SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss

[Julia]

I Love to Say Da Da is one of the 2 water element pieces of the The Elements and so IS tied to Smile and is on the list.  It was changed to Cool Cool Water.

As I understand it by the end of 1966 they only had left to do vocals for the Home on the Range section on Cabin Essence, vocals for Do You Like Worms, vocals for Surf's Up and the 2nd movement, Vega-tables and I Love To Say Da Da.  So there was not a lot to actually do so why at the 11th hour would you give the whole thing up?  He was struggling with reworking H&V in 1967 but managed to finish that so that couldn't have been the trigger to 'scrap' the whole album.  Even if he felt like that for 10 minutes and told Derek Taylor when he overcame the problems with H&V and the opportunity to release the album was still open, why didn't he?

1. It's not a definite that Dada was always going to be water. It definitely morphed into Cool Cool Water but that isn't evidence of its genesis anymore than Cant Wait Too Long "revealing" that Wind Chimes was secretly about a relationship. Just recycling an unused melody, because that's how Brian works. In my opinion, based on a preponderance of the evidence, Dada was "All Day" a random "feel" akin to "He Gives Speeches" or an early Heroes fragment, perhaps even a piece of the mysterious "IIGS" on the tracklist. Then it got reworked as a B-side and possibly Air due to the title Second Day referring to God separating the waters of the sky and sea. (Hell, maybe Dada including the Water Chant was both Air and Water while Fire and Workshop were Fire and Earth? What if we've been misinterpreting the elements all along and it was meant to be two 1:30--2:00 pieces combined rather than 4 1:00 pieces? I like that theory.) Point is we just don't know, this is a case where fragments jumped between songs all the time.

2. It may not have been the volume of work so much as the difficulty in getting it done. While the original "Mike killed SMiLE" narrative was overstated, I think this led to an overcorrection of the record, where the pendulum swung to "Mike sang his heart out on those lyrics, case closed" and we were meant to accept that it was Brian alone that canceled SMiLE. The truth is definitely in-between, where Mike clearly made his displeasure known and this was a major factor but only one among at least half a dozen. Brian was a particularly sensitive person prone to giving up on his own wishes if it means keeping the peace or making someone else happy at his own expense. He was also a terminal perfectionist who was prone to scrap GV what, like 4 different times and wasn't even satisfied with the version we got that blew everyone else away? I think SMiLE is just that but magnified to an album of material scrapped at once because it wasn't perfect. That's partly on Brian for being obsessive and partly on the others for contributing to his gnawing doubt (and the Capitol lawsuit, and the drugs, and Carl's draft, and Murry, and...) Maybe the guys really did refuse to sing their parts, or they were so deliberately combative in the process (like Mike on the "I Know There's an Answer" sessions) that Brian couldn't bring himself to face that negativity.

I apologise.  I misled myself.

I have a partial article. I have been trying to find the rest of it or source it elsewhere but the author’s name is lost and in the morass of information on Smile it is difficult to plough through it all. I believed this article was published before BWPS and it quite clearly explains the lyrics of The Elements to illustrate Brian’s now famed LSD trip in which he died and was reborn.

It includes quotations from VDP and the lyrics to Da Da are a chant issued as he is reborn in Hawaii.  This obviously makes it an important part of the story and as I also have a track list published long before BWPS which includes “I love to Say Da Da I (Water)” in the same position on the album, I had thought that VDP had written these lyrics earlier.  This, combined with the knowledge that Smiley Smile didn’t begin production until June  and that Brian had refused to use any of the Smile material on Smiley and that he re-recorded Da Da as Cool Cool Water, made it seem obvious to me that Da Da was part of The Elements on Smile.

I still THINK I’m right but obviously the VDP lyrics for it were written at the time of BWPS.

The lyrics for Da Da converted from the Hawaiian “convey the idea of a prolonged, intensified ritual based on sacred breathing, with a possible music connection”.  As this is a rebirth I expect the baby like sounds are somewhat fortuitous at worst and possibly deliberate as this is Van Dyke’s style. It is possible that this was always intended - someone else pointed out that VDP leaving was seen to be a big deal at the time which it would only have been if his work was not complete.  Perhaps Da Da was some of the work he hadn’t completed.

I don't mean to ruin your fun, and by all means please go on interpreting Dada that way if it works for you. The last thing I want to be is the curmudgeon who makes someone feel their personal interpretation of art is "wrong." HOWEVER, if we are discussing the historicity of the album here, I need to push back when anyone lets their preferred artistic reading of the material redefine what happened during the sessions.

While the idea of Dada representing the rebirth out of the fire Brian supposedly experienced on acid is a compelling one, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny unless you can actually provide contemporary evidence from '66 or at least '67. An article written by a fan or even anyone who isn't Brian from the late '90s early '00s isn't compelling evidence just because it predates BWPS. By that point, fanmixes, resultant fan-theories, incorrect bootleg tracklistings (with mislabelled songs and including material pre or post dating the actual SMiLE sessions, like Three Blind Mice or Little Red Book) all muddied the waters of what the album was. It's why I always used to complain about Priore and the idea of a multi-song "elements suite" complete with Wind Chimes as air (because we gotta have an air, can't admit that's a missing piece, and it has wind in the title so sure, why not, go with that one!) Fact is, anyone can write "Dada (Water)" on an unofficial anachronistic tracklist but what does it say on the tape boxes, the session logs, the studio chatter? Where Fire is clearly "The Elements: Part 1 (Fire)" or some close derivative on all, there's no equivalent for the other three. We have other clues for Veggies as Earth, like Frank Holmes' art but nothing so concrete for Water and Air. The best we have from the sessions as hard evidence, I would argue, is the fact Brian recorded an Undersea Chant with his friends while the band was on tour and then something similar (Water Chant) late '67 or early '68. With air we can only assume the Breathing chant was something similar but it's even less definitive.

Your idea is genuinely fascinating though and imbues Dada with far more meaning that it would seemingly have in any other context. I'd love to be wrong if you could dig up the source and it's compelling enough, but Im highly skeptical.

[Julia]

Separate issue and just curious on the opinions, but does the track's placement on the BWPS Smile with Van Dyke's lyrics hold any weight in assumptions about the track's original possibilities in the original Smile plans?

My controversial opinion:

1) Smile (like any album ever made) was a constantly evolving and metamorphosing set of ideas. Those ideas are not set in stone until the artist decides to officially share those ideas with the world in the form of a finished album.

2) In 1966/1967 those early Smile ideas were molded by both Brian and the people that surrounded him. Brian of course being the one with the final say, but he was not a sole person in a vacuum - he was surrounded by artists, musicians, creatives who helped mold his ideas about the album.

3) post-1967, decades pass and during which Smile fragments leak. Theories about Smile’s track listing, demise, overall themes, etc are created.

4) those decades worth of fan-theories have an obvious impact on the track listing for BWPS. Some fans claim that Darian’s fan-theory involvement ruined the possibility of BWPS being more of a faithful rendering of a 1967 Smile.

But there was no 1967 Smile. The faithful rendering of Smile is BWPS. BWPS is the Smile that Brian Wilson completed and sent out into the world. It doesn’t matter that BWPS uses fan theories that probably “incorrectly” use Dada as a water element. Brian released the idea to the world that Dada is a water element song - it doesn’t matter who influenced Brian on this, fact is that Brian agreed with it and recorded it into the concept. As I stated in point #2, Brian always had outside influences that helped evolve his ideas for Smile. So whether it’s outside influences in 1966 or 2003, Brian used all those different ideas and it culminated into the release of BWPS.

BWPS is the greatest concept album ever made. Not only because the aura of the initial Smile sessions is vividly infused into each track of the album, but also because it’s resurrection was decades in the making - this isn’t an album that was put together in a 2-month time period. It’s recordings were/are the stuff of legends. It took 37 years for this album to be completed. The huge reason for it’s successful resurrection was due to a guy who was just 4 years old when those original sessions were taking place. And that guy is one of the most genuinely dedicated fans of Brian’s music to ever live (i don’t mean to gush about him, but he does put his heart and soul into everything that revolves around Brian and his music). So who better to help Brian finish his masterpiece?

Anyways, long story short: Dada probably wasn’t originally intended to be a water element, but all ideas evolve. Was Sloop John B originally intended to be on Pet Sounds? Perhaps not, but even if it wasn’t it doesn’t matter - Brian Wilson had the final say in it, and it’s now an official part of Pet Sounds.

I can agree with this logic to an extent but also, it ignores the real world hindrances, human follies and corporate/contractual obligations that sometimes complicate an artist's vision.

I've come to agree that, in some sense, there is no '66 SMiLE. Ideas were too in flux for us to pin anything down definitively and no song sans GV and maybe Wind Chimes was finished until after the project was abandoned. Any attempt at a faithful recreation is prioritizing a certain day/week/month's version of the album over conflicting testimony/evidence. I do believe the primary accounts like Vosse and Anderle who say that by early Nov the album existed as a conceptual whole in Brian's head, but I think it's more that he knew what themes he wanted, he had a general "checklist" of 30-40 minutes of music that'd be included even if the exact configuration was still in flux. People saying "there was no 1966 SMiLE!" are right in that we may not be able to pin down what was on it minute by minute, but we know it would have some version of Heroes, Barnyard would be somewhere either as a 4-part suite or part of Heroes, etc.

BWPS was officially released but so was 20/20, Smiley, Sunflower, Surf's Up. Does that mean that SU the song was really meant for the '71 album--or that it sounds better there than it does with its '66 brothers? I'd argue no, some might say yes, and ultimately it's a matter of taste.

To step outside the SMiLE box for a second, Get Back was a "back to basics" album originally meant to have stripped down production and a live concert. For many reasons, that didn't happen and the music came out later, with overproduced Spector schmaltz and a new name. Is Let It Be the same as Get Back just because it actually got released? Maybe. Paul didn't think so and released Let It Be...Naked over 30 years later, which is in my opinion far superior. To my heart, that is the true way that music should be heard. We can quibble over what takes precedent, which came first or which stayed true to the original vision of the project but ultimately everyone's going to listen to what they like. The point is these things are not so clear cut.

