My Last (?) Crack at the SMiLE Jigsaw

[Julia]

Here we go, the big one...

Im just gonna go page by page and point out anything in particular that catches my interest. A lot of the most important quotes that get passed around like trading cards to support arguments on here "originate" from LLVS but at this point you've seen me comment on them as they came up in other sources. Also, I've written responses to Vosse's Fusion, Anderle's Crawdaddy, Siegel's Cheetah and Vosse's TeenSet articles before (as "The 4 Gospels of SMiLE") along with Nick Kent's "The Last Beach Boys Movie" so while these are seminal pieces on the band, they won't get a lot of attention in this essay.

1. Look Listen Vibrate SMiLE

On page 21, the ad that Derek Taylor writes about Brian isn't particularly flattering. He's compared unfavorably to George Martin, more temperamental and hard to be around. The Beatles are said to have stripped each arrangement down to its essentials in comparison to someone like Brian's more Wall of Sound approach. This will be the first in support of another controversial theory of mine--I think Taylor may've been overrated as press agent and arguably did more harm than good. The "Brian is a genius" campaign was a double edged sword, as was inviting so many press people to watch the sessions (though Anderle was equally responsible for bringing his "hip" friends around) and it's clear by the end there wasn't much love lost between Taylor and Brian considering what VDP accused Derek of and what Derek has said of Brian when off the payroll. I think Derek Taylor is an unspoken source of tension in the scene.  

Page 29, Dennis says "there'll be things that make people laugh" on SMiLE. Maybe a little obvious but it's a source beyond Brian confirming the point was to get people to laugh at times. You know what I'm going to say about this, I'm sure, but I'll spell it out anyway--I see this as more proof of Psychedelic Sound comedy bit highlights between tracks. Not too many, just maybe 2-3 per side including the Veggie Fight, George Fell & Heroes "you're under arrest/this one's for you, punk!"

On Page 30, the article "Meanwhile...What's Brian Doing Back at Base?" is dated mid-November (18th) of 66, I checked with sources outside the book by googling the title. Brian says he's working on the new single, H&V. If we take all this at face value, it means work on the single, or knowledge there must be a single (and according to Anderle, Heroes was selected "because it was the closest to being done") started an entire month earlier than when I'd always assumed. (I checked and Brian had worked on the song last around Oct 27th and before that on the 20th--that's a plausible time when the article would've been written, right?) This piece has a lot of the most important contemporary quotes, "GV, Heroes and ten other tracks" / "lots of humor--some musical and some spoken--there won't be any spoken word tracks but somebody might say something between the verses." If we were to take the best pieces from inside and outside LLVS to make a more concise "contemporary articles collection" for easy reference, I propose this make the cut somewhere in the top 10.

As a general observation so far, I notice a lot is made in these snippets about the group not quite recreating the same sound live "but making up for it with their voices" (or words to that effect). It's a common theme that does illustrate this must surely have weighed on at least some of the BBs minds--between the six of them plus pressman Derek Taylor et al, someone must surely have been reading the trades.  

Page 45, Published in October, Brian doesn't consider himself to have written a hymn yet--despite Prayer being done a month earlier. This is probably my favorite individual page/article thus far. He wants to write "a symphony for drums" -- the new Earth element? (Or something else, or just a put-on passing thought to amuse the reporter.) He wants "free form" lyrics so they don't have to worry about rhyme.

Page 50, when listing songs they include "a suite called Elements" but list WC and VT separately. They also misspell Veggies ("Vege-tables") and add a dash to the middle of CE ("Cabin-Essence") so take the word "suite" as you will. The BB are said to have won "more awards than any other American group in the history of pop music" and then lists them--far more than just #1 pop group in NME. (Which itself must have been a great feat since multiple articles so far in the collection focus on that; I repeat, their position on that NME list was worth whole articles in other publications.) Tell me again SMiLE would've flopped. Some people don't seem to understand, sales of a thing isn't solely, or even primarily, driven by its own quality, but by the perceived quality of previous releases and/or media hype. So, even if we accept the (in my opinion, flawed) premise that people in 1967 wouldn't have liked SMiLE, that it was too weird even for acid-induced hippies... it stands to reason the anticipation from Pet Sounds and these many awards would've been enough to give it a strong initial showing on the charts, and under no realistic circumstances would it have failed to at least crack the top 10. (As PS did even without all this press speculation, industry buzz and Capitol ad campaign--SMiLE had so much more going for it out the starting gate, is what I'm saying.) This talking point needs to die.

The Vosse TeenSet article begins on page 52 and ends on page 57. This is undeniably the best account of the SMiLE sessions while they were still going on (his own Fusion article as well as Anderle's Crawdaddy interview and Siegel's GSHG were all written/released 6-to-24 months later, still "vintage" in my book but not strictly speaking "contemporaneous"). Even against those juggernauts of industry journalism, it's probably my #1 favorite article on the subject, for sharing the "little things" that would've been forgotten otherwise, that needed such a recency bias to be included against the grander (and exaggerated) narratives like: "the studio burned down/VDP wrote Heroes on the spot/Dennis' humiliation gave Surf's Up its name" and other postmortem myth-making.

^I love how Vosse describes and therefore legitimizes some of the otherwise "lesser" sessions, providing an invaluable insight into these tragically overlooked moments that I strongly believe were more important than some fans want to give credit for. Like with Taxi Cabber, Brian is said to have directed takes rather than recording the man without his knowledge, indicating an active plan for the track as opposed to "hur hur stoned improv recording because Brian was wacky!" the way a lot of people want to frame it. The Undersea Chant was clearly the start of Water Chant and CCW ("this is an interesting direction. When the guys get back we'll try something similar"), despite any bad faith arguments to the contrary. Vosse describes what sounds like it might be the "dogs chewing on stuff" recording mentioned in Badman or ball and mitt (as Siegel throwing a ball for the dogs). Then we get mentions of Workshop, the Wind Chimes tag (admittedly no vocals are described here, despite what I'd remembered--guess I was wrong on that), plus George Fell and the Veggie Fight. Vosse gives all these anecdotes equal weight as when discussing the Heroes sessions or OMP in a minor key--it's all SMiLE to him, no "this was the real music and hur hur these parts were just Brian stoned and goofing off for a separate humor album!" Brian is described as very happy with GFIHFH and the Nov 4 vocal watery demo--all these wacky asides are presented as valid methods of his creative process, producing equally important pieces for the album. The Veggies game of pool with Hal using celery to hit tomatoes, which I thought the WIBN autobio made up, is in here too. Also, thanks to this article we know the Arab tent was oval shaped.

^Looking at this article again, the one thing that stands out most to me now is a very rare mention of Paul Jay Robbins, where Brian wants to film a "16mm" movie of chickens with tennis shoes at his house for Barnyard--it sounds like Brian imagined Paul would film it, in fact. So is that what PJR was around for? Did he have film experience? Was this ever put to tape, or just another passing thought that Brian quickly forgot about, like the cutlery symphony and all-night telescope store? I imagine it doesn't exist, but wouldn't it be funny if this guy PJR, the quiet Posse member, had filmed this goofy thing for Brian and maybe the tape's been in his family attic all this time but he just never got interviewed, never bothered to make himself known, wasn't popular enough with the other Posse members to get invited to their get-togethers (where things like Williams' book's conversations are recorded and TSS essays written) yet he had an important piece of SMiLE lore all this time? It's doubtful but not impossible that guy at least had stories to tell once upon a time, now lost to history. I wish someone had sought him out back in the day...

The interview on page 66 is pretty eye-opening if you read between the lines. It feels like there was an undercurrent of Mike overcompensating his importance when a reporter was around, making himself an intrinsic part of the dialogue even if it meant he usurped the reporter's role to ask Brian questions. Also, a nameless engineer interrupts the interview by playing back the tape they'd just cut and Brian yells at him, though Mike tries to smooth over any awkwardness with the actual reporter witnessing such strife. It sounds like it was a weird uncomfortable time and the interviewer did their best to play it off as funny "oh those wacky BBs" but knowing what we know now it feels like a microcosm of Brian and Mike's flaws on display. I may be reading too much into it.

On page 68 VDP (presumably in a then-contemporary interview with Priore?) describes being fired by Mike Love. On the next page, he emphasizes he worked FOR Brian, not with: "HE WAS IT." Van has always emphasized that SMiLE was Brian's vision first and foremost, they were not equal collaborators so much as he was subordinate to Brian's artistic inclinations. (Despite some of my theories that he pushed the Americana angle and Anderle's comments implying a more co-producer/arranger relationship.)

On page 75 Brian says Lets Go Away for Awhile was meant to have vocals originally--so that seems a confirmation. (I was starting to doubt that talking point since Asher denied writing lyrics for it and I began to feel as though the only source was self-referencing hearsay.) This is also the first Ive seen of Brian in a vintage source admitting the group isn't perceived as cool. He plays it off but the fact that he even brings it up shows it must have weighed on him in some way. I think, and it seems a fairly uncontroversial opinion, that SMiLE was Brian deliberately trying to be cool. (Not that this implies insincerity of the material, but he definitely wanted hip approval, hence Derek Taylor and VDP with their Beatles and Byrds cred, plus using Anderle who has been described as the hippest guy in LA with tons of high profile friends.)

The Derek Taylor ad on pages 76 thru 78 doesn't really impress me either. I think something like Vosse's TeenSet piece feel more like an ad than Taylor's kinda tongue in cheek, sometimes backhanded, sorta meandering prose. I get the distinct impression reading Taylor's articles so far that he thinks he's better than this gig and kind of phoning it in, taking as many little pot-shots as he can get away with. I wouldn't be interested in giving the band a chance just reading his work, while the two Vosse articles and Siegel's make me wish I could sell my soul, just to have been a witness of the awesome scene they describe. The best advertisement for SMiLE now is in the myth that Siegel, Vosse and Anderle's accounts have created.

Reading the Priore article that comes next (page 99) is just so exhausting. This guy, I guess I probably hate what I see in myself but he'll tease a revelation and then goes off on an aside and seemingly never gets back around to the point. Like in that earcandy interview I posted where he's asked about the secret unrecorded conversation where Brian revealed that his (Priore's) SMiLE mix is somehow exactly was always intended in '66, and rather than just give a direct answer, he feels the need to remind us in 5+ paragraphs about what music was cool in the mid-sixties instead. Here we were supposed to learn the secret that inspired the Americana suite only to be reminded for the millionth time that America wasn't cool in the late '60s because of Vietnam. Or he'll hint at the pictorial secrets of SMiLE only to segue into a rambling paragraph about how sounds can shatter glass, the walls of Jericho and his anecdotal experience at a Pink Floyd concert. This guy, agree with his SMiLE theories or not, needs an editor. (Perhaps I could use one too, I admit I can be rambly, but I'm not selling books nor claiming my mix was blessed with Brian's approval am I?)

^This same Priore article is where he goes into the infamous Americana/Elements structure I've come to be the chief antagonist of. Even putting aside all the other arguments that I've described ad nauseum, I disagree with Priore's "evidence" that the Americana songs are "more lyrical" while the Elements are "more pictorial." I was thinking about this the other day and was trying to find a way to work it into an essay--even putting aside thematic, lyrical or instrumental considerations, I think there's a clear division in pictoral/bisociative subject matter within SMiLE. What we call the Americana songs (the core being: Heroes/Worms/CE and arguably MOLC) are about putting the listener in a specific place and time in US history. Heroes could be about nothing except life in an old West gunslinger saloon, Worms is about Plymouth to Hawaii and how we overthrow the rightful native societies in each, CE the railroads, Cow the Chicago fire. Without even any lyrics (though they do help) you can feel the locations in the arrangements. Meanwhile the rest (Wonderful/Look/Child/Surf/WC/GV and even VT despite my preference for it as a "Mid-West Breadbasket" Americana track) focus on bringing inanimate objects to life musically. A music box (and the feminine innocence that implies), an ice cream truck (speculative but what else does that track make YOU think of?), a baby crying, jewelry at the opera, chimes, physical attraction around a hot chick and vegetables--the exact location in space and time is irrelevant here, these are common objects one interacts with anywhere. To me, this is another clear separation between the songs, and I'm not reaching in service of a pet theory, because Veggies in the second classification actually goes against my preferred placement for that song with the American Gothic suite. (OMP is also something of an odd one out here and viewing SMiLE through this lens, I think it's a lesser inclusion than something like Look, which I would use to take its place were it up to me. OMP's arrangement is not particularly pictorial except the fade.) It's hard to comment on which is "more lyrical" or packed with allusions since most of the unfinished songs are in the non-Americana group--but Surf's Up has at least two direct literary references which is as much as any other and it along with Wonderful are perhaps the most "dense" oblique lyrics in the whole canon.

