing him and things fell apart. It coincides roughly when he is said to have left the second time. It tracks with Brian's mind and how it worked--new stimuli, new focus, if it couldn't happen immediately he lost interest. It tracks when any lingering Vosse Posse sycophants would've been barred from coming over anymore. It tracks with the home studio (or rented 8-track but still) when the Wrecking Crew were gone. Everything fits roughly with that timeline, that late March-early April is when the album died in Brian's heart if not officially.

This is another reason why Im not 100% a believer in Dada as definitely water. I mean, I sort of use it as such (and/or air as Second Day/Air Dada) and refer to it in that context out of convenience, but that's just because it's the best thing we have to plug that conceptual hole among what's in the vault. But it's at least as likely or more so in fact that Brian wanted to start fresh (singles aside) and pull out an old half-forgotten "feel" that never really got pinned down before as something to play around with, since it wasn't connected with SMiLE's grand designs and therefore there was no pressure for it to be "perfect." (Like if he were to work on Surf's Up or something.)

Really, Im of the opinion "Elements" was the Nov 4 "fitness elements" demos, then frustration with that track's difficulty to nail down, plus tensions with the Boys led Brian to write the scary anxious Fire as an emotional-musical release. Then the troubles with that track and it's "bad vibrations" killed whatever was left of his enthusiasm for this concept. Everything beyond that, like CCW, Fall Breaks and maybe Country Air are Brian recycling old themes he didn't think would see the light of day otherwise as he was prone to do. We can quibble over "was this an element" but really the answer is "who cares, it's a good standalone song and not released as part of any element suite then or now so just let it go and move on."

The idea of a 4-part orchestrated elements we can find out of Brian's recorded material has always been something of a red herring to me--like, it's possible but nowhere near as probable as many think, not worth the hassle (EVERY elements reconstruction I hear is very flawed, ESPECIALLY what Brian did in 2003) and ultimately the best music should just be put in a 35~45 minute playlist without worry of "is it element-y?" Like it's kinda fun to think about, but it dominates so much of SMiLE discourse and people get so bent out of shape about it that I get annoyed sometimes. The only reason it gets such focus is because that careless liar Priore decided to argue it was half of SMiLE, with NO EVIDENCE as I can now prove, and it caught on with info-starved fans in the 80s & 90s. It's way past time the conversation moved on and the fanatics arguing that Wind Chimes & Surfs Up are Air/Water because they have vaguely air-water related words in their titles get over it and just enjoy the music as it is, on its own terms, stop trying to force things in a box.

I think it's possible that Brian was giving a series of conflicting signals about abandoning the project for some time, which would have left everyone caught in the middle. The session logs show us no evidence that the other tracks had actually been finished...and the rest of the band, thousands of miles away at various points in time during March and mid-April/mid-May, couldn't really be sure what was going on back in LA.

What we don't know is whether there were still lingering issues about two of the key tracks (SU, CE). This would have been back in the forefront once the "Inside Pop" series had aired (April 25). One possibility that doesn't seem to have been considered is that Taylor's announcement of an imminent SMiLE release on April 29) was an attempt to elide concerns about the status of the LP in wake of the "Surf's Up" segment with its endorsement from Leonard Bernstein. (No press agent worth his Ascot is going to pass up a chance to ride those coattails...)

It looks like Brian just yo-yo'ed a couple of more times at this point. He could have let Taylor issue a too-rosy picture of where things were at, then had a moment of dread about what was really involved in pulling it all together, remembering the issues swirling around those two key tracks, possibly having lost confidence in the original CE configuration. Having left a lot of tracks to languish, he could have felt overwhelmed by the prospect of it all. And we should at least factor in Carl's legal crisis regarding his draft status, which comes into play right at the same time (the night after "Inside Pop," to be exact). Brian might have thrown his hands up at that point, taking this as another bad omen.

I think we need to recognize that as all of that was playing out, the entire band had reasons to want to point their fingers in another direction. I think we get a palpable sense of "exasperated lament" in the wording of Taylor's May 6th announcement, as if he had been pistol-whipped while in a revolving chair. Does he ever issue anything else regarding SMiLE ever again? I do not recall ever seeing it...