We may never know exactly what '66 SMiLE would be if Brian even knew himself. But we can safely say it wouldn't have been BWPS for many reasons. First of all, no Beach Boys. Second, the three-movement structure is simply impractical for 2-sided vinyl. Third, the various short snippets would've almost certainly been edited into the main tracks or left on the cutting room floor. Fourth, certain tracks like I Ran and especially Holidays would've almost definitely been left off. Fifth, the lead single would've opened a side and probably the entire album while almost anyone would agree Surf's Up makes too much sense as the closer. Sixth, there's no fades, even though those are the best parts of most of the songs. I could go on.

When a project likes this changes so significantly, I think there's an argument to be made that after a certain subjective point it becomes something different. Most would agree Smiley Smile isn't the same as SMiLE either. Then there's that whole parable about the car that gets replaced piece by piece (when does it become a different car than what it started as) and the way we differentiate between the ancient Roman Empire and medieval Byzantine Empire even though the latter is an anachronistic term. Or how Caroline changed after she cut her hair, lost her happy glow and wasn't the same woman the narrator fell in love with 

[rab2591]

I don’t see BWPS as “different” - simply because there was no complete original form to begin with. It was a collection of ideas that Brian was trying to weave together, and he just couldn’t complete this in ’66/’67 due to a melange of problems. However, he took the same music, same ideas about Hawaii/spirituality/cowboys/elements, even got back with his original collaborator, and finished composing these ideas in 2004. Yes, he absolutely had the help of his bandmate and was influenced by ideas/concepts that could only have been dreamed up in that 40 year span - but I don’t think that has any bearing on the authenticity of BWPS being Smile. A ‘66/‘67 Smile did not and could never exist in our timeline. The 2004 version (fake harpsichord and all (which I honestly prefer btw!)) is the only version that could have been born from the embryonic stages of Smile, first conceived in the 60s. It was Brian’s baby, so to speak, and he felt he finished it. And I hold this opinion mostly because the artist/composer himself said numerous times in 2004 that he felt relief that the album was finally finished. Anything else is just imposing our worldview against Brian’s own opinion - an opinion that I believe is definitive, as he is the composer/artist. And out of respect to him, I take his word on it.

Subjectively, I find BWPS to be a perfect album of spiritual movement. If I shut my brain off - and don’t think about handlers/influencers/supposed original track listings/etc - and just listen to the music, it always creates a moving experience for me. Not to be cheesy, but I smile every time I listen through that album - something that the original recordings just don’t really do for me. It does exactly what Brian intended for it to do, which to me makes it a definitive work. Again, that’s my subjective opinion.

I say all of that, but I don’t know what the right answer actually is. At the end of the day, I am grateful that we have TSS and BWPS, and an endless stream of fan mixes. We also get such a variety of dialogue across these forums that is full of what-ifs and logical/illogical opinions that are mostly all wonderful. So take the above with a grain of salt. I appreciate most of the opinions about this album, and I think it would be a real boring state if it were any other way.

[Julia]

You cannot state as fact that there is or was no dividing line between the two projects when the band themselves and most fans who can easily listen to what was done for Smile versus what was "started from scratch" for Smiley Smile make that separation between the two, and in the band's case they're on the record since 1967 saying as much. If the band and the creators saw them as different projects, do you purport to know something the band didn't know and Smile just seamlessly flowed into Smiley Smile and there was no difference?

That's your opinion, and it's fine to have that opinion and stick to it, but when you have music for Smile which sounds that much different than what's on Smiley Smile, and when the creation of that music changed as dramatically as it did from April into May '67 going into June, it's obvious there was a drastic change that involved more than moving sections around and swapping songs in and out. They started a new project in June 1967 with new parameters and working methods, remaking certain songs and adding new ones. I don't know how more basic of an observation that can be.

You're putting too much weight into the band's perceptions and giving fans too much power.  I would also say that the compulsion to think of Smile as its own, isolated phenomenon is to project a sort of Aristotelean hylomorphism onto this whole thing, when we're really playing a completely nominalist game.  There is simply no need to limit any particular recording to one absolute ontology; Wouldn't it Be Nice is part of Pet Sounds just as much as it it part of Stack-o-tracks.  Wonderful can be part of Smile just as much as it can be part of Smiley Smile.  Cabin Essence can be just as much a part of Dumb Angel as it was part of Smile.

In a sense, yes, we do know something different than the band did.  Unlike the band, we have a pretty nice set of retrospective data to analyze with the benefit of many extra years of context.  We can know exactly when Cabin Essence was no longer a candidate for the new album, for example.  We can track with a lot of accuracy the evolution of Heroes, seeing how different ideas were cannibalized in pursuit of a single, and how other songs were left behind as Brian demonstrably lost interest in them.

I think another major fallacy here is some kind of species of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; here, where one wrongly ascribes the change in sound to a deliberate delineation between one project and another, rather than attributing the change in sound to the change in sound per se that Brian was working towards all along.  It's that darned Baldwin organ; it's such a dramatically different sound that dominates the texture -- but if you take that away, it's, in my opinion, patently obvious that Brian was continually working incrementally towards reduced orchestration and simplified song structures.

I spend a lot of time transcribing the Beach Boys arrangements, and I think if I put up, say, the transcription of Wonderful Mark I, and the transcription of Wonderful as it came out on Smiley, you could see visually that the released version is more heavily orchestrated and more complexly structured than Mark I.

My point there is simply that swapping a harpsichord for a Baldwin does not automatically make something and less or more simple.

Incidentally, if anybody wants to see those Wonderful Transcriptions, I would share them.

I think this is true for most albums by artists who think of albums as just "a collection of songs" / "a vehicle for the singles rounded out with some lesser takes and demos" but by the late 60s, some (not all) artists, and I would argue those who wanted to be taken seriously, started to think of the album as a cohesive statement. It arguably started with Rubber Soul and Pet Sounds (Brian wouldn't let just any song on PS, he specifically set out to make "an album of all good stuff" and "the best rock album ever made") and for a lot of serious popular recording artists that mindset continued through the 80s, though I think it's fair to say some artist still treated the album as just a quota to fill to get product out rather than a cohesive statement. To some artists it went back and forth; I'd argue that 20/20 and even CATP:ST are just "a collection of songs" while Smiley (singles aside) and Love You have unique, cohesive aesthetics that bind those songs together as pieces of a greater whole. While they're both "trippy" and experimental, there's a certain "color" and "vibe" that separates the avant garde cuts of Revolver from those on Sgt Pepper, at least to my ears, while the folksier softer stuff on Revolver is also distinct from what's on Rubber Soul. Then you get into straight-up concept albums, like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, where the songs tell part of a larger story and/or take you immediately to the next track with no banding; to remove or replace any individual song is to diminish the whole.

So the question then becomes, was SMiLE such an album or not? I would argue that yes, it was. While it's certainly true that the Smiley compositions have more complexity than at first glance, they still *sound* underproduced, they still have a shared sonic "texture" to them where you can tell they were part of the same sessions and recording methodology (singles aside). I think to say otherwise is being a bit obtuse; even taking remakes out of the equation, CIFOTM and CE have more in common with each other than they do With Me Tonight or Gettin Hungry. Does that matter? To some, maybe not. To me it does. When SMiLE was clearly meant to be more than just a hodgepodge collection of songs but a "symphony to God"/"music people would pray to" that was supposed to span America and encapsulate different new age philosophies, wake the world to stop destroying nature, I feel you can't just put any old song on it and say "good enough." For my ears, both musically and philosophically, there's a very noticeable break from the old Wrecking Crew and home studio sessions.

In this light, Smiley Smile seems to me like a dramatic pulling out of what had been a minor thread and turning it into the major thread. Sort of like how there had always been car songs, but Little Deuce Coupe was *all* car songs, Smiley was a whole album of I'm Bugged at My Old Man crossed with And Your Dreams Come True. Where before that particular looser, funnier, less-rock-n-roll approach had been only a small part of what Brian did. Does that make any sense to anyone?

That actually does seem pretty apt.  All the seeds for a Smiley are in Smile -- the scaled down productions scattered in there, the chanting and laughing and talking and silliness, the songs themselves, even.  But the Dumb Angel ethos that was perhaps a carry over from the "Pet Sounds" way of doing things, the Cabin Essences, the Surfses Up--the bigger productions--dominated the composition of the identity of the record, where Smiley is dominated by the minimalism, and the jokes.  I buy it.  But I do still believe that the pulling out of that thread happened over gradually and was mostly all the way out by the time Brian snipped off the Smile thread.

CAME UPON THIS LATER

Yes, I agree with this take absolutely. Dumb Angel into Smiley is like a crossfade from one recording ethos (grandiose production, perfection, music worthy of God, Wrecking Crew orchestration) to another (silliness, mistakes-left-in, audio verite, just the band with unconventional sounds) with the mythical SMiLE existing somewhere in-between, with every listener placing it somewhere unique along the spectrum. Some might want to put more emphasis on the silliness and spliced-in talking, so their SMiLE is closer to Frank Zappa, others might want a straightforward Pet Sounds 2. But there were a lot of contradictory themes meant for the album such that some were bound to crowd out the others no matter how you slice it. Im of the opinion that at least part of why the project changed is Brian lost interest in the "journey across America" vibe which I always felt was more VDP's influence. Whether he fell out of love with that vision organically or because of browbeating from the band is also a matter of interpretation but I think it was a bit of both. VDP by himself made "Discover America" and "Tokyo Rose" while Brian by himself made the humor-above-all Smiley and almost equally goofy Love You. Just from that alone I think we can see who contributed what to SMiLE and why maybe they weren't quite seeing eye-to-eye on the project. Brian didn't have this problem with Tony Asher because Asher wasn't an artist in the same way, he was not on Brian's level creatively and didn't have his own "voice" or sense of artistic purpose to cloud Brian's vision. Just my read on the situation.

[Julia]

By the way, how much interest is there in the actual facts regarding dates and documents and when splices were made, etc? I would think that would be right up the alley of every Smile fan on earth, but I've been surprised to see a lot of the info, which has been revealed here for the first time, completely ignored! Brian splicing the Worms verse from Worms (which he'd otherwise just chopped up for Heroes) and planning to use it as an intro for the original Da Da, via notes on the tape box? I thought that would get a big reaction!

Putting aside the debates regarding contemporary quotes and what they mean re Smile's transition into Smiley Smile, I'm surprised that most of the new information that's being given in this thread from original documents is kind of getting washed over. That's the part that fascinates me the most - the music, and exactly how, when, and where it was made. Through that, Brian's rapidly changing plans can be traced, as can his increasing interesting in minimal tracks, and instruments that are stacked by himself, rather than played by a live ensemble.

