My Last (?) Crack at the SMiLE Jigsaw
Julia:
Quote from: BJL on August 18, 2025, 01:00:31 AM
I think Brian intended Pet Sounds to have a certain unity of tone or theme. Not a concept album, but very much the album as a single coherent work of art. But I agree totally with what you say about Smile, here. I guess I think it may have been something like: Okay, if an album can function as a single coherent expression... what can you do with that? What possibilities does that open up? I do agree that Brian never really tried to think in terms of albums in that sense again.
Yes, and I want to make it clear none of this is a knock against Pet Sounds--in fact, as an older person out of my 20s now, I more often wonder if PS isn't the superior work these days. There's just something nice about its simplicity, where I can pull up the record on any device in a pinch and the songs are all accessible in their best possible version, no assembly required, no finagling my non-offical digital copy to get it to play on a new device (or the different speakers suddenly revealing noticeable changes in quality from where I had to sample outside TSS sources). If I'm listening with someone, there's no worry if they'll "get" something like Fire/Workshop, or find it strange listening to songs with chorus vocals but not verses, or if they're looking to dance and "who ran the iron horse" is both too unmelodic... SMiLE is more "fun" in how it invites active participation, the mysteries make it infinitely open to discussion, but it's still totally exhausting sometimes. Forget when your fanmix audio file won't work because the stereo doesn't recognize the specific codec and you're stuck listening to a low quality boot or that janky TSS Disc 1 assembly (which I find more frustrating to sit through than ethereal as SMiLE should be).
I'll always respect what SMiLE was trying to do and wish more people saw the beauty of Brian's madcap vision, but it feels like such a niche topic to anyone outside BB circles and even within them, there are detractors of the SMiLE Era. The seemingly disjointed nature is a put-off for some, the optimistic "LSD will change the world" philosophy drives away others. It seems like 1967, what was once considered the peak of pop music, is slowly being reevaluated by a more jaded public as we move away from that "sunshine utopia, make love not war, wear flowers in your hair" cultural moment. I submit as additional evidence the growing sentiment that Pepper is overrated (from #1 to #24 in Rolling Stone, plus more lists and average joes would tell you Revolver or Abbey Road are superior now) which, even suggesting that would've gotten you lynched ten years ago in most music spaces. You're also not gonna meet too many Jefferson Airplane diehards like you will for Elvis, Billy Joel, MJ, or even Jimmy Buffet in my experience. Outside some of the Doors, none of the 27 Club seem to get airplay on the radio outside "All Along the Watchtower." Even as a psychonaut myself, whose top 3 time travel bucket list items includes a trip to the Monterey Pop Festival, it feels like the tie-die aesthetic is as dated and silly to people now as Disco (visiting Studio 54 is on that list too, just saying).
Sorry for the tangent, more to come in the rest of the reply, I was high when I responded and couldn't help myself :thewilsons
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Completely agree (except that I think Brian was working well within the limits of the tech he had available). I absolutely think the spiritual / humor aspect of Smile you point to was not a lark or hippy bullshit but a serious objective - and very much within reach.
Glad to meet a fellow believer. I'm not sure why so many opt for a conservative interpretation of probably the least conservative project ever,* or assume anything coming on the heels of GV and the NME poll would "flop" (and, even if true, somehow that justifies SMiLE's abandonment) but those are opinions I see a lot of, even in fan circles. I consider this something of a lack of imagination or "willingness to upset the established pantheon" perhaps. The Beatles won, they survived the '66 transition from oldies soft rock to psychedelic prog rock--so, their legacy as #1 is set in stone in the popular imagination. The Beach Boys failed to clear that hurdle, which only Brian saw coming, and have been uncool pretty much ever since. These fans let their knowledge of the band's fortunes in our SMiLE-less future muddy the waters of that album's prospects in its moment, one of much-hyped anticipation and maximum cultural relevance, mind you. So, because that's the score now in our timeline, it somehow proves the public would've favored Sgt Pepper no matter what but never SMiLE--even if it came first and hot on the heels of their biggest hit EVER, which was giving them hip cred as well as glowing coverage in TV documentaries.
It's like how the myth of PS flopping refuses to die even though it hit the top 10 and it's been proven Capitol under-reported sales--BB fans are just weird, pessimistic masochists or something if you ask me. The Beatles were publicly praising their rivals' newest album and rival producers were taking out ad space to celebrate it. I don't buy this "it'd flop" theory, which seems based solely on Smiley's performance despite the obvious details separating it from what SMiLE's impact pre-June would've almost certainly been. Whether later albums, like a post-SMiLE Wild Honey would've still underperformed, is irrelevant--though for the record I think it was the reputational damage of not living up to Derek Taylor's hype and the cowardly no-show at Monterey that music buyers were punishing them for in our timeline, not a disinterest in the music of WH & Friends necessarily. Before all that happened, before Pepper could swoop in to steal the thunder, I think SMiLE had as much of a shot at #1 as any album ever would in the history of pop music, and a top ten spot was all but guaranteed even post-Pepper if the hipsters and critics praised it. What makes the whole thing so tragic, such an obsessive "what if" for believers, that it was so close to happening in theory, all it would've taken was a month or two of dedicated work, willingness to just release an "imperfect" single (just say "good enough" to any version of H&V or pick another song for God's sake) and then we'd have world peace...
*[ASIDE:]Are you the one who said to me "just because Brian didn't doesn't mean he couldn't" or words to that effect? I'd agree and add "just because he didn't OR couldn't, doesn't mean he wasn't thinking about it." Somehow, it's not enough that this would-be revolutionary album wasn't completed, people seem want to pretend it wouldn't have been so great, or wasn't even envisioned as a ground-breaking innovation for the medium, in spite of all the evidence. It's like there's this need to retroactively justify the band's reputation as squares, eternally playing catch-up to the Beatles, only doing simple lo-fi straight-forwards albums, for reasons I don't understand. Does Brian's inability to deliver mean he wasn't at least shooting for the stars--if so, then why couldn't the album just come out sans Fire or with CIFOTM as an instrumental then? Why couldn't Brian put that out as Smiley, to salvage some of the band's reputation, if the goal was only 12 tracks, nothing more ambitious than "another Pet Sounds"? As even these fans like to admit, Smiley is far more "out there" than SMiLE, and inarguably killed their public standing at least until they got a second chance in '74, if not forever, so why would Brian allow that if not for the fact that the only way his vision could be saved was by rebuilding from scratch?
The obvious explanation is SMiLE was indeed supposed to be a "next level" endeavor: a unified statement whose message of love was so important he'd never compromise it, a musical house of cards so delicate one lost piece, or poor editing choice, could destroy its intricate beauty. To do it justice was such an arduous task Brian couldn't even begin to start, lest he make the tiniest mistake and betray his perfect vision, much less mentally commit to the months of fine-point splicing across hours of analog tape recordings. But at the same time, he didn't want to let go of that dream, didn't want his world-shattering magnum opus released in a "compromised" state and erroneously remembered as "just another pop album" forever. This seems like such a fair reading of what went down, but people want to deny Brian even the sanctity of his own vision, for no reason beyond their own dislike of the music or skepticism of its message, which is just bad historical analysis whether you like the project or not. These are the kind of people who let everything influence their opinion--namely, the group's comparatively rudimentary pre and post SMiLE output--except the primary sources themselves. There's a reason Brian is so proud to be able to call BWPS "a rock opera" as if that justifies it as something more than an average album. There's a reason he was upset at Surf's Up being recycled outside its intended context.[/ASIDE]
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This is really helpful for me in terms of my own thinking, because I've always struggled a little to explain what I believe Smile would have been. Personally, (and this is sort of just my own instincts, I guess, based on years of reading and listening), I believe that Smile would have been 12 distinct songs following the track list printed on the jackets, many of which (but probably not all) would have had fades. But I *also* think it would have had spoken exclamations, jokes, unlisted hidden songs (some silly and some serious!) and even linking tracks! But that none of that implies it would have had *movements* or been like a rock opera type of thing (other than in the sense, maybe, of thematically connected songs being clustered together, but that's not really the same thing!)
Debating SMiLE's structure is a very complex topic with a trove of contradictions: some in the legit sources, most invented by haphazard bootleg releases and their effect on subsequent, flawed guesswork. Over decades of parroting online, with warm nostalgic memories of those surely-pleasant conversations, that all morphed into a zealously upheld oral tradition that makes it hard for real archivalist scholarship to break through. It doesn't help that a lot of people have serious emotional attachments to their fave theory, plus there are those who just like to shut down SMiLE conversations either to troll, uphold BWPS as the sacred final word, or even get a kick out of obfuscating the narrative because they find the "impossible mystery we'll never solve / endless Zen koan where the confusion is the point" thing compelling in its own right. So there are a lot of people online not actually invested in a productive investigation, or at least there used to be, and they don't make it any easier when you don't phrase things 100% perfectly 100% of the time. I'm gonna rant about some examples of this, if you'll pardon me...
It's indeed hard to claim "I don't like how BWPS excised the fades" while also saying "I take vintage '66 Brian at his word with the laughing/talking between cuts." I think a lot of "traditionalists" rightly consider PS' excision of the spoken word bits from other BB albums as a step in the right direction, and don't see too many other bands incorporating such weirdness in their own successful albums. With that in mind, it's fair for them to be dubious when I "pollute" the beauty of SU with Talking Horns, or undercut the ambiance of Worms with Taxi Cabber fly-ins. (I can't necessarily blame them, I sometimes think there's a reason Brian dropped these ideas and recreating his every passing whim of "what if?" / "why not?" / "this could even be on the album!" is a fool's errand.) But what can I say? I think Brian's quotes from '66, the very existence of audio verite and comedy skits in the tape vaults, as well as his finished output (Smiley) in '67, prove this kind of modular audio collage was a vintage, seriously considered idea in the halcyon Oct-Dec period, and therefore worth at least trying out. Some results are better than others, and I can't help but notice at least a few of these ideas have been getting popular in other mixes. It bugs me how Brian being this forward thinking prodigy who beat almost everyone to the punch in the production race, invented new chord progressions in pop music and heard impossibly complex harmonies in his head is taken as a given...until it comes to using audio verite collages a year before anyone else. Apparently Brian would've been incapable of song-mashups or something like Revolution 9 without seeing another group do it first ("Row row row your boat," what's that?)
I find the whole "movements" verbiage of BWPS very pretentious and unhelpful...but how can I say that when I subscribe to the "teenage symphony to God" that'd change the world with its sheer awesomeness? How can I champion the "it was originally two movements" quote if I still want at least semi-distinct tracks that fade? I mostly look to even Brian's prior work like Today! with the rockers on Side 1, ballads on Side 2 for a guide, with what I consider obvious context clues like shared "sound texture," emotional vibe and thematic overlap to determine the groupings on each side of vinyl. So, not "movements" like in Beethoven's Fifth so much as "playlists" of interrelated but distinct songs, like most concept albums--especially early ones. Wonderful by itself is about a girl losing her innocence, Surf's Up is about finding meaning in the madness because of children. CIFOTM is presumably about the way our childhood experiences (probably focusing on traumas and parental mistakes) ripple across our lives into recursive adult patterns or outright dysfunction, depending on how positive or negative they would've interpreted the concept. Each expresses a complete, independent thought but combined they become a song cycle built around a shared theme of life's minor tragedies compounding into a bittersweet human experience. As if that's not compelling enough, they have congruent arrangements (particularly the prominent keyboard and horn instrumental parts in each) with consistent emotional vibe (somber, reflective, evoking regret for past mistakes perhaps) and even shared numerology values. I think, as far as it goes, the first two "movements" of BWPS are vintage like the man said, with the multi-song Elements suite an ad-hoc invention borne out of bootleg-Smile Shop tradition retroactively justified by BWPS (despite Brian's explicit admission to its newness). Most songs in each "playlist/suite" would fade, some would carry right into something else (as Version 1 Wonderful seems want to do, or some versions of OMP and IIGS/BY) and some would have intros or outros of very brief comedy skits, particularly the Veggie Fight and SU Talking Horns. I say a Sixties SMiLE would've been roughly 33% Pet Sounds (in terms of arrangement), 33% Smiley (in terms of vibe & inventiveness), 1/6 Zappa's WOIIFTM (spliced audio collage w/ comedy bits), 1/6 Sweet Smoke's Just a Poke (distinct sides of interrelated music).
