This was a nice conglomeration of threads I only just now discovered through the search function trying to see if anyone ever talked about "Barnyard Billy." Now it's my turn to return the favor and say I think it's a shame leetwall no longer posts on any BB forum I've seen. We crossed paths briefly on I think PetSounds forum or maybe it was EH and I always admired his passion. He even wrote up a list of the SMiLE songs' key signatures for me at one point which was very appreciated, then dropped off the face of the Earth.
"Sometimes, we started working on songs and they didn't get very far past instrumentals with no lyrics [that describes Look as we know it today beautifully...] or at most fragments of lyrics [and that describes CIFOTM as we know it today beautifully]. "Look" was like that. "Child Is Father Of The Man" was like that."
But I feel like it's not too outrageously out of line to challenge some of the assumptions every now and then. That's all I'm doing here. Hey, the scientific method relies on challenges, right? You have a theory... then some new evidence challenges it, so you adapt and improve your theories. Right, leetwall97?
I agree with this entire post, which I've condensed here for the sake of space. It's pretty clear that no long lost lyric sheets of Look or Child are going to show up and I'd argue they were never written. VDP was asked about it in 2005 and said he thought CIFOTM was supposed to be an instrumental (which makes no sense to me, but the point is he clearly doesn't remember anything we aren't hearing) and in a separate interview for BWPS he says "everything I worked on is there" implying there's no missing junked lyrics. I think the missing Look vocal session was probably just backing vocalizations, not full fledged lyrics. I'd still kill to hear that tape, though, Look is one of my favorite pieces of SMiLE music but it's kept from being "suitable for release" without vocals--it's too repetitive to sound good as an instrumental in my opinion. (I mean, it sounds great but it's not something Brian would've released as-is.)
The June '67 sessions for "With Me Tonight" were logged with the AFM as "Vegetables" as the title (I think one of them even read "Vegetables (You're With Me Tonight)". As to why, I couldn't say.
Stuff got mislabeled more frequently than I would've thought, with the Child sessions under the CE name referenced earlier in this very thread. But the fact that, what, 3-5 different sessions were labelled for Veggies at this time hints at a deliberate intent. Without further info I just assume that it was something to do with legalist-business concerns, like Capitol was obliged to pay for Veggies sessions but not necessarily any new material for the next album, which would be a Brother Records release. This is totally just a shot in the dark.
I concede it could be a case of WMT as a Veggies segment and I have no personal stake either way but...that's just so weird. Like every other speculative "this might've been a piece of that" theory floating around makes sense on some level except this one. Doesn't mean it isn't true just that I think it would've been a really disjointed unenjoyable song with those segments thrown in as the bridge or fade. One could say "oh and Do a Lot doesn't?" but DAL works as an expression of the other things your mom yells at you to do (in addition to "eat your vegetables!"). I guess WMT could have been meant as a joke in this context, since the song is set up like a Shakespearean ode to food instead of a beautiful woman, so by pairing it with a traditional romantic ballad the irony is more noticeable..? Like we're meant to laugh at the idea of the speaker spending the night with his beloved veggies? Eh. Either way, I'm glad we got the Veggies we got.
So here's the deal with that. With Me Tonight was meant for the Vega-Tables single as some sort of insert for either Side A or Side B. Side B was Wonderful version 3. It's a piano track recorded in the key of A, and it's the first version of Wonderful to contain pauses. I believe the pauses were meant to be filled in by either With Me Tonight, or Mama Says. Perhaps both.
I like this idea a lot more. It seems pretty obvious to me that Brian wasn't fully satisfied with Version 1 Wonderful (neither am I frankly, though it's a beautiful piece of music it's lacking something, a bridge, a fade, a "part 2") and wanted to make it a more traditional love song but couldn't think of how. He tried the "night club crooner" version 2 and with version 3 he tried a piano ballad. It makes intuitive sense to me that Version 3 Wonderful and WMT could've been pieces of a newly fleshed out song. I'd love to hear that, if we had all the raw material to make it so. Piano Wonderful with WMT as a fade, plus the horn and yodeling overdubs of V1 as well as the "rock with me henrys" of V2 is my dream version. The instrumentation matching the main melody of Veggies as the two sides of a single would've been a nice touch, making them feel a more natural pairing.
The only things recorded on the 10th of October were vocals for "Wind Chimes" (the group tag vocals, and Carl's lead vocals). Maybe I confused you with "10/7" and "10/11" above - people outside of the U.S. would read those dates as "July 10th" and "November 10th", but here in America they're read as "October 7th" and "October 11th", and those are the correct dates - sorry for any misunderstanding there!
So...another independent attestation to WC having tag vocals I see. Old post so I dont expect a response but if you or anyone else comes by...what's the source for this? I had thought Vosse mentioned it in his TeenSet article but when I reread that recently I was surprised to find he doesn't mention vocals at all. Was it actually in Fusion (which I haven't read in awhile) where he says this, or some other source entirely? This is one of my SMiLE holy grails so I'd really appreciate an answer if anyone has one to give. That tag just sounds so bare as is, I wish we had vocals to use with it. I'm thinking it was a bouncier version of "Whispering Winds" to match the melody.
Was the tag to CFM recorded on the same day as the rest of CFM?
Is there a commonly recognized tag to Child? What I used to consider the tag I now know to have been V1 chorus, besides that there's the piano bridge I personally use as an intro. The test edit, as I recall, ends with the chorus. (I don't like Brian's test edit--it repeats the chorus too often for my liking. I think the best versions of CIFOTM use both the Version 1 and 2 instrumental sections. The song benefits from some variety, especially without verse vocals to carry it.)
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