Im still catching up on everything Ive missed here over the last 10 years but Id love to see more revelations like this. I can't say it means I'll change the tracklist on my fanmixes (I just don't see how Worms-Verse/Dada and the '67 single version of Heroes sound better than Worms-Proper, personally)but I'd love to know what other kooky remixes Brian had in mind and if there are dates involved it'd be a great insight to how the project evolved. Anyone have a master list and/or source for how this all came to light?

[Julia]

@Joshilyn Hoisington

When is your book coming out, or has it, is it part of the new David Leaf book on SMiLE? I googled your name but I didn't see anything come up. I know it takes awhile to get a book published so maybe even in the 3 years since you mentioned it, it hasn't gotten done yet but I'd love to see something like that!

I disagreed with your take on SMiLE as a fixed album earlier but beyond that I've agreed with what you and sloopjohnb were saying...about 10 pages back   I really want to know more about what the hard data reveals. Im still interested in SMiLE but at this point Im kinda fed up with the way discussion always gets derailed by speculative fan theory back-imposed as fact. Im sure some will say Ive been guilty of that too, and maybe I have been, but I always tried to give weight to what was on-tape and documented over what Brian said in an interview decades later, what the online consensus is, what BWPS does, etc. It's kind of infuriating trying to seek the truth, disappointing though it may be (IE "I think these Psychedelic Sounds chants are as close as we're gonna get to a vintage Water and Air, guys") only to get some self-appointed keeper of the tale telling you ("nah man, Surf's Up is totally water because it has surf in the title; did you even read LLVS bro?") It's a big reason why I stepped aside from this forum in '15 and honestly rereading the middle section of this thread is giving me serious deja vu vibes. Not trying to pick on anyone in particular; I think we all go through a phase where we latch onto the SMiLE myth, build up a "perfect" vision for it in our heads and don't want to let go, but for those of us who now just want the hard documented evidence, a solidly researched book would be nice.

All that said, I think there's room for balance. The historicity of the sessions, vintage test edits, contemporaneous primary sources, etc should be carefully guarded against unfounded hearsay and respected as the closest word to what happened. Absolutely. But also when it comes to analyzing the "meaning" of the songs and what they make individual listeners feel, or the message that might tie them in with other material from the sessions...let people have their fun. (Not that you weren't, just making a general point.) It bugs me how, in the past, if I tried to throw out a fun idea for CIFOTM maybe signifying America surpassing Europe in geopolitical prominence and now protecting them as a father would a child, I get told "we don't have lyrics, you're passing off unfounded speculation as fact!!!" as if I did something wrong, just trying to have fun and think of what it might've meant. Or saying Wonderful might be about how to "have" an innocent girl is to take her innocence and therefore diminish the beauty you were seeking, which ties into CE and to explore the West meant defiling its pristine tranquility with noisy railroads, somehow makes me "creepy."

I don't know, maybe Im rambling and being inconsistent. I think there's a time and place for fun undocumented speculation and disciplined archeology so to speak, and a lot of commenters (perhaps including myself) don't seem to know where to draw the line, which is what leads to a lot of consternation between people on this forum.

[Julia]

I'll just mention that Liz, the originator of this (once) great thread, has gotten only the thanks of being effectively bullied and chased from the thread, and maybe from the board.
And this reminds me why my personal story with BB fandom is a story of participating, quitting, participating again, quitting again...
Too many delusional self-appointed "authorities" on these matters (not directed at the always excellent admins).

She absolutely wasn't bullied, and if anything (as a neutral observer coming in 3 years late with no stake in the conversation) I think she was bullying Joshilyn with her belittling J's work and snarky one-liners. If the very restrained pushback Liz got in return constitutes bullying, I have stories that'll make your toes curl, both on and off the BB forums, of stuff people have done to me. Frankly, as soon as she stopped posting, the conversation got infinitely more civil and interesting, at least for me as a reader. I hope she wasn't permanently driven from the boards because I admire her passion for the material and see some of my old self in her. She just needs to accept that certain pieces of evidence trump others and there are people on the forums who do academic research in this field that deserves more respect than she's been willing to give.  

But like a certain "sacred-buzzy-insect" I used to debate with on here, I think she'd do well to realize she's not the end-all-be-all authority on this music just because she read some essays she can't even cite, especially if she's going to pretend her fan-theory trumps other people's research into the hard evidence. At least no one told her she's not even allowed to comment anymore because she didn't read some 300 page book, as I've had said to me. And then when I read and commentated on the most respected articles, proving with citations and embedded screencaps that they actually strengthened my arguments rather than refuting them, I was told I was "twisting the facts to mislead people!" Meanwhile the guy couldn't even do the same to back up his own "obviously correct" position, just using the book as a cheap gatekeeping tactic to shut up an inconvenient voice of dissent! (Urgh, I'll admit that still ticks me off somewhat, same with another poster straight-up publicly accusing me of trolling and deliberately twisted my words to make me look stupid just because my opinion went against the grain; nope, Wind Chimes is definitely air, Surf's Up is clearly water and to even consider otherwise makes you a bad faith actor apparently.)  Actually forget it, just blowing off steam here.

In general I think there needs to be a clear delineation of "my personal take on the SMiLE music and what it means to me, how I think the music is best arranged" and "here's what we have evidence of Brian doing, based on what's on tape, what's written down on official documents, what the primary sources said on the record within a reasonable timeframe (for me that's give or take within 5 years, after that memories get hazier and hazier in my experience). We can and should have discussions in both contexts, separate but equal, however the problem is the fan-theorists sometimes insist on taking their subjective reading as superior to the often inconvenient truth. Meanwhile the self-appointed "fun police" who never heard the term "death of the author" often refuse to let anyone take anything but the most literal interpretation from a song or fill in the SMiLE gaps with a bit of "fanservice" where appropriate even if there's a clear disclaimer that the poster is merely speculating. It's honestly tiring in both directions. (I don't think anyone in this thread was guilty of the latter though.)

Well, on what I'm about to say I'm pretty sure *no one* on this thread agrees with me! But nothing in this thread has really shaken one of the old school assumptions that some of ya'll are trying to overturn: that one day, Brian said f*** it, I'm done, Smile is over, called up his publicist Derek Taylor, and told him so, that Derek Taylor published an article saying that Smile had been scrapped, and that that was true.

There's been a lot of talk about people putting too much weight on this article, but to me, personally, that argument requires a very high bar of evidence. Because a publicist is a publicist, even one as unusual as Derek Taylor, and I just simply don't see any way that that press release goes out without Brian Wilson being the source. And that once Brian Wilson has decided Smile is scrapped and told his publicist and its been published in the press...the album is scrapped. And so here, I guess, I disagree with Joshilyn...because at some point Brian Wilson woke up, had breakfast, and said, you know what, I'm done. Done enough to announce it publicly. Whatever comes next, it's going to be something different. And if that's not an RIP date I don't know what is.

Yeah I agree. Whether Taylor went rogue or not I think that's as good a deadline as any. March when VDP left through June when Pepper released and the band came back is my timeline for when the album we call SMiLE died, but like everything else to pin it down to a specific date is murky and perhaps a fools errand.

One thing about SMiLE discourse I find interesting is how people just sort of assume that no one was doing their jobs correctly except maybe Anderle and Vosse. What I mean is, a lot of people take it as a given that VDP never wrote lyrics for the rest of the songs, which then begs the question "what the hell was this guy doing for 9 months on payroll then, seriously?" And at least as often as not, people assume Taylor went rogue and unilaterally canceled SMiLE even against Brian's wishes or without his consent. (Even "official" and published sources like the Badman book say as much "but Brian knew better.") And it begs the question, what kind of a publicist was he then, and why would the Beach Boys allow him to make such a momentous decision? If he had no explicit authority why wasn't he fired on the spot? There may have been a lot of craziness and confusion from Brian but does that really mean these other important underlings were allowed to just fart around collecting paychecks for not doing their jobs properly? Im really asking.

[BJL]

I can agree with this logic to an extent but also, it ignores the real world hindrances, human follies and corporate/contractual obligations that sometimes complicate an artist's vision.

I've come to agree that, in some sense, there is no '66 SMiLE. Ideas were too in flux for us to pin anything down definitively and no song sans GV and maybe Wind Chimes was finished until after the project was abandoned. Any attempt at a faithful recreation is prioritizing a certain day/week/month's version of the album over conflicting testimony/evidence. I do believe the primary accounts like Vosse and Anderle who say that by early Nov the album existed as a conceptual whole in Brian's head, but I think it's more that he knew what themes he wanted, he had a general "checklist" of 30-40 minutes of music that'd be included even if the exact configuration was still in flux. People saying "there was no 1966 SMiLE!" are right in that we may not be able to pin down what was on it minute by minute, but we know it would have some version of Heroes, Barnyard would be somewhere either as a 4-part suite or part of Heroes, etc.

BWPS was officially released but so was 20/20, Smiley, Sunflower, Surf's Up. Does that mean that SU the song was really meant for the '71 album--or that it sounds better there than it does with its '66 brothers? I'd argue no, some might say yes, and ultimately it's a matter of taste.

To step outside the SMiLE box for a second, Get Back was a "back to basics" album originally meant to have stripped down production and a live concert. For many reasons, that didn't happen and the music came out later, with overproduced Spector schmaltz and a new name. Is Let It Be the same as Get Back just because it actually got released? Maybe. Paul didn't think so and released Let It Be...Naked over 30 years later, which is in my opinion far superior. To my heart, that is the true way that music should be heard. We can quibble over what takes precedent, which came first or which stayed true to the original vision of the project but ultimately everyone's going to listen to what they like. The point is these things are not so clear cut.

We may never know exactly what '66 SMiLE would be if Brian even knew himself. But we can safely say it wouldn't have been BWPS for many reasons. First of all, no Beach Boys. Second, the three-movement structure is simply impractical for 2-sided vinyl. Third, the various short snippets would've almost certainly been edited into the main tracks or left on the cutting room floor. Fourth, certain tracks like I Ran and especially Holidays would've almost definitely been left off. Fifth, the lead single would've opened a side and probably the entire album while almost anyone would agree Surf's Up makes too much sense as the closer. Sixth, there's no fades, even though those are the best parts of most of the songs. I could go on.

