My Last (?) Crack at the SMiLE Jigsaw

[Julia]

Here we go, the big one...

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

1. Look Listen Vibrate SMiLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concluding Thoughts...

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

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

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

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

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

[Julia]

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

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

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

[Julia]

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

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

1. The Forewords and Everything

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

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

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

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

2. Early Chapters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Dumb Angel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Dont f*** w/ the Formula

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Can't Wait Too Long

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Don Malcolm]

Julia,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

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

[Julia]

Thank you both, I do appreciate it very much

[BJL]

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

[BJL]

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

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

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

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

[BJL]

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

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

[guitarfool2002]

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

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

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

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

[doinnothin]

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

[Julia]

I want to thank everyone again very much for the kind words. This is something I would've done regardless, reading all this stuff, and sharing my reactions here was a thought of "hey why not" but I wasn't sure what the reaction would be. So I am glad that it's appreciated!

With regard to Carl, it's absolutely a good point that he was dealing with a ton of his own grief at a young age plus any potential disapproval of the music in and of itself doesn't make him "mean" or a bad brother. To some degree my perception is probably clouded by 3 biases: 1) what would happen years later, like the SU in '71 thing never sat right with me, 2) my personal love of the music and natural resentment towards anyone in the scene who may have potentially got in the way of it plus 3) like Zenobi said with regard to Pet Sounds, I have a natural inclination to present a different take on any consensus opinion if it's too overwhelming.

In an ideal world, as Brian stepped aside to be an independent producer, occasional solo singer, we'd have Dennis writing songs, Carl running the touring act, Mike singing bass notes and maybe Al finding some more folk standards they could cover. (That's as good of a post-SMiLE direction for them as any. Im not as jazzed by the R&B WH sound as many in the fandom though it's alright.) But yeah they just weren't ready in 1967. 

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,14076.msg310563.html#msg310563

^I think this post in a thread that started off great but was sadly derailed by a whacko is my favorite summation of Carl I've seen. But if it's really true Carl never forgave his brothers for skipping the funeral I kinda just want to take the guy aside and say "dude...take the hint." Like, if BOTH brothers thought he was that bad, and were clearly messed up enough to become barely-functional burnouts or alcoholics, maybe they have a very good reason for the choice they made. I think Carl was being really sanctimonious here, assuming this is an accurate read on his position. By all accounts he got the best treatment from his parents (the youngest often does) and seemed unwilling to step outside his own perspective to recognize how bad his brothers got it.

Again Im biased here because I have a similar dynamic with my own sibling. (They're younger, they were the golden child, I had a lot more expectations thrust on me by our parents, as the oldest every spat or drama was always perceived to be my fault, I was always told to "be the bigger person" and accept blame or let legitimate gripes go for the sake of family "harmony.") As adults, my sibling would berate me for "being too hard on mom and dad" if I ever brought up any of this, or other drama yall don't need to know, like it's my fault they should hear how their actions affected me. I told my sibling, not in an unkind way, that our childhoods were different and they knew a different mom and dad than me, therefore it isn't their place to tell me how to feel or react as I process a lot of this grief. They responded by giving me the silent treatment for "making [our parents] feel bad." So, I'll just throw my cards on the table and admit this is the lens through which I view the Wilson's sibling drama--I tend to side with the whipping boy older bro(s) who shouldered a burden the youngest can't appreciate and seemingly has no interest in trying to understand. Im not sharing this for sympathy so I'd rather we just breeze past it; Im just sharing as much as necessary to illustrate the flawed perspective Im coming from, if it helps people understand some of my bias against Carl.

[Julia]

Here we go, finishing up David Leaf's book.

I'll follow up with a post about the instruments used in each song plus notes on the BWPS concert booklet (I caved and bought a copy).

Someday soon-ish I'll post the Byron Preiss & Jon Stebbins book notes.

No guarantee I'll ever get my hands on the relevant ESQ issues. (I just can't justify $100 for some fanzines that probably dont have revelatory info in all likelihood especially in these uncertain times, sorry.) Someone could do me a big favor by sharing if there's any info there that's new or contradictory to the established narratives. (Or, dare to dream, shares scans or something...)

1. Raising the Titanic

I notice VDP's humility, referring to "the force of the music," / "the power of the visual images [of Frank Holmes]" compared to the "adequacy" of his own words.

I've seen some people in the forums state VDP was upset at not being called in earlier, and I wonder reading this chapter if that's true. It must have been more than a little insulting to expect a call and be waiting for months, only to hear from Brian when absolutely necessary to clarify a minor point. If this did hurt Van, I can understand it, but with Brian being the way he is I don't think a slight was intended. I think Brian is just somewhat asocial (as in, introverted and shy) and a "go with the flow" kinda guy. He probably thought "why bother Van if I don't have to" where most people with better social skills might think "maybe Van would like to be part of this."

The story of how Brian wanted Leaf there every day and that's how we got the documentary is a very interesting bit of new info. It was a great decision ultimately, whatever minor artistic quibbles I have with BD. It was a smart PR move, to introduce the significance of the SMiLE music to newbies in a more accessible medium for future reference. (Most people aren't going to read books, or forum posts, or hunt for decades-old magazine articles from defunct publications.) And I know it's an effective film because it was BD that kicked off my now 15 year SMiLE obsession on first watch back in 2011. There's better Brian Wilson documentaries but none that focuses on this one sub-topic and that's the difference.

There's a discussion of what makes SMiLE so compelling and I'll take the opportunity here to add my own 2 cents. My favorite aspect of SMiLE is how each song is an experiment onto itself, how the elements (pun intended) of music composition were pushed to their limits and in new ways that, to my knowledge, no one's ever tried before or since. (Or maybe they have I just haven't noticed.) It's the purest, most compelling expression of creativity for its own sake in any medium I've ever seen, an interactive Testament to Man's Imagination. I'll just give a few examples of what I mean:

1) OMP I see as an experiment in how modular recording can be used to take two completely separate, established standards, put them together in a different context and suddenly the song has a whole new meaning. From an ode to God & an ode to love (now in the past tense, minor key) you get a song about loss of faith in God presumably as a response to grief. It seems so simple but I've never seen anyone else do this in any other pop album.

2) Elements and to a lesser extent the Barnyard suite were about taking 4 new disparate, original compositions and seeing if they could be stitched together seamlessly. Can you put a big scary fire with a presumably gentle, relaxing water and not break up the flow? (Apparently not, because Brian never did it, but hey I love him for trying and with some cross-fading chants or comedic asides to smooth the transitions, maybe...)

3) I've spoken at length how he wanted certain instruments in the arrangements to evoke particular themes, moods, objects. The most significant of these is Surfs Up where the horn part plays what sounds like similar chords in different ways to evoke whole new meaning, from a marching band pep rally sound, to laughing, to wistful yearning or even crying all within the same track...and it fucking works! The same or similar notes on the same instruments evoke different emotions when played differently.

4) Heroes was an exercise in how many left-turns and side-tangents you can fit in a song before it loses its melodic pull. How far can you stray from a verse-chorus structure before a song collapses in on itself? (Here too, perhaps Brian never quite found a definitive answer but it's still a really cool trailblazing concept and he gave us the tools to find out for ourselves.)

Probyn's quote on page 124 about the irony of the name SMiLE is dead-on. Unless it was a reference to Tim Leary, which I doubt, it's not a particularly fitting name for this body of music in my opinion and I still wonder if that isn't partly what was eating Brian when he canned it. (Like "I wanted to make happy music but this all sounds too melancholy or even outright scary in the case of Fire.") Dumb Angel fits much better, or another name like the word Brian supposedly coined "Psychedelicate," although I'm sure Mike wouldn't hear of it. There's a part of me that always thought "Sandcastles" would be a cool name for a Beach Boy project and I can think of no better time to bust that out than here, an album of modular little pieces delicately constructed into a fragile, beautiful work of art.

I like Darian's description of SMiLE as going even further than Pet Sounds in both directions, simultaneously more childlike yet more complex. Pet Sounds is the definitive coming of age album, SMiLE is a celebration of childlike innocence with deep insight into the human condition and how recurring social problems impact us and vice versa. It's about the birth, collapse and rebirth of both individuals and nations, in the context of our particular country. This quote made me feel vindicated for the basic 2-side structure I've settled on, which from the beginning (SMiLE: Reflections, the first I posted here) I've described as an introverted "trip" about an individual's life story on one side paired with an extroverted "trip" about our cultural history on the other. It's a much more analytical self-reflection and critique on the world that shaped him (the speaker). I've used this in conjunction with the same Americana/Innocence dichotomy before but you could perhaps put something like Heroes in the "introspective" side in this context--they need not be totally interlocked groupings. There's definitely some kind of dichotomous structure inherent in the music, I feel.

A key quote, what Darian supposedly said to Brian: '“Hey Brian, we’re not trying to finish an album here. We’re just . . . how do we perform this music in a way that it would flow? How can we present this music so that it’s cohesive?” And I think that made him feel a little better.’ And then later, in the same vein: "Darian explains that the challenge he and Brian faced was that, ‘In order to present the SMiLE music live, it was finding some sort of flow. Thematically, creative, some sort of approach. And the SMiLE recordings from the sixties were, as we know, fragmented; [we] don’t know what Brian would have done with them all."

^I'll point it out again, in case there was any doubt, BWPS was not, and made no claim to be, a finishing of the 60s album. (Until Brian started pushing the CD and that was probably PR hype.) It was just a presentation of the music from the sessions in a way that worked for a live performance. Thankfully this seems to be understood today but ten odd years ago there was a lot of talk of "Brian finally spilled the beans / now we know what SMiLE was going to be" that I saw here, on Facebook and in real life. I may be pedantic to the extreme but I think maintaining this distinction is very important. It's entirely to Darian's credit that he never claimed otherwise--lesser men I think would've tried to seize the glory of "Im the guy who helped finish SMiLE, this project I was a part of was the culmination of the greatest album ever!" I'm glad he's such a humble guy who never tried to inflate the project's ambitions for the sake of publicity. For this, his excellent musicianship, his delicate and respectful handling of the planning and overall good rapport with Brian, Darian has my eternal gratitude. Any criticisms you may hear me level at BWPS are NOT directed at him or the other members of Brian's band--I just want to take the opportunity to say that.

It does sound like there were at least some vintage ideas that went into the sequence, at least how this book tells the story. ("And he would tell me, 'Yeah, yeah, that was supposed to go with that. That was supposed to go there.' [Or] 'No. No. That didn’t belong in that. That wasn’t a ‘Heroes And Villains’ type thing.'”) It sounds like the exact track-by-track order wasn't necessarily vintage but the overall groupings were, sans the third movement. The classic anecdote about Look coming after Wonderful isn't mentioned here, nor are any other specific examples, however.

This is the first I can recall of the Worms anecdote where Brian mentions "there was some Indian chanting." Is he referring to the "boo da bah" chorus vocals (heard in the first chorus of Worms at least on the boxset version) or a whole other set of backing vocals for the verses we've yet to hear? Also, in this version, Darian knew about the lyrics all along--apparently Leaf had a copy of the lyric sheet given to Frank Holmes. Very cool, and I can only suppose if there were CIFOTM lyrics or some other earth-shattering revelation there, Mr. Leaf would've shared them in one way or another by now, or Darian would've gently prodded Brian into including them.

Van Dyke says there was music he hadn't heard before, and it's implied this is different than the new "segue music" made to keep the flow going in the live performance. I'm guessing Fire is one of these, and then perhaps Dada? Anyone want to take a crack at which SMiLE music Van didn't hear in the 60s?

There's a throwaway line on page 132 where Van remembers "an orchestral section" that Brian supposedly offered him to arrange or write (he uses the word "to orchestrate") and Van told Brian that he (Brian) ought to do it. This seems to imply Brian was open to letting Van write some music on SMiLE, not just lyrics, but Van wanted the project to be as much of Brian's voice as possible (as he reiterates in every interview I've seen). This implies that some of Anderle's lines in Crawdaddy about the two discussing arrangements could still be accurate despite VDP's claims he was strictly a lyricist. (I love it when previously discordant accounts can be harmonized!)

VDP offered to bring in new lyrics rather than being assigned the job. Makes you wonder, would we have heard a half-instrumental CIFOTM had he not been up to it, or passed away pre-03? Would Brian or Darian dare be so bold as to assign the task to someone else?

Van Dyke says: "I’ve never had a preconception about what SMiLE was. I still don’t know what it is, but I like it." However, he does at other times call it "impressions about America's Manifest Destiny and [...] with great kind of cartoon consciousness, which I think is signature to the piece." And later he says "the idea of a concept record never occurred to me, absolutely not. I thought the medium for this project SMiLE was animation." I think reconciling these quotes means, he didn't know what the overall message was necessarily, the complete sequence, but the general theme and "texture" (or visual) was there. It wasn't necessarily a step-by-step fully unified concept album so much as a series of songs with a general theme and aesthetic. Not to put words in his mouth but that's what I think these three quotes mean, taken together.