It's also not that I enjoy killing Elements speculation by reminding people of the (admittedly far less exciting) Psychedelic Sounds demos that all but prove what was in '66 Brian's head on the matter.* Just because accepting where the tapes lead us isn't as much fun as reiterating the "airy piano piece" quote from a decade later, or rediscovering and re-rejecting Veggies and Dada's claims for the umpteenth time, that doesn't stop the "higher order pramana" from taking precedence. Just because it sucks that the best we have for unambiguously vintage water and air are rough demos by not-BB vocalists, that doesn't mean some brilliant Wrecking Crew melody no one ever documented is going to appear in the vaults. Just because the dream of a symphonic elements that knocks everyone away and converts us to subud on the spot is more enticing, doesn't make it real. I'm not arguing all this from a place of aesthetic preference (I wish we had a Vosse water sounds based track too, believe me). I'm arguing from a sense of academic integrity, because respecting a consistently applied method is how we keep "fun" speculation from clouding the truth. Without a logical, common sense hierarchy of evidence, which we follow even if we don't always like the answers it leads to, there's no standards. That means efforts at further research get distorted, with the same tired, baseless fan-theories dominating the conversation ad nauseum because there's no agreed upon, objective means to come to a conclusion. But people making flippant jokes about "oh so you'd rather hear wheezing in a mic than Holidays" don't seem to get that. You can still opt to make an "element suite" on your fanmix with WC/Barnyard/CCW or Country Air/Workshop/Dada, especially since SMiLE changed so much. It's totally possible there was a cooler "4-song '67 Elements" in Brian's head soon after, but we don't have explicit proof of that on tape the way we do the PS' vintage-'66 rough cut demos*, which is why they must take precedent or at least be included in the conversation when it comes to the Elements "mystery."
And that leads to another possible contradiction that makes it hard for me to explain the intricacies of my opinion. If I say SMiLE is so great, how can it have flaws like a comparatively unimpressive Elements? The answer might be that Brian changed his mind, which he did often, so a surely cacophonous 4-part medley was quickly scrapped in favor of "spiritual successors" like a standalone Veggies, CCW & Second Day (which I believe by '67 was Air if it was anything, though I maintain in '66 it was just another uncertain "feel"). But then someone deliberately misses the nuance and asks how I can say that if I just claimed the PS elements were Brian's (original) plan and we go 'round again. Or they want to die on the hill that Wind Chimes and Surf's Up were specifically intended air and water from the start, I guess since they have one word in their respective titles vaguely element-adjacent if you squint. If not that, then they cite how it was said on a forum 30 years ago, after being labeled as such on a bootleg in the '80s, and plus it was good enough for BWPS... So, they think that's all a solid argument because it's backed up by "3 sources" that were actually built on a shared foundation of baseless, inbred-ouroboros conjecture. (Like, it may be your aesthetic preference, more power to ya, but it's not historically accurate in any way we can prove which is my whole point.)
Another answer to the naysayers might be "youre right, the PS Element demos* suck, maybe Talking Horns as part of SU proper IS a bad idea, perhaps that's why Brian started second-guessing his muse and the album was scrapped?" but then how can I sing the praises of an album so apparently flawed? Or, they hate PsychSounds so much they don't want to concede those recordings have any connection to SMiLE whatsoever even as the poison pill that started its unraveling. To even suggest that the man over here constantly bringing up humor and "talking in the pauses" might've sourced something from his many contemporaneous recordings of humorous talking is somehow an insult to SMiLE's majesty. It's weird to me how hostile a lot of people were (are?) to acknowledging these ~6 particular sessions (Oct 25 Lifeboat, Nov 4 PS, Nov 7 George, Nov 16 Argument, plus whenever Taxi Cabber, Smog and the rest of PS Disc 2 were done), more than was held for any non-single track, are actually part of the project, even as proof of how disjointed things were getting before the collapse. Every attempt to navigate this straight of Messina leads to a genuine contradiction and convenient "gotcha!" for those allergic to nuance (or just intolerant of the non-melodic, "weird" aspects of SMiLE). Deliberately obtuse yoyos pretend not to understand the concept of a rough demo* when they say "durr, so you think Brian would've used these janky Vosse Posse vocals on the album?!?"
*[ASIDE:]And yes, I do believe the Nov 4 recordings (Disc 1 of PS boot) are demos, however much we may not like them, whether they were abandoned soon after or evolved to be nearly unrecognizable (UC into the Water Chant & Brian Falls Into a Piano/Mic into George Fell), they are demos by definition. The evidence is right there: 1) Brian couldn't wait to try some ideas first thing in the middle of the night, which all the sources cite as his usual operating procedure. 2) The Beach Boys weren't around, so he used his posse of hipsters--they can even be heard complaining about the late hour and being ordered around as if they have nothing better to do. 3) Brian clearly has concepts for skits he wants to try out without directly telling everyone what to say, only giving them a vague scenario and see how it plays out organically. You can hear this for yourself or read my commentaries about the PS boot (not in this thread), even though the others sans Vosse (ever the loyal disciple) often ignore these setups and goof off in the interim (Mary Poppins, Ice Cream Man). 4) This was all professionally recorded, catalogued and filed with the rest of the SMiLE tapes, implying somewhat more importance than "goofball stoners absent-mindedly killing time because haha drugs." 5) Finally, the two main comedy skits Brian explicitly tried to direct the group towards were more professionally recorded with Wrecking Crew members within 3 days (George Fell) & 2 weeks (Veggie Argument). If this were anything except spoken word comedy, which a lot of people seem to have a visceral disdain for, it would be an open-and-shut case they're demos, but no one wants to legitimize this part of SMiLE. At least the concept of chanting was recorded a month later with the lone You're Welcome session, then several times more in the spring (including CCW) plus the Water Chant a little less than a year later. (Anyone pretending they can't see at least the conceptual carryover between UC & CCW/WC is absolutely full of sh*t and pushing an agenda--I die on this hill.) [/ASIDE]
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However, I think I disagree with this statement: "As I alluded to previously, you can have a funny album with offbeat "talking/laughing between cuts" or you can have music about the tragedy of American expansionism, but you can't have both simultaneously unless you want a mess."
I believe enough of the album Brian was recording in 1966-7 was finished to make sense of what he was doing, and I've never believed that the music contains the seeds of the albums demise in this way. Of course it wouldn't have been a unified statement, but it was an album that was *conceived from the beginning* to be both an Americana trip about the history of the West, a coming of age story, and a paen to, for lack of a better term, hippie spirituality (I don't mean to be disparaging by calling it that!). But the humor and the seriousness runs through all of it, and neither was ever segregated out into one part of the project. Barnyard and Heroes and Villains are silly, Cabinessence is somehow extremely silly (boing, boing boing!), very ominous, and not particularly poignant. Bicycle Rider is ominous, the Hawaiian chants are light, and the versus and title of Do You Like Worms are funny. Wonderful is beautiful but also very light. The tonal range within 75% of the songs worked on in 1966 is wider than the tonal range on all of Pet Sounds! That was a huge part of the point. (Also Song Cycle is not exactly a somber record, it's very light in its way, and full of musical humor from Vine Street on, something Van Dyke Parks very much appreciated in his work and Brian's, in my opinion, whatever frustrations he might have had with Brian's working methods at the time Smile was being recorded).
Well, I'm sort of two minds about this myself. First of all, I love SMiLE as-is (obviously) weird tonal shifts and all, but I still recognize it as an untenable mess of one-too-many ideas if that makes sense. It's like the Beatles White Album, where "its beauty is in its mess" but here, instead of 4 budding solo artists competing for space on the record, it's one guy's speed-addled, fraying mind trying to cram every cool sonic idea, every deep philosophical lesson, into less than 45 minutes. It's sort of rough around the edges and conceptually bloated, I think it's fair to say. It works brilliantly even in its fractured state, my fanmixes of "what might've been" blow me away on a good day, but sometimes I can't help but notice more of the cracks and think "Pet Sounds is actually better because it's so much more tight and cohesive."
Some of my misgivings maybe stem from my desire for uniformity and balance--VT and SU clearly had orbiting comedy skits, I have no doubt of that--but while the Veggie Fight fits like a glove, I must admit even I struggle to justify including George Fell sometimes. I used to like tacking it on at the end ala Her Majesty or Pepper's inner grove, but that does diminish the sincere profundity of SU's statement I think. At least it borderline does. I've seen other mixers start to use this idea like DAE LIMS which I find flattering (not sure if they were inspired by my efforts directly, but even if they weren't it legitimizes the choice, knowing a more famous mixer felt the same way independently) however, hearing someone else's version, which I now have no personal stake in, made me think "oh man, that's too much, you ruined the moment." My last mix (Voynich SMiLE) moved George Fell to an intro for SU, but here too you break the melodic momentum of CIFOTM (or whatever else) leading into Surf if you do that. So, I sort of unintentionally recreated what happened to Brian in '66 I feel, where he wanted an avant garde comedy + sound effects collage but (probably) realized the music he was making was too serious, too sad and reflective to work tonally with these left-turn jokes breaking up the flow. But for me, to have a skit in Veggies on Side 1 but no comparative moment on Side 2 also feels wrong somehow, like in my mind (and for no good reason) I want two mirror-like symphonic playlists, one reflecting on American history and society, the other on individual relationships and life cycles, and I want them as balanced as possible.
Someone might come in and say "you're too hung up on thinking Veggies was Americana, put it back on Side 2 like most people and then you've restored balance with two overtly silly tracks--Heroes and Veggies--on each playlist!" They may be more right than we know, because if SMiLE followed Pet Sounds singles releases, the kick-off single should be at the end of side 1, not the beginning of side 2 where the third or double A-side second single should be (which is Veggies). But, for me, that creates its own problems. As I've said, I don't believe in an "Elements Side" as the popular, long-handed down oral tradition from the '80s bootlegs would have us do. Even if I did, every version of such an endeavor sounds like a disjointed free for all to my ears, BWPS included. I say to split up the "BWPS second movement" tracks is an absolute crime, considering that segment is everybody's favorite, it intuitively works so well musically and conceptually, and (yet again) Brian said the first two groupings were vintage, Americana and Cycle of Life. So, rather than throw ALL that away because Priore said so, or your first bootleg did it, I say use the main tracks of the first two movements as the foundations for both sides of a Sixties-style album. Ok, that means dividing the "Elements tracks" up and we just established H&V should be separate from VT. See the issue? Either track would just sound so wrong rubbing elbows with the likes of Won/CIFOTM/SU(& WC). It just forces a tonally discordant left turn where there doesn't need to be one. GV isn't so bad with the Side 2 tracks, but it sounds absolutely lost next to Heroes or CE.
You may say I'm boxing myself in and creating arbitrary problems for myself, but that's what SMiLE does to you. You get a theory that sounds right until another contrary piece of evidence (often pedantically thrown in your face by a dissenter) pokes a hole in it, which is all any bystanders notice. ("Oh their explanation isn't perfect so they're wrong, even though literally no attempt to make sense of this mess has ever been without its inconvenient contradictions.") You explain how it's like a real life DBQ (document based question) in an AP class, where you're given a bunch of primary accounts and must carefully choose those which seem to paint a consistent picture while ignoring those that are antithetical, because not every observer will agree on what happened or may even be lying, but the existence of one alternate take doesn't/shouldn't necessarily silence a more compelling majority. But then you're accused of hobby-horsing and "misleading" people. More importantly, you get an idea for sequencing most of the tracks that seems great, but I'll bet if the rest of you are anything like me, there's always that one song that won't neatly fit. You either ran out of room on one side, forcing its inclusion with the other concept-playlist it isn't naturally a part of, or it could go either way (the singular Elements track) or something else. Anytime I've made a SMiLE mix, there's always some kind of compromise like that, where one thing isn't how I'd like but it's the only way the rest of it fits together. That, or I had to ignore evidence and do things I'm much less certain Brian would've (like using the Heroes intro for a standalone Fire, Dada as a standalone track, using I Ran instead of IIGS/BYS, etc) for the sake of making it sound better. That's why every time, as soon as I'm done a mix, I almost immediately think "wait, this could be better."