^Beyond that, Priore's article is just hype ("the Beatles were trying to capture a moment...Brian was trying to capture a piece of eternity!" Uhh, sure whatever that means, Dom.) I do admire his enthusiasm I just hate his methodology. Say what you will about me or my ideas--I must surely come off as a pompous exhaustively worded petty person and I make no excuses for it--but I've never deliberately lied to push a perspective. Never. That's where I draw the line and I find those who do inexcusable.

Who knows if it's true or not, but page 130's mini-history gives March 2 as the date VDP leaves, then March 31 as his brief return until April 14.

I love how, on page 131, most of one of the articles is covered up by two additional snippets overlapping it diagonally. Like, the whole "clipped out scrapbook" presentation is cute--same as the Tobelman site's "1990s Web 1.0...for better and worse" aesthetic, but it's not particularly user-friendly much of the time. I find myself wanting a table of contents, an index, a chronological (or subject based) order...anything to make following along more simple and sensible. Half the type is too small to read, and some articles like this we just don't get to see in full because Domenic the Keeper of the Scrolls didn't feel they were important. (Perhaps they say things he'd rather keep hidden but he wants the credit of including them, I don't know but wouldn't put any dirty tricks passed the guy at this point.) I resent that both of these sources that seemingly defined SMiLE discourse in the early days, are slap-dash, ad-hoc, schizophrenic assemblies--perhaps you could say they work as a performance piece, mimicking the scatter-brained nature of '66-'67 Brian and his fragmentary tapes, but it's a lot less cute when you're trying to suss out real info in a timely fashion. I'm predisposed to dunk on Priore at this point, but I don't think making the articles physically legible is asking too much here--this just provides a perfect excuse to bring up my problems with the book as a whole, revisiting it without the rose-tinted glasses of my earlier fandom.

On a similar note, I dislike the way sheet music for part of Cabin Essence is provided but for no other song. I guess that's all he had access to but it's frustrating to be teased with something I've genuinely wanted to find only to get the rug pulled out. Someone who can determine what notes are played by what instruments would be doing the world a great service if they wrote out sheet music for all the SMiLE "feels." I know BWPS has a sheetmusic book for sale and I've even referenced a certain site that has some in an interactive digital format, but they're far from complete. I'd do it myself at this point, but it's beyond my abilities.

On page 133, we get some interesting snippets of info--Brian is said to be "worried" about one track in particular, The Elements (here described as "Earth, Air, Fire, Water--coincidentally how it happened on BWPS). Bruce admits he doesn't get the lyrics either, but diplomatically pivots to "it's more concerned with the harmonies."

The next Derek Taylor article is more of the same from him--kinda subtly making fun of the group it seems. I think the guy was put in a bad spot, having to hype up the band with no product to speak of, but if I saw this, with paragraph after paragraph of excuses and "well, there was no official deadline so they can take as long as they want" I know I'd think "hmm...sounds like apologism to me." I really think Vosse and Siegel, whether they meant to or not, had the right idea for advertising this thing by just describing how much fun the sessions could be and how unconventional Brian's methods were. Vosse should've been the press agent--he had a knack for translating his admiration and excitement to good copy. Taylor has a tinge of British condescension and fake enthusiasm that I can smell a mile away. (He describes Bruce as "still kind to his mother" which feels like calling him a momma's boy--that's a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. You couldn't say ANYTHING else about the guy but that, really?) That said, we do get one nice description of the Posse and their women fooling around in the tent ("...sometimes spray each other with chocolate cream and frosting from aerosol cans,") as well as the planned slide going down to the bed (the mattress, apparently, was to be huge and circular). I recall Vosse saying in Fusion this was determined to be impossible to build in any kind of practical manner, but Taylor here says they lost trust in the builder when he sold them grass seeds with weeds in it. Huh.

Mike talks about the planned future for the band on page 140 which includes Brian AND Dennis AND Bruce (?!) producing their own records for BRI "Carl does the organizational part and I'm the business guy." Mike claims Brian brought the tapes of H&V to the radio DJs himself. With regard to SMiLE's transition to Smiley, he says "Brian played the tapes again a few times and found it necessary to skip some songs," no elaboration given on why. This is the kind of detail I wish someone would've brought up to Mike over the years and held his feet to the fire on. When did this happen--pre or post the Taylor announcement, in Spring '67 or even earlier like March? Why did Brian feel this way--was he axing the more VDP-influenced songs, the ones most unfinished and/or with the more "objectionable" lyrics? Was it about trashing the songs that wouldn't sound as good in the stripped down Smiley aesthetic and/or live on stage? I'm really curious but unfortunately the window to get answers on this has long since been closed.

Page 141: We get what appears to be an original lyric sheet for "Teeter Totter Love" but frustratingly, nothing for the two lost Jasper Dailey songs. Those must've been afterthoughts (of the afterthought) even then. It seems like nobody ever cared about them.

Page 144: I had never even thought of it before--call me sexist or small-minded--but yeah, why HASN'T anyone asked Marilyn what SMiLE was back in the day? Well, apparently they did here in this article and she doesn't know anything. Never had any late-night conversations with her husband in bed back when it was going on, never asked him over breakfast throughout the next ten years...or if she did, he wouldn't even tell her. Ah well. My assumption that she was kept out of the creative loop has been justified retroactively I guess.  

On page 145, the author of the essay (Brad Elliot) doesn't/didn't know what he was talking about, saying Worms was finished. I could maybe understand thinking an "instrumental" like I Ran is finished if that's all you heard was boots with no master sessionography or knowledge of the lost vocal tape, but even listening to the boots of Worms, how can a song be half instrumental and half chorus vocals? The BBs weren't that avant garde, not even in the SMiLE sessions. The rest of his diagnosis is similarly flawed, which I don't hold against him because info was sparse when this was written, but it just goes to show how SMiLE-archeologists back then were working with a very flawed perspective and their conclusions are so outdated and ill-founded they shouldn't keep dominating the rhetoric around this album as they seem to do today. Like, it's kinda cute to look back and say "aww, they thought CIFOTM was a one-minute cut" and "haha, they thought IWBA was a working title for IIGS instead of its own song" (I know Workshop was labelled "Friday Night (IIGS)" though that's not the same thing,) but this has no use as a source for what SMiLE or its tracks were going to be now, in 2025. (This document is even older to us than the SMiLE recording dates to it when first written!)

In my recent thread about SMiLE sessions not included in the boxset http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,28662.0.html we were told the 11-8 date for SU was "a mistake in Capitol's files" but here on page 153 of the book I'm looking at a session worksheet with that date, 2:20 track time, "1st movement" from 2pm to 5pm, overtime till 6pm, with Chuck Britz and Diane Rovell's signatures on it. So now I'm skeptical of that claim. And this is presumably where the speculation for a second movement derives from, I suppose (I'd heard it was because one session was labelled "first movement" implying a second). If this was a mistake it was a helluva mistake that's caused a lot of people a lot of headache, is all I'm saying. If there really was a session here it's another missing piece.

On page 154, this is the first I've seen where Steven Desper recorded water sounds instead of (or in addition to?) Michael Vosse. Same page, I really wish we could hear the Oct 2:25 minute Heroes and Villains. I wonder if it wouldn't have just been a nice little cowboy song that's tight and perfectly fine and should've just been left alone so that all the work trying to make it the next GV could've been better spent on literally anything else.

Page 155, more nonsense about Tones and Holidays being related, hence the final Tones session might've been for The Elements...Veggies first session was April 4 (uhh, the Oct demo says hi), McCartney played bass at a Veggie session, etc. I'd like to see a new collection of sources that culls these useless outdated sources, which now only serve to justify false info, and make a tighter scrapbook of only the high level articles which give the truth.

I wish we had a complete, ORGANIZED list of the session work sheets anywhere. I always see a few posted here and there in the various books like this one and TSS but it's always very haphazard which are included and in what order. I want a companion piece to AGD's (and WillJC's when it's done) complete sessionography where every individual session is accompanied by one of these worksheets, pictures of the tape box, and a link/reference to the music contained therein (IE, "what was recorded on this day can be found on TSS Disc 3 track 12 as well as a longer take on these boots..."). Something like that would be of far more interest to me nowadays than these annoying essays of Priore and pals telling us when they first heard SMiLE or speculating on how complete the tracks are and getting a bunch of stuff wrong. I can't speak for others but I'm just done with the myth-making, the fan circle-jerking and baseless speculation ("SMiLE is Brian's second acid trip!")--I just want the bare facts but it's so hard to get them even today. Everything is buried in a "too cute" presentation and conjecture-laden prose that was part of the charm back in the day but now feels an impediment to real scholarship.

"The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music" by Tom Nolan is another particularly great article that isn't frequently talked about in our circles. There's a lot of good quotes, a fly on the wall account of a typical SMiLE session, plus comparisons to Frank Zappa's then new first album (so I'm not alone to compare the two producers!). But this is a weird one for several reasons. Why is the album still being referred to as Dumb Angel here in Nov 66 when the consensus of almost every other source is that the name change happened in September or October? Was it really not until November that the album was re-christened SMiLE, and if so was it the humorous Psychedelic Sounds skits (of Nov 4 and soon after with George Fell & Veggie Argument) that prompted the title shift? That'd make intuitive sense to me but... Also, Brian says he did two trips of LSD in this article...does that mean the all-important 3rd dose Tobelman obsesses over never happened or perhaps post-dates SMiLE entirely? Hutton speculates Brian had dropped acid during the GV sessions the previous summer and Tobelman speculates it was around the same time in Big Sur. Did either of these experience really happen, and if so were they actually the second trip rather than the third as I'd assumed, or is Brian misspeaking in this article? The world will never know. Another cool detail is apparently there was a Humble Harv party that Brian attended with Vosse in Feb '67. I'm surprised this event is never talked about in any of the SMiLE sources--must not have been that interesting.

On page 172, we get another source (however spotty, this reads like an ex post-facto fan theory) claiming Brian had no intention of cutting a single off SMiLE or even including GV, however the author uses this conjecture to argue for a "flowing suites" structure so...grain of salt. This also "confirms" something I'd speculated on, that the included booklet would've been a first for a pop act.

On page 180 we finally get an article by the elusive Paul J Robbins, unfortunately it isn't about SMiLE, just the Monterey Pop Festival.

Page 191, there's another reference to November as the time "Dumb Angel" became "SMiLE," from Derek Taylor whom you'd think would know. I'll have to review my notes on the other sources but I'm increasingly wondering if this isn't the truth and anything suggesting earlier is in error. (As I recall, other sources were vague and just mentioned "the fall" plus Holmes claimed he delivered the cover in October, so I'd assumed that was the latest possible date and perhaps even the impetus for the change itself.) The timeline of when the comedy skits come into play is almost too perfect, it would also explain even further why the project seemingly went into flux come late Nov thru January--Brian's overall conception of what the album should be shifted suddenly and radically between the more overt humor and needing to build the LP around a new single at Anderle's request. But it's definitely still an uncertain timeline either way.

Page 195, there's a claim that "someone stole a tape" of SMiLE music. I know VDP thought Taylor gave the Beatles a sneak peek and Brian thought (not without good reason) that his tapes had been accessed without his consent but is there any evidence one was outright stolen back during the SMiLE sessions themselves--besides the GV master going missing for a few days? (And WTF was up with that anyway?? Why doesn't that get more attention--even here I couldn't really find threads about it!)

Page 210 The book has veered into some adjacent articles about VDP's Song Cycle, which I'll admit I mostly skimmed. (I'm just not that interested in SC or VDP as a solo artist, sorry.) The transcribed conversation on this page between VDP and Anderle is pretty interesting as a rare insight into what it was like for the closest "disciples" after their former leader left them cold. There's a tinge of bitter disappointment from Anderle but still overall a sense of gratitude and well-wishes toward Brian from both men. The next page (211) we get what looks like a weird poem about or in the style of VDP from Paul J Robbins. I'd like to come back to this later and analyze it as a standalone work of art.