^It's interesting Van sees SMiLE as music for animation, considering earlier I said it'd be a great soundtrack to a Fantasia like film, with no dialogue and a cross between Holmes' drawings with Yellow Submarine esque pictures for the artstyle. It'd be a wonderful celebration of SMiLE, 60~ years after the original and ~30 after the resurrection, if we could get Lord & Miller (the geniuses behind the beautiful Spider-verse films) or someone of equal merit to helm such a project! I know it's a million to one shot, but I'd like to send out some fan letters to BRI, Capitol, Brian's daughters and L&M to see if anything comes of it. If, in my wildest dreams, such a thing were to happen and they use a two-suite sequence similar to one of those I've put forth...boy I could die with a smile then. 

In case there's any doubt, once again we get explicit confirmation that Holidays' lyrics were NOT vintage.

For whatever it's worth, Van circles back to the incident where Brian "grabbed the lyric sheet out of [his] hands and started to sing the melody of [Worms]" and says "it was so immediate that I couldn't help but feel that it was always there." I take this as confirmation of the droning verse melody of Worms as vintage over the bouncier version heard on TSS. I maintain the slower melody was the lead vocal and the lilting version Brian sang in the console booth was for a backing vocalization, either a "call and answer" or something else. Aside from anecdotes like this, the BWPS melody just fits the verse better in a vacuum.

There is a constant talk of "new and old" ideas being incorporated, the only consideration being "if they worked." So, again, BWPS was not solely a faithful reconstruction, more like a revisiting of the material.

Page 139 and we get these two bombshell quotes, one from Darian: "‘Brian never ever referred to any of the pieces as being part of some “Elemental” concept, and whenever I did bring up the concept, he didn’t seem to react to it with any enthusiasm. I brought it up again while Van Dyke was around and didn’t get a clear reaction from him either.'" Then from Leaf: "As to the ultimate three-suite structure, nobody knows whether that was ever considered in 1966." I take this as further proof the Domenic Priore "four song" elements suite was not vintage, although BWPS did ultimately end up using it out of convenience. Similarly, I take this as a sign that what Brian told Peter Reum in the 80s was also bullshit--either a polite white lie to tell the guy what he wanted to hear and get him to stop asking about SMiLE, or Brian was so out of it from Landy's drug cocktails he didn't know what he was saying. It'd be interesting to see how these two supposed conversations in the 80s with Priore and Reum played out exactly--one imagines a half-there Brian absent-mindedly going "uhh...yeah, yeah, sure whatever" as leading questions were fed to him by over-eager fanboys desperate for their fanmixes to be christened by the maestro.

^Furthermore, the first quote there signals that Brian and Van never finished the Elements as originally conceived and/or they both found the topic too difficult to talk about. Besides the Fire drama I suspect this is because it's the first instance (certainly that I know of) where Brian failed to get a track finished, an idea he had didn't work. That must've been a blow to his confidence, especially with all the people watching and all the "genius" talk. This fear of failure then spiraled into the whole album. Besides Mike, the lawsuit, the mental instability, I've often felt the misfire (pun intended) of the Elements spoiled the whole project in his mind. With the Smog tape it's clear he felt that particular theme was central to the whole album, in my opinion it ties the otherwise distinct "Americana/society" and "Innocence/Individuality" movements together in a unified lesson of "be good to nature / live in balance and you will be healed." To not be able to express that concept in SMiLE meant the intended spiritual revelation was pointless--at least that's my theory.

Further down the same page (139 into 140) there's clarification that's too long to quote in full but reaffirms what they said in the 2005 book. The first two movements came naturally, the third was built from leftovers repurposed to the new Elements suite. IIGS was put in the new element suite solely because it mentions "fresh clean air" and that's clean not zen (sorry Tobelman). With TSS I've read Priore insisted it be placed in the first movement since it was a Heroes fragment.

"As to how the project might have been completed in 1967 versus 2003, Brian is clear. ‘This is how I feel about this music now.’" (Emphasis Leaf's, further illustrating that the presentation of the music changed over time.)

Apparently it was David Leaf who gave Brian the original GV lyrics from Tony Asher (how the hell does Leaf have all this vintage material that Brian doesn't??). I'd always heard that doing Asher's lyrics was Melinda's idea and a dig at Mike Love, especially because of the lawsuit going on at the same time. (For the record, whatever you feel about Mike's actions during the original sessions, suing Brian for releasing this music he wrote, that Mike never would've put out in a million years, was a shitty spiteful move, just giving his poor cousin one more thing to worry about during what should've been a happy occasion.) Maybe Leaf brought him the lyrics but Melinda encouraged him to use them, but that isn't mentioned here. I prefer Mike's words but I think it made sense to frame this as purely Brian's night and excise Mike's creative contribution all things considered. It gives BWPS' GV its own identity.

Page 157, apparently someone overheard Paul Von Mertens discuss the project in public and started posting about it on the forums. Smiley Smile itself wasn't around then (we're circa 2005, right?) so is this the Smile Shop or somewhere else? Anybody know the story? Were there leaks there or on the Cabinessence forums and everyone was abuzz?

Beyond that, the chapter mostly consists of the musicians discussing their parts, how they prepared, what the rehearsals were like, how much they admire Brian. It's really good info and Im glad it's been recorded for posterity, I just don't have any comment on it.

Even in 2003, VDP seems to have thought of SMiLE as a vindication of American music/culture against a now long-over British Invasion with the quote "you're gonna show those tea-bags!" (Maybe he just meant because they premiered in London, but that still seems a strange way to say "knock em dead boys" unless there wasn't an aspect of national competition to it.)

Page 161, we get the same annoying braindead talking point "the public wasn't ready for SMiLE [in 1967]." If I convince the world of nothing else with my excessive writings on this topic, I hope to have it said that no one ever repeats this nonsense take again. It's just such a reductionist, defeatist, wholly unfounded position. It's taking PS' relative underperformance (which we now know Capitol engineered) and using it to draw ridiculous conclusions that ignore so much evidence of what SMiLE had going for it, in terms of hype, GV success, popularity of the band at an all-time height, critical acclaim, a world-class ad campaign with Taylor, industry bigwigs chomping at the bit to hear what Brian would do next, and I could go on...

2. Dreams Do Come True & I Was There & The Critics Chime In

With regard to the second movement of Surfs Up, there isn't even a mention of asking Brian "what was this supposed to be" you just have Paul Von Mertens saying Brian told him "do what you feel" so he added "a string quartet" because "I was feeling it." The Brian quote "there were some strings" doesn't even come up. In any case, it's interesting the things Brian remembered versus what he didn't. You'd think SU, by all accounts the crown jewel of SMiLE, the one that was going to prove they were more than a beach band, the one demoed on TV that was so anticipated it got its own self-titled album 4 years later, would've remained on Brian's mind all that time. Apparently not, or apparently the original arrangement (if it had been formulated at all) wasn't that important to him. It's strange and disappointing.

This is the chapter where I started skimming. It's all just hype and talking about how momentous opening night was. That's great, but I'm looking for information on the album and music. Im glad this information was gathered but I think Leaf kind of has a way of drawing this stuff out a bit too much even as a fan. There's only so many quotes of "this was a night of healing" / "it was such an honor to be there" / "Brian is so amazing" / "I can't believe it was 37 years in the making" and comparisons to other great artists a person can take, even me. (I probably wouldn't be quite so done with it if I hadn't just spent several months reading the same stories over and over again, of course.)

For whatever it's worth, there's a corroborating anecdote where Brian says the third movement is his favorite. In the 2005 book he told Darian on the tour bus as I recall, here he tells Leaf in an interview.

It is really awesome to get more info on what Paul's visit at the fourth performance was like. Apparently he told Brian he loved SMiLE more than anything he'd heard in his life--I wonder if, all things considered and after time has gone by, if he prefers PS or SMiLE.

There's some cool insight from Leaf's interview with Brian at the end. Apparently Brian considers California Girls & Good Vibrations to be the "two great records" the BBs did. His favorite SMiLE songs are Worms, Wonderful, CE & WC (huh, not Heroes or Surf?). He thinks SMiLE is the best thing they ever did; "if PS is a 4 (or 7) then SMiLE is a 10." Surprisingly, Brian admits that the then-forthcoming studio album wouldn't be any better than the live show performance. (Frankly, I think it was a mistake to not just release a live album of their best performance, or spliced best performances, especially if they weren't going to take full advantage of the studio to add extra overdubs or whatever.)

I don't have any comment on "I Was There" for the most part, because it's just recording fan reactions to finally hearing SMiLE. Again, very cool and Im glad this was all recorded for posterity, it's just not what Im interested in with this project. The chapter on the critics responses just seems like blatant filler though, I have to say. It's like reading a biography about an actor that includes a chapter of reprinted reviews to all their movies. If I wanted to see these I could just read the actual reviews.

3. The Later Chapters

Not too much to say, they go into how BWPS was recorded. Brian reiterates here what I noted in the other 04-05 interviews of his, that he considers his band at this point to be superior to the Boys. (Absolutely no slight to the Wondermints but I also think part of his need to emphasize this point so strongly is out of resentment for the group that never helped him finish SMiLE and were suing him at the time.)

I'd like to see the 6 hour rough cut of Leaf's BD film mentioned here. Im sure it's ponderous and unwatchable for an average viewer as a piece of entertainment, but I want to see and hear all the info he gathered for it. What didn't make the cut? Are there 20 minute interviews of Vosse & Anderle full of arcane factoids that a casual wouldn't understand? If so it makes sense to cut from the feature, but for an uber obsessed nerd like me that sounds fascinating! I don't expect anything to come of it but I'll be contacting him soon to see if there's any way they might release the Directors Cut online somewhere or for a pay-to-play download maybe.

^Of the cut footage, we get descriptions of two scenes that came closest to remaining in the final version: Durrie Parks weeping at SMiLE collapse, lamenting how big it would've been for her husband's career (I sense this is a big reason for Van's bitterness, especially not getting credited for some of the Smiley songs) & Tom Nolan trying to sequence the thing from what came out on subsequent releases. (I wish Leaf had shared the track order he settled on!)

When talking about the boxset, I feel like Leaf could've went more in-depth. He almost certainly had access to Linnett and Boyd, he could've had them discuss how and why certain mixes were done, why certain pieces were included over others, surprising things they found on the tapes, yadda yadda. It felt like this was more of an afterthought, an "I didn't work on this, meh" kinda deal. I share his sentiment that the story of SMiLE is still ultimately a tragedy because the album would've had SO MUCH more impact in 1967 than it did in 2004, that that album would've been SO MUCH better (no offense Wondermints), that the Beach Boys & Brian's historical reputations would've been SO MUCH higher. But it is what it is, and lamenting about it endlessly does no good--except to shut down the lamebrain "SMiLE would've been a dud" talking point. Otherwise, we've read the eulogies, let's just get the facts to the page while at least some people are still alive to talk about it all.

I'm just skimming through the final essays again--I've read so many fan essays talking about the first time they heard CG/PS/GV lately I could scream. (Not trying to sound like a douche but Im ready for this deep dive to be over, and it almost is.)

In Tom Nolan's essay, it isn't Carol Kaye that tells Brian Look has 12th Street Rag in it but Barney Kessel. Van gets his car as a farewell present not on the first day (unless Brian bought him two cars). VDP's lyrics are said to have been finished at the time he left. Brian told everyone "sometime in spring" that they weren't doing SMiLE. Jules Siegel is quoted second-hand from 1969 saying Brian believed someone would kill him for finishing SMiLE. (Sounds like paranoia from the auditory hallucinations exacerbated or triggered by speed psychosis to me. Or another convenient excuse.)

The "School's in Session" essay is fantastic, although I don't fully understand it as a non-musician but it gives me an idea of Brian's innovation. I wish there was more of this kinda discussion in SMiLE books and articles--tell me about the hidden literary allusions or linguistic puns in VDP's words and the compositional or production inventiveness of Brian instead of the 20+ fan essays telling us how old they were when they first heard I Get Around. I dont have much to say about this particular piece but it makes me want to learn more about music theory and how the rules can be broken to surprising effect.

The rest of the essays are very sweet and it's great that so many figures from the Beach Boy lore got a say, including AGD and Carlin whose book was a fantastic read for me back in 2011. I love how Vertigo, coincidentally one of my favorite movies, is quoted in the epilogue! In that same final word, Leaf affirms once more that BWPS isn't what we would've gotten in 1967.