When a project likes this changes so significantly, I think there's an argument to be made that after a certain subjective point it becomes something different. Most would agree Smiley Smile isn't the same as SMiLE either. Then there's that whole parable about the car that gets replaced piece by piece (when does it become a different car than what it started as) and the way we differentiate between the ancient Roman Empire and medieval Byzantine Empire even though the latter is an anachronistic term. Or how Caroline changed after she cut her hair, lost her happy glow and wasn't the same woman the narrator fell in love with 

I think all of this is well said!

I think I've reread this thread two or three times or so now (after participating originally!), usually looking for some piece of information that's buried in the middle somewhere, like WillJC’s post on page 11 with a breakdown of where things were left in the 60s.

I think that post, and the thread in general, establish that there are a number of things that were considered finished in 1966, even if there was a certain tentativeness to that finality: Good Vibrations (obviously), Wonderful, Old Master Painter/My Only Sunshine, Wind Chimes, and Our Prayer seem to have all been regarded as done in the fall. Finished, mixed backing tracks for Do You Like Worms, Cabin Essence, Child is the Father of the Man, and substantial pieces of the rest of the songs. Maybe Heroes, though it’s immensely confusing and tapes are missing.

I guess my feeling is that a world where these things that were finished were suddenly unfinished is a world where Smile doesn’t come out. (The world, of course, that we live in.) And so logically, if we’re going to ask: what would Smile have been if it had been released at the time, we sort of have to accept that it would have sounded like all the stuff that was finished up to that point. A counterfactual where Brian considers nothing ever to have been finished just isn’t a counterfactual where an album is released, because if you can’t finish one song you sure as hell can’t finish twelve songs.

But there is a very compelling counterfactual where the album does come out, and that’s the imagined world where Brian Wilson finishes the album he was actually recording. And that Smile is not hard to conceptualize or understand at all, because it was like 75% done or better. There are important questions that will never be answered, of course, but those questions do not necessarily point to flaws or inconsistencies in the original conception of the record, but only to the reality that it is impossible to know the outcome of a decision that has not in fact been made.

And so I remain sort of frustrated (and obviously I’m not really talking about you here, Julia) with the way that people return to a "Smile was so in motion it could never be fixed down" attitude that I think is maybe less supported by the surviving evidence than it is by the desire of fans to accommodate a broad range of fan theories and/or take seriously every random thing Brian Wilson said in 1966, when Brian Wilson is famously someone who just, ya know, says things all the time for all kinds of reasons.

But I recognize that my views on this are perhaps idiosyncratic. I am not asking anyone to agree with me! Just can’t resist saying my piece.

Also I love your Let It Be analogy. Though as a big fan of Spector’s work in the late 60s and 70s in general, we’ll indeed have to agree to disagree on the merits of Let it Be…Naked

[Julia]

I think that one of the reasons the "Elements" track was abandoned is that the whole "elements" idea grew to the point it could no more be represented by a single track. And, so, in BWPS, it became the whole Third Movement.
Also, has not the elemental theme always been in the DNA of the Beach Boys (starting from their very name)?

Yes! Absolutely agreed. I think this is the most clear cut example of where a lot of SMiLE dissectors talk past each other. When some people are saying "the elements was a single track in four parts" they're talking about the plan from Nov '66 or maybe early Dec, while those saying "no man, it was four songs and we have at least three (missing air or water depending on their interpretation)" they're talking about '67 and beyond, what happened AFTER the track blew up, which it absolutely did by all accounts soon after it was recorded.

That's one of my big pet peeves, when I'm trying to talk about Undersea Chant and Breathing as rough early working concepts for those elements and people say "naw you're crazy man, it's CCW (or according to one, Surfs Up) and Wind Chimes!" and it's like, do you not understand it could be both? First one and then the other? Obviously by '03 it was one way, and by late '67-'68 water was CCW, but maybe possibly in '66 it was closer to what we actually have on tape from that time?" I don't know. It feels like there's a need sometimes to discount any inconvenient evidence that might possibly give legitimacy to a version of SMiLE you don't like when really the truth is Brian tried so many combos that they're almost all equally valid especially if you squint hard enough. Also, sometimes artists kick around a working concept to get it to tape, so they have a reference, and that means we can gleam a rough idea of what they had in mind, but saying "Undersea Chant is '66 water" doesn't mean I think Brian would've put it on the album as-is.

[BJL]

One thing about SMiLE discourse I find interesting is how people just sort of assume that no one was doing their jobs correctly except maybe Anderle and Vosse. What I mean is, a lot of people take it as a given that VDP never wrote lyrics for the rest of the songs, which then begs the question "what the hell was this guy doing for 9 months on payroll then, seriously?" And at least as often as not, people assume Taylor went rogue and unilaterally canceled SMiLE even against Brian's wishes or without his consent. (Even "official" and published sources like the Badman book say as much "but Brian knew better.") And it begs the question, what kind of a publicist was he then, and why would the Beach Boys allow him to make such a momentous decision? If he had no explicit authority why wasn't he fired on the spot? There may have been a lot of craziness and confusion from Brian but does that really mean these other important underlings were allowed to just fart around collecting paychecks for not doing their jobs properly? Im really asking.

Yes! I think this extends to Brian, too, honestly. Like, Brian Wilson was a professional, and although well before Pet Sounds his behavior could be eccentric (and at times clearly off-putting), he also knew how to put together a record and was very well-versed in the commercial side of the industry. Even in the early 60s, with all the outside productions, Brian aspired to be a record industry figure (like Phil Spector, of course!) more than the pop star he reluctantly was. The idea that he wouldn't have approved an important press release, or a finalized record jacket, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, personally.

I'm of two minds on the missing lyrics, though. I guess my gut feeling, unfounded in any kind of factual evidence, is that if Van Dyke Parks had written full lyrics to Child is the Father of the Man or Look or whatever else, that everyone actually liked and that Brian planned to use, those lyrics would have been important enough to have been at least mentioned or described or shared with *someone* who could attest to their having existed. Which makes me suspect that if certain songs *weren't* left unfinished, maybe they were lyrics that weren't quite considered to have worked...

[Julia]

One thing about SMiLE discourse I find interesting is how people just sort of assume that no one was doing their jobs correctly except maybe Anderle and Vosse. What I mean is, a lot of people take it as a given that VDP never wrote lyrics for the rest of the songs, which then begs the question "what the hell was this guy doing for 9 months on payroll then, seriously?" And at least as often as not, people assume Taylor went rogue and unilaterally canceled SMiLE even against Brian's wishes or without his consent. (Even "official" and published sources like the Badman book say as much "but Brian knew better.") And it begs the question, what kind of a publicist was he then, and why would the Beach Boys allow him to make such a momentous decision? If he had no explicit authority why wasn't he fired on the spot? There may have been a lot of craziness and confusion from Brian but does that really mean these other important underlings were allowed to just fart around collecting paychecks for not doing their jobs properly? Im really asking.

Yes! I think this extends to Brian, too, honestly. Like, Brian Wilson was a professional, and although well before Pet Sounds his behavior could be eccentric (and at times clearly off-putting), he also knew how to put together a record and was very well-versed in the commercial side of the industry. Even in the early 60s, with all the outside productions, Brian aspired to be a record industry figure (like Phil Spector, of course!) more than the pop star he reluctantly was. The idea that he wouldn't have approved an important press release, or a finalized record jacket, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, personally.

I'm of two minds on the missing lyrics, though. I guess my gut feeling, unfounded in any kind of factual evidence, is that if Van Dyke Parks had written full lyrics to Child is the Father of the Man or Look or whatever else, that everyone actually liked and that Brian planned to use, those lyrics would have been important enough to have been at least mentioned or described or shared with *someone* who could attest to their having existed. Which makes me suspect that if certain songs *weren't* left unfinished, maybe they were lyrics that weren't quite considered to have worked...

The Badman book mentions VDP wrote all the lyrics and CIFOTM specifically. I know that source has been questioned but still. My own gut intuition is the opposite; that if VDP weren't doing his job Brian would've called him out or even offered the gaps to Mike as a placating gesture and to challenge VDP. What seems somewhat likely is Brian rejected some lyrics hence VDP staying around, mentions of multiple "disagreements" in Badman as well as the "Big 4" Primary sources (Vosse and especially Anderle) and those holes weren't plugged up that we know of, possibly due to the focus on the single. But thats partly speculative intuition. Maybe he kept VDP on retainer to write new lyrics as Heroes and Villains changed; did Van write the new chorus subbing out two words for three, or all the bouncy H&Vs chants that just repeat the phrase in slightly different ways?

I also agree about Brian with regard to the announcement and especially the tracklist. I think the people discounting it are just looking for an excuse to use or disuse certain tracks they wish were(nt) included. Its inconvenient if you want I Ran or Holidays to be on SMiLE, plus it means you have to explain the IIGS listing (the most puzzling credit of the whole thing) and it disproves the Elements suit everyone is seemingly so fond of.

[Julia]

Basically I think my hard-headed perspective on this stems from some fans just not believing that BWPS is the finished product (which is sadly something I have read far too often in the fandom)...a perspective that I just don't understand. The way I see it, if Beethoven started a symphony in his 20s, shelved it, then completed it towards the end of his life, 400 years later we wouldn't say "well did he really finish that symphony though?" We wouldn't question it because clearly Beethoven has the final authority on what he completes/finalizes. So why is Brian Wilson any different?

Also BJL, all of the above isn't really in response to your post as I do agree with your post and I don't think we disagree about anything. The above comments are more aimed at those who just don't see BWPS as Smile. Your post just made me want to clarify my position on the topic.

Yea, I agree with this. I've never been a huge fan of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (in terms of like, choosing to listen to it), but I couldn't count the number of times I've watched the live Smile DVD. Seeing Brian perform his *completed* Smile with a huge smile on his face! My god. It is a shame that the instrumentation Smile is scored for is probably too unusual for it to enter the contemporary classic repertoire, because that is a *composition* that works so, so, so well in performance!

Just an observation, but I think the biggest thing hurting BWPS's status as *the* Smile is Brian's lead vocals. If Brian had followed a more normal vocal trajectory, and his voice at 62 had been basically the same voice he sang with at 25, just a little richer and deeper, than its status would be much more assured. But obviously, this has nothing to do with how completed the music is, its more just like...an unconnected fact that can't help coloring the experience of listening.