The Kurt von Meier piece starting on page 216 is a masterpiece in evading uncomfortable subjects--it doesn't even mention SMiLE proper and practically writes off the entire H&V saga as an unfortunate incident where Brian lost his way by working with an outside collaborator. By contrast, Smiley and WH are hailed as a return to form where the Boys came together again, not in service of any one man's ego. Gotta love that spin--in the pre-internet days, this kind of PR coverup must've been a lot more effective, and it's to men like Priore's credit they preserved the past so we could see how BS these anti-SMiLE narratives really were.

Page 220 begins the Anderle Crawdaddy piece, which I've also commentated on in the past. Might come back to this again later but I'm skipping it for now. On the bottom left of the same page, I kinda think that article about Sgt Pepper killing rock is funny in hindsight--I half agree. Sometimes I think there has to be a delineation between "the most important" in a medium and "the one you enjoy the most." For example, and this is coming from a huge Orson Welles fan who unironically watches Citizen Kane for fun sometimes--is it anyone's favorite movie, really? We can acknowledge it took all the disparate filmmaking techniques that had cropped up over the decades and put them all together in a thoughtful way that showed what visual storytelling could really do when applied to its fullest potential. Absolutely. But I prefer watching Vertigo or Godfather on any given day. Similarly, even if I were to acknowledge Sgt Pepper took rock to the next level (Im here and writing a virtual book about Brian, so I know he got there first with Pet Sounds and the SMiLE Era) it doesn't mean I don't still think Joseph Byrd, Frank Zappa, Arthur Lee and the Beatles themselves have made more enjoyable albums. Also, just because something did a new thing well, like Pepper's over-production or Marvel's "cinematic universe," doesn't mean it needs to be run into the ground--let things be.

Page 224's three fan essays are perfect encapsulations of the SMiLE myth. They're the best of their kind in the book. I love psychedelic and progressive rock, but I'll agree with the sentiment that a bunch of "ponderously dull" concept albums and melodramatic pretentious rock operas have left me cold. I'm all about side-long jam sessions like Sweet Smoke's Just a Poke if they're done well, or Cottonwoodhill by Brainticket, but for each of those there's a Tommy, Lifehouse and Mr Roboto that's so self-important and heavy-handed I just feel exhausted listening to them. (Kinda like musical theater, without the appealing visuals, impressive real life performances or good storytelling--all the negatives, none of the positives.)

[ASIDE:]I keep saying I'd love to see a rock opera where one side of the LP is carefree bouncy fun tracks, growing up when kids still played outside, then the next side is the minor keys and somber laments of adulthood's bittersweet realities. One a series of fantasy inspired, "first 65 episodes of Rugrats aesthetic" type lyrics, the other a painful set of confessions veiled in literary allusions or pictorial metaphors. A game of tag the kid-side played is now desperately reaching out for connection in a lonely world, the ode to fun colorful junk food commercials becomes the small joy of being able to afford your own groceries, and feeling like a conquering Roman hero parading the treasures of foreign lands in your chariot (shopping cart), to be combined in a lovingly home-cooked meal. Show me the profundity in the simple things--not everything needs to be the saddest story ever told or remind me of totalitarian dictatorships to be "deep." [/ASIDE]

On the very next page, I like Gene Sculatti's point that SMiLE is cool primarily because it's such a pure product of Brian's uniquely childlike personality. It isn't afraid to be kiddie or high-minded; it's literary but also saturday morning cartoons with a natural flow and purpose. It does all this and more, in a way that feels genuinely Brian rather than a put-on style (like Quentin Tarantino's "Im the 70s exploitation and lowbrow violence guy!" shtick that's started to feel self-conscious to me since Basterds, or Sgt Pepper's deliberate attempt to seem more advanced and thoughtful than it really is, etc). There's absolutely an attempt to push boundaries but it feels grounded in the hands of a man who knew so much about music composition he was confident which rules he could break. So humble is Brian that he never bragged about this accomplishment, if anything downplaying it at every opportunity, but subsequent albums following in its example (purposefully or not) as well as the more creative fanmixes have more than justified even the wildest conceptions of the material. The availability of the pieces at our disposal, combined with intuitive speculation that's plausible enough to fill in the gaps, sets it apart from other lost works, such as the missing plays of Euripedes, or junked footage of The Magnificent Ambersons, which are beyond our abilities to restore with any real claim to accuracy.

^Sculatti speaks of the "cinematic quality" to something like CCW, and this too is what makes SMiLE special--it's audio that transcends into the visual plane so well thanks to his pictorial MO--it's as visceral and universal a presentation as PS despite the more high-minded content. This is what Walt Disney's Fantasia should've been, original and unique American composers making music that people could paint to, on a Panavision screen no less, and let symphonies tell stories. (Imagine the music of SMiLE driving the dreamy narrative of a Yellow Submarine or Belladonna of Sadness esque psychedelic animated film, using Frank Holmes' artstyle as its inspiration? That's one of my dream movies--and it wouldn't even feel like a janky jukebox musical in the way YS or similar projects have, since the songs are so naturally interconnected and narrative.) SMiLE isn't trying WAY too hard to be edgy and thought-provoking the way The Wall, death metal or a lot of lesser prog rock concept albums are, it's honest and vulnerable and fun-loving, which is what makes it cooler than anything else in the medium.

By page 246, I noticed that every time I've seen the elements listed out here (that I can recall) it's been in the order: earth, air, fire and water, same as on BWPS. This obviously isn't hard proof but it begs the question if that was the unofficial order Brian threw out to reporters back in the day, and something he remembered in 2003. With Darian clearly disagreeing on AT LEAST ONE major decision of Brian's for the sequence (remember he said essentially: "[Brian] gets it right about 9/10s of the time and it sounds amazing" in the 2005 Priore book) I'm going to bet it was this, because it's pretty clearly a janky sequence at least with the "pseudo-elements" of VT/WC/MOLC/LtSD, but it seems plausible Brian recalled the order and wanted to keep it even without specially written music for the missing elements (just the leftovers after they "touched up the first two movements then added a third"). So it was a vintage idea performed somewhat haphazardly in a way that doesn't really honor what the original album would've been but ties in some "favorite son" theories of Priore & Leaf's so they write all their articles and liner notes telling us this was clearly the definitive plan all along, ie BWPS in a nutshell. Anyway, it's different than what Diane Rovell says in TSS or my preferred method of dealing with the Elements, but I think it's at least as likely and therefore worth pointing out.

^It's possible '66 Brian would've come up with a way to make this work--maybe Veggies with the argument leading into Smog talking about pollution making people want to kill each other over the Breathing chant getting more asthmatic as his monolog ramps up in intensity, then culminating in Fire before cooling down with the water-spliced Dada (Water Chant coming at the end though, not the beginning). This would be a more natural buildup of increasingly negative emotions then a climactic release and cool down (as Brian says on the PS tape "we've got to fight and then make up!"), as opposed to BWPS' clumsy "happy-calm-anxiety attack-laid back" emotional rollercoaster. I even wonder now if the Lifeboat tape wasn't originally an intended finale to the Elements last segment, with the lifeboat participants either continuing a silly argument to callback to the Veggie Fight (though yet unrecorded it could've been a twinkle in Brian's eye even then) or perhaps getting along and refusing to vote anyone out and therefore representing a positive conversation to balance the earlier negative argument. Does this make sense to anyone but me?

Page 250 re-confirms the "business called for a new single" moment as the crippling blow. Same article though says CE was originally part of "Who Ran the Iron Horse" when it's the other way around, as well as that VDP dropped out in Feb '66. (Not necessarily wrong, this date is fuzzy.)

I've read the Nick Kent article "The Last Beach Boys Movie" before so I'm not gonna comment on that again.

Priore isn't even consistent with his lies in his own published works. On page 270 he posts an article about his own book, where he is quoted saying SMiLE was "finished recording" in December 1966. The people who study the tapes for a living would be the first ones to tell you this is bullshit, that even "finished" songs were only completed years later, to say nothing of the obvious holes in Worms, Child Elements & SU among others. The SMiLE we know now is only an unfortunate patchwork of disparate takes and separate versions of songs frankensteined together. It's only a testament to how fantastic and interconnected the material still is that it works as well as it does even in this diminished state (or BWPS' similarly flawed condition).

Page 271 is cool to have, however semi-legible it is, just to see the entire SMiLE sessionography on one convenient page really puts it into perspective. (I'm not gonna go date by date and compare it to Bellagio--if it were a new book I might, but I don't think it matters much if this 40 year old tome got a few dates wrong at this point and others like WillJC & Joshilyn will or wont prove it accurate with their more in-depth scholarship than what I'm doing.)

Page 272 contains myths and their debunkings as published by "Record Collector" magazine, with Priore correcting the record of a previous SMiLE story they must have published. (Was that included earlier in the book? If so I missed it but seems to me he should've put it right before this piece if so.) In answer to the first myth (Brian "fried his brains on drugs") Priore rebuts that Mike is the one "incoherently babbling on" in an Our Prayer tape. I can't recall ever hearing this but I'm not the most thorough in my collection of bootlegs (believe it or not) so if anyone can confirm... Point #9, Priore claims that Desper has attested to a tape of the Elements "suite." Can anyone confirm, does Desper say this? Is it in the book and I've somehow missed it? Unless he's talking about just Fire alone, or the Nov 4 Psychedelic Sounds "fitness element" demos, this surely can't be real can it? The extensive TSS tape inventory doesn't mention anything of the sort, nor AGD nor any other source I've ever seen (which is practically everything at this point--another reason I've done this, to leave no significant stone unturned). Point #10, Priore acts like he's an authority on "Inspiration" but doesn't seem to realize it's a different name for some of the GV sessions. Point #13, I agree with him that George Fell/Talking Horns wouldn't have been track names on the LP proper, but I see no reason not to refer to that particular session recording as some kind of commonly identifiable name. For what it's worth, Priore seems to consider these types of tracks to be valid pieces of SMiLE here, comparing them to the Heroes "You're under arrest" as is my position. I agree with Point #16, the Capitol lawsuit and ensuing corporate-legalistic shenanigans are collectively the #1 reason SMiLE died, with the tape thefts a stupidly overlooked culprit as well. The GV tape going missing is shocking and almost completely justifies Brian's spiraling paranoia. Gary Usher is an unsung villain of this story, whose name has largely escaped condemnation thanks to Leaf & Co's obsession with demonizing Mike.

Page 276, is there anything in the mentioned Vigotone 66-page full-color booklet of period interviews that's significant and not included elsewhere like LLVS itself? Is it true that all SMiLE bootlegs came primarily from these 4 cited leaked tapes?

With regard to pages 283 and 284, I admit I never, until this moment, connected Surf's Up's opera imagery with the gilded age robber barons but that does make total sense. I remember my dad even watching that History Channel "Men Who Built America" show back in the day that talked about millionaires like Carnegie building their opera houses or libraries as public services to sort of justify their obscene wealth in their later years. That's a very cool revelation, so much so that some of the other "flaws" in this article ("iron horse" as the chorus to Heroes, etc) don't bother me. They make note of the same chord progressions at the end of SU matching with Prayer, further justification in my eyes for concluding SMiLE with prayer rather than starting it. (Although it would create a bookended "full circle" thing if you start with Prayer and Brian says it was the intro on tape, so I completely understand those who choose to do it that way too.) This also goes to show that the themes of Americana would not have been firmly relegated to separate groupings/sides--there's going to be some cross-over, some tracks that don't neatly/completely fit either "suite" no matter how you try to break them up. Heroes as a whole is like a male counterpart to the Wonderful story, as another example.