I have nothing else to say except it's a really good read. I enjoyed it, if I sound like I didn't it's just because I'm overdosed on SMiLE coming up on the end of this thing and ready to put the subject to bed. I'd recommend it though. If LLVS is (by default) the best book on the SMiLE sessions and early bootleg movement, then Leaf's is (also by default) the best one on BWPS and its impact. Neither is perfect, I think the information could be presented in a better way, but this is what we've got and it works. I think the definitive book on the subject has yet to be made, and could perhaps be constructed as a multi-stage "Bible" featuring a "gospel harmony" of the best sources (Siegel's, Vosse's, Anderle's primary accounts as the "synoptic gospels" plus maybe a "sayings gospel" of the disparate, non-narrative quotes from others like the BBs, Hutton, Volman etc.) I also like the idea of taking all the info and trying to go day-by-day (more likely month by month) as much as possible like Badman does but with better accuracy, and giving all the anecdotes with those showing up in more sources written in bold say, those in less sources in italics perhaps, those in only one as regular text, then those disputed with a strikethrough or something. Then there can be an "epistles" section of all the best essays, from the insiders to archived forum posts and conjecture of the book authors perhaps trying to make sense of the overall account. That's something I'd like to do in the near-ish future.


Worms--Heroes--Barnyard Suite--Cabin Essence
GV--WC--Elements--CIFOTM--SU

^Its a rough one, but I thought an interesting SMiLE mix idea might be to bookend the two 4-odd part suites, Barnyard & Elements, with the other tracks. What angel name are we on now? Did I do Raphael yet? (I'll compile all these in a master list in this thread soon, promise.)

[Julia]

Here we go. Until my copies of the Preiss & Stebbins books arrive in the mail, this is all I have left to look at. Let me know if I've missed any important sources in the meantime. If anyone can help me with those ESQ issues too it'd be most appreciated

I looked over the collection of Smile Shop essays I shared earlier in the thread but there's really no new info in there for me at this point--in fact, since many were written just before or after BWPS, they have a lot of out of date info. They're an interesting time capsule of where the fandom was at back in the early days of the internet, but no more no less and not worth a deep dive.

One thing that's funny is, at least in the essay by Louis Shenk, it's taken as a given that GV was "not originally part of SMiLE." It's so fucking surreal how all the sh*t I was made to feel out of line or ridiculous about back in the day is commonly corroborated in almost all the sources after all. But what'cha gonna do except prove the naysayers wrong 10 years later when no one cares anymore I guess   Either way, take that ya old curmudgeon.

1. BWPS Concert Booklet/Tour Programme

I found a reasonably priced copy of this and decided to get a copy. Even though I don't expect much revelatory info from it, it'd drive me nuts wondering if I missed something and plus it's a nice collector's item for an uber-fan like myself. I'm just gonna throw out some stray observations as anything catches my eye.

VDP was aware Brian was working on BWPS but waited for a call for 2 months, like Leaf says in the new book.

VDP gives the impression that his contributions were a last minute thing. This definitely feels like the seeds sown for their later falling out, along with Frank Holmes having to work as an usher to see BWPS, and Frank almost getting screwed out of royalties on TSS. (Plus Ive heard secondhand Van expected to have a bigger role in TLOS or something.) So, it's sad they seemingly spent their twilight years on shaky ground but I understand why Van would feel miffed at all of this, I suspect Melinda was as rough on him as she's attested to with Holmes & Mike as well, but at least VDP gave Brian a very nice eulogy to end their relationship on respectable terms.

VDP refers to Veggies as earth but says it's the only Element he worked on. Once again, say it louder for the people in the back, that means now and for all time WIND CHIMES ISN'T AIR. Not even its tag, because Van worked on that too and is documented on TSS as being present for that session (see next section). This talking point has been so thoroughly debunked now, by direct testimony as well as by common sense, I hope we can finally put it to bed. If you take the Preiss quote as gospel, we have to accept that it was something else Brian was referring to--probably Dada, maybe something we don't have, IIGS ("fresh clean air" which was enough to grant it a space in the third movement, according to Brian) or Country Air. And really, it always seemed silly to me the way people insisted that half a song was an element just to suit their pet theory. Anyway, I say case closed.

VDP had never heard Fire before 2003. I think the Elements was a late development in SMiLE, almost certainly the very last song conceived during the '66 timeline, and it's when Brian drifted away from the "meeting of the minds" he'd developed with Van. That's when the partnership started breaking up, when they weren't on the same page and Van didn't like where things were going, or couldn't keep up with Brian's new ideas. Quotes like this affirm that theory for me, and are partly why I reject the Americana/Elements structure.

Darian stresses this isn't the completed SMiLE, just presenting the music in a live context. (I repeat this point every time it comes up to show how often he's clarified the issue, how many separate sources attest to this crucial distinction.) Elsewhere, it's said there was "no attempt to go back in the past" and they only did what felt natural in the moment. In even another instance, they say BWPS was "never going to be the '66 album." Like how WC =/= Air, I think the point is well-made that BWPS =/= SMiLE. It literally could not be emphasized any more strongly by the principals than it is, so anyone remaining stubborn on this debate simply cannot be reasoned out of their bias.

Darian was in charge of segues between tracks, otherwise Brian and VDP grouped the songs "musically lyrically and thematically."

Priore's "Production Timeline" reveals some stuff. Most of it is the same basic info so I see no need to comment on. The points I'm bringing up are either new info and/or are disputed by others:

1.) Apparently Dumb Angel was first announced as the title in "April/May" '66. (I can believe this, that it was a throwaway name spoken to the press before any work was done, a placeholder title while focusing on GV.)

2.) In "June/July" we have "Inspiration" listed as "the first session for a Dumb Angel track." (Does Priore still not know at this point that Inspiration was GV, or was it given the "new name" simultaneously with the thought it'd be on a new album?) Also, this is where VDP is first listed as working with Brian on the new album.

3.) Also, same "June/July" window, Brian's trip to Big Sur, which Tobelman places great significance on as his third psychedelic trip, is listed. (I could believe this is one of the times Brian tripped but I don't place as much emphasis on it. I don't think SMiLE is riddled with arcane private references to his psychedelic experiences. Also, while this trip almost certainly influenced his desire to capture the wonder of nature in the next album, I don't think he composed the Elements during it, the way Priore claims in his 2005 book.)

4.) Anderle's hiring is listed in August. (I'd never seen a date given for when he joined the party. I have no reason to doubt this.)

5.) October is listed as the month "Dumb Angel" becomes "SMiLE." Also, it's said that Frank Holmes was brought on-board in October as well. (With regard to the name change, this jives with what I've seen but in another thread WillJC claims to have reason to believe it was actually in August. I'd love to see his research when he's ready to present it, he's clearly a man that knows his stuff. As far as Frank's involvement, Priore's own book cites October as when the cover was delivered, not commissioned. Priore in 2005 quotes Frank saying he was hired in June, not Oct. It's really annoying how confusing these simple blips in the timeline are to pin down--we're not talking about a matter of days here, but a quarter of a year. It's a significant difference.)

6.) The myth of Paul McCartney chomping celery for Veggies is repeated in April 67. (Complete nonsense but it's too good a story to die at this point.)

7.) CIFOTM is listed as "completed" in April. (Uhh, if you say so Domenic. That's why it has no lyrics, right?)

8.) LtSD is stated as completed in May. (Ditto.)

In David Leaf's essay, we mostly get the same breeze through of events that, at this point, I could reiterate in my sleep. But one throwaway line stuck out to me about Brian sitting in the dark, playing the acetates and describing how the music would unfold. From this, I see more evidence of the "bisociative/pictorial" strategy at play, wanting the music to create images in your head. (Interestingly, the Love & Mercy film even alludes to this when Brian demos GOK for Murry, asking him to close his eyes and explaining that "when you're blind you can see more.") But of course what's even more tantalizing about this quote is the idea that Brian explained how the music would fit together in each of these combinations he supposedly tried. I'd kill to hear what he had to say, though I don't blame Anderle for not remembering specifics.

Domenic Priore gets like 3 separate essays in this thing which, regardless of how you feel about him or his theories, is ridiculous. It bothers me how close-knit and borderline inbred the SMiLE "insiders" community has been since the 80s. I think it's kept the discussion stagnant all these decades, with these two men essentially controlling the established narrative. It's disappointing to me as a reader whenever I get my hands on a new source just to see "oh, so it's David Leaf and Domenic Priore restating their greatest hits again for the umpteenth time. Glad I spent the money to reread the same info yet again." Some new voices in there certainly wouldn't hurt, especially back when a fair number of the primary witnesses were still alive but yet to offer their two cents in an official release. Leaf I can maybe understand because he's the one making it all happen, the producer and Brian's right-hand man (whom Brian personally requested to be present), but what's Dom's claim to fame except compiling other people's articles in a confusingly disorganized scrapbook 40 years ago?

^While I don't regret purchasing this, and it looks great on my shelf next to the TSS booklet, the new David Leaf release mostly renders it obsolete as a source of novel information. If you're like me and thinking "should I get this, does it have new info?" the answers are "if you want a piece of memorabilia maybe, otherwise no it doesn't."

2. Session Attendance

I wanted to know the sessions in which VDP's presence is attested and then, while I was at it, I was curious which sessions the Boys attended outside their function as vocalists. I didn't include GV in this endeavor with regard to the BBs--Ive done a lot of research, someone else can take the time if they want to know--but I can't find VDP listed as a musician or studio chatter in any of the TSS sessionography entries for that first song. When Van suggested the cello triplets he must've been there as a guest and said nothing on the recorded tape--I was hoping to pin this date down so we could firmly establish when he was part of SMiLE, since it's now stated by WillJC that the man only began writing songs with Brian in August as opposed to May like Badman says (and other evidence like the first Heroes session imply).

Van Dyke was there for WC version 2 but not 1. He was there for Holidays, Wonderful version 2, CE, the Worms sessions, the Heroes Piano Demo & Intro & verse remake & fade & piano theme & prelude to fade & Intro early version & IIGS & Barnyard. If he was at other sessions, he didn't play anything or say anything in the studio chatter that was included on TSS (unless I missed something).

Dennis may've been at the Do a Lot session. He was at Bag of Tricks along with the rest of the BBs. He was at the Children were raised. He may've been at the Animals session. He was at the Wonderful version 1 session though apparently just in the console. He was on the Veggies sleep a lot chorus. He was at IDK but not Tones.

Carl was on the CE tag, CIFOTM version 1 & 2,  might've been on the Veggies Fade, WC versions 1 & 2. He was there at Tones and IDK. He was on 5/24 & Inspiration & 6/16 & 6/18 & GV.

Dennis and Carl were both at the Heroes Part 1 Tag, Veggies Chorus (1 and 2nd), Holidays, 9/1 GV, HGS.

Bruce was there for Animals and Part 2 revised.

Al was there at Tones, but only studio chat.

All but Bruce were on the Veggies verse master take.

Diane Rovell was in the Organ Waltz Intro.

(That's not getting into the Smiley era sessions either. Along with GV, I personally don't count these as SMiLE sessions per se, just "adjacent sessions.")

^With this data in mind, perhaps we could rank the other BBs by their enthusiasm for SMiLE? If so, surprisingly Carl comes before Dennis, then Bruce comes before Al. HOWEVER this is a very imperfect methodology because sometimes the guys (especially Dennis) have question marks after their name, plus it's established that just because someone wasn't a musician/vocalist or on the "studio chat" it doesn't necessarily mean they were not present. It's still interesting to note, however.  

3. Master Numbers

Now I'm going to list the songs that had multiple versions (or otherwise disparate sections) with separate master #s. If a song isn't shown here, then according to the TSS liner notes any alt-versions are explicitly listed under the same master # as what we consider the "main/definitive take," or no change is noted. (Apparently Holidays never had a master # at all. HGS didn't have one either, nor Teeter Totter Love, or Three Blind Mice. For this reason if no other, we can safely consider these the "throwaways" that wouldn't have made the cut, I say.)

0. Apparently IDK & Tones did have master #s which is just bizarre to me. Also I completely missed this before when noting the lost SMiLE tapes, but there's a "part 1" to IDK that's missing. It's such a small blurb, regarding a song I don't care about, that it slipped my notice earlier. I think this all indicates Tones and IDK might've been more serious than we've been led to believe--certainly not planned for SMiLE, especially not as the album was originally conceived, but perhaps potential b-sides, cuts for the next album (which was sure to be a SD&SN to SMiLE's Today!, or Party to SMiLE's Pet Sounds) or maybe Carl and Dennis might've gotten their own solo singles like Brian did with Caroline No.

1.The very first Heroes session in May '66 was 55999. Heroes on 10/20 including BY was 56727, then 10/27 for IIGS it was 56738. A lost 12/13 vocal is 56727 again. Another lost session on 12/19 is 57020. "Pickup to 3rd Verse" is 57020 (none of the pieces from IIGS to now mention master #s), then the next time another master # is mentioned is "Whistling Bridge" which is still 57020--Cantina & All Day explicitly list the same #, as does Prelude to Fade, Piano Theme. An abandoned 1/20 session has the #57074. Then we have the Verse Edit experiment, Gee, Part 2, Part 2 Revised, Part 2 Revised (Master Take) and Part 3 which list nothing. Part 4 suddenly reaffirms 57020 again. It only gets to 57045 with "Part Two (Master Take)" and Fade, (verse remake lists nothing), Organ Waltz & another lost session from 3/2. Then suddenly in the Smiley session overdubs we get 56727--the very first master # we started with, from back in 10/20/66! (Anyone else sometimes resent Heroes when it comes to stuff like this? So confusing!) The theory that 57020 is Side 1 while 57045 is Side 2 sorta takes a hit when looking at it this way--a lot of material commonly believed to be the b-side are under the "wrong" master #.