With regard to both these quotes, I think BWPS is an incredible work and "a" completed SMiLE (same as Smiley and fanmixes), definitely the one with the most legitimacy by default. I just think it's different than what would've happened in '66 and that original conception is so special to me that it's important to distinguish between the two. I don't mean this as a slight against what Brian did, as I feel my words sometimes get taken as, just that there were certain ideas (spoken word humor) and design limitations (2 sided vinyl) and abandoned pieces (all the fades, Talking Horns for the 2nd movement of Surfs Up) and psychedelia (Dada's LSD initialism, "tripped on a cornucopeia" lyrics, etc) which I really miss, that stop me from listening to BWPS after the initial curiosity had worn off. (The inferior vocals and production factors into that, plus I think the pacing issues from a three-movement structure with lots of small snippets makes it harder to sit through multiple times. It's not something I can just throw on the stereo like my fave albums or fanmixes, I have to *really* be in the mood and after it's done I feel exhausted.) I'm not trying to diminish Brian's accomplishment or anyone's enjoyment but you say you don't understand, that it saddens you we disagree, and this is me explaining why I guess. It's not that BWPS is "bad" it's that those '66 recordings are so magical that nothing can compare, they just have an indescribable beauty that haunts me like nothing else I've ever heard. It's comparing the average Beatles solo album to Abbey Road--not a fair contest even if it's the same artist.

I will say, Darian is exactly what Brian needed in '67 as I said in my other SMiLE thread on the front page, a collaborator whom Brian trusts as his equal who can say "let's do it this way, Brian" rather than "gee, it's your album, not my place to tell you how to do it." Not that Brian didn't have final say, but I think Darian giving him a template to build off of must've been a load off, where Brian could say "yeah I like that sequence" or "no, I junked that part" instead of having to sit there and come up with the "best possible configuration" cold, with the weight of perfection on his shoulders again and everyone saying "well, you're the genius, it's your masterpiece, you should figure it out on your own, not my place to weigh in" as I feel the dynamic was in '66. (This isn't a swipe at VDP either, I think his collaborative MO was respectful and sound, it's just Brian was paralyzed by choice and needed a stronger push than Van realized.)

In my experience, some people get upset if one brings attention to Darian's contribution to the project, as if this is done to downplay BWPS' authenticity but that's not my goal here, and in any case I think to pretend Brian didn't have significant help is to diminish Darian as an artistic-collaborator in his own right. One could even see it as a little bit of Americana seeping into the project, with three "branches of government," and Darian as an embodiment of the "court of public opinion" breaking a 40 year deadlock. It must've meant so much to Brian having an accomplished musician with no stake in the project saying "this is my favorite body of music, this inspired me to get into the game, I want to help you finish it because the world needs to hear this incredible art!" It's a beautiful story straight out of a movie (and why it wasn't included in "Love and Mercy," even in an end-credits montage or something, is beyond me).

I think all of this is well said!

I think I've reread this thread two or three times or so now (after participating originally!), usually looking for some piece of information that's buried in the middle somewhere, like WillJC’s post on page 11 with a breakdown of where things were left in the 60s.

I think that post, and the thread in general, establish that there are a number of things that were considered finished in 1966, even if there was a certain tentativeness to that finality: Good Vibrations (obviously), Wonderful, Old Master Painter/My Only Sunshine, Wind Chimes, and Our Prayer seem to have all been regarded as done in the fall. Finished, mixed backing tracks for Do You Like Worms, Cabin Essence, Child is the Father of the Man, and substantial pieces of the rest of the songs. Maybe Heroes, though it’s immensely confusing and tapes are missing.

I guess my feeling is that a world where these things that were finished were suddenly unfinished is a world where Smile doesn’t come out. (The world, of course, that we live in.) And so logically, if we’re going to ask: what would Smile have been if it had been released at the time, we sort of have to accept that it would have sounded like all the stuff that was finished up to that point. A counterfactual where Brian considers nothing ever to have been finished just isn’t a counterfactual where an album is released, because if you can’t finish one song you sure as hell can’t finish twelve songs.

But there is a very compelling counterfactual where the album does come out, and that’s the imagined world where Brian Wilson finishes the album he was actually recording. And that Smile is not hard to conceptualize or understand at all, because it was like 75% done or better. There are important questions that will never be answered, of course, but those questions do not necessarily point to flaws or inconsistencies in the original conception of the record, but only to the reality that it is impossible to know the outcome of a decision that has not in fact been made.

And so I remain sort of frustrated (and obviously I’m not really talking about you here, Julia) with the way that people return to a "Smile was so in motion it could never be fixed down" attitude that I think is maybe less supported by the surviving evidence than it is by the desire of fans to accommodate a broad range of fan theories and/or take seriously every random thing Brian Wilson said in 1966, when Brian Wilson is famously someone who just, ya know, says things all the time for all kinds of reasons.

But I recognize that my views on this are perhaps idiosyncratic. I am not asking anyone to agree with me! Just can’t resist saying my piece.

Also I love your Let It Be analogy. Though as a big fan of Spector’s work in the late 60s and 70s in general, we’ll indeed have to agree to disagree on the merits of Let it Be…Naked

Yes, this is why I break with some of the hardliners who say "there was no plan" or "there is no '66 SMiLE." A clear motif when reading about the sessions is how Brian would come home every day with a rough mix on acetate that everyone would acknowledge as brilliant and beg him not to touch, but then he'd come back later with the pieces remixed and they'd have to agree it was just as good. I see that and say "yeah there was no settled playing-order and even the structure of individual songs was up in the air but it was still the same 30-40 minutes worth of music being toyed with." The music was all there (or would be soon), lyrics all written, the themes were well documented, there was even a large pool of "humorous" spoken word recordings to pull from if he really was serious about "talking and laughing" between verses or tracks. We can all look at the tracklist and say "I know what that song was supposed to be" for all except maybe 2 entries: The Elements & Im in Great Shape. And even there, we at least have some solid ideas. I still choose to believe IIGS was another name for the Barnyard suite that would include Workshop as "building the barn" as per Vosse's testimony, for example. Now, how that song, and the elements, wouldn't sound like a complete mess I don't know, but then that's why it all fell apart wasn't it? (That and the quest to make Heroes a single.) But even then, there's a big difference between "No '66 SMiLE existed!" and what we have, which is: 1 finished track, 9 that just need vocals and final mixdowns (that's what, a months work if that?) plus 2 medleys in a state of flux (which might've required more effort but still a very solvable problem). There's definitely a recognizable core of an album here, a concrete body of work with a consistent, artistic statement. The reason I responded to these two separate quotes together is that, my thesis on this '66 album is why I'm not ready to accept BWPS as the sole definitive take on the material; it's just too different from this original project I consider far superior in its intent and execution.

I also agree with, at least what I think you're saying, that certain fans have a vested interest in pretending the SMiLE sessions (at least pre-'67 certainly and perhaps even beyond) are more opaque than they really were. The motives for this seem to be: 1) in legitimizing BWPS by comparison (not accusing anyone here of that but it was def an attitude I came upon in '15), 2) to not step on anyone's toes with their fan-theories (I really don't like the way Joshilyn and sloopjohnb were painted as "overbearing" and even "bullying" just for stating facts to an obstinate theorist who belittled their work as researchers) and 3) to shut up the "annoying" newbies just trying to talk about this stuff for the first time (Mikie and his motley crew over in meanie-ville who hate fun--we didn't all have the privilege of being around in the Smile Shope days, ya old farts!). There's definitely a lot of confusing anecdotes related to the project, some all-consuming rabbit holes, but it's not like we have NO IDEA what '66 Brian was doing or what it would've sounded like. I wouldn't level this accusation at anyone in the thread here, but I've accused some posters in the past of being deliberately obtuse in order to push a narrative or shut down discussion they don't like but can't refute. Things like "you don't like BWPS; you think you know better than Brian?!?!" and pretending there isn't somehow a connection between Undersea Chant and Water Chant because you don't want to admit your precious "Surfs Up is water!" theory is wrong.

I dont know maybe Im being mean,but I just want a place where I can get the straight facts so I can make up my own mind with the best info possible. Unfortunately though, most or all of the books are full of inaccuracies so Im told and the boards are often full of confusing, conflicting takes, some fascinating new ideas, some bad faith arguments. If there really is a scholarly book about the sessions coming out as Joshilyn alluded to, what I thought the Badman book was and what it should've been, Id love a copy so I can just read that and not bother anybody or have to wade through pages of snarky barbs. That'd be my ideal at this point.

[Julia]

Let's assume Brian did manage to complete Smile in 1967, it got released (or dropped as they say today), became a massive hit, and was loved as much as Sgt. Pepper.
How was Brian (and the Beach Boys) going to follow that up?
How do you top Pet Sounds AND Smile?
Eventually, our hero was going to crack.

I think in that scenario, their reputation is at least maintained especially if there's no "Then I Kissed Her" single and even more especially if they go to Monterey. The one-two-three punch of not living up to their own hype, releasing outdated music and running chicken from the coolest concert ever all killed their popularity. There's probably no Smiley in this scenario which sucks but at least the subsequent Wild Honey and Friends (or their equivalents in this timeline) are better received. Even if Brian still burns out and they do a lo-fi sound for awhile, it's seen as a well-deserved break after redefining what pop music can be (like the Beatles doing a more traditional rock aesthetic after Pepper) rather than an admission that Pet Sounds and "Brian's a genius" were just a fluke.

I think ideally, with the group still near(er) to the tops of the charts, there's less pressure on Brian to keep producing hits for them, so he's "allowed" to produce for Redwood and branch into the Spector-style independent producer he always wanted to be, occasionally writing solo or Beach Boy material as it suits him. And Carl grows into his own as leader of the band; the Wild Honey through Holland run still mostly happens but without pilfering SMiLE so Brian isn't hurt and his recovery unhindered. We probably don't get Love You and if we do get Mt Vernon it's either an entire LP (because the group trusts Brian's instincts more) or a solo venture. American Spring is maybe more of an ongoing thing.