And that's not even touching what I consider the inappropriate undercutting of racial injustice with some silly jokes if you apply Brian's "talking between cuts" to the unambiguously Americana songs. How do you put a joke or laughing after CE's magnificent fade, or "fall into a microphone" during Fire? What comedy skit works with the genocide of the Indians? Maybe I'm being too literal here, or assuming there'd be comedy skits ala Fight & Fell between almost every track when it would've been applied more sparingly. (This is how my application evolved across two previous mixes, where "Olorin Edition" used PsychSounds clips between every track but that got obnoxious on repeat listens, so I scaled back with "Romestamo Cut" to just one or two per side.) It's all about how much you think Brian would've done, how seriously you take him in those interviews and if maybe he was only considering something like Heroes when he said that and I'm just assuming it'd apply to the whole album. We can't really know, but to me, the added problem of juggling such disparate pieces with (seemingly) discordant vibes must've surely been a factor in the collapse. At least, that makes intuitive sense to me, anyway, because I've experienced it firsthand working with this material.
And yet, and yet, all that said, I do still agree with a lot of what you're saying here. The melancholy and joviality does run through a lot of it. Worms has the goofy title and flippant "East or West Indies, we always get them confused" that most AI fanmixers frustratingly leave off. Surf's Up has the "horn laughing" sound even in the first movement (another reason I think Brian had a plan for the "horn droning" and "horn wailing" sounds from the same session). Heroes has the bouncy melody but tragic lyrics. I get it. And not all, perhaps not even most, albums are like PS and the USA with their uniform "sound textures" and interrelated subject matter. Thriller, Revolver and Abbey Road are all over the place (most forgettable albums I've heard are too). Even one of my top favorites, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, has that weird annoying detour in the middle where there's like 3 proto-prog freak out jam sessions in between 8 shorter, fun, whimsical-psychedelic ditties. (Tangent: I always thought "Take Thy Stethoscope" should've been replaced with "See Emily Play" at the very least.) So just because everything wasn't perfectly aligned doesn't mean it was unreleasable or even unusual against its peers. But we're talking about Brian Wilson here, the man who was so obsessed with perfection he hosted 30+ Heroes sessions only to not use most of what he'd recorded anyway. The guy who wasn't satisfied even with the final cut of GV, only reluctantly letting go when he realized it was the best he could do, who considered giving the song away. The guy who set out to make "music people would pray to" and wouldn't settle for any less than the best. That's why I think these..."imperfections" or "rough edges" which might've been fine for another artist must've been unacceptable for him. He was in a manic state in Oct-Nov, wanting to put everything from dinner plates to a random Cabbie on the album. When the speed crash happened, the euphoric high giving way to depressive funk, suddenly he realized "I recorded a lot of 'junk' that's gonna take weeks to sequence properly, probably won't even sound all that good together anyway, the band already doesn't like it and if I change my mind I have to resplice this delicate tape until it physically falls apart."
I just think, knowing what we know about Brian's perfectionism, he would have had a lot of the same frustrations and second-guessing of the material as someone like me does trying to make sense of everything in the vault, but even more so because he made it, it's his would-be masterpiece, he has to live with its reception forever not me. Brian pre-Smiley was not one to make compromises on his important work. (Yes, he made filler albums on command, but he wouldn't cut the intro to California Girls, change Pet Sounds, nor would he trim GV down despite significant pressure to do so.) Surely it was a factor in any case. As far as my theory the two partners weren't seeing eye-to-eye, again I just base that on Anderle's (and I believe Vosse's) accounts as well as what Brian chooses to focus on in interviews (ALWAYS humor) compared to VDP, as well as their usual styles. Im not sure if we can totally say "SMiLE was conceived as an American gothic trip from the beginning" or at least I don't think we can definitively say it was Brian's idea or a 50-50 idea with what we know. Im guessing Brian had a silly cowboy song and things grew from there in competing directions, but that's just speculation based on a preponderance of the evidence as I like to say.
Sorry for all the long-winded tangents. :afro
Julia:
Just me talking to myself again, and the realization of that coupled with rereading the book full of tangents I just wrote, I wonder if maybe Im not going crazy and that can be part of the legend, that it became to a fan what shortenin bread was to Brian or something. Anyway...
1. Thoughts on 97.7fm VDP Interview
I watched a bunch of random VDP interviews on YouTube lately, mostly not dealing with SMiLE, or just reiterating the basics. But one stood out to me for a few reasons, which I'm gonna commentate on :-D. This is a 2011 Casey Radio in Melbourne, Australia. You get a bit of insight into SMiLE about ~22 minutes in (https://youtu.be/mXZeKCUjwGU):
1) VDP says he felt like he was taking someone else's job and, upon realizing this, felt embarrassed like he'd been put in an antagonistic "odd one out" role he wasn't set up for. Listening to this, it only suddenly occurred to me that without Mike officially being credited on songs, and Van probably never realized there was a sidelined lyricst whom his presence was insulting. This is the perfect example of the compounding recursive ways that injustice screwed Mike over, as it sounds like VDP wouldn't have accepted had he known, or certainly he may've been more sensitive about it. Asher was probably set up to fail in that way as well. This is an overlooked detail I think we take for granted sometimes--nobody knew they were stepping on Mike's toes going in.
2) VDP says the new 2000s SMiLE is not much different than the Sixties because "it's not about the particular brushstrokes" but "about having the same attitude & expressing what it set out to do" (words to that effect). It sounds to me like either he didn't want to upset fans by implying there's still a lost work out there, or imply that Brian/Mark/Alan didn't do a good job "resurrecting the album," in addition to his clear lack of the same obsessive pedanticism which drives uber-fans of this material. Perhaps also, Van didn't want to get bogged down explaining minute specific differences nobody but us cares about, because at this point they don't matter to him, he forgot, or maybe he was never privy to them in the first place. Either way, we're not getting some secret vintage tracklist, lost sheet music or description of a missing vocal part from him.
3) VDP claims he had "5 sessions" with Brian, (though it's hard to make out and I turned CC on) "each one hour long" and for a hot minute I was reeling at the implications of this, that the writing for SMiLE had all been accomplished in such limited bursts...but then Van clarified later he was talking about BWPS. That's still kind of interesting, and he confirms the Holidays pirate thing was new (I recall there was debate on if those lyrics were vintage, well case closed). At this point, VDP seems to want to downplay this topic and move on, "it really isn't that interesting/it really isn't demanding work/im glad it got done but [...]it didn't make me a millionaire/did I tell you about my new CD?"
2. A SMiLE-Focused VDP Interview
This one's with BBC radio 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G00Y22qA0
1) What's interesting here is, according to VDP, there was no overarching plan, at least not at first, except to assert their American-ness against the British Invasion. There was still a sense of calling the country out for its flaws (Vietnam, race riots, loss of American dream) but no particular "purpose" to the album except "to be Americans and comment on America without shame." There's a quote about how Brian could "translate the American vernacular into music."
^If Brian was immediately taken with humor going in, or bisociative song-writing, or secret messages about his acid trips (as Tobelman insists) he apparently did not share any of this with Van. That could imply the humor and music concrete ideas Brian discusses in vintage interviews came a little later, or he didn't think it was important to bring up with the lyricist. (Also, it's possible Van's misremembering, but I choose to take him at his word here.) It's possible Brian thought of the religious angle later and told VDP after their first meet in May but before September. However, I would think Van might've mentioned something like that, because it's a big omission. This is another case where an uber-fan with obsessive knowledge would've asked for clarification but alas... As is, I submit this anecdote as further proof the two were focused on different components of the music, VDP always as the American politics & history guy, Brian as the spiritual comedian. I think it's likely there was a "meeting of the minds" here in May, but then Brian kept changing what the album was, the same way he kept changing what each song was, and Van was struggling to keep up. That's why, when asked "what is SMiLE," Van defers to this memory, where they were on the same page and before it got so confused.
[ASIDE:]Since the earliest recorded (non-single) SMiLE songs in August and September are WC, I Ran, Wonderful & HGS, Prayer and Holidays I almost have some doubts of this "America first" origin of the project. They're all arguably the least overtly Americana AND least explicitly humorous songs on the whole album. Indeed, the most viscerally jolly of the tracks here (Holidays) was almost certainly cut from the final tracklist! This early date for Prayer also implies the spiritual angle was present close to the beginning: if not in May during the first brainstorm with Van, then at least before the recording sessions really got underway. (Even these particular versions of WC & Wonderful which predate it were ultimately redone, I Ran & HGS likely scrapped too, so in effect Prayer is the second completed SMiLE song after GV, a few stray 20/20 overdubs aside.) I now consider WC to be like GV, in that they were conceived outside of the SMiLE conceptual umbrella but grandfathered into the tracklist anyway. (People obsessively try to make WC fit better by insisting it was the Air element, when really Brian just spur-of-the-moment wrote about something he bought at the store that day.) In fact, I'm wondering if you couldn't call everything pre-Oct or pre-Prayer (9-19-66) as a bit of a false start to the SMiLE sessions now, where non-Americana / non-New Age music, with a carryover from Pet Sounds' "sonic texture" and its "adolescent yearning themes" were still working their way out of Brian's system, before he hunkered down and focused on the bulk of the tracks--especially those more closely tied to SMiLE's major ideas.[/ASIDE]
2) VDP downplays the idea that he was a co-writer or co-producer of the music without even being asked, emphasizing that Brian's arrangements already knocked him out. VDP makes a point to say "I never asked Brian to change a note." He also claims he would've preferred if Brian had just given him simple 2:30 length tracks and said "here's the song, give me lyrics for it." Instead, Brian would feed him 8-bars at a time. It seems the SMiLE modular free form style was more of a burden to Van than anything. "[SMiLE] got a mind of its own." Van says towards the end he doesn't like the BWPS "pop symphony" / "movements" or even the vintage "symphony to God" framing of SMiLE, it made him uncomfortable. To Van, it seems, SMiLE was just an album or perhaps should've stayed just an album.
^This is interesting because it's going to contradict what Brian says in another interview at the end of this post. It seems like nobody wants to take credit for the modular style, probably for good reason as it was a not-insignificant factor in the collapse of the project. For what it's worth, if we have to take one collaborator's side over the other in this, I choose to believe Van Dyke when he says he wanted a more straightforward approach. Unless I'm very wrong, I believe Brian was already going modular with GV when he brought Van onboard. All the same, I've seen it said on these forums (forget who, forget which thread) that Van misinterpreted what Brian needed from him with SMiLE. I get the impression Van saw his role as limited, just the lyricist, while Brian was looking for someone he perceived as "on his level" to help tell him how to assemble the pieces. Van didn't want there to be pieces, didn't have the whole scope of the project in mind (my interpretation), he thought, or wanted, SMiLE to be a simple 12-track banded album with no crossfades except in one song (presumably Elements). Brian was too paralyzed by indecision to settle on a structure, he wanted his collaborator to take a firmer hand and cast the vote, yet paradoxically seems to have held him at arms length on the big picture. It's a weird, confusing dynamic we can never totally be sure of, but that's my best estimation based on all these confusing quotes. This is why I think Darian was essential to BWPS for playing some of his fanmixes for Brian to give him ideas (the Look after Wonderful "eureka!" moment.)
3) VDP acknowledges SMiLE was not commercial and implies that was more Brian's idea. Van emphasizes he was not misled by Brian's desire to take music in a more abstract place, that he knew they were doing something radical from the jump. VDP also shares the anecdote of watching GV played on Dick Clark, where the teens stopped dancing in the quiet parts, as an early warning sign this might not sell. The way he tells it you can take away "and Brian proved the conventional wisdom wrong" or "and that was a sign of what was to come." Brian was thinking beyond songs, so much so that Van says he couldn't tell you how many "songs" he wrote for on the album.