The lost IIGS tape from 10/17 is given master # 56728 (same as the Veggies Cornucopia, leading to speculation the tape was mislabeled...or perhaps Veggies & IIGS were one track at some point: perhaps IIGS could've been the air and Veggies the earth of a very early version of the Elements? Also OMP is 57020--same as Heroes, but crucially not the first version of the song which was said to feature variations of "My Only Sunshine" back from May 11, 1966.

2. Worms is 56729, except the BR overdubs on 1/5, which are 57045 (same as the Heroes #s using this section of music).

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

4. Bizarrely, CE has 56647 in 10/3 but 56716 in 12/6, and 57044 on 12/27. The last two are vocal takes, the first as far as I can tell includes all three sections of the backing track.

5. Wonderful is 56550, Version 2 is 57046, Version 3 has none.

6. I Ran had none the first session, but 56473 when vocals were recorded. (I'm taking this as further proof I Ran could've gone on SMiLE afterall and is a step above Holidays/Speeches in the hierarchy of pieces that are frequently left off. In SMiLE tier lists of song importance, if Holidays/Persuasion are F-tier, then IR is at least an E or D.)

7. No master # was assigned to CIFOTM version 1, but Version 2 is 56716, Version 3 has none assigned (and, I didn't know this, was labelled Tune X on the box & Nowhere on the session tape).

8. Surfs Up is all over the place, the first movement has 56842 written but crossed out with 56850 replacing it, the overdub session (Talking Horns) on 11/7 is 56841. The piano demo vocals have no master #. The lost BB vocal session of 12/15 used the same master number as the 11/7 overdubs (56841). The lost 1/23 sessions, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, were given the master #s 57087 & 57086--totally unique. Anyone wanna take a stab at what this mess means?? This might be my new "favorite" mystery of SMiLE, looking at it now. What the f*** was going on with SU that almost every session got its own number??

9. For IWBA/FN, it says "master # unknown" as opposed to "no master # assigned" like the other songs without one. (You're Welcome is the only other song I notice with this same issue, upon a second glance.) So whatever that means.

10. Vegetables single version is 57450 (all sessions plus With Me Tonight), the '66 Cornucopia "demo" is 56728 (which is different from Fire's master #, 56891, belaying any idea they might share an "elements master #.")

11. Wind Chimes Version 1 is 56448, Version 2 is confusingly 56648.

12. Early Dada had none either but  the 5/16-5/18 sessions were 57668.

13. Cool Cool Water version 1 had no master # but part 2 is 58583.

14. Good Vibrations starts at 55680 then onto 55949 by April, then the "Inspiration" sessions are 56065 in early June, then 12935 by 6/16, back to 55949 by the 18th and as far as I can tell it stayed that way to the end.  

^What does any of this mean? I sincerely have no idea. It's wild how something like Heroes is mostly pretty consistent with the numbers despite having all these disparate sections and edits while SU is a mess of haphazardly assigned masters. The almost consistent lack of assigned master #s for the "versions 3s" in 1967 almost feels like Brian knew none of this was gonna come out and stopped trying. I honestly think he was just spinning the wheels at that point, the post-VDP March through May sessions. It seems significant Brian circled back to the first master # for HV and second for GV, like he set aside new numbers to experiment then when he knew he had it, he returned back to the number he'd always had in mind for the song. It seems clear in some cases a new master number meant a new plan, like the songs that had versions 1 & 2, or Veggies the elements fragment vs Veggies the single, but that doesn't account for the strangeness that is SU, or CE.  

4. The Instrumentation of SMiLE

I'm taking this information from the TSS booklet, pages 17-20. My interest is in comparing all the different instruments used in each of the major SMiLE songs, so in cases where there's multiple sections (like Heroes) Im just going to list what's unique in the ancillary sessions rather than every instrument all over again since you can just read the book itself for that. With the other tracks that have separate Versions, I'll just list all the instruments from the different sessions in each group. (Hope that makes sense, basically if something was meant to be a "do over" I'll treat it as such and list the instruments over again.)

Heroes and Villains: acoustic rhythm guitar, dano bass, tack piano, drums, slide whistle, french horn

(Prelude to Fade: piano, fender bass, upright bass, temple blocks, harmonica, violin, viola, cello)
(Do a Lot: upright piano, grand piano, thump percussion)
(Bag of Tricks: Bass drum & jug, guiro, recorder, steam engine percussion, duck quack, noise maker, whistles, bells)
(Cantina: Mandolins)
(Part 2: Shaker, Clank)
(Fade: Snare drum, harmonica, tenor flute, 12-string electric rhythm guitar)
(Verse remake: baritone ukulele)
(Organ Waltz/Intro: Hammond Organ, organ bass pedals, buzzer)
(Children were raised overdubs: electric harpsichord, baldwin organ)

Barnyard: electric or amplified acoustic lead guitar, dano bass, upright bass, tack piano, conga, shaker, bass harmonica

Im in Great Shape: Piano, Harp, Tenor Sax, Fender Bass,

Do You Like Worms: 12 string electric rhythm guitar, fender bass, upright bass, piano, tympanis, parade drum, conga, 12 string electric slide guitar, harpsichord, tack piano, 12 string electric guitar, dano bass

My Only Sunshine: Acoustic rhythm guitar, dano bass, upright bass, drum, harmonica, tenor saxophone, clarinet, violin, viola, cello,

Cabin Essence: upright piano, banjo, acoustic guitar, bouzouki, dobro, dano bass, tambourine, bell goodies, flute, accordion, harmonica, bass harmonica, cello

Wonderful: harpsichord, grand piano, upright bass, trumpet, tenor ukulele

(Version 2: Mandolin, harpsichord, dano bass, drum)

I Ran: 12 string electric rhythm guitar, fender bass, dano bass, upright bass, grand piano, harpsichord, drum, bongo, tambourine, glockenspiel, flute, trumpet, french horn, tuba

Child is Father of the Man: grand piano, electric baritone lead guitar, fender bass, upright bass, vibes, drum, castanet, tambourine,

(Version 2: tack piano, grand piano, electric rhythm guitar, electric baritone lead guitar, fender bass, upright bass, trumpet, snare drum, sleighbells,)

Surfs Up: upright piano, electric baritone lead guitar, fender bass, upright bass, hi-hat, car keys, glockenspiel, trumpet, tuben horn, french horn,

(Cancelled 1/23 session: violin, viola, cello, harp, oboe, english horn, french horn,

I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: grand piano, acoustic lead guitar, acoustic rhythm guitar, upright bass, drum, vibes, snare drum, board drop, electric power drill, hammer, saw

Vega-Tables: grand piano, upright bass, veggie chomping, thump percussion, electric harpsichord, fender bass, xylophone, drum, rattling percussion, tenor ukulele, hi-hat, castanet, vibes, violin, viola, cello, ukulele,

Holidays: marimbas, piano, fender bass, drum, clarinet, flute, slide whistle,

Wind Chimes: electric harpsichord, celeste, tack piano, grand piano, fender bass, 12 string electric lead guitar, dano bass, upright bass, temple blocks, drum, clarinet, tenor saxophone,

(Version 2: marimba, upright bass, finger snaps, grand piano, tack piano)

Fire: Dano bass, fender bass, drum, triangle, flute, violin, viola, cello,

Love to Say Dada (for this one, Im including Parts 1 & 2 in one list): Grand piano, upright piano, dano bass, upright bass, drum, temple blocks, piano, hammond organ, 12 string electric lead guitar, electric rhythm guitar, fender bass, clarinet,

(Version 2/Second Day: Piccolos, whistles, bongos, gut-string guitar)

^I didn't chronicle the instruments used in GV. I took one look at that giant page with a million sessions, each with a million instruments and said "yeah, nah" sorry. That's not part of this exercise. Besides laziness, I justify my exclusion with the fact that it was not part of SMiLE proper (not the sessions anyway) so if there's any shared instrumentation I think it'd be more of a coincidence than anything. And with such depth of arrangement, it's probably got something in common with every other SMiLE song.

I fed this information into the Big 5 AIs (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Deepseek) to have it present the data in reverse, where we can see each instrument with the songs it's used in, as well as how many instruments each song shares with each other. For songs with multiple versions, I used the one used in the TSS Disc 1 assembly and most commonly on fanmixes. (So, Wonderful V1 but Wind Chimes & CIFOTM V2, single Veggies, etc.) For Heroes, since Brian could've used any of the sections and it was too confusing or arbitrary otherwise, I used all the instruments from all sessions in this exercise.

I know some scoff at the use of AI but I think it can be a useful tool if it's not a "one stop shop." Like, if I asked the AI straight up "what are all the instruments used in each SMiLE song and how many are shared between each track?" it would be overwhelmed by the open-ended nature of the question and spit out generic fake garbage. BUT if you carefully feed it data and ask it to curate that into something else, it can be very useful in a limited capacity. This saved me at least ~2 hours of tedious work that would've been easy to screw up, and by using all 5 of the big names it ensures that if one AI hallucinates nonsense, the others won't.

This is the GEMINI Comparison of shared instruments

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D3H0v46CGYfi7CS4_eF1B78GW5JTj5YLRXpLFjkIRaI/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Jcmku1Tw3CZGxgx8rM-4zX9Ucc0G9VQEPhC_Y_V3Vts/edit?usp=sharing

This is the CLAUDE.AI Comparison of shared instruments

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/95a162ff-a2ab-4e45-afc8-aae98d611487

This is the DEEPSEEK Comparison of shared instruments

### Heroes and Villains
- with Barnyard: 4
- with Im in Great Shape: 2
- with Do You Like Worms: 6
- with My Only Sunshine: 8
- with Cabin Essence: 4
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 7
- with Child is Father of the Man: 5
- with Surfs Up: 7
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 5
- with Vega-Tables: 9
- with Holidays: 4
- with Wind Chimes: 7
- with Fire: 6
- with Love to Say Dada: 9

### Barnyard
- with Heroes and Villains: 4
- with Im in Great Shape: 0
- with Do You Like Worms: 4
- with My Only Sunshine: 2
- with Cabin Essence: 3
- with Wonderful: 1
- with I Ran: 2
- with Child is Father of the Man: 2
- with Surfs Up: 1
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 1
- with Vega-Tables: 1
- with Holidays: 0
- with Wind Chimes: 3
- with Fire: 2
- with Love to Say Dada: 2

### Im in Great Shape
- with Heroes and Villains: 2
- with Barnyard: 0
- with Do You Like Worms: 2
- with My Only Sunshine: 1
- with Cabin Essence: 0
- with Wonderful: 0
- with I Ran: 1
- with Child is Father of the Man: 1
- with Surfs Up: 1
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 0
- with Vega-Tables: 1
- with Holidays: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 1
- with Fire: 1
- with Love to Say Dada: 2

### Do You Like Worms
- with Heroes and Villains: 6
- with Barnyard: 4
- with Im in Great Shape: 2
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 4
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 6
- with Child is Father of the Man: 5
- with Surfs Up: 4
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 5
- with Holidays: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 6
- with Fire: 4
- with Love to Say Dada: 5

### My Only Sunshine
- with Heroes and Villains: 8
- with Barnyard: 2
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 5
- with Wonderful: 1
- with I Ran: 5
- with Child is Father of the Man: 3
- with Surfs Up: 5
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 5
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 4
- with Fire: 5
- with Love to Say Dada: 4

### Cabin Essence
- with Heroes and Villains: 4
- with Barnyard: 3
- with Im in Great Shape: 0
- with Do You Like Worms: 4
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Wonderful: 1
- with I Ran: 4
- with Child is Father of the Man: 2
- with Surfs Up: 3
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 2
- with Vega-Tables: 3
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 4
- with Fire: 3
- with Love to Say Dada: 4

### Wonderful
- with Heroes and Villains: 2
- with Barnyard: 1
- with Im in Great Shape: 0
- with Do You Like Worms: 2
- with My Only Sunshine: 1
- with Cabin Essence: 1
- with I Ran: 3
- with Child is Father of the Man: 2
- with Surfs Up: 2
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 1
- with Vega-Tables: 2
- with Holidays: 0
- with Wind Chimes: 2
- with Fire: 1
- with Love to Say Dada: 2

### I Ran
- with Heroes and Villains: 7
- with Barnyard: 2
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 6
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 4
- with Wonderful: 3
- with Child is Father of the Man: 5
- with Surfs Up: 6
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 4
- with Vega-Tables: 6
- with Holidays: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 6
- with Fire: 5
- with Love to Say Dada: 6

### Child is Father of the Man
- with Heroes and Villains: 5
- with Barnyard: 2
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 5
- with My Only Sunshine: 3
- with Cabin Essence: 2
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 5
- with Surfs Up: 4
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 4
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 4
- with Fire: 3
- with Love to Say Dada: 4