Really, it would be a better world. I think even if SMiLE wasn't a huge hit (and I personally believe it would've been for many reasons) it would've been listened to by an unsuspecting mass of teenagers expecting more typical BB fare, melting their faces and blowing their minds. Imagine some 16-20 year old girl who's never experienced anything more avant garde than Pet Sounds (if she even bought that) hearing Fire? Imagine the American public at large pontificating on the message of Surf's Up rather than a comparatively elite few uberfans. It could've changed the world and I'm not exaggerating. The problem with Pepper and a lot of other Flower Power psychedelic rock of the time is it was lacking in a message, and I say that even as a huge fan. But Pepper and Surrealistic Pillow never called people to a higher standard, made them contemplate their society's flaws, compelled them to do better for the sake of the children. If the sunshine pop of '67 talked about topical issues at all it was usually in a sort of defeated way, ala The United States of America and Forever Changes. SMiLE had just enough hope, just a peek at what could be...

Things are in a little better shape now since that post in 2005.  I did a teeeeeeny tiny bit of work on that stuff when I worked with him, but Alan has been able to go through the Smile material much more thoroughly with the 2011 boxed set getting funded.  Still a lot of missing stuff, though, sadly.

One of the items mentioned in that post from Alan from 2005 that has since been more or less cleared as a possibility is that infamous tape vault photo, with the apparent "safety copies" of albums along with a tape labeled "Brian - Dumb Angel." Through a bunch of sleuthing and deduction later on, it was determined that those tapes belonged to some sort of superfan/peripheral associate/friend of the band. Nobody ever got to the bottom of exactly why or how those tapes were there (though lots of likely/plausible theories), so I don't think it's 100%  cleared as picturing possible since-lost tapes. But it's very unlikely. I'm guessing it was either a prop tape or, depending on when the photo was taken, a dub of some old boot.

Im SO GLAD you brought this up because that Smiley thread where this was first discussed absolutely haunted me and I was always flabbergasted it wasn't discussed more. The idea that Brian had a rough draft of the entire album on tape that went missing...damn. Anyway, it's nice to know we weren't robbed of something quite so important.

At this point, I'm assuming everything in the tape vaults is accounted for, yes? And anything left to be found would have either been taken from them years ago, like perhaps by thieves or anytime the group pilfered the vaults to work on something, as well as any loose acetates that may still be floating around? I'd kill to hear the Wind Chimes fade with vocals that Vosse describes...

This is really, really interesting, thanks for posting. I totally buy it, at least til better evidence emerges!

And if it is true, it really is just more evidence for what is, for me, an increasingly inescapable conclusion...which is that the Smile project fundamentally fell apart because Brian lost the thread of it. Yea, you can still argue about *why* he lost the thread, how much of it was external factors and how much internal, whatever. But, again, if this is true, for me, there's just no way around the fact that anyone who would re-record Part 1 of Surf's Up has lost the thread of what they're doing. That original recording is one of the greatest things recorded in the 20th century. If you can't tell it's fine as it is....

I think he was just a terminal perfectionist starting with GV. I see little difference in his obsessive tinkering of GV versus the rest of SMiLE, it's just one got done and the rest didn't. It's insane to hear how many times he remade GV and how he was never totally satisfied with it. The achilles heel of SMiLE was there right from the very first Good Good Good Vibrations session

[rab2591]

Basically I think my hard-headed perspective on this stems from some fans just not believing that BWPS is the finished product (which is sadly something I have read far too often in the fandom)...a perspective that I just don't understand. The way I see it, if Beethoven started a symphony in his 20s, shelved it, then completed it towards the end of his life, 400 years later we wouldn't say "well did he really finish that symphony though?" We wouldn't question it because clearly Beethoven has the final authority on what he completes/finalizes. So why is Brian Wilson any different?

Also BJL, all of the above isn't really in response to your post as I do agree with your post and I don't think we disagree about anything. The above comments are more aimed at those who just don't see BWPS as Smile. Your post just made me want to clarify my position on the topic.

Yea, I agree with this. I've never been a huge fan of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (in terms of like, choosing to listen to it), but I couldn't count the number of times I've watched the live Smile DVD. Seeing Brian perform his *completed* Smile with a huge smile on his face! My god. It is a shame that the instrumentation Smile is scored for is probably too unusual for it to enter the contemporary classic repertoire, because that is a *composition* that works so, so, so well in performance!

Just an observation, but I think the biggest thing hurting BWPS's status as *the* Smile is Brian's lead vocals. If Brian had followed a more normal vocal trajectory, and his voice at 62 had been basically the same voice he sang with at 25, just a little richer and deeper, than its status would be much more assured. But obviously, this has nothing to do with how completed the music is, its more just like...an unconnected fact that can't help coloring the experience of listening.

With regard to both these quotes, I think BWPS is an incredible work and "a" completed SMiLE (same as Smiley and fanmixes), definitely the one with the most legitimacy by default. I just think it's different than what would've happened in '66 and that original conception is so special to me that it's important to distinguish between the two. I don't mean this as a slight against what Brian did, as I feel my words sometimes get taken as, just that there were certain ideas (spoken word humor) and design limitations (2 sided vinyl) and abandoned pieces (all the fades, Talking Horns for the 2nd movement of Surfs Up) and psychedelia (Dada's LSD initialism, "tripped on a cornucopeia" lyrics, etc) which I really miss, that stop me from listening to BWPS after the initial curiosity had worn off.

I rather just see it as the legitimate version, exactly because Brian felt that way - and since he's the artist I just naturally see that as being a final authority on the matter. Again to my Beethoven analogy, you wouldn't say "oh his 9th is "a" version of the symphony, the most legitimate for sure, but since it took him 7 years to create, the final version wasn't the one he envisioned at it's conception, so it's just "a" version of the symphony" - no, the completed sheet music/symphony is HIS vision - regardless of the amount of time or evolution of ideas. And 200 years later no one would argue against that. (edit, I also realize it's an imperfect analogy because conductors put their own spin on timing and such, but regardless, hopefully you can see my point).

I just really don't like the take that BWPS is somehow inferior to this non-existent '66/'67 album. To me, it takes away from Brian's work, but ultimately his story. Would it have been a perfect scenario had a '67 Smile officially come out? Maybe, maybe not. It's cool to think about the what-ifs, but when those what-ifs alter the perception of a completed work of art, I just don't think that's fair to the artist.

[Julia]

I rather just see it as the legitimate version, exactly because Brian felt that way - and since he's the artist I just naturally see that as being a final authority on the matter. Again to my Beethoven analogy, you wouldn't say "oh his 9th is "a" version of the symphony, the most legitimate for sure, but since it took him 7 years to create, the final version wasn't the one he envisioned at it's conception, so it's just "a" version of the symphony" - no, the completed sheet music/symphony is HIS vision - regardless of the amount of time or evolution of ideas. And 200 years later no one would argue against that. (edit, I also realize it's an imperfect analogy because conductors put their own spin on timing and such, but regardless, hopefully you can see my point).

I just really don't like the take that BWPS is somehow inferior to this non-existent '66/'67 album. To me, it takes away from Brian's work, but ultimately his story. Would it have been a perfect scenario had a '67 Smile officially come out? Maybe, maybe not. It's cool to think about the what-ifs, but when those what-ifs alter the perception of a completed work of art, I just don't think that's fair to the artist.

Thats a very fair and well thought out take. I don't disagree with your reasoning. Ultimately though, when it comes to "what do I like to listen to when Im in a SMiLE-mood" for me the answer is "one of my fanmixes or a playlist of other people's remasterings edited into a track order consistent with my mixes" so for me that's the definitive SMiLE. But if there's a museum exhibit or 50 years from now a "Brian Wilson concerto" that opts for the BWPS arrangement I would certainly understand why they opted for the officially released version and wouldn't pitch a fit about it. Put simply, it's the definitive to history (unless you count Smiley, which I think has an equal claim based on your logic to be fair) but not the definitive to my ears. Beyond that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.  

Wow! I very much like the direction this thread has headed. BJL, thanks very much for your kind words, and I appreciate all the appreciation  

One thing I would like to add to the Smiley Smile talk is something that sort of gets ignored in conversations about the "shift"...

The Beach Boys' role in the music did not change in any significant capacity between Smile and Smiley Smile. The instruments are still mostly played by Brian on his own (where before it was some combination of Brian on his own, Brian and Van Dyke, or the wrecking crew), although Carl and Dennis do contribute pretty significantly here and there. But... that hadn't changed very much from the Smile period. Carl and Dennis, especially Carl, were much more involved as instrumentalists throughout the Smile era than the Pet Sounds era. Brian began treating Carl as a wrecking crew member again, including him as a bassist/guitarist on big band sessions like Wind Chimes and Cabin Essence, while a lot of the homier, more low-key tracks were entirely done by Brian and his brothers. To give a few examples, He Gives Speeches has all instruments played by Brian, Carl, and Dennis, as do both unique chorus sections for the April version of Vegetables.

If The Beach Boys felt like hired hands during Smile, well, their role demonstrably did not change. According to all 6 of the Beach Boys, and made clear from the session tapes, all of the material recorded for Smiley Smile was arranged and produced by Brian Wilson. Carl and Dennis played here and there, just like they'd done on Smile, and all of the Beach Boys recorded harmonies under the direction of Brian, just like they'd done on Smile.

So, what did change that made everyone so much happier?

Well, I know I'm a guy that pretty much only talks about the music (it's what I know best), but it's no secret that the 'vibe' was completely different. Brian's closest friends were his brothers and his cousin and Al again - the band. Brian wasn't recording side projects with others and leaving the rest of the band in the dark as to what the music was anymore. And the big one: Brian and Mike were writing together again! In limited capacity, as most of the songs were re-recordings of Wilson/Parks material, but it's still an important thing to consider when we're trying to figure out why the dynamic changed so significantly.

The Beach Boys were no less hired hands on Smiley Smile than they were on Smile. But, there are circumstances where being a hired hand feels good, and there are circumstances where it feels bad, to put it extremely simply. Consider the massive difference in atmosphere, and how drastically that can improve the tense relations the band was having before.

Yes, the vibe was different and certainly the arrangements! Even if the level of complexity was similar as Joshilyn and the stereo releases have proved, no one could deny Smiley sounds different and I'd argue it's that organ and whatever other less conventional sounds Brian had in his home studio that give it the distinct tonal quality we all recognize as a significant departure in sound from SMiLE.