Page 289, I'll admit Priore's explanation for why Veggies and Chimes are listed separately from The Elements yet still part of "the suite" is interesting. He states that they were intended for singles, hence getting singled out for greater attention. It's not a ridiculous assertion and if he had greater reason to think at least WC was air and Dada was water beyond "there HAS to be an air/water...Brian wouldn't have just...not finished something on this unfinished album would he? No...the album was all done by December, remember? The final cancelled session was an album mixdown, dontcha know?" I'd by it. But he doesn't and besides there's no indication WC was even supposed to be a B-side until Smiley (Wonderful and Dada and even CIFOTM have a better claim as the potential b-sides to Heroes or Veggies) especially when there are essays in and outside the book confirming Brian originally wanted no additional singles until Anderle told him BRI needed one. So, it's not a terrible argument in a vacuum but the evidence doesn't bare it out--I still think he made up his mind already and is using arguments like this to justify his own preconceived answer.

Page 290, I just fundamentally disagree with the sensibilities of anyone who wants to listen to the Cantina H&V going straight into what Priore even knows is just 4 random disconnected "heroes and villains" chants one after the other in Part 2. If that's really what Part 2 was, if the people claiming to have heard a two-part 5~6 minute acetate aren't pulling our legs or hearing some last minute alt-arrangement by Brian of which no paperwork describes, I think the two-part Heroes would've been a dud. In any boot or mix I've heard that crosses the ~5:30 barrier, I start to get bored, because it means throwing in random chants or alt-segues at the wall and the song comes apart under its own weight. Even when I tried to include a "H&V (Reprise)" on my Aquarian SMiLE mix, I separated the two so that they book-ended the entire Americana suite. But yeah, this much Heroes in one sustained bloc of music is too much for me and I suspect a lot of other people; without new verses from VDP and linking music that simply doesn't exist to tie the more left-field sections together, there's not enough raw material to make a "Moulton mix" of Heroes. This is why I've never been particularly interested in the "was there a two-sided Heroes single" or "what was part 2??" nor will I be until we ever find a lost Heroes tape with more "meat" to work with.

Concluding Thoughts...

It's funny, I was told my theories on SMiLE were ridiculous back in the day and I'd see reason if only I read this book. I said "hey man, I'm in college and can't really commit to reading this whole book in a timely manner for the time being, can you tell me what're the most important articles to start with? Or what pages/sources in the book specifically prove me wrong?" I was told "read the Vosse Fusion article" and then I find out, lo and behold, it's not even in the book. Arguably the single best article on SMiLE (GSHG has some tall tales and predated the breakup so it's incomplete by comparison), the one this guy said was essential...it's not even here. (My version goes just past 280 pages). So that guy I was arguing with didn't even read his own book, or couldn't remember, he just wanted to gatekeep me and no one else stood up for me and called him out on it. And nothing in Vosse's Fusion article nor LLVS disproves my theories either, except some of Priore's own baseless conjecture once again passed off as fact. (It'd be one thing if any of these vintage articles had independently claimed the things he says but they don't--Priore just pulled sh*t out of his ass because it's how he wanted things to be, then lied about a secret conversation with Brian to justify it.) I know I must sound petty talking about this, but I don't care--I want the record to be known here once and for all, there's nothing in LLVS that goes into any kind of sequence one way or the other to back up Priore's claims. It's mostly puff pieces designed to sell the then-imminent product, then circle-jerking lamentations on the album that never was for the umpteenth time, rehashing the "it broke Brian" myth and reminding us how awesome GV and PS were. I'm not saying these articles aren't important historical documents but there's little revelatory info on SMiLE's structure, composition, inspiration...anything I came here to learn.

I have to say, after all the hype I was pretty disappointed with this book--and not just because my opinion on Priore's influence in the SMiLE conversation has been more con than pro. But while still a great "time capsule" my thought upon reaching the end was "I've never seen someone use so many words to tell me (almost) nothing." A few scattered nuggets of info aside, mostly front-loaded (once you start getting into the articles about SMiLE's death instead of its imminent release, the book gets way less interesting) it's just the same basic anecdotes you've heard a million times ad nauseum. It'd not just because I've read almost every "official" word that's been printed about SMiLE, though that certainly doesn't help, but even within its own binding the info becomes repetitive. There's only so many ways to say "this would've been the best album ever / Brian was troubled and business got in the way / the songs included xx, yy, zz..." without thinking "yes, and..?" But maybe that's just me. I skimmed the ex post facto fan essays with a few exceptions so maybe somebody could correct me if I'm wrong but at least one or two of them I think are blatantly repeated in different spots in the book.

Overall though, while a great resource and invaluable salvaging of most (the vast majority?) of the secondary sources, I think the definitive "SMiLE archaeology" collection has yet to be made. One that preserves the original articles completely intact, presents them by date or subject matter, maybe includes different "highlighter colors" to indicate particularly revelatory info (gold) and/or false/out of date info (light green). No cutsie overlapping columns to emphasize the "scrapbook aesthetic" at the expense of legibility. Including an index and table of contents are essential. Perhaps one or a series of commentaries on the articles as I've been doing, giving background into the authors/periodicals or balancing the weight of conflicting info against each other.

[ASIDE:] I'm now wondering if the horns in SU aren't first the pep-rally of a parade or patriotic standard, malevolently calling the narrator to arms in service of a misguided cause, when played over "handsome man and baton." Then these similar but distinct horn parts in the second verse now symbolize laughing (hence the whole "laughing horns" exercise at the Geroge Fell session) children calling him to action for the true, noble cause, just as he is awoken to "a song dissolved in the dawn" (the children's song itself). Then my speculated "moaning horn" part from "Dove nested towers..." to "broken man too tough to cry," would be the inner conflict between the two working itself out in the Speaker's conscience as he decides which side to choose. He realizes his calling is to the genuinely expressed music of children/the innocent not the overly dressed-up, false-sentiment, commercialized robber baron funded product he's been forced to churn out (and used to manipulate us into submission). This is when the song genuinely would break down to just the Speaker/Brian and piano, before the horns come back in that wailing crescendo to express what music truly is--an artist crying out their vulnerable passions, lessons and worries to the world, letting their soul cry out so to speak. Perhaps then, as a little joke to ideally make the listener laugh and therefore (according to Brian's views) become more open to having a spiritual revelation, we'd get the talking horns, a snippet of "George Fell" conversation, as an unlisted epilogue of sorts.

In short, the horns' bisociative counterpart is the narrator's conscience or inner conflict expressed in four distinct sounds representing his emotional catharsis in as many steps. (With a possible tongue-in-cheek spoken word about it after, so really 5 sounds.) That's an unspoken aspect of its brilliance and part of why we NEED to move past "what are the other elements" and get on to looking at SMiLE in different contexts--like using Koestler's book or the I Ching as a lens! [/ASIDE]

[Julia]

Stating the obvious, this just leaves me with the BWPS concert booklet, David Leaf's new book, then waiting on my library back-order of Preiss and trying to find a copy of the Stebbins book wherever I can (those were the only two major published works I couldn't find online or in pdf format somehow). If I've missed anything substantial, printed or online or podcast, let me know and I'll check it out especially if it has contradicting info to the established lore. Im also going to at least skim through the old Smile Shop essays in my collection and compare/contrast the songs by their instrumental arrangements.

Once all that's done, or in the process, Im going to release a free "book" (really 3 or 4 collections of essays) which include my "deep dive" of all the sources here, my "thesis" on SMiLE as currently hosted on my blog, my newly compiled archive of all the significant SMiLE discussions from this site (and a few others I saw fit to save), plus the aforementioned Smile Shop remnants. This will be "the SMiLE BiBLE" and it will soon be accompanied by at least some of the fanmixes I've conceptualized here and elsewhere the last few months. Basically every permutation of songs Ive been inspired to try out since I rediscovered the topic recently. I'm thinking of calling this collection of fanmixes "SMiLE: 60 years, 7 archangels" since I've named each individual sequence after a major angel of the Judeo-Christian Bible or apocrypha. So that's S:67 for its initial and the year it would've come out. There will be original cover art for every individual mix, whether it gets "released" or not as an audio file.

This will collectively be my own final word on the subject (what else is there to say) and I will happily await someone else as obsessed as I to either confirm or disprove my theories based on their own opinion on the breadth of sources and musical intuition. Until that happens, I'll rest assured in knowing that Im one of the most well-read people on the subject who's probably put forth the most exhaustively researched theories. I don't do this to presume to have the final word or intimidate others from putting forth their own theories without reading a dozen sources...I just desperately think the topic is overdue for a fresh take and want to move the conversation away from Priore (& to a lesser extent Leaf)'s shadow.

[Julia]

Whelp, this is me finally reading the David Leaf book on SMiLE. I'm gonna break it up in sections, this being part one.

First, a quick throwback to the LLVS sessionography: I didn't cross-check all the dates but did give a quick scan and realized two things 1) he cites "late oct/early nov" as the changeover from Dumb Angel to SMiLE, then 2) he doesn't bother to list the dates for ANY of the Psychedelic Sounds, as if they weren't worth cataloguing.

1. The Forewords and Everything

I'm not gonna review this stuff as works of literature in their own right because I'm starting to get "smiled out" and have other writing projects I've mostly put on hold for this, that I really want to get back to. I just want to focus on revelatory info on the sessions, structure or meaning of the music as much as possible with my "review." With that said, "Reintroducing Brian Wilson" is a nice collection of quotes that us uber-fans have seen a million times but is a convenient repository for us going forward as well as a concise intro for the normies. Mostly same with "SMiLE in a Nutshell," it's the myth reiterated for the millionth time, complete with Beatles hyping it up (because nobody cares about anything from the '60s unless it was sanctioned by the fucking Mop Tops--Brian only exists as an ancillary figure in the story of Sgt g0dd@mn Pepper as far as John Q Public is concerned). Melinda's Foreword is nice.  

The "Leaf" intro/foreword about our author rubs me the wrong way. Even if I completely 100% agreed with everything they theorized and made in service of the Beach Boys, I think some of these insiders like Leaf & Priore have gotten too big for their britches. I have nothing against David Leaf personally and in fact I commend him for spending so much effort getting the word out of Brian's genius to the world. I'm sure he's a nice guy and any friend of Brian's would be a friend of mine. It's just that I resent the fact that so much info, from concert films to documentaries to band biographies to books about albums all come from the same well. I think that's bad for the historical record--too much info has come from too narrow a lens, a man with a very obvious bias ("Brian and the 5 assholes except Dennis is kinda cool too I guess") has been given an outsized impact on the historical record. Now, that's not Leaf's fault--it's not like someone else couldn't write a book about the same thing or make their own documentary, there isn't a quota where others are bumped off from doing so because of him. It's probably more likely we just wouldn't have as much BB ancillary material if there wasn't an uber-fan like him so willing to do it. Ok. But it doesn't change the fact that when people are discovering this music for the first time, and taking in all this info, he's going to have an out-sized influence on the conversation. When arguing with more "off the beaten path / open to intuitive speculation" fans like myself, the "by the book / this is the sanctioned interpretation" fans are going to cite him as an authority to "win" arguments because he's in a published book. And well, I just think that's wrong especially when all these insiders seem to have conflicting accounts they claim are totally justified by their secret unrecorded conversations with Brian from 20-40 years after the events in question.

Call it sour grapes, call it a persistent need to be contrarian, call it anti-establishment run amok, but it rubs me the wrong way how Leaf and Priore are constantly given the honor to write liner notes, TSS essays, given interviews even in docs they didn't produce just because they're recognized uber-fans. Especially in Priore's case, just publishing your scrapbook (which I can now say, isn't even particularly well-curated or properly catalogued--there's no bibliography or citations for his own claims and theories) shouldn't grant one the ongoing authority he seems to enjoy on the subject. Leaf's claim to fame is somewhat more legitimate but do we really need this "preface" in the book talking about how great he is because he didn't want to manage the BBs, just celebrate the music? No offense to the man as an individual but this is the hokiest most self-important thing I've ever seen. I think at some point, these guys got a little too comfortable parading themselves before the cameras (Leaf escorted Brian to several of the interviews I've commented on in this thread) as the ur-expert of SMiLE par excellence and that's what rubs me the wrong way. Like you're not the star dude, Brian is.