^This seemingly contradicts the way I'd always framed their dynamic in my head. VDP is anti-commercial whether he means it or not; he's "the cult artists' cult artist" as I've heard it said. Meanwhile Brian pre-SMiLE was the one-man hit machine, has been called "the biggest star in the American recording industry" at that time. I always assumed it was Van pushing Brian to step outside the boy-girl, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-fade structure. Anderle says Van wanted SMiLE to be "more sophisticated" and Brian wanted "more simplicity." It's just kind of hard to say who's right here, or if there aren't missing details. (Like, perhaps Van was initially hesitant but then said "hey it's your record--but if we're pushing boundaries let's REALLY push boundaries!" though this is baseless speculation trying to connect two disparate dots.) This does also lend credence to the theory that SMiLE was morphing into something more like a music concrete audio collage than a traditional banded album though, it's just a matter of how extreme you think it would've gone. (I suggest more than Pepper, less than Zappa, probably H&V would've been something like an "Abbey Road Medley" while other tracks faded.)
4) VDP says of 2003 and presumably 2011 "there isn't anything I worked on that isn't there" which seems to imply that CIFOTM didn't have lyrics back then and if Vosse really heard WC with vocals over the fade it must've been vocalizations not "columnated ruins domino" esque true lyrics. Probably I Ran lyrics are off the table too with this quote in mind. Disappointing but not unexpected.
^I'd really love it if someone asked, not in a mean way but "so, did you ever hear the CIFOTM tapes or see the sheet music? Did Brian just never give it to you, you struggled with how to put it to words, you knew you were gonna split soon anyway and considered it a wasted effort? Why was nothing written here, for this one song out of all on the tracklist? Why, in several months, was nothing done on this track? Not saying you didn't do your job, but could you only visit Brian sporadically once a month or something and each time you were shocked by how much the project had changed since last time? And that constituted a redo or something? Work with me here, boy, because this doesn't seem normal..."
3. Thoughts on Beautiful Dreamer
I also revisited the David Leaf Beautiful Dreamer documentary for the first time in 14 years, wondering if there would be any cool anecdotes there I overlooked/forgot since that's what first kicked off my obsession. Sadly, there wasn't much except that H&V, SU, CE & Wonderful all supposedly were written in the sandbox, as well as the BWPS stuff. It's definitely the most accessible source for the general public and the info seems basically accurate looking back as a more wizened fan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H0Orfkaqf4
1) My big sticking points are the lack of "talking head" interviews from actual Beach Boys besides Brian, as well as the over-the-top focus on Mike alone as the reason things fell apart. I'll always agree he was a factor, but I'm now convinced that the Capitol lawsuit fallout and setting up Brother Records were actually the biggest issues, with the speed crash & subsequent depressive funk as third. Then jockeying for fourth place: growing apart from VDP, lack of group enthusiasm, and procrastinating from having to sort thru then stitch together hours of analog tape. Worries about live performances, fears of commercial rejection, lingering Murry issues, worry of losing Carl and wasting their final moments together on an acrimonious endeavor must surely round out the top 10 reasons. Then anything else you can tack on were also contributing annoyances, certainly, which compounded in a mental breakdown--maybe not "locked in a room for years" as the oral tradition claims, but enough that the album was abandoned and nothing as conceptually ambitious as it was ever attempted again. (I'm choosing my words carefully here--even if "Friends is just as complex on an arrangement level," or whatever's trending on the other side of the "how serious was Brian's breakdown" pendulum, the point is Brian never attempted a "symphony to God" again, a "two movement cantata" or "rock opera," as he's called SMiLE.)
2) Besides that, it's the basic story without too much detail. A great starting point, but one should immediately pivot to a less overtly "anti-Mike" source as a pallet cleanser. Mike deserves a bit of bashing for his part in not supporting Brian's vision and taking pot-shots at his mistakes decades later. But Mike was also young, in an understandably tough spot considering the commercial risks, was both financially/professionally screwed and publicly humiliated from the lack of recognition as lyricist and being sidelined, plus Brian was legitimately going off the rails. Mike deserves some grace, and even if he hassled VDP at every session (not just one) it wouldn't have prevented SMiLE's release unless Brian wanted it to. (I think for Brian in 2004 and possibly even as early as 1967, having Mike as a proverbial bad guy in the SMiLE Saga served as a convenient excuse for his failure to deliver on the hype. Brian was never above this kind of passive aggression if you look at him honestly.)
3) For me, the fact that Brian only called VDP to "finish SMiLE" because he couldn't make out a word on a lyric sheet kinda shows that he didn't think he needed VDP to "finish" SMiLE anymore, this was more his thing than an equal co-op--he just wanted to get the music out rather than restore any kind of vintage plan. Van writing new lyrics seems to have been a happy surprise, but one wonders whose idea that was. What's more likely: Brian asking "hey, while you're here..." or Van "say, I could pitch some new words to clean up the dead spots..." I'm not trying to downplay the significance of their reunion but I wonder if Brian didn't want to embarrass VDP after getting him to come over ("well thanks for clarifying that word...bye") so he decided spur of the moment to offer him a gig for his trouble, or if maybe the indecipherable lyric story was his excuse for getting a foot in the door, rather than dropping the bomb "we're finishing SMiLE, motherfucker!" out of nowhere. It's an interesting moment to speculate on.
4. Thoughts on the TSS Webisodes
I remember these were released one by one over a few weeks or something in the buildup to the TSS release in 2011. Someone edited them into a 45 minute mini-documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUgFc1H34d4).
1) Most of the info here is pretty basic stuff that you'd get from any other source; it is nice to finally hear interviews from the actual band members but they don't have too much to say. I'm thinking of the BBs, Dennis and certainly Carl would've been more privy to the details and I think they "got" SMiLE on some level at least. Dennis tripped and was the next best songwriter of the group. Brian says in places that Dennis was his biggest supporter and his vintage quotes back that up ("SMiLE makes Pet Sounds stink, that's how good it is" / "Brian is the Beach Boys; he's everything, we're nothing.") Carl was eager to learn production techniques and I've heard others say he was in the control booth as often as possible around this time, shadowing Brian. Carl would step in and finish several SMiLE tracks as we all know, along with spearheading the Tones sessions and is the most likely source of the Capitol tracklist along with Diane Rovell. I think the other two Wilsons could've told us a lot about SMiLE and especially Smiley Smile (which either no one remembers--too much weed--or doesn't want to talk about, since it was such a humiliating release coming in SMiLE's shadow.)
2) There is a throwaway line from Brian that seems to have massive implications, though. When recounting his early collaborations with Van Dyke, Brian makes it sound like it was Van's idea to record in "snippets." Like supposedly Brian even asked "what's that?" and Van "showed" him how to record just a piece of a song without having to worry about the parts that weren't coming right away--you can just let the creativity flow where it wants and come back to the hard stuff later. Towards the end of the doc, Brian is asked "what would you say to your younger self" (words to that effect) and he answers "if you write a song, don't crap out halfway. Write your whole song--like my father used to teach me." That feels like a heavy quote, Brian deferring to Murry's way when reflecting on his greatest professional failure.
^This all seems like a strong repudiation of modular recording (at least "modular writing") and therefore VDP's influence if Brian's other quote is accurate. I take any non-vintage Brian memory about SMiLE with a huge grain of salt, but I'm curious if anyone else believes VDP really gave birth to the modular approach or Brian is misremembering. (Maybe he got the idea independently around the same time and attributed it to VDP's influence due to it all happening simultaneously? When did GV become a truly modular recording process, can anyone answer that?) VDP never shuts up about the cello in GV, so I wonder if he really taught Brian this technique too, wouldn't he mention it more often? Or maybe VDP also recognizes it as a net negative in the long run, and doesn't want to take credit for the seed which arguably planted the album's undoing?
Julia:
I just perused the relevant sections of The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White, but unless you're interested in the extended backstories of Warner records and VDP, or some factoids like 1966's Unsafe at Any Speed contributing to the death of early '60s hot rod culture (thereby rendering another of the BB's fad topics obsolete), there's not much uncovered there. It is, however, the first explicit mention of Brian studying a form of Buddhism (Tantric) outside the untrustworthy Tobelman site, at least that I can recall, so that's something. Not knocking it as a source by any means, just you read enough of them and they repeat the same basic info.
I also saw Van Dyke Parks: An Obsession with Music (2002) but it's apparently in Dutch for the most part, so the narrator's asides are indecipherable to me. There's English interviews with VDP, Brian, Danny Hutton and some other guy about the SMiLE sessions but it's mostly the same info you hear a million times (met at Terry Melcher's house, H&V was first & written on the spot, then SU, yadda yadda...) Danny Hutton speculates there may have been creative differences between VDP and Brian but that "it was good for the music"--no specific elaboration on what disagreements could've occurred, what songs or themes were at stake, etc. Hutton makes it sound like Van was in a position to be helping with melodies and production/arrangement ideas with this quote, similar to what Anderle has implied in some of his articles. But this is contradicted by that other radio VDP interview I shared recently and even here, VDP says Brian's "destiny" was to go solo "...and I happened to be the guy who brought in some words." (Very humble, very much not putting himself on Brian's level as SMiLE's co-creator, just a hired hand with a specific role to fulfill.)
^At this point I've listened to a bunch of VDP interviews and honestly my takeaway is Van would absolutely talk it up if he did more for SMiLE production-wise than "just" the GV cello suggestion which he never misses an opportunity to brag about. If he'd recommended another instrument for, say, the Veggies chorus or something, it seems he'd constantly brag about it too. So, the fact he doesn't do that AND insists he was purely a lyricist, means I'm inclined to believe him. But then, I'm not sure why Brian apparently felt he needed VDP around to finish the album (just cut CIFOTM from the tracklist, tragic as that'd be, or hire another guy to do that one song), nor why Anderle and Hutton seem to think the melodies or arrangements were a give-and-take between the two. I'd love to see someone offer a theory connecting these disparate testimonies, or weigh in on who's wrong if they can't be reconciled.
Another "new" piece of info is the effect of the collapse on Van, which was "devastating" and humiliating. He'd given his best and was made to feel like it wasn't good enough, treated by Mike as if he were "a bad influence." Van doesn't mince words either, with some of the harshest, most pointed criticisms of Mike I've seen: "Mike Love destroyed the enthusiasm of the project. It was a very stupid thing for him to do. And I have forgiven him completely." (Somehow I doubt Mike ever sought forgiveness, which I'm sure Van is not-so-subtly calling attention to, and neither his voice nor expression indicate anything but disdain in my estimation.) These are DIRECT QUOTES. I still think Mike's hostility was a lesser factor overall (perhaps "the 5 lb weight that broke the camel's back" let's say), but what's important is Van clearly thinks his actions were a big deal and is saying so outside of David Leaf's influence. Van either really blames Mike, or finds him a convenient scapegoat for the unfavorable outcome of this confusing, tumultuous situation (as I suspect is at least partly Brian's MO when blaming Mike in the Leaf film). I lean towards the former scenario in Van's case, but I'm not sure how cognizant Van was/is about the other factors--did Brian ever confide his worries for how the music would sound live, for example? Was Van aware of the lawsuit at the time, did he have the wherewithal to perceive Brian's speed crash or mental illness as they were unfolding?
^Without direct quotes or specific anecdotes outside the CE session incident, I personally just don't feel comfortable leveling quite so much blame at Mike's feet. I think he was certainly a negative presence and complained a good deal, but not in any kind of way that would've held up someone who was 100% (or even let's say 75+%) certain of their vision and/or not already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Mike's harsh criticisms ("this music disgusts me") probably delivered the final push, and Van saw cause and effect without directly witnessing the cracks that had been forming for years from Brian's compounding problems and undiagnosed condition. That's my theory. I still say without the endless possibilities (plus immense, delicate work) of modular editing and constant legal distractions as well as the weird dynamic of enriching your "enemies" by giving them your masterpiece to profit off of, SMiLE still gets done whether Mike likes it or not. But I can see why Van and Brian latch onto Mike as the embodiment of all the antagonisms they were facing, like "you know I/Brian am going through all this other sh*t right now, you're family, I/Brian got you where you are, and you can't just give me/him a break for once?" That's a very human reaction, certainly. If Mike were just a bandmate and not family, I think VDP or Anderle might've even straight up said that to him on Brian's behalf, but as-is it was perceived as a family matter and neither thought it was their place to get too directly involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TynLkl3PdY8 <Here's the link. Anyone who knows Dutch and can confirm if the narrator says anything revelatory, let me know.