[rab2591]

I rather just see it as the legitimate version, exactly because Brian felt that way - and since he's the artist I just naturally see that as being a final authority on the matter. Again to my Beethoven analogy, you wouldn't say "oh his 9th is "a" version of the symphony, the most legitimate for sure, but since it took him 7 years to create, the final version wasn't the one he envisioned at it's conception, so it's just "a" version of the symphony" - no, the completed sheet music/symphony is HIS vision - regardless of the amount of time or evolution of ideas. And 200 years later no one would argue against that. (edit, I also realize it's an imperfect analogy because conductors put their own spin on timing and such, but regardless, hopefully you can see my point).

I just really don't like the take that BWPS is somehow inferior to this non-existent '66/'67 album. To me, it takes away from Brian's work, but ultimately his story. Would it have been a perfect scenario had a '67 Smile officially come out? Maybe, maybe not. It's cool to think about the what-ifs, but when those what-ifs alter the perception of a completed work of art, I just don't think that's fair to the artist.

Thats a very fair and well thought out take. I don't disagree with your reasoning. Ultimately though, when it comes to "what do I like to listen to when Im in a SMiLE-mood" for me the answer is "one of my fanmixes or a playlist of other people's remasterings edited into a track order consistent with my mixes" so for me that's the definitive SMiLE. But if there's a museum exhibit or 50 years from now a "Brian Wilson concerto" that opts for the BWPS arrangement I would certainly understand why they opted for the officially released version and wouldn't pitch a fit about it. Put simply, it's the definitive to history (unless you count Smiley, which I think has an equal claim based on your logic to be fair) but not the definitive to my ears. Beyond that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.  

Totally. I should have added that my opinion is not a hill I'm willing to die on, so I absolutely respect your take on it all. And again, if everyone thought like me, this would be a very boring topic haha. So I'm glad there are those who delve further into this stuff and see it differently.

[WillJC]

When I think of Smile as a project with a musical vision, I think of a journey that flies around across the continent, back in time, in and out of side doors, wherever it wants. Lots of miniature worlds and sonic palettes. When I think of Smiley Smile, I think of that little house in the woods on the cover. It's much more a chamber piece, one of those albums glued together by a musical 'setting', like Party, or even Pet Sounds. That's a big part of the vibe shift to me beyond all the material practicalities of recording. It's adjusting focus from AMERICA (in big bold letters) to whatever's going on with the bugs in the garden. I think the extent Brian compartmentalised his music can be overstated by some but it definitely had its place in his head. He liked being a deliberate album craftsman.

@Joshilyn Hoisington

When is your book coming out, or has it, is it part of the new David Leaf book on SMiLE? I googled your name but I didn't see anything come up. I know it takes awhile to get a book published so maybe even in the 3 years since you mentioned it, it hasn't gotten done yet but I'd love to see something like that!

I disagreed with your take on SMiLE as a fixed album earlier but beyond that I've agreed with what you and sloopjohnb were saying...about 10 pages back   I really want to know more about what the hard data reveals. Im still interested in SMiLE but at this point Im kinda fed up with the way discussion always gets derailed by speculative fan theory back-imposed as fact. Im sure some will say Ive been guilty of that too, and maybe I have been, but I always tried to give weight to what was on-tape and documented over what Brian said in an interview decades later, what the online consensus is, what BWPS does, etc. It's kind of infuriating trying to seek the truth, disappointing though it may be (IE "I think these Psychedelic Sounds chants are as close as we're gonna get to a vintage Water and Air, guys") only to get some self-appointed keeper of the tale telling you ("nah man, Surf's Up is totally water because it has surf in the title; did you even read LLVS bro?") It's a big reason why I stepped aside from this forum in '15 and honestly rereading the middle section of this thread is giving me serious deja vu vibes. Not trying to pick on anyone in particular; I think we all go through a phase where we latch onto the SMiLE myth, build up a "perfect" vision for it in our heads and don't want to let go, but for those of us who now just want the hard documented evidence, a solidly researched book would be nice.

All that said, I think there's room for balance. The historicity of the sessions, vintage test edits, contemporaneous primary sources, etc should be carefully guarded against unfounded hearsay and respected as the closest word to what happened. Absolutely. But also when it comes to analyzing the "meaning" of the songs and what they make individual listeners feel, or the message that might tie them in with other material from the sessions...let people have their fun. (Not that you weren't, just making a general point.) It bugs me how, in the past, if I tried to throw out a fun idea for CIFOTM maybe signifying America surpassing Europe in geopolitical prominence and now protecting them as a father would a child, I get told "we don't have lyrics, you're passing off unfounded speculation as fact!!!" as if I did something wrong, just trying to have fun and think of what it might've meant. Or saying Wonderful might be about how to "have" an innocent girl is to take her innocence and therefore diminish the beauty you were seeking, which ties into CE and to explore the West meant defiling its pristine tranquility with noisy railroads, somehow makes me "creepy."

I don't know, maybe Im rambling and being inconsistent. I think there's a time and place for fun undocumented speculation and disciplined archeology so to speak, and a lot of commenters (perhaps including myself) don't seem to know where to draw the line, which is what leads to a lot of consternation between people on this forum.

If Joshilyn doesn't see this one I can answer. Her, John Brode, Craig Slowinski (who compiled the official Smile sessionography in 2011 among lots of others) and I are all working on a recording sessions sort of book in several volumes. Have been at it for years, will probably still be at it for years. It's only about Smile to the same degree that it's about everything else from the beginning, so it'll take a while to get there. We've just started talking through a plan to mitigate that by getting an appendices/companion of sorts online with information that'll be out of Vol 1's reach - setting sights on later this year slash 2026 for a revised Pet Sounds/Smile/Smiley Smile coverage in time for the 60th anniversary.

[WillJC]

By the way, how much interest is there in the actual facts regarding dates and documents and when splices were made, etc? I would think that would be right up the alley of every Smile fan on earth, but I've been surprised to see a lot of the info, which has been revealed here for the first time, completely ignored! Brian splicing the Worms verse from Worms (which he'd otherwise just chopped up for Heroes) and planning to use it as an intro for the original Da Da, via notes on the tape box? I thought that would get a big reaction!

Putting aside the debates regarding contemporary quotes and what they mean re Smile's transition into Smiley Smile, I'm surprised that most of the new information that's being given in this thread from original documents is kind of getting washed over. That's the part that fascinates me the most - the music, and exactly how, when, and where it was made. Through that, Brian's rapidly changing plans can be traced, as can his increasing interesting in minimal tracks, and instruments that are stacked by himself, rather than played by a live ensemble.

Im still catching up on everything Ive missed here over the last 10 years but Id love to see more revelations like this. I can't say it means I'll change the tracklist on my fanmixes (I just don't see how Worms-Verse/Dada and the '67 single version of Heroes sound better than Worms-Proper, personally)but I'd love to know what other kooky remixes Brian had in mind and if there are dates involved it'd be a great insight to how the project evolved. Anyone have a master list and/or source for how this all came to light?

Damn, this is why I'm afraid to check out the start of this thread and see what was written three years ago. That one was a premature call that I'm also part responsible for. Brian does make a "let's put them together" comment at the end of the master for the first version of Da Da recorded 12/22/66. We thought for a time that this was directed to a transfer of Worms Part 1 made right before it on the same reel, but the tracksheet provides the context that he was probably talking about splicing two incomplete Da Da takes together - which he then did, but it's inaudible and undetectable unless you're watching the splice fly by on the 8-track machine.

Edit: Turns out I actually do still agree with 95% of the info I wrote on page 11. Phew!

[Julia]

Totally. I should have added that my opinion is not a hill I'm willing to die on, so I absolutely respect your take on it all. And again, if everyone thought like me, this would be a very boring topic haha. So I'm glad there are those who delve further into this stuff and see it differently.

Yes, I agree completely!

And then, in an even more poetic and cyclical and beautiful ending, the original 1966 and 67 recordings were edited into the rough template of Brian Wilson Presents Smile, becoming the first disc of the Smile Sessions. I suspect that the vast majority of future fans of this music will almost certainly start there, and get a version of Smile built on this whole incredible rich history. And that Smile, the 2011 Smile, is also legitimately Smile. It *is* Smile.

At the risk of derailing the tranquility, this though, is what I take issue with I have to say. By all means, BWPS is Brian's take on the material and I don't deny it, but I think to then edit the original '60s recordings to fit that narrative they clearly weren't intended for is wrong. Not because I prefer the songs a different way, but because this will be the only way most people ever experience the vintage material and I believe it ought to be taken on its own terms, not manipulated to post-fit a later interpretation, even Brian's. To me, this is like going back to Pet Sounds and subbing out '66 Brian's voice with 2011's because "this is how Brian sounds now, this is how he wants the music presented now, who are you to question him" or dubbing in additional vocal/instrumental parts because "this is how he did it last year, this is his vision now, you think you know better than Brian?" It's not about preference, it's about historical preservation and honest presentation of what the project was. I feel the same way about the Star Wars special editions; by all means have a "SMiLE...Solved" separate release or disc on the boxset...as long as the original edits in the tape vault are there. Thats a fair compromise at least.

I don't care what playing-order the TSS disc 1 uses, that's not the issue, but the fly-in overdubs ("Childs" in Look), intense pitch-correcting to make things fit (Carl sounding like a woman in Dada, "Whispering Winds") ignoring vintage edits where inconvenient (CIFOTM--not hobby horsing here either, because without vocals, my fave cut of this track is the Odeon bootleg mix, but it should've been Brian's '66 assembly on the box) and cutting vintage fades (Wind Chimes the biggest off the top of my head) is going too far for me. I think the goal of the boxset should've been "here's what exists in the vaults, with Disc 1 as the most complete version of each song possible" not "how can we frankenstein the material to fit this new anachronistic template it was never originally intended for." I know it was Brian's insistence that BWPS be followed, so I guess Mark and Alan's hands were somewhat tied, but even then they didn't have to go whole hog with some of those fly-ins and abrupt cuts. I'm sure Brian wouldn't have minded if WC faded for example.