I guess it just bugs me how small the club seems to be, at least in all these official releases, where it's always the same names writing the big essays reiterating the same myth over and over. It bugs me that they got spots in the TSS booklet, sometimes multiple, while other people who were actually present like VDP, Jules Siegel, Guy Webster, surviving Wrecking Crew members and Paul J Robbins did not. Anyway, these same thoughts apply to "The Reason I Had to Write This Book." I just want to get the facts and plausible/intuitive speculation on what SMiLE was without the myth, the acid-aggrandizing, the comparisons to Mozart and the "greatest mystery in the history of rock and roll" flowery rhetoric. That's why WillJC & Company's sessionography project is so long overdue, in my eyes. At this point, I would rather read about SMiLE from the perspective of a (seemingly) dispassionate historian than another sycophantic hero-worshipper ever again, which is why I myself try not to downplay Brian's or the "cool kids'" flaws and inconsistencies when I write about the subject.

2. Early Chapters

I like how Leaf even admits he wants to get to 1966 as quickly as possible, so he just breezes through the early years as a perfunctory exercise in getting any normies up to speed. Especially since I'm reading this after seeing the same story told over and over in a bunch of different docs, interviews and books...yeah I appreciate the succinct approach.

I didn't know Brian was actually friends with Crosby of The Byrds fame. I knew Crosby was an admirer of Brian's work but in all that I've read I can't recall that being mentioned before. (It's possible I've forgotten of course, not saying it isn't true.) He certainly wasn't around during the SMiLE sessions, right?

As much as we may dislike Daro and as rich as it is hearing him of all people say "Brian fell in with the wrong crowd" he's absolutely right on page 11 when he says Brian needed to get away from his family. Look, family is important and shouldn't be discarded lightly, but sometimes family is just toxic and expect you, as the oldest or as the most compliant, to roll over to keep the peace. I have a troubled relationship with my own sister where no matter how much I give it's never enough, I can do ten nice things and only hear about the one time I "screwed up" (and my screw up will be something like having inconvenient feelings or sh*t that happened 20 years ago I can't change and apologized over a hundred times). And because my parents want to "stay neutral" and refuse to blame anybody, they constantly play both sides at best, or throw any blame for our troubled relationship on me because I'm the oldest even though we're both adults. I mostly just keep my distance now because trying to make it work with someone who won't meet you halfway is a soul-crushing but even still I can't help but feel guilty for doing that and wish I could make things better. So, I get why Brian couldn't cut the chord but I also get that sometimes your family just isn't good for you and you have to be your own person. It's a tough situation and I think people are too quick to drop others these days but knowing what we know now in hindsight, yeah, I think Brian should've dropped the Boys and done his own thing. It'd suck if the band collapsed without him but he really didn't owe them a lifetime's worth of stolen happiness and artistic/professional fulfillment to be their mealticket because they were too accustomed to fame to work day jobs. That's the harsh reality of it. Their actions through the years don't often signify any kind of gratitude to my eyes either which is just a slap in the face.

I think this book has the best collection of and acknowledgement for, Brian's many conflicting statements about LSD through the years. I think it was clearly a bittersweet experience for him, perhaps a great revelation at the time but later a convenient benchmark for when things went wrong as well as a scapegoat for why that happened without having to blame himself or others too much. I have sort of a similar opinion on psychedelics myself at this point--I've tripped over a dozen times now and it can be a really great experience but it's not the end all be all like some make it out to be. It's a way to change the "frequency" your brain is operating on, like the stations on a radio, but are you tuning into the higher plane of divinity, or just making yourself more sensitive to some stimuli while blunting others, or going temporarily insane through an induced chemical imbalance? Arguably all at once, and in the moment it's the most profound thing you've ever felt, but when you come back down there's always a sense of a) Ok I met God...now how does that pay my rent and taxes, b) I felt the overpowering connection of all things...but just saying "everything is love!" seems so silly when trying to explain it sober, c) I realize now this life I'm living isn't the only one--I have been other people, other animals in the past and will be again in the future...but that doesn't mean I'm not still miserable in THIS lifetime now, and d) I'm still me, I'm still the same person, I still know the same things but I thought I was supposed to become this permanently enlightened guru? And like every other activity or ethos, there's people that take it too far in either extreme who ruin its perception: the ones using it to get f***ed up but not learn anything or the ones acting like dropping acid makes them somehow wiser and cooler than anybody else. Anyway, I don't think doing LSD made Brian a happier or wiser person but neither do I blame it for all his subsequent problems--he crashed out on speed and hash in '67 (the latter isn't even so bad except that he was doing it constantly with no break) then did more permanent damage with coke, alcohol and misapplied psychiatric drugs from Landy. Psychedelics are the favorite red-herring of the Reaganite "square" fans like filledeplage and her coterie of bitter old men.

For whatever it's worth, especially coming from Daro, he thinks Brian's inability to explain his psychedelic predilection to Carl was what hurt the most. I tend to agree. Without belaboring the point again, I've often felt that Brian and Carl's relationship was somewhat less than rosy and that Carl was more of a controlling or negative presence than he's often made out to be. I think there was more of Mike and Bruce in Carl than Brian and Dennis, but it's taboo to say since he died young and "was such a nice guy." (For the record and this isn't proof of anything but for whatever little it's worth anecdotally, some of the nastiest two-faced people I've ever met have been called "a nice guy/girl" by other people who didn't see them up close, or dealing with someone they wanted to manipulate.)

I know Tony Asher has mentioned some negativity from the group before but this may be the first time I've heard him specifically say he stopped going to sessions because the other guys were "not cordial" and "didn't talk to [him]." (Also, in the interest of fairness, I should mention he singles out Carl as being particularly kind and supportive to him.)

I don't know why everybody hates on Sloop John B. I kinda got it at first, ten years ago, but now I think the song fits perfectly and find all the negativity towards it really obnoxious. Twice Leaf singles it out for no reason ("excluding SJB there's only ten minutes of BB background vocals" & "there had never been an entire BB album of emotional music (SJB excepting)). I just find it one of those weird annoying memes that catch on and gets repeated endlessly by people without thinking about it. Like, this idea that it was recorded slightly before the other PS tracks and, what, square Al Jardine recommended it, somehow makes it uncool, so we gotta downplay it as much as possible? It's not "really" a PS song? Bollocks to that, I say. It's just as emotional as any PS track--the speaker is miserable and full of angst, wanting space away from his lame adults and the terrible vacation they set up for him. How does that not fit the overall theme of teen growing pains (how many of us have stories of our annoying families forcing us to do sh*t we didn't want to as teens?) just because it isn't explicitly about romance? Have men like Leaf even listened to the song? Do they even like the Beach Boys output that isn't 100% of the "cool LSD Brian-centric" variety? I don't know, this attitude is just really grating after awhile.

It's brushed over quickly, probably because it doesn't put Brian in the best light, but there is a quote from Brian himself on page 25 recalling a conversation with Mike where they agreed to go back to the BB formula after PS. (This has been alluded to in at least one other interview I recall mentioning earlier in the thread.) If Brian had no intention of following through on this promise, he shouldn't have made it in the first place. Probably he was telling Mike what he wanted to hear to avoid an uncomfortable situation in the moment but he set everyone up for a bigger fall later by doing it. In a perfect world, Brian should've stuck to his guns and told Mike "Im gonna make the music I want to make, either it comes out with the band's name or mine" and that's that OR perhaps he could've thrown Mike a bone and tried to write with him again. What Brian did instead was cowardly and insincere, if understandable given his nature.

Page 29, this is the kindest description I've seen Derek Taylor give about Brian. Much nicer than what he said in that Sgt Pepper book.

^However, he also openly supposes Brian was taking "rather more acid than I would suppose" (whatever that means exactly) implying Brian did the stuff at least a few times during the SMiLE sessions, presumably more than the three trips commonly settled on. I'm still skeptical this is so--in the first place, it's basically impossible to do acid more than like once a month since the tolerance level shoots up so quickly and strongly after a single trip. Plus, even enthusiasts dont enjoy doing it quite so often--it's like going on vacation to a distant land, or paying for a trip to the carnival--an amazing treat once in a blue moon, still fun as a semi-regular getaway (like 3-5 times a year) but beyond that the hassle and logistics are really more trouble than it's worth, plus you get sick of it like with anything else. Remember too an acid trip is very all-encompassing (you can't really do it and still be productive unless you're microdosing which I don't think was even a thing back then and is very hard with a drug whose active dose is measured in micrograms) and long-lasting at 8 to 12 hours with a significant afterglow. Especially if you're doing Owsely Purple, you're committing to an entire day dominated by the drug, which for a guy as busy as Brian with tons of people interacting with him constantly, there ought to be more attested cases of him strung out on psychedelics for this to be true. Anyway, you'd have to be a real degenerate to do the stuff even once a month and that's how most people actually burn out on it. Not saying it isn't possible but I've always felt the reports of Brian taking a lot of acid as opposed to an occasional indulgence are hard to believe and not particularly well attested to in evidence. Just another case of people who have no idea how psychedelics actually work spreading misinformation because "huh huh drugs are bad/funny."

On page 32, that quote from Brian is new to me, about wanting to do an album that wasn't quite so personal, where the lyrics were not so raw and emotional to him as PS' had been. That's very illuminating.

At this point, before we move on, I have two points with regard to the book's format. One, I like the way quotes are integrated throughout except at times it's difficult to tell where a long quote ends and David's voice returns. A bit more of a break or perhaps quotes in italics would've been preferred. That, and I find these random quotes from great artists and geniuses (like Einstein) in the margins a little pretentious. We get it, Brian's the bees knees, we don't need Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde quotes to think of him as among such illustrious company. This is where Leaf gets on my nerves a bit as a presenter for the Brian Wilson story--he's way too high minded about it, he can't just let the story or the music speak for themselves, he has to remind us how much the Beatles and other industry bigwigs love PS as if to justify Brian's existence. I don't know, I just wish he'd tone it down a little.

3. Dumb Angel

Anderle, admittedly without any direct proof, claims that SMiLE was just one of several projects on Brian's mind--with the humor album cited as the most prominent side piece--but "ultimately it all became just one piece: SMiLE." Needless to say I agree even if this statement in a vacuum is hardly the best evidence to make the case. Especially if the implications of those LLVS essays are accurate and the name change only occurred in November, soon after getting Holmes' cover and coinciding with the sudden humor skits being recorded, it all fits with the timeline. I think what's most likely is Dumb Angel was set to be a more serious evolution of Pet Sounds, not without its funny cowboy song H&V but the work done from August through October mostly reflects the somber "Cycle of Life" tracks that are almost a PS vol 2 in feel. I think somewhere along the way Brian must've mentioned wanting to do a humor album, hence why this weird detour is attested to so frequently in our sources, but then got the radical idea to combine the two around November and this carried through to the finished Smiley Smile. It may actually be the case that details like Prayer as the intro were conceived of for an album with a different name and therefore vibe than what would've come to pass had things gone on unimpeded--like YW becoming the opener. It would also explain why certain songs were cut from Smiley beyond the usual speculation (too unfinished, too VDP-influenced) maybe CE, CIFOTM, Worms etc were impossible to make funny? How do you make a joke out of racial disparities, genocide, recursive childhood trauma and losing faith in God? I don't know, and I expect neither did Brian.

However, Leaf can't help himself from uncritically repeating the usual simplified-for-newscasters summation "a travelogue of the Bicycle Rider across America from Plymouth Rock to Diamond Head" so take everything with a portion of salt of course. (I do hate this talking point because there's nothing said from Brian, VDP or--far as I recall--the three great primary sources to justify it. Far as I can tell, like so many things, this framing device was invented by fans then retroactively justified by 2003-4 Brian in interviews so it's now enshrined as fact.)

We get a somewhat different version of Brian meeting Van--now it's Crosby who introduces them at Brian's house. (The Terry Melcher party still happens later in this version.) There's still no real firm date for this. Badman said (or at least implied) May, which seemed plausible considering that earliest Heroes date, but if the first Heroes was just "variations on You are My Sunshine" as attested, and other sources imply a later date, I could buy that too. It would explain why so much was still left undone by the end if there were 3 or 4 less months of the two working together. Anyway, Leaf pins the beginning of work at "late summer of 1966." There's no attempt to suss out a timeframe for when it became SMiLE instead of DA.

Danny Hutton doesn't think there was a fully realized album in Brian's head so much as a ton of music that would've gotten arranged together and put out on an album. I don't dispute this, it matches up roughly with what I've come to believe--which is there was about 40 odd minutes of great music floating around in Brian's head, interconnected, that he never quite pinned down to an exact sequence. (I think there's enough clues in and outside of the music to make some plausible sequences from what we have though--using themes, chords, or what have you.)