BJL:
Just writing to say I, at least, am reading everything you post with great care! But mostly not letting myself reply, because I will easily lose hours in these conversations and at this precise moment I don't have the hours to lose... (Especially since writing mini-essays on Smile uses up the exact same kind of energy I'm supposed to be using on the research and writing
I actually get paid for...)
Julia:
This is me commentating on Domenic Priore's second, far less famous, SMiLE book from 2005. https://archive.org/details/smilestoryofbria0000prio/page/9/mode/1up?view=theater I'm gonna go chapter by chapter and share my thoughts on SMiLE stuff.
Key Takeaways:
1. Thoughts on Brian's Foreword
It's really wild to hear Brian describe "[the time of composing] the music of SMiLE [as] a very special and energetic and upbeat time in my career and life." He also calls it "a very uplifting, jovial album." I think certainly the 2003-04 version is more jolly and triumphant than its inspiration, but those original sessions I find straight up haunting and bittersweet at best. It makes me think of the tremendous regret in our past and little tragedies going on everyday (Wonderful, the uncertain future of CIFOTM) with only the faintest promise of a better tomorrow at the very end to leave the listener with just enough hope to carry on. As I've frequently stated, the only two tracks that seem "jovial" to me are Veggies and H&V to a noticeably lesser extent (the lyrics betray the upbeat melody). It is great that's Brian so positive about it now, of course.
The rest of what Brian says isn't particularly insightful, which is disappointing but not unsurprising. ("Pay attention to the words in the chorus: Heroes and Villains, just see what you've done..." uhh, thanks Bri, will do.) He just says the most basic possible description of each song ("[regarding YAMS] listen to how unhappy the lyrics are and how sad it is for the guy to lose the person he loved, his sunshine," as if that isn't the first thing anyone would notice). He's just not a verbose guy, nor one to reveal his secrets. That's why, despite being the epicenter of the whole thing, I find him one of the worst sources for information about SMiLE.
One illuminating factoid is that, supposedly, they only recorded "the cello part" of OMP because Brian couldn't remember the whole song when it was originally recorded. Another interesting tidbit is how he refers to SMiLE as "teenage rock opera to God" rather than "symphony" mirroring what he said in Ear Candy ("we added a third movement, now it's a rock opera") implying that wasn't a throwaway comment but what he thinks SMiLE ultimately is now.
2. Thoughts on VDP's Foreword
I notice he can't help but milk that "GV cello" anecdote for everything its worth, calling it "the signature shot of the piece" like the ruby slippers in Oz. He even takes a quick drive-by swipe at Mike, implying there may've still been hurt feelings twenty years ago (or even to the present day). I'd say the theremin is the "ruby slippers" of GV if any one piece is, or even Mike's hook in stark irony to all the obsessive tinkering Brian did over 7 months of work, but let Van have his moment, I guess. It was genuinely a good idea.
Beyond that, frustratingly, VDP has little else to say of the album as a whole, of its genesis or what he feels of the work then and now. I understand that Brian is Brian, but I can't help but be a little annoyed when VDP continuously gives us the slip. I feel like he could say so much more than he does but then he chooses to focus on the same "I came up with the cellos in GV" anecdote, or pass on writing an essay for the 2011 booklet. (Yeah he was sticking up for Frank Holmes, but it still screwed over the consumer.) Tell us at least what working concepts you had in mind for CIFOTM man, or if you wrote anything for I Ran (as opposed to the vocal sessions comprising of vocalizations and scat).
3. Thoughts on Part 1
I admit I'm mostly skimming the pre-SMiLE chapters (my area of interest is hyper-focused and I have a lot of other writing projects that Brian's unexpected passing has been distracting me from, so cut me a bit of slack on this, please).
Probably the biggest revelation here is that the Beach Boys were in talks to make a film with "American International Pictures" called Beach Boys Hawaiian Style. I'd like to read more about this rabbit hole later, but offhand I'm skeptical it would've been as good as the Beatles' movies. Even just going by the prospective title, it feels like the band was too shoehorned by their name to make anything more interesting than "isn't the beach fun?!" and when I read that AIP wanted the music rights... call me crazy but I'm on Murry's side. Doesn't sound like a very good deal to me. I don't know if any of the guys sans Brian and Dennis would've had the same charisma or witticisms that the Beatles did in A Hard Days Night.
The paragraphs about the Byrds' influence to the Beatles (and therefore, everyone else, Brian included) were pretty illuminating. Most histories of the '64-'66 years play up the friendly rivalry between the BBs and Moptops in a vacuum, maybe with Bob Dylan thrown in there somewhere, while the rest of the emerging counter-culture scene are often overlooked until Monterey. (And then it's just about how Hendrix said "you'll never hear surf music again" and that's it.)
The impressive list of BB songs that have been used to close movies is something I never thought about before. The only one of these I was familiar with was American Graffiti.
The Pet Sounds section isn't particularly impressive, especially coming off the other sources I've seen recently (plus the Charles Granata book about 14 years ago). It feels a bit like going through the motions, but the main point Priore drills into the reader's head is that Brian did almost everything, save singing 8 vocal parts. This was Brian's ride.
4. Thoughts on "Brian Wilson Meets Van Dyke Parks"
I think Priore's opening line here ("[...] Brian Wilson finally met a collaborator who gave back to his music as much as Brian himself was putting out") may be doing Tony Asher and perhaps even Mike Love dirty. Assuming no harm was intended, I think a more accurate way to put it is "finally Brian had met a cowriter as well-versed in music composition as himself, with as much of an artistic ambition and knowledge of the hip scene." It's not that Asher & Love couldn't or didn't pitch musical ideas, much less give their blood, sweat and tears to see Brian's vision realized, just that VDP was an independent recording artist, and therefore Brian's equal in a way the other two were not.
Van says the words "...that's what I was [a lyrical assistant], as far as I was concerned; I assisted him in what he chose to do." That feels pretty significant to defining their collaborative dynamic.
Van says: "[H&V was] the first one we finished," and "we did that in one day. The next thing we worked on was 'SU, and then came 'Wonderful' , 'CE' and the rest." These four, the ones Brian would recall specifically writing in the sandbox in Beautiful Dreamer, feel like the core of SMiLE in hindsight, especially if we expand "Heroes" to mean "every snippet that was ever part of that song." I don't think either man has talked about when or how they wrote any other specific track (except Wind Chimes, but I believe it was Marilyn who described the shopping trip inspiration). Also, if Heroes was "finished" that implies what, the regular verses and maybe some kinda chorus (early BR, which it's now understood started here, went to Worms then came back to Heroes), and the disconnected IIGS verse? This is before it mutated into whatever random cowboy skit or half-realized western themes Brian could come up with for the next year. I'd give anything to hear that first session for the song, but sadly it's lost media.
Van also says it was a GV session he attended first, and here he suggests the cello triplets--he makes it sound like this came after their first writing session(s). In Van's telling, the cello suggestion is when he really "proved" himself to Brian, when they realized they were on each other's level musically, that they both understood production.
I'm very appreciative of the fact that Priore spends so much time on providing context of the music scene as it was progressing rapidly, connecting how all these acts (the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Curt Boettcher, Love, the Rat Pack, even one I never heard of called "The Seeds,") either artistically influenced each other, or impacted the music industry so they had to adapt to the changes in each other's wakes. It's good we have at least one major piece of SMiLE analysis that zooms out the lens beyond the immediate players.
5. Thoughts on "Good, Good, Good, Good Vibrations"
This is the most any book-level source I've read has gotten out of Tony Asher regarding GV. I'm now inclined to believe that he's the reason it was called "Vibrations" and not "Vibes." It'd be an interesting butterfly effect alt reality--what if the same melody had been built around the shorter word? Alternatively, what if the Asher version of GV had been included on Pet Sounds? I don't think it would've fit and without Mike's hook it wouldn't have been quite as big of a hit for sure, but maybe it would've boosted sales of PS?
There's a throwaway line from Danny Hutton that could have profound significance to the Tobelman School of Smilogy! On page 48, Mr. Hutton recalls the conversation where Brian played the demo for GV, and says "I think he'd dropped acid the night before he did that demo session." Now, according to Melinda and the WIBN bio, Brian did acid three times. If we assume for the sake of argument this is true, and assume further that trip #2 happened as described in that disowned biography, that means Brian's Tobelman-hyped third experience, where he "saw God," was here. (It's extremely vague in WIBN when/where this last trip was or what "seeing God" means exactly, to my immense displeasure, so there's nothing to rule out there, nor does Melinda go into any further detail.) That means the GV demo was made in the afterglow of Brian's supposedly enlightening, totally positive last trip, which is a nice thought I'd like to believe in, anyway. The GHS builds the entire SMiLE mythology around the dualism between Trip #2 (Hell) with Trip #3 (Heaven), so if you put stock in his theories, this is important stuff. To most other curious fans, it's at least an interesting anecdote providing a bit more insight in Brian's psychedelic intake. (For the record, Trip #1 with Loren Daro which inspired California Girls, is pretty well accounted for across sources and I accept it as established fact.)
Paul Williams is mentioned as another member of the so-called "Vosse Posse" group of hangers-on, though he was writing (or commissioning) articles in Crawdaddy so something productive was coming from his presence. His name doesn't pop up very often compared to the others, so I feel this is worth bringing up for the record. He claims his first time ever smoking weed was in the Arab "meditation tent." In the next chapter, Priore will name-drop another lesser known member of the "SMiLE clique:" Paul Jay Robbins, writer for the Los Angeles Free Press.
Mike's missing song credits are known in fan circles, and I think it's at least part of the reason he was such a grouch, but Priore is one of few to focus on this as a factor in the soon-to-be SMiLE impasse. This is the first book I've seen that claims Mike confronted Brian about the slight numerous times and wouldn't believe Brian when he pleaded innocence to any part in the credits snub. Priore describes Brian bursting into tears over it and retreating whenever possible. "Year in and year out, this became a vicious circle of abuse [...] his dictatorial attitude towards Wilson evolved into habit." (That is a direct quote.) This is a significant missing piece I think doesn't get included often enough in the SMiLE narrative, probably because most of the seminal books were published before the '94 lawsuit (when the issue became widely known and Mike's grievance was legitimized) plus a lot of the sources are hostile to Mike and disinclined to give him any kind of sympathetic backstory.
Priore also expands on the narrative thread of Capitol sabotaging Pet Sounds. Not only did they under-report sales, rush out a "Best of" comp, withhold promotion, but they refused to restock stores who'd sold out of PS copies unless the retailers called the Hollywood office directly, and even then gave them hard time about it. ("Why would you want that?") The "public's rejection" of Pet Sounds is an obnoxious rumor that refuses to die, used by SMiLE detractors as proof that "it would've flopped anyway, so who cares" without acknowledging that even if true, it still would've influenced other artists in the meantime, would've been critically reevaluated like PS has been in our timeline, etc. (Not to mention the success of the GV, WIBN/GOK and SJB singles casts serious doubt it would've undersold in the first place anyway). I hate this talking point, it's in bad faith, overly-selective and deliberately obtuse in the face of so much evidence the "fans" ought to know by now.
6. Thoughts on "To Capture Lightning in a Bottle"
Heroes and Villains
Take these quotes with a grain of salt or not at all, but Priore claims H&V started off as a standalone song that "led to the creation of more Western-themed music for the SMiLE album..." elsewhere he says it "rolled out into its own cinematic tale beyond the song itself, straight into music that would fill the remainder of SMiLE's first movement." I see that as proof of a "song cycle structure" for the album, personally, but that's just me.
Also, both Brian and Van credit each other for the track name. Between the two, I believe Van when he says Brian wrote it--I think later-era Brian is a little too eager to over-credit Van with SMiLE stuff for some reason, like he's still alienated from it for some reason. Maybe he feels bad about leaving Van out to dry early in his career and thinks it's a way of making amends? Or his memory is just scrambled so he's want to credit things to others that he can't specifically remember doing himself.