### Surfs Up
- with Heroes and Villains: 7
- with Barnyard: 1
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 4
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 3
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 6
- with Child is Father of the Man: 4
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 6
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 5
- with Fire: 5
- with Love to Say Dada: 5

### I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- with Heroes and Villains: 5
- with Barnyard: 1
- with Im in Great Shape: 0
- with Do You Like Worms: 3
- with My Only Sunshine: 3
- with Cabin Essence: 2
- with Wonderful: 1
- with I Ran: 4
- with Child is Father of the Man: 3
- with Surfs Up: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 4
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 3
- with Fire: 3
- with Love to Say Dada: 4

### Vega-Tables
- with Heroes and Villains: 9
- with Barnyard: 1
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 5
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 3
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 6
- with Child is Father of the Man: 4
- with Surfs Up: 6
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 4
- with Holidays: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 5
- with Fire: 6
- with Love to Say Dada: 6

### Holidays
- with Heroes and Villains: 4
- with Barnyard: 0
- with Im in Great Shape: 2
- with Do You Like Worms: 2
- with My Only Sunshine: 1
- with Cabin Essence: 1
- with Wonderful: 0
- with I Ran: 2
- with Child is Father of the Man: 1
- with Surfs Up: 1
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 1
- with Vega-Tables: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 3
- with Fire: 1
- with Love to Say Dada: 2

### Wind Chimes
- with Heroes and Villains: 7
- with Barnyard: 3
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 6
- with My Only Sunshine: 4
- with Cabin Essence: 4
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 6
- with Child is Father of the Man: 4
- with Surfs Up: 5
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 5
- with Holidays: 3
- with Fire: 4
- with Love to Say Dada: 6

### Fire
- with Heroes and Villains: 6
- with Barnyard: 2
- with Im in Great Shape: 1
- with Do You Like Worms: 4
- with My Only Sunshine: 5
- with Cabin Essence: 3
- with Wonderful: 1
- with I Ran: 5
- with Child is Father of the Man: 3
- with Surfs Up: 5
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 3
- with Vega-Tables: 6
- with Holidays: 1
- with Wind Chimes: 4
- with Love to Say Dada: 5

### Love to Say Dada
- with Heroes and Villains: 9
- with Barnyard: 2
- with Im in Great Shape: 2
- with Do You Like Worms: 5
- with My Only Sunshine: 4
- with Cabin Essence: 4
- with Wonderful: 2
- with I Ran: 6
- with Child is Father of the Man: 4
- with Surfs Up: 5
- with I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night: 4
- with Vega-Tables: 6
- with Holidays: 2
- with Wind Chimes: 6
- with Fire: 5

These are the ones where it was simpler to share a link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19zrNjjUzflJMylWIX-rC2Dq2_Zt3Jo3UVl9nGQbyWtk/edit?usp=sharing

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7668e62e-743a-4ed0-b780-b7f233697b1b

This is the ChatGPT comparison:

### Reverse Instrument List

- **accordion**: Cabin Essence
- **acoustic guitar**: Cabin Essence
- **acoustic lead guitar**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **acoustic rhythm guitar**: Heroes and Villains, My Only Sunshine, I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **banjo**: Cabin Essence
- **baritone ukulele**: Heroes and Villains
- **bass drum**: Heroes and Villains
- **bass harmonica**: Barnyard, Cabin Essence
- **bell goodies**: Cabin Essence
- **bells**: Heroes and Villains
- **board drop**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **bongo**: I Ran
- **bouzouki**: Cabin Essence
- **buzzer**: Heroes and Villains
- **car keys**: Surfs Up
- **castanet**: Vega-Tables
- **celeste**: Wind Chimes
- **cello**: Heroes and Villains, My Only Sunshine, Cabin Essence, Surfs Up, Vega-Tables, Fire
- **clank**: Heroes and Villains
- **clarinet**: My Only Sunshine, Holidays, Wind Chimes, Love to Say Dada
- **conga**: Barnyard, Do You Like Worms, I Ran
- **dano bass**: Heroes and Villains, Barnyard, Do You Like Worms, My Only Sunshine, Cabin Essence, I Ran, Wind Chimes, Fire, Love to Say Dada
- **dobro**: Cabin Essence
- **drum**: Heroes and Villains, My Only Sunshine, I Ran, I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night, Vega-Tables, Holidays, Wind Chimes, Fire, Love to Say Dada
- **duck quack**: Heroes and Villains
- **electric baritone lead guitar**: Child is Father of the Man, Surfs Up
- **electric harpsichord**: Heroes and Villains, Vega-Tables
- **electric power drill**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **electric rhythm guitar**: Child is Father of the Man, Love to Say Dada
- **english horn**: Surfs Up
- **fender bass**: Heroes and Villains, Im in Great Shape, Do You Like Worms, I Ran, Child is Father of the Man, Surfs Up, Vega-Tables, Holidays, Wind Chimes, Fire, Love to Say Dada
- **finger snaps**: Wind Chimes
- **flute**: Cabin Essence, I Ran, Holidays, Fire
- **french horn**: Heroes and Villains, I Ran, Surfs Up
- **grand piano**: Heroes and Villains, Wonderful, I Ran, Child is Father of the Man, I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night, Vega-Tables, Surfs Up, Love to Say Dada
- **guiro**: Heroes and Villains
- **hammer**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **harp**: Im in Great Shape, Surfs Up
- **harpsichord**: Do You Like Worms, Wonderful, I Ran
- **hi-hat**: Surfs Up, Vega-Tables
- **hammond organ**: Heroes and Villains, Love to Say Dada
- **baldwin organ**: Heroes and Villains
- **organ bass pedals**: Heroes and Villains
- **jug**: Heroes and Villains
- **mandolins**: Heroes and Villains
- **marimba**: Holidays, Wind Chimes
- **noise maker**: Heroes and Villains
- **oboe**: Surfs Up
- **piano**: Heroes and Villains, Im in Great Shape, Do You Like Worms, Holidays, Love to Say Dada
- **rattling percussion**: Vega-Tables
- **recorder**: Heroes and Villains
- **saw**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **shaker**: Heroes and Villains, Barnyard
- **slide whistle**: Heroes and Villains, Holidays
- **sleighbells**: Child is Father of the Man
- **snare drum**: Heroes and Villains, Child is Father of the Man, I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
- **steam engine percussion**: Heroes and Villains
- **tack piano**: Heroes and Villains, Barnyard, Do You Like Worms, Child is Father of the Man, Wind Chimes
- **tambourine**: Cabin Essence, I Ran
- **temple blocks**: Heroes and Villains, Wind Chimes, Love to Say Dada
- **tenor flute**: Heroes and Villains
- **tenor saxophone**: Im in Great Shape, My Only Sunshine, Wind Chimes
- **tenor ukulele**: Wonderful, Vega-Tables
- **thump percussion**: Heroes and Villains, Vega-Tables
- **triangle**: Fire
- **tuba**: I Ran
- **tuben horn**: Surfs Up
- **ukulele**: Vega-Tables
- **upright bass**: Heroes and Villains, Barnyard, Do You Like Worms, My Only Sunshine, Wonderful, I Ran, Child is Father of the Man, Surfs Up, Vega-Tables, Wind Chimes, Fire, Love to Say Dada
- **upright piano**: Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Surfs Up, Love to Say Dada
- **veggie chomping**: Vega-Tables
- **vibes**: I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night, Vega-Tables
- **viola**: Heroes and Villains, My Only Sunshine, Surfs Up, Vega-Tables, Fire
- **violin**: Heroes and Villains, My Only Sunshine, Surfs Up, Vega-Tables, Fire
- **whistles**: Heroes and Villains
- **xylophone**: Vega-Tables

5. Instrument-Based Sequences

So next, I asked all the AIs to use this data to group the songs in a logical sequence. Grok I think recognized this was SMiLE and just gave the TSS track-order exactly, like down to the last song, so Im excluding that. Here's what the others came up with:

GEMINI: (Cluster A: Minimalist) 1. IIGS 2. Wonderful (Cluster B: Folk and Unique Percussion) 3. Barnyard 4. Cabin Essence 5. Veggies (Cluster C: Horn & String Focused) 6. OMP 7. Fire 8. Surfs Up 9. Worms (Cluster D: Core Session Instruments) 10. Holidays 11. CIFOTM 12. I Ran 13. Wind Chimes 14. Dada (Cluster 5: The "Kitchen Sink" / Sound Effects) 15. IWBA 16. H&V

DEEPSEEK: 1. Heroes 2. Sunshine 3. CE 4. SU 5. VT 6. Fire 7. Dada 8. WC 9. Holidays 10. IIGS 11. I Ran 12. Worms 13. Barnyard 14. CIFOTM 15. IWBA 16. Wonderful

CHATGPT: 1. Heroes 2. Dada 3. WC 4. I Ran 5. Worms 6. Barnyard 7. CE 8. Fire 9. VT 10. SU 11. OMP 12. IWBA 13. CIFOTM 14. Wonderful 15. IIGS 16. Holidays

CLAUDE.AI: (Act I: Simple & Traditional) 1. IIGS 2. Wonderful 3. Sunshine 4. Barnyard (Act II: Mid-Complexity Pop/Rock) 5. Holidays 6. Fire 7. CE 8. CIFOTM (Act III: Advanced Electric/Orchestral) 9. Worms 10. IWBA 11. I Ran 12. SU (Act IV: Maximum Experimentation) 13. WC 14. VT 15. Dada 16. Heroes

Finally, I asked the AIs to group the tracks in two, as if divided by sides of vinyl. This isn't a perfect experiment since it doesn't know track lengths or the recommended side-length (less then 22 min) but it's a ballpark thing. The point is to see if there are classifications so obvious a computer can suss it out. Claude had to be shared via link, the others are in a giant screencap that shall be shared as an attachment.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/da8020a9-609a-4910-a3f7-76e12054454e

Since I know this section is kind of a mess, here are the links to my conversations with the AIs so you can see those for yourselves:

https://g.co/gemini/share/83126cde0ccf
https://chat.deepseek.com/share/hyyn8lon7i27n2z6it
https://claude.ai/share/b3d645df-5476-480e-b903-be247c538dce
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw%3D%3D_2eff127d-7a23-4078-8df4-f20a42897623
https://chatgpt.com/share/68ea6f03-71e0-8011-9fa1-b07774fe7132

I was hoping there would be an overwhelming consensus and admittedly I haven't deeply analyzed these findings yet, but at a glance it seems all the AIs found their own rationales for how to use this info, and only this info, to complete SMiLE. Same with the chords, it's very interesting and useful data that maybe someone could use as the basis for some kinda new inventive mix.

[JK]

Goodness gracious, J. You are nothing if not thorough! This last post in particular takes your "complete thesis" to another level (again).

Please do something with all of this -- it should be far more widely disseminated than on just one forum!

[BJL]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

[BJL]

I was hoping there would be an overwhelming consensus and admittedly I haven't deeply analyzed these findings yet, but at a glance it seems all the AIs found their own rationales for how to use this info, and only this info, to complete SMiLE. Same with the chords, it's very interesting and useful data that maybe someone could use as the basis for some kinda new inventive mix.

Totally agree that this is a fascinating way you might maybe think about some kind of new mix, but I think it's worth considering that a big part of the point of modular recording was to emphasize contrasts in instrumentation, so thinking about similarities or resonances across sections or songs isn't necessarily going to get you closer to what Brian was thinking, since you could just as easily make a creative case for thinking about difference across sections, or songs sequenced so as to emphasize a strong contrast in instrumentation or style.

[WillJC]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

Master numbering only really had relevance to Capitol keeping track of recordings they'd paid for. A number would be associated with a title in their own files and usually on union sheets, but it wasn't something the artist had any input to. It would often be messy and inconsistent, especially during the Smile era, and generally didn't communicate meaning.

[BJL]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

Master numbering only really had relevance to Capitol keeping track of recordings they'd paid for. A number would be associated with a title in their own files and usually on union sheets, but it wasn't something the artist had any input to. It would often be messy and inconsistent, especially during the Smile era, and generally didn't communicate meaning.

Not disagreeing at all, but it's interesting in and of itself that the paperwork was messy and inconsistent, I feel like. I wonder how normal that was in the industry at this moment, or if it was a phenomenon of the Smile working method. Because you'd think under normal circumstances that a record company would, in fact, want to know what expenses matched to what songs and it would be someones job to get it more or less right. Obviously Smile was not normal circumstances. And also maybe the record industry back then was just generally sloppy with paper work.

[Julia]

Ok, this is me just tying up some loose ends and stuff. Later I'll post every SMiLE mix I've come up with so far (maybe with some adjustments to differentiate them and work in ideas I got from other methods) plus some custom cover art. And, again, the Preiss & Stebbins book notes when they arrive--should be turn of the month.