Anderle concurs and even goes one further, saying GV wasn't something he viewed as being part of SMiLE. Later, he says he doesn't believe there was ever a plan laid out when the two men got together, the Americana stuff developed naturally because Brian is the California dream personified and Van is "...Americana to the max. He's Aaron Copeland. He's Charles Ives."

This is the first I recall hearing VDP talk about the humor in SMiLE, usually he downplays it to talk Americana or less commonly the innocence/angst angle. VDP doesn't think his resume at the time impressed Brian particularly, rather it was a gut instinct. (Brian was GREAT at that, at least up to a certain point. From 1961 through 1967 he never missed, and the few times it didn't immediately land was just because he was two-steps ahead of the rest of the industry.) Supposedly they discussed the American Dream in passing and VDP briefly speculates maybe Brian sensed that he (Van) had that belief in the American Dream in him.

The way the process is described here, it sounds like the two did sort of work on the music together. It's not presented as though VDP showed up for the day and Brian had some melody lines already to go and said "here's your homework, put lines to this." Instead, they sat down at the piano together, trading riffs which Brian would sing a melody for and Van would translate his vocal scat into poetry.

Heroes was first (duh) key of C#, knocked it out in a day. (Now here's the million dollar question--is that ALL the verses including "threescore and five" does it include Bicycle Rider, does it include IIGS and BY--the million follow-up questions to these vague statements that never get asked??) Later in the chapter, Van does state outright that the Cantina section wasn't part of that original Heroes workshop but Ribbon of Concrete was. I forget which source said it now, but I recall reading that, contrary to what many of us have long thought, the Bicycle Rider chorus really did start in Heroes, then go to Worms then came back to Heroes over the course of the sessions.  

New info: CE was done at a separate session "a week later" and Van "inspired [Brian] to come up with new licks and new melodic ideas." So Anderle was right, Van did blow Brian's mind and influenced the melodies/arrangements albeit perhaps indirectly. (Like, Van didn't necessarily say "use these instruments for CE" but pitched ideas that led Brian to try something he normally may not've done.) However, Van insists later on that SU came second, then "Wonderful or CE." It's clear either way that these four songs, the ones Brian cites as written in the sandbox, were first in whatever order and formed the core of the album. (Two Americana, two Cycle of Life...no elements. Yes, I make note of that.) Veggies came fifth perhaps but Van can't even guess the order after that. (I wonder if CIFOTM came last? I'm willing to bet as much.)

VDP describes at least some of Heroes (and presumably SMiLE as a whole) in terms of farce, and says he didn't mind this because anything Brian came up with was great, but there's an implication that farce is not something he'd usually go for.

This is overall a great account of what their working relationship was like--exactly what I've always looked for in these sources. It sounds like it was pretty laid back: apparently Van's wife was welcome to come and watch as often as not. Unlike Tony Asher, arriving at a decent hour and kept waiting (the punctual businessman against the lackadaisical bohemian) Van was down with Brian's nocturnal schedule, on call virtually 24 hours. They'd listen to things the next day and see if they still liked them. Van guesses he came over "two or three times in a week" which is far more often than I was beginning to assume. (I was thinking it may've been as infrequently as once a month with how much wasn't complete.) Their brainstorming sessions would be broken up by going into the studio "for a week or two... And then we would go back and repeat the process. So there were intervals between my going up there." I wonder why, if it sounds like they recorded as they wrote, Heroes was on the backburner for so long as the unambiguous first song, to say nothing of SU only come in November.

Volman describes the listening parties as a lot of fun but the music was so piecemeal that it was hard to tell how it fit together and nobody had the big picture. Carl's wife says they were over at Brian's every day or every night and "there were plenty of ideas flying around the room." I wonder perhaps if anyone dared suggest ideas to Brian, about arrangements or something, which might be an alternate explanation for why some tracks changed. Perhaps a fellow musician might've suggested "hey you know what'd sound even more like WC? Marimbas!" But this is just speculation. Anderle even admits they (the spectators) would "argue" with him, if he said "this is part of CE" they might say "it works better with Wonderful." So it sounds wild but apparently the Posse members did effect the music in that way. (Perhaps we have them to blame for Brian's indecision after all?)

When the subject of themes comes up, Durrie Parks singles out CIFOTM & H&V as "Brian trying to say some things." She doesn't say "these were the key sections of two comprehensive themes" or anything more tantilizing but I still think it's significant that she chooses one of Americana and one of Innocence. Van reiterates the "reasserting America against the British Invasion" kick he's mentioned before.

Brian wrote the lines "tough" in Surf's Up and "tennie" in Veggies. Van opted to focus on America's past with his lyrics to explain how we got to where we are, as opposed to writing topically. (And thank God, because SMiLE holds up so much better than "Vietnam War is Bad #348" like so many other bands were doing.) "It wasn’t like I felt that I had to go in and teach Brian something. I had to simply go in and service his music.’" / "After I got in the tent, I decided to shut up. No musical ambitions at all. I did nothing except play the marimba. He’d come over and show me the part to play. I played those notes. I played what I was told if I played at all. But beyond that, I had no purpose in the studio with Brian Wilson, except to learn what he was doing and to observe him . . . It was really an illumination for me."

Of Brian, VDP says "the guy was absolutely earnest in everything he did," which is why the best studio musicians were willing to do goofy unprofessional stuff like talk through their french horns, etc. I did not know until now that VDP and Durrie actually slept in a spare bedroom at the Wilson house! That's really nuts! Leaf mentions the things Brian wanted to talk about with his friends and it's mostly the usual stuff but he includes "a cageful of mice." Is this just a reference to that WIBN anecdote about Brian buying Van 40 mice "because he lived like one and seemed lonely" or is there any other independent anecdote of Brian being into mice or something? Just curious.

Leaf makes a throwaway comment on page 52 implying GV would be included on SMiLE at the record company's insistence. Whether this is true or not, whether Brian enthusiastically wanted GV on there by his own volition, you have to admit it's interesting how often this talking point comes up. At the very least, it's not completely unreasonable for someone to opt to leave it off their mix, removed from the commercial worries of a '66 release and free to focus solely on thematic cohesion or musical flow. Certainly not worth starting a rivalry over, coughMikiecough.

I admit to speculating that perhaps Brian and Van weren't really seeing eye to eye on the project based on some of these prior sources, but that's far from the picture presented here. It sounds like Brian was liberated and inspired working with someone of Van's knowledge, someone who was an actual musician in their own right (Mike is just a frontman with a knack for hooks, Asher's a wordsmith but mostly in service of ads not really a guy who could write his own songs like Van.) Brian's childlike humor is referenced in conjunction with The Elements specifically at one point, which may be surprising considering all we have, unambiguously for that track is the scariest and least funny track in SMiLE...but perhaps if Durrie was referring to Veggies and/or the "fitness elements" Nov 4 tape...

On page 57, we get another new piece of info about a "Brother Curtis Springer," whom I'd never heard of, but supposedly turned Brian onto the vegetarian thing that led to Veggies being written. Similarly, Durrie recalls Brian meeting Frank Zappa and the two were both working on vegetable songs, so they discussed that together. (I really wish things had gone just slightly differently here and maybe Frank stepped in to help edit SMiLE--I think he was the man for that job, to take that bit of gruntwork off Brian's plate. If Brian was willing to surrender his "produced by" credit to the BB, maybe he'd have been willing to share it with Zappa. This also might've gotten Frank some much needed mainstream appeal, coulda been a win-win. Alas...)

Van's favorite piece in SMiLE is Prayer. Vosse's first conversation with Brian was about the spiritual power of laughter (I guess to ascertain if this guy was on board with the guiding philosophy of the project). Vosse was instructed to carry a professional grade tape recorder everywhere in case Brian wanted to record sounds. Anderle makes a comment that Vosse was even filming things with a camera everywhere at Brian's request. "He was the documentarian." Shame these many tapes have seemingly gone missing or otherwise been buried by BRI or Capitol. I'd give an arm and a leg to hear/see them, even if it's just mundane stuff. With our current tech, I'd love to sort out the water sounds by pitch and edit them into the Dada melody as I suspect was Brian's intent (for a day, a week, a month). Brian says Vosse produced the GV firehouse tape, which I never knew before.

I notice everyone in the Posse is described as being funny by someone else, which was probably an unwritten code for getting in Brian's inner circle at this time. David Anderle in particular is described as being the smartest person in the group, a cool head, and totally selfless for Brian's sake.

Curiously, Frank Holmes is mentioned in conjunction with the month of December. "By december 1966, everything was moving forward. Artist Frank Holmes, a friend of Van Dyke's, created a SMiLE shop design..." So, does that mean he delivered it in Dec, or just Leaf couldn't think of any other time to weave this into the narrative until now, when outlining where things stood in the high water mark before it all came apart? I hate ambiguity like this. Holmes himself told Priore in the 2005 book it was delivered in the Fall...so which is it?

There's yet another new spin on the "Dennis' plight named Surf's Up" story. Here, the song has seemingly already been written, or mostly, and Van comes over to play it (presumably at Brian's house) while Dennis is over. And Dennis asks "what's that called" and VDP says "it's called SU, Dennis!" which was "immediately taken enthusiastically" by the group, or at least by Brian and Dennis. This is a lot different than I'd always pictured the story, where Brian and VDP are working together and DENNIS comes over (perhaps unexpectedly) interrupting their session but then inadvertently giving VDP the inspiration for the name on the spot. It's funny how the same story, told over again slightly differently, can make events seem so different. The way Van describes the Inside Pop performance, it sounds like Brian's "aaahhh" vocals at the end were not necessarily planned in the beginning of the song's conception--either as an improv for the cameras or they hadn't "finished" that part when it was time to film. Van says "we just left that there. It was like a sand painting with something missing." That's a new perspective on SU and how it developed for sure.

You can take it with a grain of salt because it's Leaf, but he does make it sound like everything was peaches and cream until the Beach Boys returned from their European Tour (Nov 15 it would've been over according to Bellagio). Brian was so sensitive that being told "no" being questioned, having to explain, feeling negative vibes, it killed his enthusiasm. It's just hard sometimes to accept that answer completely because by all accounts he was getting pushback on PS too yet he stood up for his work. Why then couldn't he do that for SMiLE, if Mike's naysaying was truly the biggest impediment? I'm still having trouble buying that.

I never knew exactly when Carl was drafted before, but Leaf says January. The lawsuit, also a bit of a shaky timeframe, is here pinned to February. Derek Taylor admits it was hard to promote the group because nothing was coming out--I totally get it and don't blame him.

Brother Julius lit the fire in a trashcan. Brian says Fire was to express the bad thoughts he was having (probably from the guys rejecting his music). Supposedly Dennis put the idea in Brian's head (Leaf's exact phrase) that Fire caused a neighboring building to burn down--first I'm hearing of that detail. (If so, I doubt Dennis would ever intentionally try to harm Brian or his muse but it was a really stupid, thoughtless thing to say. But we're all human and I've had people whom I know care about me say similarly dumb, careless things that hurt my feelings.) Besides the lack of lyrics, VDP cites Fire's abstract nature as a reason he was "probably unhappy" with it as a song. The common thought process that even I've fallen into with SMiLE is the assumption that Van was the avant garde artiste pushing the commercial giant, Hawthorne hick out of his comfort zone, but really every Van interview I've seen indicates it was the other way around.

I think to some extent Brian's own irrational, optimistic-to-a-fault idea that the music would bring joy and peace to the world was at least a part of SMiLE's undoing. He probably saw the way it tore his group apart, how his experiments with starting a fight and getting the participants to make up (in Nov 4 and the Lifeboat tape) were failures. He must've thought "if this music can't even bring my friends and family together, how's it going to unite an increasingly divided country, and if it can't do what I want it to do, is it even any good at all, really?"  