Van confirms the IIGS lyrics we know (eggs and grits and lickety-split...) were originally part of Heroes proper but Brian "put them in another place later." Also, all his lyrics were "visual efforts" which coincides with Koestler's TAOC bisociative process and some of the less ridiculous theories in the Tobelman site. The lyrics of SMiLE, like the instrumentation choices, were meant to evoke visual associations and put the listener in a place. Unlike Pet Sounds, where the lyrics were more to communicate emotional catharses and the instruments chosen purely by "what sounds good," here there was more of a deliberate, sensory-association component. I say again, even if it's true PS was more "complex" in arrangement and chords, SMiLE had more thought put into what instruments should be used on which track and their effect on the listener's imagination.
"One composition rolled into the next and a general subject matter began to emerge [...] Van Dyke recalled 'that was the genesis to start this infatuation with the American dream, to try to write something for the American century. This is about Plymouth Rock, which is where we thought this all started." The vibe I get from these and previous quotes is they started writing for Heroes, thinking what other disparate sections could be put in it, not necessarily worried about how they'd all connect in the moment. (How do you fit lyrics about breakfast and the great shape of agriculture in a song about a guy raising his children after his bar-maid wife gets shot?) Then, somewhere along the way, they realized "we have enough Americana-themed material here for several songs, let's make that a conceptual focus of the album!" In this way, the invention of modular recording meant that every stray idea could be recorded and "we'll find some way to work it in later" which organically led to the concept of interrelated song cycles or thematic suites with possibly repeated leitmotifs. One innovation made the other inevitable, see? Then the many ways the material could be put together drove Brian mad (among all the various pressures) but the music was too good to cull the garden he'd let grow out of control. This is why he ultimately chose to abandon the entire harvest (sans the singles) and start fresh--the SMiLE material was just too entangled to even begin to sift through in his mind.
Do You Like Worms?
I know Brian has credited the title DYLW to VDP elsewhere, but here Van says it could've been an engineer, Brian or even Mike Love (!) who thought of it. I'm noticing a weird pattern, where no one can recall or wants to take credit for, almost anything in SMiLE (except the unambiguously popular stuff--everyone has a story of how they improved GV). For what it's worth, I always liked SMiLE's idiosyncratic song titles like Worms, Dada and Cow. Even the more straightforward titles like CE & SU are only referenced once in single-use verse lyrics, where conventionally pop songs are named for their choruses. (So, in any other album, CE would be "Who Ran the Iron Horse" and SU would be "Bygones" or "Are You Sleeping?"). It's just a cool thing that helps set the album apart from its peers, and makes you wonder "why did they choose that name then?" But it all makes sense: 1) Worms is about the underbelly of decay and a cute childish joke question on a childlike album, 2) Dada's initialism is a reference to LSD and the album itself is a work of dada art, 3) CE is a play on the word "cannabis" according to Frank Holmes, 4) Cow is an obscure US history reference, 5) Surfs Up is a an ironic reference to the group's roots, 6) the weird spelling of "Vega-Tables" a reference to the star Vega, part of the constellation Lyra, aka celestial music. It all works better than generic titles like "Roll Plymouth Rock" and "In Blue Hawaii" in my opinion.
When describing Worms as a song, Van explains that "Mahalo lu lei" is a Hawaiian prayer of thanksgiving, which I consider more evidence that if you use Prayer as an intro to the album (rather than a coda) it makes the most sense to pair it with Worms as the first main song. This way, the track begins and ends with a prayer, one from the European invaders, the next from the native inhabitants. We're expressing the same thought in different ways, and that wasn't good enough for the settlers to recognize their hypocrisy denying the same religious freedom to others which they themselves sought by coming to the new world. (AKA the original sin of America's founding, the lie every other flaw we have was built on.) It just makes a lot more sense than Prayer going into Heroes in my personal opinion. (The other piece that works as an unlisted intro, You're Welcome, works well going into either Worms or Heroes.)
Old Master Painter
Van doesn't take credit for changing YAMS lyrics to the past tense. "That was a shock for me, from out of the blue." The way Priore recounts it, Brian got the idea of singing the song with mournful chord progressions and changed the lyrics so that would make sense.
Wonderful
On the subject of Wonderful, Van says "musically, it's entirely different from anything else" and "I thought it was [...] an opportunity for a love song." But Brian seemingly wanted to explore "the relationship between the mother and the father and the child." Van even says straight up he wanted to do a traditional love song for SMiLE and thought it was sure to happen, but "I never found an opportunity to pursue that with the music I was given." This does tie in with that other VDP interview I shared where he wanted to make something more conventional but Brian didn't, despite what most would assume looking at each man's resumes. Van goes even further, to say SMiLE was not meant to be an "ivory tower" endeavor (IE overly academic, not relatable to the common man) and "I wanted to meet more chicks; that's why I was working for Brian Wilson." Reading this, it almost feels like both men were using the other to get into different scenes than they felt they were stuck in. Brian wanted to use Byrds-adjacent VDP for hip cred, Van wanted to use Brian to be around the screaming girls and mainstream limelight. Kinda funny to imagine.
[ASIDE:]Anyway, I don't see Wonderful as a love song at all, especially not romantic. I could be talked into seeing it as the song of a parent's love for the child and the bittersweet experience of letting her go, knowing she's going to get her heart broken at least once but it has to happen. I don't see romance with the boy at all; he's barely mentioned and only exists to "bump into" her, presumably knock her down a notch in some way ("all fall down") and take something from her, which I always assumed was her virginity ("and lost in the mystery, lost it all to a non-believer, and all that's left is a girl"). With the "non-believer" lyrics, it could almost be a very metaphorical retelling of Pocahontas or something, but it's not romantic so much as tragic to my ears. Wonderful as Pocahontas would tie it in with the first permanent settlement down south, Jamestown, and cover another geographical region like how Heroes is based in the southwest, Worms is in Massachusetts & Hawaii, CE is the golden spike point in Utah, Veggies the Mid-West breadbasket and Cow, obviously, Chicago Illinois. If we say WC is Brian's house in LA & SU an opera house on Broadway or something, that feels like most major regions covered outside Alaska. [/ASIDE]
Child is Father of the Man
Of CIFOTM, Van says "it was an instrumental piece until Brian asked me to put some words on it in 11/03." Pivotal quote that shows once and for all no vintage '66 lyrics are coming. However, Van has to be mistaken here. I'm not saying he's lying, I'm saying he forgot or Brian kept him in the dark. That test edit proves it couldn't have been an instrumental with the chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. It doesn't work as an instrumental, it's too repetitive. Also, why would an instrumental have chorus vocals? It just doesn't make intuitive sense, what he's saying here.
In any case, the other big reveal for Child is it represented Van offering Brian a new turn of phrase to express his anxiety about growing up, to get the "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" & PS themes out of his system. There's no mention of any kind of Americana interpretation of this, I Ran nor Wonderful from Van or Brian. The way this book is written, I'll admit it feels like these are just the songs made outside of the Heroes/America kick the two were on, rather than any kind of deliberate vision for a vintage second movement. It seems the "Cycle of Life" suite as we now call it, grew organically from anything not explicitly of the "Side 1 Americana" feels. So, probably if you want to be 100% accurate in a mix, the go-to structure is "Americana Side" with H&V as the center of gravity and as many of its pieces-turned-tracks as reasonable, then Side 2 is "everything that wasn't conceived of as a Heroes-feel, or was but had to be placed here for the sake of balance" (because you can't have a 30 minute side 1 and 15 minute side 2 on vinyl).
In a different passage, Van acknowledges Brian's spiritual bent working on SMiLE (so he was aware of that at least at some point) and ties it into Child, for whatever that's worth. On page 77 Van fully reveals his own spiritual bent, how Brian wore religion on his sleeve (which Van is usually uncomfortable with) and how these associations influenced the work overall. There's no explanation of how, or which religions/spiritual concepts influenced any particular songs, just "we hit upon some of the big questions, the unanswered questions, about the nature of belief and how important it might be." So there was some shared understanding that spirituality would be a part of the album at least at some point, but the specifics are vague. Van doesn't mention humor as part of this mission, (he doesn't mention humor at all, really), when discussing SMiLE--despite the two being closely linked in Brian's mind.
7. Thoughts on "Environmentalism on Tape"
The (So-Called) Elements
The way Priore decribes Brian's summer '66 trip to Big Sur implies Brian wrote Holidays, WC, Dada and Cow there explicitly as Elements. I'm not gonna weigh in on why I think that's BS, but that's what's written.
However, a few pages on in the chapter, Van says "Truly, I would have been quite aware of Brian's interest in doing something about the elements, but that wasn't from the beginning; it was later on." Which totally contradicts what Priore said before. Van's particular phrasing implies Brian had only an interest in "doing something" elemental, not that it was ever done at all, plus he rules out an early date explicitly. I think it's noteworthy Van doesn't bother to name drop anything they recorded as part of that "something" either, which you'd think he would if he could, if for no other reason than to give Priore something to write about AND put the whole blasted matter to bed. (Van must surely know about all the back and forth fan speculation on this.) The clear implication is Brian got the idea of doing an elements track "later on" (IE probably on or just before Nov 4 with those very rough demos I've mentioned) which precludes WC from being intended for Air when it was recorded since that was so early in the sessions. VDP doesn't seem to take the idea too seriously and acts as though it were just an unrealized goal rather than a carefully orchestrated theme running through the officially recorded tracks. The concept almost certainly never got very far anyway, at least not in its original intent as a 4-part instrumental track. (The truth is Brian almost certainly only wrote/recorded Fire--y'know, the only song directly referred to as an element on tape or in the studio chatter. This isn't nearly as complicated as some people make it out to be, but no one wants to admit that we'll never know what the other 3 would be, if Brian ever knew himself, because that's not as much fun.)
Priore mentions a "piano demo" of the Elements "recorded Nov 4" but all that's listed that day is SU 1st movement track, H&V barnyard demo and...oh look at this...Psychedelic Sounds, the thing I've always said was a demo of the missing elements (and 2 comedy skits, admittedly with some nonsense in between). Can anyone tell me what Priore's referring to here if not this recording? Otherwise, how is this not the silver bullet I've been looking for? Why has this all-important quote been conveniently ignored by the so-called experts who told me I shouldn't be allowed to comment on SMiLE ten years ago for being "so clearly wrong" in my (disappointing but accurate) interpretation of the elements?
Despite finding compelling evidence for my own interpretation in his words, Priore unambiguously insists on the BWPS elements suite here, implying that was always the intent without any proof or quotes (vintage or otherwise). He just takes it as a given because "hey that's how BWPS did it, so clearly it must've always been his intent, right? People don't change their minds in 40 years after tons of drugs and trauma and being at a different place in their careers." And yet I saw that interviews with him posted on this forum from a recent podcast claiming BWPS was "never meant to be taken as the historical, definitive SMiLE tracklist."
So, did Priore change his mind on things like this since 2005? I guess back then he was still wowed by getting an official SMiLE and unwilling to acknowledge anything that could be perceived as poking holes in the officially-sanctioned happy ending. (That was the dominant attitude until fairly recently I'd say; to question BWPS' tracklist or legitimacy as the final word was seen as an insult to Brian himself.) Or maybe cooperation from Brian for this book was contingent on playing along with the revisionist history, same as how TSS was made to use BWPS as a template despite the '66 songs clearly suffering for it. Either way, this is one of my biggest pet peeves of SMiLE discussion--the way BWPS retroactively colors many people's understanding of the original sessions, and how challenging this faulty reasoning warrants an earful about how "disrespectful" you are for "questioning the word of (a much older, forgetful, fundamentally different) Brian Wilson." It's become an exercise in dogmatic virtue signalling instead of objective, investigative journalism, which doesn't interest me.
Random Non-Song Notes
Dumb Angel is said to have been replaced as a title "as recordings moved into autumn" which seems to track with other sources and the "proper start" to the sessions I mentioned in a previous post (the 9-19 Prayer recording date or certainly October, the high mater mark of the sessions). Prayer was not "a great opener for an album titled Dumb Angel but not for one called SMiLE" as I've heard it said, because the changeover was neck and neck. I don't think Brian saw SMiLE as any less a religious-oriented title than DA, especially with how entwined humor and spirituality were to him.