As far as the surmise about SMiLE being abandoned in March, there are new notations at Bellagio 10452 that suggest events in March which were peripheral to and parallel to SMiLE which seem to be items from David Anderle's day planner. This data is of no use regarding SMiLE itself but it does help us pinpoint the point in time when Anderle (and, shortly thereafter, Michael Vosse) left the employ of Brother Records. It appears to be somewhere between March 14-28 (formal notice of the Bellagio purchase). With VDP also lost and gone to WB, Brian was now totally on his own. To get out from under the albatross of H&V, he switched to VT as "the single," which in itself was a retreat from SMiLE--but not yet a wholesale abandonment.

The problem was that there was just too much attention being paid to it, and the large-scale concept had become like an anchor pulling him inexorably underwater.

The situation remains suspended in mid-air until the band returns from Europe (May 20 or 21). Speculation regarding exactly what Brian was up to in the mid-May "Dada" sessions remains unresolved. (Whatever we make of it, it clearly can't be part of an "April SMiLE" construct.) 

As GF noted, something epochal occurs in the next two weeks within the band. However that all went down (and how close it came to breaking up the group), most of the Americana sequence is set aside, along with "Surf's Up." The rest would be reworked, and Brian reverted to H&V as the single. But the spooky undercurrent of Smiley overtook the humor and the themes were plowed under and left on deserted ground where no crows are neither seen nor heard...

So we were lucky to get a workable (albeit over-augmented) version of SMiLE in 2004...but twenty-odd years on, with Brian no longer with us, we are free to speculate on a different path that the project might have taken had not all the forces in play in late 1966 conspired to put an ever-expanding iceberg in front of the S.S. SMiLE. Jettisoning those pesky would seem to be the key to such an effort: Zenobi has it right (IMO) that the Americana material is at the top of anyone's game, but the key to it all still is getting H&V and Worms to click together in just the right way. That's why I think Julia's approach with mutliple possibilities makes the most sense, as we can never know for sure which solution would have prevailed. I think she can make a quite plausible case for several of them, and that would constitute a fascinating coda to her compelling sift through the SMiLE labyrinth.

[WillJC]

I think it's possible that Brian was giving a series of conflicting signals about abandoning the project for some time, which would have left everyone caught in the middle. The session logs show us no evidence that the other tracks had actually been finished...and the rest of the band, thousands of miles away at various points in time during March and mid-April/mid-May, couldn't really be sure what was going on back in LA.

What we don't know is whether there were still lingering issues about two of the key tracks (SU, CE). This would have been back in the forefront once the "Inside Pop" series had aired (April 25). One possibility that doesn't seem to have been considered is that Taylor's announcement of an imminent SMiLE release on April 29) was an attempt to elide concerns about the status of the LP in wake of the "Surf's Up" segment with its endorsement from Leonard Bernstein. (No press agent worth his Ascot is going to pass up a chance to ride those coattails...)

It looks like Brian just yo-yo'ed a couple of more times at this point. He could have let Taylor issue a too-rosy picture of where things were at, then had a moment of dread about what was really involved in pulling it all together, remembering the issues swirling around those two key tracks, possibly having lost confidence in the original CE configuration. Having left a lot of tracks to languish, he could have felt overwhelmed by the prospect of it all. And we should at least factor in Carl's legal crisis regarding his draft status, which comes into play right at the same time (the night after "Inside Pop," to be exact). Brian might have thrown his hands up at that point, taking this as another bad omen.

I think we need to recognize that as all of that was playing out, the entire band had reasons to want to point their fingers in another direction. I think we get a palpable sense of "exasperated lament" in the wording of Taylor's May 6th announcement, as if he had been pistol-whipped while in a revolving chair. Does he ever issue anything else regarding SMiLE ever again? I do not recall ever seeing it...

As far as the surmise about SMiLE being abandoned in March, there are new notations at Bellagio 10452 that suggest events in March which were peripheral to and parallel to SMiLE which seem to be items from David Anderle's day planner. This data is of no use regarding SMiLE itself but it does help us pinpoint the point in time when Anderle (and, shortly thereafter, Michael Vosse) left the employ of Brother Records. It appears to be somewhere between March 14-28 (formal notice of the Bellagio purchase). With VDP also lost and gone to WB, Brian was now totally on his own. To get out from under the albatross of H&V, he switched to VT as "the single," which in itself was a retreat from SMiLE--but not yet a wholesale abandonment.

The problem was that there was just too much attention being paid to it, and the large-scale concept had become like an anchor pulling him inexorably underwater.