I hope this isn't seen as a controversial take anymore, almost 15 years later. It's not even a preference thing, or sour grapes they didn't do my fanmix or whatever else I've been accused of when I bring this up. It's just that an official archival release ought to preserve what's in the archives  as much as possible. Even the defenders of Disc 1 can surely agree that, at the very least, we should've gotten the vintage edits of tracks like CIFOTM on the box somewhere. Raise the price and add another disc, I'd still buy it. What I shouldn't have to do is buy the 1968 boxset just for that one track that belongs on a different release. I've seen other people outside this forum parroting these same complaints on the other message board, Hoffman forums, reddit etc, so Im not just some lone complainer, it's a legitimate criticism. Often I've been asked "well what would you have them do then? What sequence do you use when none was decided?" And my answer is, just follow the original tracklist as-written and then all outtakes by order of recording date. So, Worms through OMP--wasn't the intended playing order but who cares, gotta make a choice--then Holidays, I Ran, He Gives Speeches, Dada, You're Welcome, (if Im forgetting anything) maybe even include SMiLE-adjacents like CCW and CWTL. It wouldn't be optimal but it'd be the honest way to do it that doesn't distort history. And if people want to "roll their own" this makes it a lot easier to do so.

[Julia]

When I think of Smile as a project with a musical vision, I think of a journey that flies around across the continent, back in time, in and out of side doors, wherever it wants. Lots of miniature worlds and sonic palettes. When I think of Smiley Smile, I think of that little house in the woods on the cover. It's much more a chamber piece, one of those albums glued together by a musical 'setting', like Party, or even Pet Sounds. That's a big part of the vibe shift to me beyond all the material practicalities of recording. It's adjusting focus from AMERICA (in big bold letters) to whatever's going on with the bugs in the garden. I think the extent Brian compartmentalised his music can be overstated by some but it definitely had its place in his head. He liked being a deliberate album craftsman.


If Joshilyn doesn't see this one I can answer. Her, John Brode, Craig Slowinski (who compiled the official Smile sessionography in 2011 among lots of others) and I are all working on a recording sessions sort of book in several volumes. Have been at it for years, will probably still be at it for years. It's only about Smile to the same degree that it's about everything else from the beginning, so it'll take a while to get there. We've just started talking through a plan to mitigate that by getting an appendices/companion of sorts online with information that'll be out of Vol 1's reach - setting sights on later this year slash 2026 for a revised Pet Sounds/Smile/Smiley Smile coverage in time for the 60th anniversary.

Agreed. Smiley is "putting you in a room with a band, preserving a moment in time" (even if there were overdubs it still has that homegrown vibe). SMiLE is "setting your mind on a journey across multiple layers of thought, a timeless catharsis."

That's awesome and I'd love to buy a copy. Im sure you'll post here when it's done!

With regard to Worms-into-Dada, ah well. It wouldve been an interesting anecdote but can't say I don't prefer to just listen to them as separate tracks anyway. This is why I've never wanted to swap Worms and Cabin's chorus either even though I've seen sources say they did in '66. Even if Brian toyed with the possibilities, they ultimately ended up where they belong to my ears.

[guitarfool2002]

I also still agree with 100% of what I wrote on page 11. When doing a historical analysis with the goal of creating at the very least a hypothesis, at most creating a definitive narrative to be entered into a historical record, all sources must be considered and weighed accordingly. And that includes first-person narratives and quotes from the time and events being researched. When it comes to the time period of May-June 1967, expanding a bit to May-October 1967, there are the facts of what happened, speculation into what could have happened, and in these cases audio and published proof of what did happen which anyone can hear for themselves with a little digging. To cherrypick some items over others, or to put personal opinion on the table or even into the record as historical fact to be argued is where a line should be drawn. In the specific cases of the changes in the music and overall direction of the band's music and working methods, it may be a case of simply playing whatever version of 1967 "Smile" you choose next to the released "Smiley Smile" and things like the Hawaii concerts, and let people decide with their ears what was going on when they hear the differences between those recordings.

Regarding BWPS, I've agreed with Rab's comments on this in the past and still do. If both original creators and collaborators were not involved directly in "finishing" the work, it would be a totally different case. But both Brian and Van Dyke were involved, and effectively signed the work as a finished piece. Some may try to (erroneously) peg Darian's involvement as more than what it really was, even though Darian himself described his role in the process as a "musical scribe" for the two original creators. And he had the technology available at the time via a laptop and digital files to make moves in the recorded audio on the fly, placing one snippet in a specific sequence and then immediately be able change it to something else, in effect auditioning different sequences and musical flows within the piece to hear the results immediately. This was technology that didn't exist in 1967, and took literally hours of splicing and cutting magnetic tape out of the old work process to allow immediate changes to be heard and tried. To suggest anything happened beyond Darian's self-described role as a "scribe" for the two creators as a way to delegitimize BWPS and suggest Brian and Van were not the main creators for the BWPS project ignores what actually happened. And when "new" connecting material was added to create a smoother, more symphonic musical flow for the movements, it was done by the same writers who worked on the music in 1966-67...and it became a finished work in movements both on stage and on a recording. I guess it could be called arguing semantics to get into the weeds of discussing or arguing about the legitimacy or status of BWPS, but it's not like people outside of the two composers who started the work in 1966 had a hand in "finishing" it by actually composing music for it which wasn't there originally.

[mike s]

I still think The Elements was a four part suite that was never finished.

We've got a fairly good idea of what might have been included - its been discussed many times - but all those bits may have been thrown out and replaced.

I don't think Brian left it because he couldn't finish it - he went on to Smiley which has some very elaborate work on it.

[Dan Lega]

I haven't read the whole last page of this thread, but I had to get out these thoughts in my head while they are still there!

I think Julia suggested that at some point Brian may have begun not like Van Dyke's lyrics as much as he seemingly did at first.

I still believe Brian loved those lyrics completely.  And let's not forget that in David Leaf's new book Van Dyke says he felt physically threatened at a point in his time writing lyrics for SMiLE.  That's a pretty strong statement!  No wonder he left!

So I still maintain that Brian loved Van Dyke's lyrics without hesitation.  Just go back and reread Brian's thoughts on what the lyrics to "Surfs Up" mean!  And if you think he's just parroting Van Dyke, well, yeah, you may be right.  But, then again, you might not be!  Quoting from Van Dyke's statement after Brian's death, Van Dyke says something very different about the song.  Van Dyke writes... "We came up with Surf’s Up in one night. We talked about how classical music had died and was being replaced by something else, and there were things to be discovered. I sat there with Brian as we were reinventing the song form."  Then he later writes... "The lyrics are inadvertently about a man who attends a concert and has an epiphany."  SO... does Van Dyke think the song is more about a man going to a classical concert but having an epiphany in seeing that modern pop music is just as creative and compelling as classical music was in its time?  I never thought of this, of course, but I like it!  Perhaps I don't like it better than Brian's description of a seemingly end-of-the-world scenario (that has a happy ending,) but it still resonates!


And the info about "Worms" and "Dada", which I either didn't read, or unfortunately glossed over, about Brian changing "Worms" by taking out the eventual "H&V" chorus and replacing it with "Dada" is AMAZING!  I remember some of my earliest thoughts about why SMiLE disintegrated were that Brian was having trouble because he didn't want to repeat himself.  I don't think he was that far ahead in his thinking yet in having the same musical themes show up in different songs on the same album.  So when the "Worms" chorus went into "H&V", what was he going to do about "Worms?"  If he couldn't repeat himself he's going to try out other musical ideas to fit in as the chorus!  In my head I can hear the two musical concepts meshing together well.  It certainly could have worked.  Now he just needed lyrics, or perhaps, new lyrics, for "Dada" as a part of "Worms."  But, was Van Dyke out of the picture at that time?  Did this switching of chorus in "Worms" come as Brian was putting its original chorus into "H&V?"  This is really a fascinating bit of info!


Love and merci,
Dan Lega


PS -- OKAY, now I did FINISH reading the whole page.  So the swapping of choruses was wrong.  So my original thoughts about Brian not wanting to repeat himself no longer have a bit of evidence to support them.  That's fine.  As I said, it was an early idea and I hadn't thought of it much anymore anyway!  Could be true, and definitely could not be true.

PPS -- Julia, just wanted you to know I agree with a lot of things you've been saying!  AND... I'm also grateful to all the others who have given excellent reasons for their different takes on things!  It's really great to see different sides argued so reasonably!

PPPS -- Mike, I also still like the idea of an Elements Suite that is 4 separate tracks, each about a minute long.  And I did that on my SMiLE mix way back when.  I went in the order of Earth, Air, Fire, Water; using Fall Breaks And Back To Winter, Our Prayer, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, and Water Chant (from Cool, Cool, Water.)  Sounds GREAT to me!!!  The most controversial bit to SMiLE fans is using "Our Prayer."  But to me it works perfectly.  The air around us stretches far up into the "heavens," and to me its ethereal quality certainly encapsulates the meaning of "air."  But "Our Prayer" is supposed to be the opener, according to Brian, you say.  Well, I can't argue that.  But I can argue that it works great in a 4 minute, 4 movement Elements Suite, and.... you could easily use "Well, You're Welcome" as an opener, can't you?

PPPPS -- I'm going to have to go back and re-read page eleven, it seems!!!

[guitarfool2002]

When Brian was asked who was his favorite collaborator - correct me if I'm wrong - wasn't his answer always or almost always Van Dyke Parks?

Trying to say or suggest Brian did not like Van Dyke's lyrics is revisionist history bordering on complete nonsense, in my opinion. If anyone didn't like Van Dyke's lyrics, it was other members of The Beach Boys. Brian did love Van's lyrics, and said so.

[Dan Lega]

When Brian was asked who was his favorite collaborator - correct me if I'm wrong - wasn't his answer always or almost always Van Dyke Parks?

Trying to say or suggest Brian did not like Van Dyke's lyrics is revisionist history bordering on complete nonsense, in my opinion. If anyone didn't like Van Dyke's lyrics, it was other members of The Beach Boys. Brian did love Van's lyrics, and said so.

Yes, Brian always said Van Dyke was his favorite collaborator!  He also gave Van Dyke 50% of the writing credits, whereas he always gave everyone else, including Mike Love and Tony Asher, 25%.  (This is a fact I kept mentioning on the other board, and the newbies didn't believe me.  And the old guard who did know never once said, yep, that was true.  Instead they kept their mouths shut and I had to argue that I didn't just make it up, and that the newbies should believe it because if it wasn't true the old guard would have jumped down my throat for spouting lies!)