Van once again affirms he had no hand in production or arrangement. His quote on page 78, totally in awe of Brian's abilities, is fantastic. Never let it be said Van did not admire the hell out of Brian as an artist. (And then on page 83: "Everything in the music, that's Brian [...] I wrote words I thought he meant, although he didn't say those words [...] he communicates well on a non-verbal basis and certainly through the music.")
Van distances himself from Brian's particular New Age ethoses ("I've always been more dependent on astronomy than astrology") but asserts he didn't let ideological disagreements interfere with his task as Brian's interpreter ("we may have had some overriding theories [...] we just went trench by trench. He would show me a certain number, he would sing a phrase, and I would provide that phrase, and then he'd move on.") So in other words, the album's themes beyond Americana, Brian's "growing pains" and vague general spirituality are all solely Brian's influence--at least that's what I'm getting here. The unspoken implication seems to be Van thought Brian's mysticist bent was dopey, (same as Tony Asher did,) but he's too polite to say it directly then or now.
I Wanna Be Around/Workshop
Priore cites a previously unknown (to me) quote from Brian circa 1988 to Andy Paley confirming that Workshop was supposed to come after Fire. To me, this sequence has always just made intuitive sense if nothing else. Where do you put an instrumental of people building things out of wood? Probably either right before or right after things get audibly burned down, right? Or else, certainly they'd be linked together in some other straightforward thematic way. For example, I could see a world where Fire opens a side (damn, imagine that!) then a bunch of mostly downer music/lyrics showing the whole system was built on an uncertain, if not full-on rotten, foundation (depending on how harsh Bri & Van intended to be in their reflections on America) and culminating in Workshop at the end, demonstrating our ability (nay, responsibility) to rebuild from the ground up and do it better this time, after taking a long hard look at ourselves as a country. That'd work.
Despite how much intuitive sense this makes, how much you'd have to bend common sense associations for the sake of an alternate theory, I have seen clowns arguing there's no connection between the two because it'd mess up their elements dream sequence or whatever. Admittedly there is the Vosse quote implying Workshop was meant to represent "building the farm" in the early barnyard suite, but why not link the two in sequence or admit the plan changed? Maybe Workshop (which is labelled "Friday Night (IIGS) on tape) was to come after a track called "Mrs OLeary's Cow," as Brian had renamed Fire later the same day it was recorded as per Siegal? I think the Elements track was dead more or less the same day it was recorded and MOLC was bound for the Americana side based on its name alone. Perhaps a Fire/IWBA/Workshop/Barnyard medley could serve as another call for a more austere, pastoral lifestyle like Veggies--tear down the city, move out to the country and live as one with nature? Maybe the lyrics for IWBA reveal the fire was a metaphor for heartbreak and workshop is putting them together with new love--love of Mother Earth and her bounties? There's lots of ways to justify it, tie them in with other themes or songs, but the only thing that makes logical sense is for the construction sounds to come after the inferno. To deny the obvious connection between a song of buildings getting destroyed and one of them being rebuilt is to travel from Philly to San Fran by flying across Eurasia and the entire Pacific--it's quite the stretch.
8. Thoughts on "Surf's Up"
This account of the song's writing is more detailed than any I've heard, with a few significant differences. In practically every version of SU's genesis I've seen, it's presented as if Dennis walked in, complained about the crowds' reactions to the BB striped shirts and this inspired the two collaborators to make a brilliant song no one could laugh at and call it Surf's Up. I always got the impression the name came before the song, that they went into the brainstorming process thinking "we're gonna write a song unlike any we've done before, so brilliant it's undeniably hip, but we're gonna be ironic by calling attention to our surfing roots!" Here, Brian and Van already had the melody and "all but the six syllables which included what became the title words" when Dennis walks in. Dennis doesn't just whine about the audience's reactions, he weeps and it's unclear if from humiliation or the beauty of the song he's hearing. Dennis asks "what's that called" and Van says "Surf's Up" in defiant reaction to Dennis' ordeal. IE, in some versions the title precedes the song, with the implication they then set out to write the most profound song they could while always intending to pay homage to their now-uncool roots from the outset. In this version, that deep, amazing song was already written and only lacked a name.
If we believe Priore's version, I think it's important to ask then: if Surf's Up wasn't written from the ground up as a self-conscious challenge to the band's popular perception as I'd always assumed, what actually inspired its content? I propose it was probably a song about Koestler's bisociative artistic process itself. The lyrics are popularly interpreted to be: 1) a man at the opera, his mind wandering to class divide, 2) then pondering the music he's hearing, 3) considering the state of the world and if others are perceiving what he does ("are you sleeping?"), 4) then contemplating the performer's role and relationship with the art they're making as well as with the audience, 5) then it's a series of images and emotions which art can conceptualize for us, 6) he comprehends the passage of time and the beauty of a children's song (expressions of the innocent). The song ends with a reprise of CIFOTM except now the phrase means "we can stand to learn something from the kids every now and then" as opposed to "your past (trauma) shapes your future" as I suspect it would've meant in the song proper. What is this but the bisociative power of artistry in action, self consciously informing the audience of the ability of music to paint images in our mind (OMP throwback, "canvas the town and brush the backdrop") and wake people up to certain new perspectives ("are you sleeping, brother john") through subliminal programming. In this context, Brian would be celebrating the application he'd been using on us for ~35 minutes prior, revealing his hand and his biggest call to arms at the same time. Had the song's name not become a subversive meta-commentary on how far the BBs had come as artists, I believe it may've been called "And Then We'll Have World Peace," which is a title Brian always wanted to end an album with.
Final note, I always thought the children referenced in the song meant actual 12-and-under year old literal children, not "the youth counterculture" of pop music, IE Brian and Van themselves. That definitely changes things. Notice how Van credits the youth counterculture with ending Vietnam...yeah, like 6 years later. Brian never mentions Vietnam or current events once in connection with SMiLE that I've seen.
Priore repeats the notion that the Oppenheim recording session involved a fight over lyrics. As I understand it, we've since found the "margin notes" or "metadata" you might say of these recordings and "went very badly" was clarified to mean "nothing was recorded that would look good on TV" (Brian was just having the guys sing vocalization snippets, not exciting lyrics or anything instrumental.) Brian agreed to meet later and give them a singing-piano demo that would film better. So this is a case where Priore's repeating inaccurate "oral tradition" info. If there'd been a fight on camera, you can bet the news would've aired it (assuming they didn't care if it made Brian look bad) or that we'd have heard more details by now. I'm sure the film crew would've spread some gossip around their journalist peers, been called for an interview with Rolling Stone. Brian or the other BBs would've mentioned something as dramatic as Mike throwing a tantrum specifically on camera in all the decades since. This is just another persistent SMiLE myth that won't die because it makes for a more interesting narrative than "the footage was too boring to use." Every story needs a bad guy.
Derek Taylor claims VDP left of his own volition "as soon as he had been given a taste of the other guys' asinine resolve to thwart the project, and, balking at the vision of his pawn potential--some hapless entity there to be fought for--he immediately distanced himself from the project by getting involved in other work simultaneously." That sounds fairly harsh to both camps, but importantly it seems even Taylor interprets the BB actions to be hostile and uncompromising. In another quote he says "a key factor in the breakdown had to be the Beach Boys themselves, whose stubbornsess by this time had seemingly twisted itself into a grim determination to undermine the very foundations of this new music in order to get back to the old accepted, dumb formulas." But I detect a little bit of mockery for Van here as well, as if he was such a self-important artiste that the very idea someone didn't "get" his genius work so offended him he couldn't handle it. I may be reaching but Derek makes Van sound like a bit of a prima donna to my eyes.
9. Thoughts on "Conflict, Diversions And Deadlines"
Priore covers both his bases when explicitly discussing the Psychedelic Sounds: he refers to them as "segments of musical comedy" for various spoken word albums, but later admits "some of the comic and health-food ideas wound up as being part of SMiLE, so the sense of experimentation was essential to the creative process." IE, not necessarily the seeds of a WOIIFTM/USA type music concrete audio collage free form neo-album, but neither are they the worthless efforts of a bunch of braindrained stoners goofing off. Fair enough.
I do happen to agree with Priore when he says "so many project ideas began to give the precious SMiLE era a lack of focus and discipline." If Brian wasn't subsequently ashamed of all that time wasted on a lame joke at A&M's expense with Jasper Dailey, he should've been. And even as a defender of the PsychSounds to an extent, I'd rather he just spent that time on something more productive. A precursor to WOIIFTM with the music concrete audio collages would've been fantastic, but not at the expense of the actual songs remaining unfinished--I'd gladly take a straightforward 12 track banded album over nothing in '67.
Vosse recounts a story where Brian consulted the I Ching "one night" and it told him that everyone in the room (not clear who or how many besides Brian and Vosse) were ultimately meant to go on their own way. Brian took this seriously, or used it as a convenient "out" to break up a scene he was losing faith in, or to avoid having to come up short if SMiLE didn't live up to the hype. Same as if you think he really believed Siegal's girlfriend had ESP or if he really thought Anderle had numerologically captured his soul in the painting. (It's like each of Brian's adopted creeds demanded a sacrifice, or every new idea he tried to incorporate meant kicking a prior muse out of the ring to make room.)
This is the only source that provides a timeline on when Frank Holmes was involved. He met with the other two in June, finished his work by October. "It was kind of sporadic: I'd get a little piece of it here and there, and I submitted the cover," which implies Van gave him some lyric sheets as he finished them, and since Van never finished all the lyrics neither did Frank have complete lyrics either. Whatever the last song was Van passed along to Frank by October is anyone's guess (Veggies as a proto-element?). Frank was able to talk himself into the job as well as including the booklet by the sounds of it, so good for him. If hired in June, that means his storefront idea was part of an album called Dumb Angel as well, which I think is worth mentioning. (It used to be popular to imagine this dramatic shift in line with the name change, that the more "serious" or religious songs (IE prayer) were done under the DA banner, then with the new title suddenly sillier songs and the happy storefront drawing came to be. That doesn't seem to have been the case, it feels like DA into SMiLE was incidental to the album's overall identity and direction.)
According to Van, Frank Holmes was given no direct instructions but intuitively understood what Brian wanted through "[his] powers of suggestion" and Holmes' work defined the image Brian and Van understood the music by going forward, where they started "thinking of it in cartoon terms [...] to me, it was a music cartoon and Frank showed that without being told anything." It's weird though, because Brian scrapped every non-GV & non-Prayer session pre-October (redoing WC and Wonderful with different arrangements, others never touching again) around when he would've gotten the final booklet, perhaps implying that what he'd recorded before didn't fit the new established visual aesthetic...however those early SMiLE recordings fit the happy Smile Shop perfectly while the more melancholy CIFOTM & CE & Worms he moved onto immediately post-cover seem like such a contrast! Was Brian being deliberately subversive or just producing what came naturally without regard to "matching" the cover? In any case, I get the impression Van was more inspired by Frank's work than Brian--afterall, Van had known him before the project and introduced both men.
One of the abandoned Brother Records projects is said to have been an animated movie using Frank Holmes' SMiLE illustrations as inspiration, essentially Yellow Submarine for the Beach Boys, probably coming out around the same time or slightly before its rival. If that wouldn't have been the coolest thing ever... How did the Beach Boys blow it THAT bad to miss such a cool opporunity? They really could've had it all and been what the Beatles are if they didn't screw this up...
10. Thoughts on "The New Single Will Be Heroes & Villains"
If Chuck Britz' description of the two-sided Heroes single is right (and the tape/track labels on TSS back it up) this would've been a very disappointing mix at least as far as Side 2 goes. I don't think too many people would ever be turning over the vinyl to hear three annoying, slightly different "Heroes" chants. (It does prove Brian's fascination with the concept of chanting though, along with the Nov 4 experiments, "You're Welcome," "Do a Lot" and then the Smiley "With Me Tonight" & "Whistle In" tracks.) I remember when posters in the early 2010s had the opinion that 2-sided Heroes would've been a "SMiLE sampler pack" with pieces from most of the other major songs recontextualized as part of Heroes. (So the BR chorus, false barnyard fade, new CIFOTM chorus vocal, & IIGS-style tape explosion across a 6~12 minute mix of the song.) That is admittedly a much cooler idea, but it's contradicted by this and a Brian quote where he frets about the B-side because he doesn't want to reveal too much of SMiLE at once--the opposite of what you'd think if you're releasing a sampler.