The situation remains suspended in mid-air until the band returns from Europe (May 20 or 21). Speculation regarding exactly what Brian was up to in the mid-May "Dada" sessions remains unresolved. (Whatever we make of it, it clearly can't be part of an "April SMiLE" construct.)  

As GF noted, something epochal occurs in the next two weeks within the band. However that all went down (and how close it came to breaking up the group), most of the Americana sequence is set aside, along with "Surf's Up." The rest would be reworked, and Brian reverted to H&V as the single. But the spooky undercurrent of Smiley overtook the humor and the themes were plowed under and left on deserted ground where no crows are neither seen nor heard...

This all scans to me as totally on the money. Great, great insight. There's a tendency to want to put a definitive stamp on when ideas stopped and started, and when Brian threw away one album and started another, but as you say, it seems more like a yo-yo in his mind and in what he was telling people for a few weeks or months. I think the airing of Inside Pop forcing Brian to finally make a decision about those postponed "heavy" songs at the heart of the project is really acute analysis, as is the draft bad omen and what would prompt Derek Taylor to make those yo-yo announcements in quick succession. To add one timeline detail here, the last Beach Boys sessions (or Beach Boys related things in general) that David Anderle noted in his appointment book were April 4 and 5.

[BJL]

This is how I've always felt too, unless you use Veggies as a song about the Mid-West breadbasket, a "part 2" to Barnyard. But even then, as I recall, Veggies is the major SMiLE song that shares the least amount of chords with the other SMiLE songs, which was very surprising. It's almost an island to itself. However while Veggies fits the fitness/element/humor and arguably Americana themes despite its musical isolation, WC is just kinda out by itself in terms of subject matter. You could look at it as a song about death (chimes are used that way in Eastern cultures) "dust in the wind" and joy in the simple things, maybe isolation, of the day/life passing you by, to fit the Cycle of Life motifs but it's not as seamless a fit as the other tracks in that group. What it does have is the "crying horn" leitmotif I feel the CoL/Innocence songs share: with Wonderful's being the girl crying at her bad encounter with a non-believer boy, CIFOTM with the baby crying, SU with the "broken man too tough to cry" finally sobbing after his revelation, and WC has the pivotal lyric "now and then a tear rolls off my cheek."

So in short, WC and VT do have some things that tie them to the rest of SMiLE but it's not as clean as the other major songs. GV has absolutely no connection at all besides modular recording and lush arrangements. That's the true odd one out, and while it definitely would've been included at Capitol's insistence, in our circumstances where commercial pandering are no object, I think it makes more sense to leave it off nowadays. (Somewhere a crotchety old boomer just felt a twinge of loathing and didn't know why.)

I actually think Good Vibrations fits *better* than wind chimes, though I wouldn't leave either of any personal Smile mix.

I don't know how relevant this is, really, but I think it's not entirely irrelevant that the other great concept album of 1967, Sgt. Pepper, played fast and loose with its concept, for the simple reason that the Beatles were far more interested in making a great record than staying true to any kind of concept, and weren't going to leave off a song for conceptual reasons any more than they were going to phone in a song for conceptual reasons. And I think the same was almost certainly true for Brian. Yes, he had all these concepts and he was obviously excited about them, but I don't think there's any universe where Brian was going to let conceptual concerns get in the way of musical concerns, if that makes sense. Nor do I think conceptual "purity" was of any concern at all. If he had a song about Wind Chimes he wanted to put on who the hell was gonna stop him?

Nor do I think we can deduce from the lyrics or music that Good Vibrations was only on there for commercial reasons. As I'm pretty sure Julia said somewhere else, though not in these exact words, if Good Vibrations being on the album was a done deal, than whether or not it fit creatively wasn't really going to be an open question. But I guess what it comes down to for me is that *I* think it fits musically and lyrically and belongs on the album, and so it rubs me ever so very slightly the wrong way when people who don't share that opinion treat it as a historical fact rather than a musical opinion, if that makes sense.

[BJL]

Also I think the fact that Brian asked Van Dyke Parks to rework Mike's lyrics and Parks declined is relevant, though I'm not sure exactly what it means. Does it mean that Brian saw the song as an integral part of Smile, and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs? Or does it mean that Brian thought it was totally out of place.... and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs!