Overall, this was a surprisingly great chapter with revelatory insight and fresh anecdotes. It's like, if Leaf managed to get Anderle's definitive account in his original 1978 book, this is him finally getting VDP's (and others) definitive memoirs on the record before it was too late. Whatever misgivings I have towards him Im eternally grateful for that. Typical of SMiLE though, every new piece of info raises so many questions, like if the Parks were staying with the Wilsons, why has that never come up before, why were they still not able to finish CIFOTM in 5 months time (it'd be one thing if their meetings were few and far between as I'd started to suspect) and why didn't Brian fight harder for a man who had essentially become his housemate, a sort of surrogate family member, for months? It makes the nice, neat theory I was developing fall apart with no easy answers to replace it with.

4. Dont f*** w/ the Formula

Danny Hutton speculates that Taylor, while not slipping them acetates or anything, might've been warning the Beatles "you guys better up your game because Brian's coming for ya" and this is why Paul went to visit in April.

I don't know where the "Brian needed a year to finish SMiLE" comes from or why that isn't pushed back on. Even if SMiLE was as complex in its final sequencing and splicing as Zappa's We're Only In It For the Money, surely that doesn't take a year. He banged out at least the foundations of 12 songs in 4 months and the raw materials for most if not all the comedy bits he could've ever used. I absolutely understand it was a tedious undertaking he was looking at, but not a year's work and this is all "worst case scenario" talk, where SMiLE is as complex as it can possibly be. If SMiLE was just "12 banded tracks" ala Pet Sounds 2...how does that take a whole other year? I think it's more like what Vosse said in the 90s conversation with himself, Anderle and Paul Williams--ie, he knew it would take a long time, an indefinite amount of time, and when he realized he wasn't gonna get that leeway from the band or record company, he shut down. But the ultimate irony is it almost certainly would've been accomplished by March or May certainly if he hadn't been distracting himself with the singles and stupid Jasper Dailey tracks.

Durrie, if her testimony is accurate, gives some important "new" (corroborating) info: there were sessions where "people wouldn't participate." (If so, that throws a wrench in the "Mike sang his heart out on those tapes!" excuse we always hear.) And "there were meetings where it was discussed that this wasn't going well...or the feeling was that this was maybe not the best move to make." I know we all like to pile on Mike and not without reason, but I find it hard to believe he was alone on this. If everyone else was as enthusiastic as they pretend to be nowadays, and it was just Mike as the lone dissenter, I can't see why they wouldn't tell him "sorry dude, you're out-voted. Now do your job or beat it." It had to have been at least one and probably two or more additional guys in his camp (or who, certainly weren't enthusiastic defenders of SMiLE on Brian's behalf) for these meetings to have any kind of serious effect. Right? Like, this isn't an unreasonable assumption on my part? Earlier Dennis was listed as the only wholehearted supporter while Carl is described as "diplomatic" (which reads to me as a polite term for "two-faced and afraid to stick his neck out one way or another.") I'm sorry but I read Carl's "peacemaker" shtick as more of a negative than most, to me he sounds as feckless and self-serving as a typical neoliberal politician or Pompey Magnus. Al and Bruce's positions aren't really known to history in the same way as the others--I suspect they were more on Mike's side than not but less outspoken about it, and to Mike's credit he's mostly never shied away from what his position was while the two of them have seen which way the chips ultimately fell and now keep quiet about their displeasure. Just a theory.

Unfortunately Durrie doesn't name names (sadly a lot of important info has been lost to time in this way I reckon--just call people out already, it's been 60 years) and VDP also gives a vague statement about "There were a lot of opinions about different ways of presenting the project. And I think that that undermined the project a great deal.’" What's that mean? They liked some of the music but not the overall humor thing, they didn't like the cover art (could be why it was changed for Smiley, we don't know), they objected to some of the more overt druggie references? I wish we knew.

Durrie calls Mike "challenging" and it's highly implied she's holding back. Her description of Dennis as someone who always got blamed for everything really breaks my heart because I often have felt the same way. It's tough being the black sheep, the punching bag, and when everyone piles on and nobody stands up for you it just makes it hard to have any positive opinions of anyone. I think the Beach Boys were a toxic group for Brian and Dennis, especially from this time into the mid-70s. They really needed someone in their respective corners who could help them go their own way.

I gotta say, I'm extremely surprised Durrie is such a font of knowledge in this book so far. I never would've expected her to have been around much, let alone so free with her memories, but she's been a better source even than any of the Beach Boys or Marilyn. Makes me wonder who else we think of as a minor fringe figure who could've shared some great insight had they been put on the record. (Cough Paul J Robbins, cough Guy Webster, cough Siegel's girlfriend, cough).

David Leaf's frustrations with the band and label's inability to see where music was going is well-founded. I feel the same way listening to the, ahem, Reagan-loving boomer-aged crotchety old farts among our community, who pitch a fit if you say "vinyls" instead of "vinyl records" try to tell me SMiLE was "too weird to be a hit" in 19-freaking-60-godd@mn-7. I don't know why but it's like the Beach Boys are and were treated differently by people including their own so-called "fans" (fans who like the early surfin stuff, the Carl-led years and that's it). For some reason, nobody sees the Beach Boys as a serious group on the level of the Beatles, Byrds or Bob Dylan--it's ok when the mop tops go psychedelic but when the clean-cut surfer bros do it "that's not appropriate music." I don't know about the 60s but nowadays it feels like a lot of Beach Boy fans are jaded self-effacing squares who support Trump and Stamos more than Brian himself and the young fans he continuously brings to the fold. (You don't see too many twenty-somethings talking about how Wrinkles and Kokomo made them life-long fans now do ya?) I wonder if the Who never finished Sell Out and we heard these pieces of songs mixed with weird fake ads, if there'd be people arguing "no way they would've actually used that in the LP, they were just stoned and goofing off--spoken word bits in a pop album, in 1967, that's crazy!"

VDP's quote on the breakdown I think is worth repeating in full: "I think that Mike Love is the most famous instrument of restraint in the situation to the point that he defeated the process, but he didn’t do it maliciously . . . he couldn’t understand what it was all about. And ultimately, I got to the point where I couldn’t understand what it was all about. ‘It’s not because of Mike Love that I walked away. It was because of my own irrelevance that I walked away. There were too many things conspiring against the record . . . and that’s not just related to [the lawsuit] settlement with Capitol Records, ’cause, believe me, that [money] didn’t come out of Capitol Records without a lot of hostility and adversarial incident. The Beach Boys were having a terrible time, both within and without, and I felt like an intruder."

Similarly, VDP's quote on page 82 is very illuminating: "It wasn’t so much like being able to know Brian Wilson. It wasn’t that, because I think that there was a great sense of “good fences make good neighbours,” as Robert Frost said. There were good fences between me and Brian. I always respected him and his marriage and his family. And he respected me. We were not guppies in a fishbowl. We weren’t just hanging out and feeling good. ‘There was nothing hedonistic about the experience, by the way. It was tough to keep up with this fellow, in his pursuit of a musical ideal. And it’s obvious . . . his love for music was driving him. But it was the people around him and the crowded house it became that generally made it hard for me to get my snout in the trough. My ideas were less and less relevant, it seemed to me, or useful for his purposes.’ And then Van Dyke sadly admitted, ‘I believe there came a time when I was irrelevant."

^You're free to interpret it however, but what I take from this is "we liked each other but had our boundaries--we weren't friends, just getting stoned because we liked each other, we were there to work. And when I felt like work wasn't getting done anymore and he wasn't listening to my ideas anymore, I left." It's like the "friend nobody likes" realizing they're not actually wanted, just tolerated, finally having enough and walking away for the sake of their own dignity. Not that Brian didn't like VDP but he knew it wasn't his scene. I've been there too, where you just realize the people you're with don't like you as much as you like them, or the reason you were hanging out with them has changed, so it's time to go and not follow around someone who doesn't respect what you bring to the table.

SMiLE is such an enigma because I can read these sources and bounce back and forth in my assessment of what happened or how I feel about the participants. There are times I feel bad for Mike and times when the overwhelming consensus is he was a huge dick that ruined everyone else's good time. There are times when I feel like VDP was being a prima donna who gave up on their work too easily and others, like now, when I totally get why he left and think Brian was the jerk for putting him in that situation. There's no right answer. I wonder if every life event is as complicated as this and we just notice it with SMiLE more because it's such an interesting topic that's so widely covered yet so poorly researched (a few notable works like this aside).

VDP talking about fearing for his personal safety is pretty shocking and I'm surprised that hasn't come up before. It's honestly hard for me to believe and yet I don't want to call the guy a liar plus the BBs surf nazi security thugs essentially kept Brian in a living nightmare for how many years and f***ed up Dennis' vocal chords permanently with physical force so I almost don't put anything past these people. (Has Rocky, Stan or hell even Mike ever expressed remorse for these insane tactics?) But sometimes I just don't know, with how Domenic Priore pulled the "Mike commandeered Taylor to announce the cancellation and staged a fight for the cameras" accusations out of his ass, I can't help but be wary of these dramatic escalating accusations coming decades after the fact. (That said, it's interesting how none of Priore's bullshit claims is repeated in Leaf's book so far, despite our biased author clearly chomping at the bit to throw Mike under the bus any way he can.)

However you feel about Mike's role during 1966, I think the most damning thing about him (ok, besides supporting Trump and abandoning his daughter) is that he never rose to the occasion, proved his worthiness to Brian, made his own great music to justify his increasingly embarrassing presence in the band. If, during the SMiLE sessions (especially after Van left) he said "Brian, your melodies and arrangements are great, my only beef is with the lyrics but here's how I think your work could be salvaged..." I'd still probably prefer VDP's words but I'd rather we get a DYLW about hot Indian/Hawaiian p*ssy than nothing at all. Or after it all fell apart, in any of the years between 1968 and 1986 if he'd said "hey Brian I got these beautiful poems I wrote and I was wondering if you'd like to put them to music?" / "hey Brian, I learned to play an instrument finally, maybe we can jam together and see what comes of it?" I'd have so much more respect and goodwill for him as a musician. But it's like Mike got bored of writing with Brian as soon as he chased off the competition--"if I can't have him, no one can!" And no one did. That's what's so frustrating, we didn't even get a few more good albums of pre-PS style material out of his tantrum. We get a couple of mediocre albums with maybe 1-3 good songs each and then 15BO. And then he repeated his sin with Adult/Child. That's what makes Mike so particularly infuriating; he thinks writing the hook to Kokomo and giving Capitol some pointers on Endless Summer justifies his otherwise complete lack of worthwhile output in 20 years after chasing away the best thing that ever happened to the band.

I think Brian's story is really the lesson that it's ok to tell even your family to take a hike if they don't appreciate you or make you feel like sh*t or don't support your passion projects. That's a tough, uncomfortable lesson but a necessary one sometimes if you're gonna get anywhere in life. If someone is a constant negative presence, or you feel bullied and constrained by their actions, you're allowed to cut the cord and be your own man. This is why I can't stand the corner of the fandom that downplays what Brian went through, or how miserably he was treated by the other BBs, or tries to paint the whole thing as a happy rosy family picture. It really isn't, even without David Leaf's "poor Brian" act, it's just a fact that the guy gave up on his passion project, professional ambitions to be an independent producer of other bands, was forced to make music his heart wasn't in anymore to support his largely ungrateful family and lived like a prisoner for the better part of ~15 years. That's not love, that's not inspiring, that's not gratitude...it's exploitation and stockholm syndrome. At a certain point, you gotta live for yourself especially if you're the one with actual talent. This is why I have trouble feeling the affection for Carl everyone else seems to have--I can't help but think if he was the angel everyone makes him out to be, how could he let his brother be so miserable, pilfer his songs and make him cry for a quick buck? (I wasn't there, I know.) Brian's the anti-Ayn Randian hero, spoken by someone who hates her "Objectivist" philosophy, but it goes to show both extremes are wrong.

5. Can't Wait Too Long

Once again, Smiley Smile is completely swept under the rug as much as can be. It's insane how for 60 years NO ONE has EVER wanted to talk about it in any kind of detail. It's never been seriously examined outside its relationship to SMiLE, never discussed on its own terms as an album in its own right, just the embarrassing stop-gap release to fulfill contractual obligations. The lovers of this album, including me, should be furious. Anyone who argues Smiley is its own distinct albeit off-beat masterpiece from Brian has had their position undercut by the band themselves and its historians, who can scarcely be bothered to devote even a full page to it in their novel-length bios. SMiLE is PS' arrangements mixed with Smiley's goofy sensibilities. I don't think it's possible to discuss one accurately and completely without talking about the other.