11. Thoughts on "Brother Records Vs Capitol Records"
No real comment on this except Priore doesn't really go into how the legal situation almost certainly interfered with the music until the next chapter's shenanigans with the single and subsequent ill will from Capitol. This chapter is just the bare facts and seems underwhelming on first pass, but in the next section Priore quotes Paul Williams saying "Ironically, the independence that forming Brother Records was supposed to bring [...] knocked SMiLE -- and the Beach Boys -- out of the water. [...] Anderle's initial idea [...] was sound, but the time it takes to put this type of thing through the courts was not conducive to the production race that was important during this period of radical change in pop." Damn. Poor Anderle loved Brian and the project so much, it's sad to think that by trying to help he arguably did as much as anyone to hurt the album.
Besides the legal red tape, I think Anderle having to constantly press for signatures and try to get Brian to understand what had to happen legalistically/financially probably soured the mood for a guy who couldn't even bother to cash checks to himself. I know Anderle was as delicate as possible, his job was to take as much of this stress away from Brian so the maestro could focus on the music, but there's still anecdotes of David needing Brian to sign something or attend a meeting and it'd be like pulling teeth. There was still the need for Brother to have a single ASAP, requiring Anderle to press for Brian to focus on Heroes, which is as much of a turning point in SMiLE's fortunes as Fire and the CE incident--Anderle regrets it immensely in Leaf's first book. Similarly, the fact that Capitol was now a bitter legal enemy but would profit from, or have the power to bury, his magnum opus is such a confounding situation for Brian to be in, and no source but the Badman book really delves into that.
12. Thoughts on "The New Single Will Now Be: Vega-tables"
Priore calls Veggies "the last composition to reach tape" which is objectively untrue (that's Elements going by Dec tracklist-officials, or else Dada & IWBA/Workshop going by anything officially unlisted that likely became a track later. Even if Priore isn't including them due to lack of lyrics, Worms, Sunshine & SU still post-date the Veggie demo). I'm not trying to be persnickety but if he gets easily-checked things like this wrong for, what, the sake of dramatic emphasis (?), that's at least a yellow-flag for other info in the book.
We get another contradiction here when Van says "I was out of the loop by then, in a place where there were no lyrics intended when he went into the studio, when he made up music independent of any plan to use lyrics [...] it was my memory that I was fired because it was already decided by Mike Love, as well as the least-known band members, that I'd written some indecipherable and unnecessary words." I have several problems with this, so I'm going to list them:
1) This is in contrast to other sources, like Derek Taylor, saying Van quit. Other sources also say he quit and Van has given this impression elsewhere. The Taylor quote, reading between the lines, seems to imply Van was a bit melodramatic and hasty in his reaction to criticism and I'm somewhat inclined to agree. I think some of VDP's issue with the project, the cagey-ness, conflicting statements and bitterness, maybe stems from shame at how he overreacted rather than stand his ground or try to compromise and work with Mike. But that's just my intuition.
2) This statement implies Brian was recording music without a plan for lyrics, which I don't think flies considering he was working on songs with lyrics already written if we're talking about the singles. (Van's quote only makes sense if Brian were working on the Elements, Dada or the supposedly lyricless CIFOTM. I guess there were lyric-less sections of Heroes like the Organ Waltz/Intro to be fair.) Maybe Van means he was out of the loop come the Fire session (other quotes imply the same) so he either wasn't told or had no interest in coming back to refine Heroes or Veggies when it came time to give them more involved single-cuts. It seems like he's taking it personally here that Brian dared make some music without lyrics as well, like god forbid Heroes have an instrumental intro, if that's what he's referring to. You want lyrics to work on? How about take a crack at CIFOTM after 4 freaking months, dude.
3) It implies the other band members had the power to fire VDP or Brian was persuaded to go along with it, (because so much is made of GV on Smiley as the inflection point where Brian was out-voted for the first time, so if Van was fired that implies Brian didn't fight for him, which is a tough line to swallow). But so many other sources imply Brian was blindsided and lost when Van left. I think VDP is just being overdramatic and a bit of a self-pitying spoil sport here if I may say so. He got pushback on some words, took it extremely personally and pulled a "oh, guess you hate me, I'm taking my ball and going home" at the first sign of disagreement. Then he tells people he got fired so he can claim victimhood instead of answering the question "why didn't you stand up for your work, or tailor it to the client, or ask Brian point-blank to pick a side?" I think Van and Brian sometimes like to have their cake and eat it too when blaming it all on Mike. Nobody else, not even Mike himself, claims he had that much power in '66.
4) The "least known band members" crack is very petty. I'm guessing that's Al and Bruce, but if you're gonna throw blame around on the record, give names and specific instances of hostile treatment. This feels like weasel words with the added benefit of a plausibly deniable insult. The more sources I read, the more frustrated I get at everyone saying Mike was such an asshole, that the BBs were "so determined to thwart the project" but no one can give specifics except "Mike rudely asked about the lyrics that one time...and then sang them anyway."
Moving on...
Priore expands on a point made in the Badman book, that Veggies was suddenly announced as the new single largely as a move against Capitol. This is another reason I think the lawsuit was a major factor--twice now it forced Brian to suddenly switch gears before properly finishing a project, first the album proper then the Heroes single. It meant business and legalistic spite were interfering in the creative process in a way that hadn't been so for Today and PS. (Almost like he could fend off Mike or Capitol but not both full-force at the same time AND have way more work to do in the studio suddenly editing disparate pieces of tape.) The way Priore tells it, the whole switcheroo was a rouse to get Capitol to give them a good distribution deal for a Brother Records release of Heroes, but I imagine all these left-turns and "extra work" on arguably SMiLE's weakest major song couldn't have been good for Brian's artistic focus on the big picture. Truly a pyrrhic victory.
Van did not support Veggies as a single release and felt the "tactical decision" to switch focus on it over Heroes was "tremendously ill advised" and "lent to the distractions that drove Brian nuts." I'm inclined to agree. Van says he left this second time because the business/legal decisions like "what single will be best for BR" was affecting the creative process. "There were too many cooks in the kitchen. The project lost its intimacy, its focus, and we had [...] nowhere to find a way to get the job done without the social pressures, which were enormous [...] and I finally left." In early-period SMiLE discussions, the factions drawn were always "Vosse Posse" vs Mike & the other Beach Boys (maybe sans Dennis). Closer examination reveals there was no "Vosse Posse" it was more like "the Anderle Assembly" as he was the one introducing almost all the non-collaborators to the scene, along with Derek Taylor. And not all of the "Anderle Assembly" were of one mind--nobody liked Siegal from what I recall, Van & Vosse were there to help Brian make great art, Anderle himself was the businessman (though he loved the music and Brian), Hutton & Volman were just along for the ride, Williams & Robbins were there for a good story to tell, Darro presumably supplied the drugs, Taylor had to pretend everything happening was "genius," Marilyn was trying to keep a lid on the madness, etc. They were not necessarily friends, they each had their own agendas and sometimes (maybe all the time) they got in each others' way and prevented the others from doing their jobs properly. I think this important nuance often gets lost in the shuffle--these people were not of one mind, united in the cause of hip psychedelia against philistine Mike.
That all said, Priore makes the bold assertion--that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else--that Mike Love started giving Derek Taylor marching orders and this is what led to the premature cancellation announcement. Without evidence or repetition in another independently researched book I'm skeptical as hell. If, if this is true, however, I take back any defense I've ever leveled on Mike Love's behalf. IF he did such a thing, he's as big an asshole as his harshest detractors say, unworthy of any benefit of the doubt and officially the man who killed SMiLE afterall. But that's a BIG "IF." I want to see corroborating statements from Taylor, or receipts of some kind. You can't just throw out an accusation like this without proof--and in case there's any doubt, I don't even like Mike.
Another highly unlikely claim is that SMiLE was actually almost finished "all the pieces were there" and the final cancelled session was for a mixdown of the whole album. Yeah, and that's why CIFOTM lyrics were never written, lead vocals for most tracks never recorded, a suitable replacement for the seemingly scrapped Elements undecided upon... This is absolute "hopium" bullshit and it casts doubt on every other questionable or unique claim in the entire book, I'm sad to say. (If he'd lie about this, or get this wrong, what else is he feeding us...) Priore is a good writer who obviously has a lot of passion for the subject matter and did a lot of research, talked to the principles... It's a shame he lets his weird fan theories and obsessive need to tie everything up in a neat little bow ("no we didn't miss out on anything--SMiLE was all done, they just needed to do a final mixdown! We always had the elements and that wasn't a dropped concept at all, the lack of vocals or BW signature counter-melodies was all intentional!") ruin his credibility for no reason. Stuff like this just pisses me off because, to the well-researched, it's so blatantly untrue but then other less discerning fans take this at face value and repeat it as gospel, muddying the waters on having a productive discourse for all time. I've had people tell me I'm not allowed to comment on SMiLE threads until I read Priore and then I do and get this nonsense.
Van accuses Taylor of being a scout for the Beatles, directly stating "I think [he] facilitated the Beatles listening to SMiLE before the advent of Sgt Pepper [...] Brian was very sad. He felt violated, raped." There absolutely was something kooky going on with the tapes around this time, like the GV masters going missing for days and I recall hearing that some tapes like I Ran went missing early. However, I believe sleuths on these and other fan forums have matched up the timelines and determined the Beatles couldn't have heard SMiLE or at least not in a time-frame that would've made a difference in their own creative process. (After Revolver and "Strawberry Fields," they didn't need help making something like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," let's be real.) I get the vibe from their quotes about each other that VDP and Taylor didn't particularly get along, which is where this accusation may be coming from. Also, while the Beatles may not have been exposed to illicit SMiLE tapes, there's no reason to think other people in the industry couldn't have sneaked a peak--in note #14 Priore references a Crawdaddy article pointing the finger at Gary Usher, a previous BB lyricist. In any case, what's important is Brian believed this could've happened and it made him feel paranoid and betrayed.
13. Thoughts on "A Bunt Instead of a Grand Slam"
VDP says he stopped working with Brian the same month he (Brian) moved to Bellagio. That makes for a pretty solid cutoff point because Brian has said he wrote CCW almost immediately after the move, and the first recording date for that song almost perfectly coincides with the "official" changeover from SMiLE to Smiley in the sessionography.
Brian moved into the home studio to keep his music safe, to be able to record whenever, to avoid catching flak from console operators' unions, but according to Hal Blaine, he then got "distracted" by the constant presence of the BBs themselves. Supposedly, without "the discipline of the clock" and having to pay overtime, or clear out before the rented time expired, the group was more prone to procrastinate, to "throw their weight around" and argue. I had never heard this before, but also they took equipment with them on tour so Brian could never surprise them with a purely independent masterpiece again. They'd have more leverage in the decision making process going forward.
Once again, specific anecdotes about Smiley--what a typical session might've been like, the decision-making process to go in that direction and change the name, these supposed fights about SU that almost broke up the band--are sorely lacking. No one remembers and no one wants to talk about it. I wish, assuming Priore had the gumption to probe and Brian rebuffed him, that the author would share what he asked, how, and Brian's response (or lack thereof) even if it was vague and unhelpful. ("I asked when the official change from SMiLE to Smiley occurred and why, if it was his or Mike's decision and the group's reactions, but Brian stopped responding verbally and zoned out" <something like this would at least let us know Priore tried and cared to delve as deep as possible. As is, it just feels like Smiley and its overlooked relationship to SMiLE proper, the possibly smooth transition at Brian's behest, doesn't fit his agenda so he didn't even ask or something.)
This book has the most involved description of the Redwood sessions I've seen as well. The quotes about how "the vibes changed immediately" and "a black cloud had suddenly surrounded Brian" whenever Mike entered the room are powerful. "Mike can be pretty forceful, so I guess Brian just bailed out." I defend Mike against accusations of killing SMiLE but he is still a huge asshole a lot of the time, even giving him every benefit of the doubt he always digs his hole deeper or refuses to apologize for anything he's done wrong. He did absolutely kill Brian's solo artist/produc
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