[WillJC]

Also I think the fact that Brian asked Van Dyke Parks to rework Mike's lyrics and Parks declined is relevant, though I'm not sure exactly what it means. Does it mean that Brian saw the song as an integral part of Smile, and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs? Or does it mean that Brian thought it was totally out of place.... and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs!

Van Dyke wasn't asked to rewrite the final lyric, he was asked to rewrite Tony Asher's verses alongside Mike's excitations line in the chorus. Van didn't want to rewrite somebody else, so he suggested they work on something new, hence all of those other songs.

[Julia]

I thought Anderle left AFTER Vosse and it was in April as I believe Will just alluded to with those last planner dates. I thought Vosse was unceremoniously fired by the band and his departure, like the last time he met with Brian during the SMiLE saga, is unfortunately unrecorded. Then later we all know the final time Anderle met Brian until years later. I always saw that incident as the final departure of a major Posse member and when the grandiose plans for the BB future (not just SMiLE but "Home Movies" the film division and a competently led BRI that produces other artists) was dead.

Would love clarification on if/why we think Vosse left after Anderle. Im trying to pin down as much of the timeline as possible and almost every time I think I've got it, someone throws a monkey wrench in there with a new quote or uncited assertion that contradicts with what I thought was established fact. (If this sounds mean or snarky, it's not my intent. Im just a stickler for dates and sources, that's all.)

...

To BJL, I sort of agree and disagree. What you said is definitely true of the Beatles, they were far more pragmatic and willing to just toss on whatever songs they had if they sounded good. Revolver is all over the place, Pepper is a little more cohesive but they gave up on the framing device 2 songs in (minus the forced reprise that, as I recall, was George Martin's idea) and it has some bizarre left turns like WYWY. The White Album's mess and Abbey Road medley tracks having no connection either just furthers the point. The Beatles didn't care about this kinda thing, but they got the credit for "first concept album" and such because they're the Beatles. Paul even admits "[the concept/narrative device] worked because we said it did."

Brian I think is different. This is a guy who threw out almost a full year's work because it wasn't gelling the way he wanted. We could say it's not because of the themes per se, but the point is if he didn't feel the music represented him or his artistic intent anymore, he wasn't shy about scrapping it. He had an album's worth of material ready to go, just needed some lead vocals they might've knocked out in 2-3 sessions, but opted to do something totally different because it spoke to his muse. This isn't to say he wasn't above shoehorning the single on there, if it fit well enough, but even then he threw up a fight when the time came to put GV on SS and was merely outvoted. I think Brian's greatest strength AND weakness as a musician compared to the Mop Tops is that if he didn't "believe" in a project, it didn't get done. This makes his highs higher but it led to scrapping some pretty great stuff.

I feel this applies to SMiLE especially considering its high-minded "symphony to God/music people would pray to" aspirations. You don't just throw any old ditty on an offering to the divine, only your best work. (In this context, GV absolutely fits.) For this reason, I think Brian was trying to go above and beyond, make the most perfect album possible (which especially for him coming off his love for RS, means cohesion) until that break of "no, this isn't a symphony to Heaven anymore, just Smiley Smile" gave him the excuse to play it faster and looser. ("Don't think you're God just be a cool guy.") Then he never bothered to be so high-minded about his craft again, for better and worse.

[Julia]

Also I think the fact that Brian asked Van Dyke Parks to rework Mike's lyrics and Parks declined is relevant, though I'm not sure exactly what it means. Does it mean that Brian saw the song as an integral part of Smile, and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs? Or does it mean that Brian thought it was totally out of place.... and thus wanted Parks to bring it more in line with the lyrical tone of the other songs!

I didn't mean to rub you the wrong way about GV. While my take on it is definitely personally biased and I wont pretend otherwise, it also was reinforced by some recent quotes from sources I've read implying that its inclusion even on SMiLE was Capitol's insistence though Brian didn't necessarily disagree. But yeah it's an ambiguous thing.

I dont think Brian was ever 100% satisfied with the song and part of that includes the lyrics. I think he loved the new bassline hook but I don't think he was especially jazzed about the verses. (Obviously he liked them well enough to use them, but I think it was more of a "good enough" level of satisfaction than being blown away like he was when working with Van Dyke on SMiLE. Van expanded his horizons with his unusual lyrics while Mike didn't.) When Mike brags about writing the lyrics to GV he doesn't seem to get that they're by far the least impressive thing about the song (the hook aside).