The weirdest thing to me is how the fall of SMiLE into Smiley is like the fall of Rome into Byzantium--the contemporaneous accounts treat the transition as almost a non-event or a gradual, inevitable progression. "Oh we're ruled by Germans now who pledge fealty to the East instead of actual ethnic Romans...well, that doesn't change my daily life any" vs "Huh, Brian decided to rerecord some songs again and leave some out--that's hardly the weirdest thing he's done this year." It's only years later where we look back and say "that was actually a major turning point when everything changed, but no one realized it at the time." And both takes are valid, since production-wise it's such a dramatic break with 1966 but conceptually, it's arguably Brian following through with exactly the wacky humor LP "with talking between cuts" he'd promised since Dumb Angel became SMiLE. There's an equally strong case to be made that Smiley is a natural progression or radical departure than what came before.

I just wish more SMiLE historians accepted that and worked harder to understand SS' place in the whole saga rather than dismissing it as they do, but I guess the current popular narrative makes for a more dramatic story. I have a feeling even a lot of the biggest SMiLE fans don't like the stranger comedy bits (Nov 4, GFIHFH & Hal Blaine's veggie fight) so they downplay their significance and as a result don't see or deny the clear relationship from what was going on in late '66 through to Summer '67. This is why I say, pompous though it may be, that if someone doesn't like SS and wanted SMiLE to be Pet Sounds 2, I doubt they would've liked the album Brian had in mind as much as they think they would've. I think their reviews would be like "the music's great, I just wish he'd let the songs breathe and lay off the humor interludes!" or something of the sort. To some extent, I think Brian recognized this, which is an unspoken reason he changed course--not by abandoning the humor, oh no, but by abandoning the lush productions and modular editing style. That, to him, was less important to the integrity of the project than the "funny moments" that litter Smiley, but it's so against most people's sensibilities of musical taste they deny, downplay and deflect when it's brought up.

The AGD quote on page 94 is perfect. At this point, I'm in near the same boat as him--I can now honestly say I've read just about every major book on the subject (only missing Preiss, Stebbins & the BWPS tour booklet), every article (sans the ESQ magazines that I think are overpriced and seemingly never been archived) and every documentary including the bioflicks. I've written enough on SMiLE to fill somewhere between 200 and 250 word document pages in 12 point, single-spaced font (no exaggeration), shared 7 fanmixes over twelve years with as many more formulated and in progress with release sometime in the next year. And I have come to the same conclusion--I don't know the answers. There is no single reason for anything, no theory without significant flaws or contradictions, no secret track order that can be reverse engineered through obscure clues in interviews or alchemic occult processes. It's a mystery because the only person who really understood what SMiLE was is the world's worst witness, a self-described adult/child with schizoaffective symptoms and avoidance issues, who changed his mind frequently at the time, then contradicts himself in every interview since, was strung out on drugs at the time, has been pharmaceutically abused in the decades since...and now he's dead. There's just no way to piece it back together from the scatterbrained mind of our idol, nor did he truly keep anyone in the loop then or since--not even VDP, his bandmates or his wife. (And no, I don't believe the "revelations" he shared with Priore or Reum in the 80s--not for one second.)

I still maintain we can make educated guesses based on the preponderance of evidence, I still believe not all SMiLE theories are created equal, I still believe some speculation is more plausible than others. But I've long since given up on ever arriving at a truly definitive answer. Brian was an unwell person and even people more responsible or mature than he have acted irrationally on things. In fact, it's been proven we humans make decisions based on our emotions then justify them with "logic" after the fact. I submit the answer may be as simple and unsatisfying as "it stopped being fun."

We get the classic Redwood story again on page 95. I just can't understand how anyone reading this shameful incident can walk away thinking Carl doesn't have something to answer for that day. Mike's a bully, we now have reason to believe he wasn't above physically intimidating VDP, but for Carl to watch his bro getting bullied into tears publicly, that's low for a sibling. I'm sorry but I can't help but think so. I've had sibling rivalries with my own kin, but anytime they were starting to look really bothered in front of other people, my familial protectiveness kicked in.

The picture pages are really good, with a few I've never seen before.

At this point, I started skimming because I'm just not that interested in the great saga of how David Leaf and Darian became BB fans. (Sorry to be blunt or dismissive but understand I have other obsessions I want to get back to like Gnosticism & political science, plus at this point I've read like 10 books and seen as many movies about this subject all in a row--I want info I can use when analyzing the actual vintage album & sessions, not more fan mythologizing.)

[Don Malcolm]

Julia,

So glad that you got to the relevant portions of the Leaf book, as it is probably the "last word" on the subject from David (as the representative of what I like to call the "truth is beauty and beauty is truth" tendency in the approach to SMiLE that would have BWPS close all retrospective historical speculation). The takeaway from it is that the trauma of that experience has created a spiraling layer of evasions that were meant to become impenetrable, but that can be traced if one looks at how SMiLE was handled subsequent to its demise.

We should all be grateful that David and Darian found a way to give Brian a way back into the project, so that it was able to provide as much healing for him as possible--but that should not preclude informed speculation on what SMiLE might have been with just of few of the key negative incidents in the saga either removed or successfully smoothed over.

That is what I think your project can accomplish, and I think you are now at the point where you can set aside this great profusion of written materials for awhile in order to return to it for the editing/rearranging part to make the book into a seamless and exciting narrative of its own.

What is here works well in covering both what happened (with solid intuitive deductions that get us down to the likeliest details of the fracture process) and what might have been had certain things happened differently. So it is kind of a double track narrative that leads to a series of possible track sequences for the 1967 SMiLE. That final section would gather together the options, the possible reasons for them, and make an educated guess as to the ones that are more or less likely. (And of course there is room for you to express your own preferences...!)

One thing that I think would be helpful for those who have been following along across the explosion of texts across multiple threads would be for you to create a post that lists all of the track sequence variants in one place. That would be a great benchmark/bookmark for what has evolved from this process and it's something that can be easily referred back to for anyone who comes here and tries to immerse themselves in the profusion of material that you've created, resuscitated, and/or added to over this extremely fruitful period.

I think my best "nutshell" guess about what triggered the SMiLE fracture centers around MOLC--the shadows it cast are so enormous on the interpersonal dynamics and on Brian's approach to what he was doing. Its out-of-nowhere creation created such startling vibrations that it frayed personal and creative associations, strengthening the resistance to the music's purpored "weirdness" and widening the rift between Brian and VDP, leading to the dangers of December that left the LP's key masterpieces (SU and CE) in limbo.

If that is avoided, I think we do get a SMiLE in March/April. But then, of course, we have to ponder what an alternate history from that point would have looked like--keeping the cautionary tale that Lewis Shiner provided to us in Glimpses firmly in mind.

What a thrill it has been to watch all of what you've done as it has unfolded... 

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

Hear hear! Great writing Julia, I've enjoyed it all. 

[Julia]

Thank you both, I do appreciate it very much

[BJL]

Just want to add to the chorus of praise. I've also read every word you've posted on this board in the last few months, and enjoyed it tremendously. (And frankly, whether I have or haven't replied has had little to do with anything except my own life, but I so wish I had more time to spend thinking and writing about Smile!) One day I hope to write my own book on Smile or maybe on the Beach Boys, I'm not sure exactly... but watching you go through the existing sources so dispassionately but also passionately has been really inspiring!

[BJL]

For whatever it's worth, especially coming from Daro, he thinks Brian's inability to explain his psychedelic predilection to Carl was what hurt the most. I tend to agree. Without belaboring the point again, I've often felt that Brian and Carl's relationship was somewhat less than rosy and that Carl was more of a controlling or negative presence than he's often made out to be. I think there was more of Mike and Bruce in Carl than Brian and Dennis, but it's taboo to say since he died young and "was such a nice guy." (For the record and this isn't proof of anything but for whatever little it's worth anecdotally, some of the nastiest two-faced people I've ever met have been called "a nice guy/girl" by other people who didn't see them up close, or dealing with someone they wanted to manipulate.)

I don't want to harp on the Carl thing either, particularly... but as I was reading this I was struck by the feeling that you're sort of wrongly equating not fully 100% understanding or supporting Brian's new direction with being unkind or unsupportive. And I think this is basically the inverse of the usual position, which is that Carl was such a kind and supportive brother, so obviously he must have understood and supported Smile. But I think that *neither* position follows from the other. There's nothing about being nice, positive, considerate, kind, or a good brother that is going to incline someone to understand or appreciate cutting edge psychedelic music in 1966. Nor is there anything about being bewildered or taken aback or confused or even just plain not liking Smile that makes you a bad person or a bad brother. AND that isn't going to make it any less hurtful for Brian, necessarily, if Carl doesn't get what he's doing or reacts negatively to music he doesn't understand. It's not clear to me that that's what the evidence shows, but you've certainly made a case for it stronger than I've seen before.

(But that, of course, is the thing about human beings: it is, so far as I can tell, actually *impossible* to go through life without badly hurting people you love, at least sometimes, no matter what your intentions or feelings.)

I think it's also worth remembering the sort of astonishing fact that Carl Wilson turned 20 years old on December 21, 1966 (and celebrated with a Do You Like Worms recording session, maybe!?). For the first half of Smile, he was literally still a teenager. Brian was his older brother, and 24. And I think it's undeniably true that the sibling dynamics going through your late teens and early 20s can be sort of complicated even in a normal family... not sure I would want a historian going through exactly what I said and did vis-a-vis my sisters between the ages of 18 and 24 with a fine-tooth comb

[BJL]

Heroes was first (duh) key of C#, knocked it out in a day. (Now here's the million dollar question--is that ALL the verses including "threescore and five" does it include Bicycle Rider, does it include IIGS and BY--the million follow-up questions to these vague statements that never get asked??) Later in the chapter, Van does state outright that the Cantina section wasn't part of that original Heroes workshop but Ribbon of Concrete was. I forget which source said it now, but I recall reading that, contrary to what many of us have long thought, the Bicycle Rider chorus really did start in Heroes, then go to Worms then came back to Heroes over the course of the sessions.  

Man, we really don't understand how that song evolved or how those pieces related to each other at different moments... If only they'd recorded fucking demos!

[guitarfool2002]

Several elements to consider with Carl specific to 1966-67. First, and perhaps most key, is that right in the middle of everything else going on surrounding Smile, he gets his draft notice and then gets charged with a federal crime of draft evasion. And for the next several years, he's fighting the very real options of actually serving federal prison time or serving in Vietnam, both of which would be devastating blows to the band and family. Put yourself into that position, then consider the implications of the worst possible outcome falling down on Carl in 1967-68.

Consider too some points that may anger some fans, call it a "hot take" or whatever: Carl could not write a hit song. He didn't write much of anything of consequence to be blunt until the early 70's. If the band needed someone to pick up the slack from Brian, who wanted to back off and not be as competitive, Carl wasn't the guy. And even back to latter 1966, Brian was mentoring and teaching Carl how to produce records in the studio. We have some examples of this to hear ourselves. In 1967, he was still learning, but wasn't there yet. He had a good ear, but not Brian's ability to bring it all together in the studio. If Brian towards the end of '67 wanted to pull back from the production race, hoping others in the band would take up the job, who did he have to hand over the studio reigns? Carl learned well, we hear this in later '68, but he wasn't there.

The points being, or to consider, are who else was going to step in going into 1968 to make records and write songs for the band? Carl for many of these months didn't know if he'd be a free man for much longer, waiting on the opinion of a court of law. He may have had a good ear for music that would flourish later, but he couldn't write songs and wasn't in the position to cut decent records without Brian's involvement for the most part, until later in his development as a musician.

And the point being too, who knows how this affected the relationship with his older brother. Jealousy could have been one result of this. And maybe that's why Carl eventually did get so deeply into production on the mixing side of the trade and moreso helming the live band and making sure the presentation of the music was top-notch. It was his niche, more than writing songs and cutting hit records like his older brother had done.

[doinnothin]

Adding in that Julia's scholarship has been a real treat to follow and has also inspired plenty of rethinking of my own Smile theories and sequences. I commend the herculean effort put forth and give a hearty thank you! And may it continue!