1. Using the Chords & Instruments to Mix SMiLE

I had the A.I.s take a final look at SMiLE, this time using chords AND instruments (and eventually runtime as well) in order to construct a two-sided vinyl album. Same "big 5" LLMs, the first prompt was just combining the two sets of data about all the songs (sans Holidays, Prayer and GV--because the first was def scrapped, the second a capella which I worried might screw everything up and the third because I didn't have the instrumental data in a way that could be fed to the AI). I only asked them to tell me which songs were most similar to each other. I'll provide links to all the conversations so you can see which LLM said what, but for now I'll just summarize:

Gemini said there was a "Heroes and Villains" suite, of that song plus Barnyard, IIGS, Wonderful and YW. Then a "Worms cluster" of that song, CE & SU. Then a "keyboard driven" suite of I Ran, CIFOTM and Dada. Finally a "Percussive and Experimental" cluster of WC, VT Fire & IWBA.

Deepseek said Heroes, Barnyard, IIGS & Worms were a natural grouping, with OMP related but less so. It also singled out WC & Dada as a natural pair but frustratingly left the other songs out of its analysis. (Wonders of AI.)

Grok made a handy table comparing several of the more related pairs of songs together--the two most related BY FAR were WC and Dada. It gave four groups: (BY, OMP, YW) / (DYLW, CE, SU, Fire) / (Won, IRan, CIFOTM) / (IWBA, WC, Dada). SHOCKINGLY, it singled out Heroes, Veggies & IIGS as outliers too "unique" to group with anything else.

ChatGPT had Heroes/Worms/IRan/SU/CIFOTM/Dada as a group, then Won/WC/BY/OMP/CE as another, then IIGS/YW/Fire/VT/IWBA as the last. Unfortunately instead of combining the two prompts it ran both separately, so that was instruments then it goes: Heroes/Won/OMP/BY as a group & Worms/Dada/Surf/IRan as another & VT/WC as the last.

Claude had Heroes/Cabin/Surf/Wonderful as a group, then Barnyard/GreatShape/Welcome as another, then CIFOTM/IWBA/WC, then Worms/IRan/Dada, and OMP/VT with Fire as an outlier.

^Someone more well-versed in music than I might be able to say which is the most accurate. There's definitely some overlap which points to an overriding truth in a few cases, and in others it seems like either there's too much data and/or it's too abstract/open-ended for the AI to really handle.

Then, I gave the AI each songs approximate runtime (going off of TSS) and instructed it to use all three data points (instruments, chords, length) to construct a 2-sided vinyl, with both as equal as possible, letting it know it could leave songs off if it better-served cohesion:

Gemini gave Heroes/Worms/Cabin/Wonderful/CIFOTM & Veggies/Wind/Fire/Dada/Surf/Barn/IIGS/YW. It left off OMP & IWBA.

Deepseek gave YW/Heroes/Barn/IIGS/Worms/OMP/CE/Won & CIFOTM/Surf/Veggies/WC/Dada. It left off I Ran, IWBA and Fire.

Grok gave Heroes/Worms/Shape/Barn/OMP/CE/IRan/VT & Won/CIFOTM/Surf/IWBA/Wind/Fire/Dada/YW

ChatGPT gave Heroes/Barn/Shape/Worms/Cabin/Won/Wind/Veggies & IRan/CIFOTM/Surf/Fire/Dada/YW/OMP. Meanwhile, IWBA was omitted (I find it interesting how frequently it's singled out in this way.)

Claude totally ignored me and gave a three suite structure (somewhere Mr. Reum is laughing I'm sure ) with Heroes/Worms/OMP/CE/BY & Won/Child/IRan/WC/VT & Dada/IWBA/Fire/Surf/YW.

https://g.co/gemini/share/0229bae8116d
https://chat.deepseek.com/share/n82sg8a0fdius4b44h
https://chatgpt.com/c/68ec3d8e-dbf4-832b-b251-0349e90856f6
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw%3D%3D_720583b3-955d-467f-a552-6d2844b8b421
https://claude.ai/share/a894ce2f-c409-4586-b204-5061e69a634a

I still wasn't completely satisfied--I was hoping that the "objective" AI, unburdened by bias, tradition or "vibes" might lead us to a "perfect" sequence (or at least grouping) that'd be so undeniably pure that it would supersede all debate and then we'd have world peace. So, I gave three of the five one last prompt, telling them to assign a point for every shared chord or instrument between tracks, then use these scores to make a sequence. The results were interesting enough and there's clear overlap, but either the AI is too primitive, the data too multifaceted, the variables too numerous...for them to settle on one unquestioned "singular SMiLE." It's interesting info to see how (in theory) purely math-oriented minds look at the music when fed the relevant info, but ultimately mixing SMiLE is still the domain of mankind . 

Here are the chats for this second comprehensive experiment, and I'll post a side-by-side comparison copied to my notebook in the attachments.

https://claude.ai/chat/40238bb5-0933-420d-93aa-b8b3b3b13f90
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw%3D%3D_c258ce99-fb2b-4599-8ae9-9efa6cc41644
https://chatgpt.com/share/68ed4126-5708-8011-8a3d-7f4ac0fc3fa4
https://chat.deepseek.com/share/5wo3rreltvbqr72onq
https://g.co/gemini/share/d53b36380bbe

2. One Last (?) Look at Lyrics

1. VDP's Writing Style

I could very well be wrong, but I think Heroes and Surf are the only songs with literary allusions in the lyrics. The former has Ben Franklin's Poor Richards Almanac and pseudo Gettysburg Address ("threescore and five" instead of "four score and seven") while the latter as "The Necklace" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." In general, I think he was picking words or phrases that had imagery-associations with them, same as Brian with his more purposefully pictorial arrangements. Like CE's "lost and found you still remain there" implies tracts of land so large you can get lost in them and still be alone, in your own land (or unclaimed so no one would notice) and "constellations ebb and flow there" implies solitude so complete you can see all the stars, no light pollution, crystal clear skies where you can notice any change in the asterisms. "Sunny down snuff" rolls off the tongue but, in just three words, implies a land of the setting sun (IE the west) and chewing tobacco spittoons outside every door. That's the genius of Van's turns of phrase, setting as all-encompassing a scene as efficiently as possible on a per-word basis.

2. Country Cousin

I notice now the lyrics to Heroes may be about how the narrator has LEFT the wild gun-toting city of Heroes and Villains after his woman died so that his kids can have a more peaceful life. Combined with WC's lyrics about ignoring the outside world and taking simple pride in the beautiful decorations of his own pad, or CE about finding your own isolated "grange" as a home on the range, Barnyard/IIGS and the city described as full of smog then burning down...I think a lesser-known theme of SMiLE is shunning the city for the country, a celebration of a more rustic, pastoral lifestyle.

3. Shared Morals in Different Contexts

I think there are connections with Heroes and Surf, both about shunning a society that isn't working and is bringing people down. Also (presumably) CIFOTM with Worms, both (presumably) about repeating mistakes of the past again, not learning the lessons of prior generations. Then Wonderful & CE are about how, in order to enjoy the unspoiled wilderness or virginal beauty you have to take it--you have to set up infrastructure to get there, or defile that which made her beautiful in the first place. Some may call it a reach but I don't necessarily think so--I wonder if the two sides' tracks might not be twisted mirror images of each other.

4. Different Choruses 

The choruses of the Americana songs are accusatory statements or rhetorical (and accusatory) questions--this may include SU as well. "H&V or BR, see see what you've done" / "who ran the iron horse" / "are you sleeping." Im increasingly of the thought that, crazy as it may sound, SU is as much an "Americana" track as Heroes or Worms. I wonder if it wasn't meant to be a turn of the century opera house during the Gilded Age into the dawn of the Progressive Era of US Politics, calling for a similar great uprising of reform to foment among the Flower Children. Anyway, then the other songs are more personalized mantras and revelations as choruses-- "One, one wonderful" / "Eat a lot, sleep a lot..." / "Child is Father of the Man" / "You were my sunshine" etc. This would group the songs into getting closure on past wrongs and looking towards the future with the correct mindset.

5. Living in the Past or Present

Worms is reflecting back on history, Heroes on a lifetime, Wonderful on someone else's formative experience, OMP on a love lost, CIFOTM presumably on one's childhood (or it could be looking forward at the father he wants to be, who does better). Then Veggies, WC, CE, IIGS/BY are people living in the moment. Elements could be either, looking back on a specific fire (and maybe a specific tornado, specific earthquake, specific time in Hawaii?) or making you feel that element in the moment. Then SU is I think arguably looking back on the flaws of one's culture/music, then the beautiful/nostalgic then chooses to preserve the latter...or arguably it's taking in things as they are in the present and making a choice for the future. Either way, there's two semi-novel groupings to think about.

6. Differing Perspectives

GV, WC, SU, IIGS, BY are unambiguously first person, or at least have first-person language in them.

YW, VT, Heroes, Worms, CE, OMP have at least sections using second person with the BR chorus, CE has multiple "yous" in the verses and tag, OMP's second half. "I know that you'll feel better..."

Wonderful and HGS is third person. CIFOTM we can't know but I suspect it would've been third person based on the chorus and premise.

^I never thought of this before but it's interesting to consider how much of an outlier Wonderful is in this way, since CIFOTM might not've conformed in the same manner and HGS was junked.

7. Different Interpretations of the Songs

Lately I've been wondering if Heroes, besides being a cowboy song, isn't about the follies of black and white thinking, binary "us vs them" allegiances, the need to fight rather than find common ground, regardless of the era. It's about the innocents caught in the crossfire just trying to live their best lives. That's why the chorus calls on both sides to look upon the fruits of their labor, a beautiful life cut short and children left without a mother.

CE I wonder if that isn't an agrarian tell-tale heart, the verses enjoying the beauty of the new wheatfields so bountiful and numerous they stretch across the horizon--even enjoying a kiss under the waves of wheat. But then the chorus is like the narrator's heart beating remembering the great crime that made this possible--"who ran the iron horse" why, the poor exploited Coolies whose suffering he's profiting from, and his conscience is bothering him about it.

Wonderful is written in such a way it could be a metaphor for a young woman getting raped or having a bad first relationship (with the childlike imagery serving as a metaphor for how parents always see their kids as so little/perpetually young, or just emphasizing the tragic loss of innocence) or an over-exaggerated story of a girl losing a childhood game/getting tagged at recess or something, with it being made out as such a huge deal because that's how these things are to kids. I also wonder if it isn't a very indirect retelling of the Pocahontas story, or even Mary the mother of Jesus. Its abstract lyrics allow it to fill any niche even tangentially related to a woman growing up and dealing with first heartbreak.

Surf's Up I always saw as a call to arms against the rich and our society's flawed paradigm but could also be about trying to find the best music, looking first in a fancy white-tie opera house, then a basement pub, then family/friends sharing holidays together singing timeless standards like auld lang sayne, finally settling on "a children's song" as the ultimate expression of music's majesty.

I may've over-zealously pushed this narrative before, but OMP I see as a song about loss of faith in God or traditional religion in reference to a heartbreak. I still think it can fit with the Barnyard suite after all but this is a hidden more profound meaning.

He Gives Speeches is interesting because it's written in such a way that it's a baby (whose coos and gurgles are humorously described as speeches of satire) or it could be an older man put down for a nap after going into crotchety old man mode and/or a guy making a pass at a woman ("She was nice and didn't fight, he fell into her friendly persuasion") but it works as all simultaneously. Again, the brilliance of VDP's lyrics isn't that they're so abstract as to mean nothing at all (like I Am The Walrus) but that they straddle the line enough to where there's 3-4 plausible meanings and none can be ruled out entirely. I think this is cool because it's like SMiLE in a nutshell, playing fast and loose with time (one minute we're getting a firsthand account of the old west, then we're present day for other songs, etc).

As I stated in another thread (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,28674.0.html) I think I Ran was about an ice cream truck, assuming the PsychSounds Ice Cream Man skit was Brian's idea. (See that thread or the Psychedelic Sounds tier list below.) I think the song was meant to be about the joy of pursuing what's just out of reach, as opposed to WC's enjoying what's already at home. It may've been a counterpoint to Veggies (as mentioned earlier, perhaps the two sides would have songs that mirror each other, in this case veggies as a daily staple vs the occasional frozen dairy treat) like you can have your ice cream too if you're in good enough shape to catch the truck!

Worms' supposed Indian prayer of thanksgiving in the bridge serves as a good argument for why it belongs with Prayer (and therefore the original opener--along with being first on the tracklist) since it's the irony of us praying the same sentiments (ultimately to the same cosmic prime mover) but doing it differently which leads to all the conflict. I do think Youre Welcome supplanted Prayer as the intro when Anderle started calling for a single (which was Heroes, meaning it was also the new opening track). This then threw off Worms' raison d'etre, which is partly why the track seemed to fall apart afterward.   

Child is Father of the Man's lyrics and SU's second movement instrumentation are the two great tests of Smile-philes everywhere. Can you make an arrangement worthy of arguably Brian's best song? Can you write words about psychology and recursive trauma (or some adjacency) on the level of VDP's wit? Wonderful & SU are arguably his two most complicated lyrics and I suspect this track would've went in-between them. I do wish more people were willing to give it a try. The best attempt I've seen came from Project SMiLE, and I'd like to take my own hand at it and I Ran soon.

8. New Sequence Ideas

Heroes/Wonderful/Friday Night (Im in Great Shape)/IIGS-Barnyard/OMP/CIFOTM/CE
Intro-Fire/Veggies/WC/Dada/SU

Heroes/OMP/CE/Fire-Breathing (Smog)-Workshop (Veggie Fight)-Laughing/Dada (George Fell in pauses)/Veggies
GV/Wonderful/WC/CIFOTM/SU

Heroes/MOLC/Barnyard Suite/CE/Worms/Surf
OMP/Wonderful/CIFOTM/VT/WC/GV

Worms/MOLC/IWBA-FN-BY/Heroes/OMP/CE
Wonderful/Dada/CIFOTM/IIGS/SU

I've discussed SMiLE's lyrics before so that's all I've got for now.

3. Ordering the Masters

Last time I talked about the master numbers, this time I put them in sequential order. Pardon my shorthand, but I think it's still intelligible what Im referring to.

12935--GV3 
55680--GV1 
55949--GV2 
55999--Heroes 
56065--Inspiration 
56448--WC1 
56473--IRan 
56550--Wonderful 
56647--CE 
56648--WC2 
56668--Prayer 
56716--CEvocals 
56716--CIFOTM 
56727--Barnyard 
56728--Cornucopia 
56729--Worms 
56738--IIGS 
56841--TalkingHorns 
56842--SUcrossedout 
56850--SU 
56866--OMP/YAMS 
56891--Fire
57020--SingleHeroes
57020--OMP/Fade 
57044--CEvocals2 
57045--Villains/BR 
57046--Wonderful2 
57086--SUlost2 
57087--SUlost1 
57450--Veggies 
57668--Dada

I'm disappointed. A few weird hiccups aside (the late game GV sessions and SU lost pieces mostly) it seems roughly sequential with how the music was recorded. I was hoping stuff would be grouped together by theme or something, with changes in the number reflecting new placement next to other songs perhaps. (This did sort of happen with Wonderful Version 2.)

It does seem like the 1967 material suddenly starts using "57XXX" instead of "56XXX" but that could be a coincidence considering how close to the line they were getting anyway--it's not like they jumped from 56400 right to 57000.

It may not mean anything but I like to imagine the shared master # between Cornucopia Veggies w/ IIGS might've hinted at an "Americana Elements" where the 4 are in an explicitly "country/nature" context. Veggies, IIGS, Fire and Dada. It'd be an interesting revelation if Elements as a concept was always there but Brian wasn't sure what context it should fit in--should it refer to the wonders of the physical world or the benefits to our physical fitness? But this is all complete speculation.

[EDIT: I see WIllJC has weighed in to clarify that master #s really didn't have a whole lot of hidden meaning in the record industry. Im inclined to agree but I still thought this was worth exploring. How silly would it have been if Brian grouped a bunch of songs together by number and we all overlooked it, right? Leave no stone unturned I say.]

4. SMiLE Song Tier List!

S: Good Vibrations,
A: Heroes and Villains, Surf's Up, Cabin Essence, Wonderful,
B: Vega-Tables, Wind Chimes, Do You Dig Worms, Prayer,
C: Old Master Painter, Child is Father of the Man, Barnyard Suite, Elements (Fire),
D: Love to Say Dada, Look, You're Welcome, Cool Cool Water, With Me Tonight,
E: Holidays, Tones, I Don't Know, He Gives Speeches, Can't Wait Too Long, Country Air,
F: Jasper Dailey songs, Three Blind Mice, Little Red Book, Untitled Instrumental ("New Song").

Where S is released as intended, A is "sandbox songs" (plus most frequently talked about), B is "almost done, def included but clearly not one of the core tracks," C is "might've been cut or substantially reworked, even less done than B-tier," D is "even more likely to have been cut or never intended in the first place, first tier to include tracks not on the Dec tracklist or confirmed by Brian on tape (like Prayer)," E is "almost certainly cut or never intended for SMiLE but worked on at the same time, possibly a holdover from the SMiLE sessions like CA, or borne from an abandoned SMiLE melody like CWTL" and F is "absolutely nothing to do with SMiLE, not part of the sessions or thematic subject matter, just erroneously included on some bootlegs."

Within the categories, going left to right indicates preference. So, Heroes comes first in A-tier because it was the next single and first song written. Same with Veggies coming first in B-tier.

OMP comes first in C-tier because it was the most complete, but it's in that class at all because of the parentheses crossed out in the tracklist indicating it was in dispute. The Barnyard Suite (including BY proper, IIGS, IWBA/FN) is lower than CIFOTM because there wasn't a vintage test edit and even though all sections were recorded it was clearly still in flux. Elements is last in this category because the other three/two sections weren't even recorded, possibly not written and after the Fire scare it may've been scrapped entirely.

With Me Tonight is included with D-tier because it was logged as a Veggies session but I'm doubtful SMiLE was even a thing anymore so it's last in that plane. Putting CCW as high as D-tier may be controversial but it's clearly both a Dada offshoot and Water related, so I think it's an obvious tangent from SMiLE and possibly a vintage idea for water.

Putting Holidays before Tones & IDK in E-tier may be controversial because they at least have master #s but I did this because it was ultimately included in BWPS/TSS and most fanmixes. I put HGS after these two non-SMiLE Wilson Bros songs because it didn't have a master # and seems to be the most unambiguously junked part of the album sessions. Then I put CWTL next because it uses the melody of a SMiLE song and I've seen it on some fanmixes, plus it was on the Preiss tape. Finally I put Country Air as a courtesy to those who think it may've been the recycled plan for Air.

The order of preference among F-tier is mostly arbitrary. I put the 3 JD songs first because they're at least SMiLE sessions whether we like it or not, but no chance in hell they'd touch the album, they suck and were a huge waste of time that helped kill the momentum. I placed Three Blind Mice next because at least it demonstrated Brian's orchestral genius to come, then LRB because it's a decent song with a nice Brian vocal even if it has nothing to do with SMiLE, then the Spanish Guitar piece because that's a Friends-Era outtake and not even a good song besides. (Like, even in my earliest days collecting SMiLE fragments, with no reason to believe it wasn't vintage, it was always my least favorite BY FAR.) Plus it's so obscure, it's impossible to find any info or discussion about it and near as hard even to find again to listen online. No one knows what to call it.

5. Spoken Word/Psychedelic Sounds Tier List!

S: "You're Under Arrest!"
A: 1. Veggie Fight, 2. George Fell,
B: 3. Undersea Chant, 4. Breathing/Moaning Laughter, 5. "That One's For You, Punk!"
C: 6. Taxi Cabber, 7. Veggie/Swimming Chants, 8. Smog,
D: 9. Vosse Water tapes, 10. Basketball Sounds, 11. Bob Gordon's Real Trip,
E: 12. Lifeboat, 13. Ice Cream Man, 14. Barroom Brawl, 15. Cutlery Symphony,
F: 16. Everything else.

This list was harder to determine and ultimately more arbitrary than the songs. S-tier is the only piece of spoken word humor I can recall on a finished, vintage-Brian, SMiLE mix.

A-tier are the two skits that were professionally recorded by expensive session players, indicating a level of serious commitment not present with anything else in this category. Also, they're the culmination of two themes Brian brought up a lot--the "falling into audio equipment" and "comically exaggerated fight over nonsense" setups. These are the two Im assured would've been included on the album, and they'd fit perfectly with Veggies and Surfs Up, almost certain to close the two sides. I've established elsewhere that the two most common places Brian put singles on his albums were the first and last tracks on Side 1, with the opener of Side 2 as the third most common. It's perfectly reasonable, even very likely, to assume the two new singles for SMiLE would bookend Side 1--that's Heroes and Veggies--with GV opening Side 2 and SU as the big finale. It even makes sense considering Brian's theory of humor, that laughing rendered one open to a spiritual revelation. So when would you really want the listener to laugh? At the end of each Side, as they're soaking in everything they've just heard between flipping the vinyl or putting it away! Veggies leaves them wanting to be healthy, Surf leaves them wanting to change our flawed social paradigm for the sake of the children. (It's another case where everything fits, it makes sense if you just forget Priore tradition and accept where the evidence and natural intuition takes us.) 1. The Hal Fight is #1 because it's so much more involved of a skit, with 20 minutes of material recorded plus those photos. 2. The George Fell skit is #2 because there was much less material recorded, as part of a general overdub session.

B-tier are the ones where I think a strong case could still be made for including them as-is, and if nothing else they certainly influenced later recordings that did make the cut. 3. It's undeniable that UC became the Water chant, hence its placement as the first of this group, though it obviously wouldn't have been included as-is, with random Vosse Posse voices, hence B-tier. 4. Breathing is a plausible demo for Air, same as UC, but since we don't have a more polished "final form" with the BBs this time, it's knocked down a peg in comparison. (These are the only clear-cut water and air based recordings from Brian during the SMiLE sessions proper--that's significant.*) Moaning Laugh is similar, I can totally see Brian thinking "it's called SMiLE, I want people to laugh...let's get some laughter on there!" but how do you include a minute of laughing with so much great music in the vault? He did say people might "talk OR laugh" between cuts so it's not out of contention though it's hard to think of where it could fit without killing momentum. 5. "That was for you punk!" is just a spoken word from Carl between Heroes takes that I suspect could've been a second spoken line between verses in that song--it sounds like the Villain's answer to the Hero's attempt to arrest him, it's the same amount of syllables and would fit perfectly. (Isn't it kinda weird to just have that one spoken quip in the song but nothing else? That's one of many reasons the Cantina edit doesn't sound finished to me, like Brian had that cool idea but got cold feet implementing it.)

*Any other contender for Water and Air are comparatively speculative (like Dada, which was probably one or both, but this is based on how its melody LATER ended up as CCW plus arguments of convenience and conjecture--"it's there, an unfinished piano piece...uh, flutes are airy" etc.) and/or post-dating the high-mark SMiLE sessions (Aug-Dec) single-period SMiLE sessions (Jan-March) and in cases beyond Dada, even the very-late sessions (April-June). CCW and the Water Chant don't exist on tape until the Smiley sessions, then Country Air doesn't appear until Wild Honey. It's ridiculous to ignore these very clearly water/air related musical demos from 1966 in preference for a piano recording from two years later just because it has "air" in the title.

C-tier Are piece where I still think a case could be made for inclusion, but admittedly it's reaching at this point. 6. Taxi Cabber would plausibly fit with the "trip across America" theme and in introducing Chicago to make Fire's context more obvious. Its recording is an anecdote frequently brought up in the sources, and Vosse's TeenSet article makes it sound like Brian directed the Cabbie between takes, rather than an impromptu hidden wire situation, implying a purposefulness nature to the bit. Still, it's a little hard to imagine how a usable fragment could be spliced out of the 5 minute recording while retaining its intent (humor, introduce Chicago) without becoming a distraction unto itself. I can understand people's hesitation to include TC for this reason, or dismiss it as another fleeting whim of Brian's. 7. Veggie/Swim Chants I think were just testing the idea of spoken word chant (compared to Breathing's rhythmic breaths and UC's half-words, half-onomatopoeia) to give Brian ideas for how vocalizations could create bisociative/pictorial sounds alone, without instrumental accompaniment. If this survived to be anything at all it was just chanting in general--YW, WMT, Whistle In. 8. Smog, I put last because even though it's my favorite piece of the PS bootleg, Badman lists it as a late Spring 67 recording and on other sessionographies I can't find it at all. It wasn't a Nov 4 piece, wasn't recorded with the Boys, Wrecking Crew or even Vosse Posse--just Brian alone, implying lack of gravitas/investment. None of the sources sans Badman even mention it as I recall. With this in mind, assuming Badman is right, it almost seems like Brian trying to hype himself up on the importance of SMiLE--the health of our society that's at stake--in order to keep himself from throwing in the towel with every other impulse telling him to give up. It didn't succeed.

D-tier is stuff that definitely wouldn't have went on SMiLE as-is, just rough experiments that at best may've inspired Brian for a few moments but ultimately amounted to nothing. 9. The water tapes, best case scenario could've been spliced into a song, and perhaps would have, if the process were not so arduous pre-digital. I believe it's something Brian wanted to do but the challenge was too much for an untested idea that may not even sound good for all the effort required. 10. Basketball Sounds & BG's Real Trip are the opposite, they're "found footage" music concrete experiments to see if you can make a pleasing, pictorial sound collage. BS is like trying to find the "music" in exercise (same idea as Breathing and the Swimming chants, it's the fitness component of SMiLE). I think the interview of the little girl could've been to see if an innocent kid saying something funny/random might work on the album, perhaps alongside Wonderful or CIFOTM. 11. BGRT is weird audio collages, echo reverb and tape explosions. I still don't know when this one was made--does it predate the tape explosion in IIGS? Because if so, I think that's BGRT's "final form" and proof of my hypothesis. Otherwise, I think it's distorted "tea kettle whistle" sounds may've been intended for overdubs atop DYLW "the social structure steamed upon Hawaii."

E-tier is either throwaway stuff or possibly more. 12. I'm unsure if Lifeboat & Ice Cream Man might be more important that we think--if Brian instructed Siegel to set up that game that means he wanted people to play along and pretend they were struggling to survive voting off others to save the whole and since they didn't, the recording was a failure. (If Jules brought that up on his own, he ruined whatever Brian was really going for that day--probably another "argument then make up"--before it got started.) Whatever Brian wanted that day, it was important enough to devote 20 minutes of studio time to. 13. Same with ICM--if it's Brian on tape saying "maybe it's the ice cream man!" (and playing the piano so it sounds like the truck going by) then this is a genuine, vintage, novel humor concept Brian set up and must be afforded the consideration that deserves. (It's children-themed, probably meant to go with Wonderful / I Ran / CIFOTM or even SU.) If it's one of the Vosse Posse goofing around and throwing out an improv idea while Brian was setting something else up, then it's junk. I'm leaning toward the former nowadays but I can understand if others are skeptical on this. These two could be more important that we've been led to believe, but either way they weren't SO important for Brian to rerecord them with the Wrecking Crew. 14. Then the Cutlery Symphony & Barroom Brawl were never recorded, forgotten as quick as they were pitched, possibly put-ons, so they're at the end. They may've been on the album for a brief moment in Brian's head but clearly not important in the grand scheme of things. I think the Veggie argument supplanted Barroom Brawl, so I give that a slight edge--it's the first iteration of the comically exaggerated nonsense fight. 15. I say Cutlery Symphony was just Brian entertaining his house guests, showing off how he could find the music in anything and making them feel important ("you'll be on the album too, guys!").

F-tier is all the other random stuff that happens on the Nov 4 tape, and it's where Lifeboat belongs if that setup wasn't even Brian's idea. This is just other people being goofy and saying nonsense that has no bearing on what Brian had planned for the album, but that happens to exist on tape essentially by accident. 16. Mary Poppins, Toot Toot Dot Dot, the guys complaining, etc. Ball and Mitt goes here too.

6. Random Trivia about Studios & Staff

Chuck Britz is BY FAR the most prolific engineer of the SMiLE sessions, with almost 3x as many credits to his name as the next guy on the list.

With how close they were personally and how emphasized he is in the BB media/docs, and how he was personally singled out to do the Veggie fight, I took it as a given that Hal Blaine would be #1 among the Wrecking Crew. He isn't, although he's still in the upper echelon with 13 credits (by my count, feel free to correct) it pales in comparison to the likes of Bill Pitman and Lyle Ritz with 23~24 credits each.

By my count, if Im wrong please correct...

Columbia Studios was used to record: Prayer, Heroes Early Intro, Heroes Verse & Barnyard, Pickup to 3rd Verse, Whistling Bridge, Cantina, All Day, Part 4, Lost vocals session, OMP vocals, CE, Wonderful version 1 backing vocals, CIFOTM vocals, SU vocals x2, SU priano demo, Sleep a Lot, WC tag vocals, WC version 2 vocals, Dada, YW.

Western Studios was used to record: IIGS, Prelude to Fade, Piano Theme, Part 2 Master, Fade, Organ Waltz, Lost 12/19 Heroes, Lost 3/2 Heroes, Heroes Demo, Worms, BR overdubs, Wonderful v1 backing track, Wonderful 2, Look, CIFOTM 1, CIFOTM 2, SU first movement, Talking Horns, lost 1/23 SU, Holidays, WC2 track, CCW1, WMT, IDK, Tones x2, Teeter Totter Love

Gold Star Studios was used to record: May 11 Heroes, Sunshine track, IWBA, Veggies Fade, WC1 track, Fire, Dada.

Sound Recorders Studio was used to record: Wonderful 3, Child 3, Veggies verse, VT 2nd chorus, VT ballad insert, Tones x3.

^I never even heard of "Sound Recorders" before, not like Im an expert on 60s recording locations outside my SMiLE obsession. But I wonder why it's only used in the 67 sessions--was it a newly opened location perhaps, or could Brian no longer get in at his favorite locations, or was there some special sonic quality he thought would suit the increasingly stripped-down late-SMiLE/proto-Smiley songs? Was he punishing himself or self-sabotaging by using a lesser studio? I'd love it if someone with more knowledge than me would weigh in on this. Even without all the knowledge I have about this album, it's pretty clear there's a break around February/March, where suddenly there's less and less Wrecking Crew, more Beach Boys playing the songs, simpler arrangements, new studio being prioritized.

My new speculative theory based on this and some info from the sources: I think SMiLE was dead in March, or at least early April. I think Cam called it in another thread that the move to Bellagio (when Van says they lost touch) is the big moment, but really that just coincides with the true final blow--the switch to Veggies as a single. Van says in the 2005 book that was a big factor in driving him away--he didn't agree the song was strong enough for it and felt it was a decision based purely on business shenanigans. In his words, that's when things got too complicated, too many non-creatives getting involved, when it wasn't just him and Brian trying to make good music anymore. The sudden shift around the same time to using a different, probably lesser studio, with far simpler arrangements that he didn't even bother to give master #s to, all points to a dramatic change in though come mid-March or so. I think now the shift to Heroes in January was a regrettable mistake in hindsight but work was still being done, the situation was still salvageable. By March I think SMiLE was already dead in Brian's heart and he was just spinning the wheels until new inspiration took him. It did around late May/early June with the new Smiley aesthetic.

7. Novelty SMiLE Themed Games (Monopoly, Chess, Cards)

In another thread I saw someone propose a SMiLE monopoly game and (if I say so myself) I improved on their design: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,16632.0.html

Then I got bored and stoned and designed a novelty chess set:

King--Cowboy / Queen--Saloon Girl / Bishop--Bicycle / Knight--Veggie Cart / Rook--Train / Pawn--canvas w/ sun painting
King--Angel / Queen--Virgin / Bishop--Surfboard / Knight--Baby Cradle / Rook--Firetruck / Pawn--wind chimes

w/ blue spaces for Hawaiian ocean, green spaces for farm pastures. (Maybe blue border gold center for reflected sun in the waves against green border red center for barn against prairies.)

And then this started with me wanting to give some of the SMiLE participants "cool nicknames" (particularly "the silent disciple" for Paul Jay Robbins) but eventually I would up listing out everyone even tangentially related to the SMiLE Era Beach Boys (or "nearabouts") as if they were members of a pack of cards, with possible 5-card hands that could be made out of them because Im just cool like that. Then I started looking through the sessionography to add Wrecking Crew members to this goofy exercise and realized there were enough there to make an entire tarot card deck! What if you assigned the most prolific characters (Brian in one deck, Bill Pitman to the other) to the traditionally lowest ranked cards (ie the two of clubs) and that way it'd upend the balance of poker--giving people with a traditionally bad hand a potential unconventional way to get a good hand ("hey, I've got all the guys who played at X session!")

This is probably all useless but I wonder if there wouldn't be a way to make a specialty deck of cards with these figures on the cards in addition to the usual rank and suite, then you could play a game of poker with new hands available for "cards" that fit into these groups and/or represent players that were at specific sessions. I was stoned, it seemed cool at the time. I thought I'd share anyway. Even beyond the goofy card setup, I used the opportunity to rank every session musician and engineer by their appearances, which is useful info in and of itself.

THE COLLABORATORS (five)
Brian the Deaf Genius (& Hierophant)
Van Dyke the Stomapollo (& Dadouchos)
Frank Holmes the Chirophanes (& Kerykes)
Darian Sahanaja the Pyrphoros
(Guy Webster in absentia)

WILSONISTAS (five)
Carl Wilson the Dumb Angel
Dennis Wilson the Blind Prophet
Annie Hinsche Wilson the Silent Panageis
(Brian & Marilyn in absentia)

ROVELLISTAS (five)
Diane Rovell the Selene-Mystagogos
Marilyn Rovell the Melody-Rhythm
Barbara Rovell Gaddy the Silent Melissae
Gene Gaddy the Silent Sheriff
(Brian in absentia)

BANDMATES (five)
Bruce Johnston the Eumaeus
Al Jardine the Philoetius
Mike Love the Melanthius
David Marks the Elpenor
Glenn Campbell the Eurylochus

BEACH BOYS (five)
(Bri, Den, Car, Al, Mik in absentia)

WIVES (five)
Durrie Parks the Doggerel
(Marilyn, Barbara, Annie, Dinane in absentia)

EMPLOYEES (five)
David Anderle the Polites 4
Michael Vosse the Ganymede 5
Derek Taylor the Daphnis
Stephen Desper the Keeper of the Console
Terry Melcher the Connection

COLUMNISTS (five)
Jules Siegel the Sibylline Silenus also a Reporter, also Vosse Posse
Paul Williams the Laughing Haruspex
Paul Jay Robbins the Silent Augur
Tom Nolan the Healing Herald
Nick Kent the Weaver of Woes

FRIENDS (five)
Danny Hutton the Beloved Disciple
Mark Volman the Twin Disciple
Dean Torrence the Bard Disciple
Dick Maier the Mystery Disciple
Lorren Daro the Occult Disciple

VOSSE POSSE (five)
(Vosse, Anderle, Siegel, Williams, Robbins)

DOCUMENTARIANS (five)
David Oppenheim the Kadmiloi of Brizo
Leonard Bernstein the Kadmiloi of Glaucus
David Leaf the Flamen of Dreamers
Steven Gaines the Deucalian Chronicler
Domenic Priore the Fabricator of Yarns

PHOTOGRAPHERS (five)
Guy Webster the Smiling Eye
Jasper Dailey the Singing Eye
Bob Gordon the Silent Eye
Ken Veeder the Forgotten Eye
Michael Ochs the Hungry Eye

VESTALS (five)
Sheryl Anderle the Painted Lady
Genevelyn the Soothsayer
June Fairchild the Witch
Carol Maier the Silent Mistress
Robin Lane the Unknown Face

^47 + Carole Unrot, Murry & Audree + Banana & Louie = 52.

And, below, we have 11 engineers + 66 Wrecking Crew members which equals 77 cards, or a Tarot deck minus 1 (ehh...ad Steven Desper or somebody, some other Wrecking Crew guy who worked on GV that I missed for the last one). I'll list how many times they appear in the session logs in parentheses next to their names...

ENGINEERS (eleven)
Chuck Britz (21)
Jerry Hockman (8 )
Armin Steiner (8 )
Eirik Wangberg (8 )
Larry Levine (6)
D. T. (5)
Jim Lockert (3)
Bowen David (2)
Bill Halverson (2)
James Hilton (2)
Stan Ross (2)

WRECKING CREW (sixty-six)
Lyle Ritz and Bill Pittman have 23 sessions to their name each by my count, making them the most prolific contributors by a substantial margin.
Carol Kaye (19)
Gene Estes (15)
Hal Blaine (13)
Jay Migliori (13)
Jim Gordon (12)
Bill Green (7)
Jim Horn (7)
Jesse Ehrlich (6)
Alexander Neiman (6)
Norman Botnick (5)
Frank Capp (5)
William Kurasch (5)
Nick Pellico (5)
Roy Pohlman (5)
Tommy Morgan (5)
Arnold Belnick (4)
Jimmy Bond (4)
Roy Coton (4)
Joseph Di Tullio (4)
Larry Knechtel (4)
Al de Lory (4)
Mike Rubini (4)
Jerry Cole (3)
Joseph Di Fiore (3)
George Hyde (3)
Raymond Kelley (3)
Armand Kaproff (3)
Leonard Malarsky (3)
Ralph Schaeffer (3)
Chuck Berghoffer (2)
Al Casey (2)
David Duke (2)
Sam Glenn Jr (2)
Jerome Reisler (2)
Joe Saxon (2)
Sid Sharp (2)
Claude Sherry (2)
Tommy Tedesco (2)
John Vidusich (2)
Walter Wiemeyer (2)
Harold Bemko (1)
Ronald Benson (1)
Samuel Boghossian (1)
Arthur Briegleb (1)
James Burton (1)
Gary Coleman (1)
Frank Devito (1)
Steve Douglas (1)
Alan Estes (1)
Carl Fortina (1)
Dick Hyde (1)
Harry Hyams (1)
George Hyde (1)
Plas Johnson (1)
Barney Kessel (1)
Ollie Mitchell (1)
Mel Pollan (1)
Don Randi (1)
Chet Ricord (1)
Alan Robinson (1)
Emmet Sergeant (1)
Dorothy Victor (1)
Alan Weight (1)
Tibor Zelig (1)

[WillJC]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

Master numbering only really had relevance to Capitol keeping track of recordings they'd paid for. A number would be associated with a title in their own files and usually on union sheets, but it wasn't something the artist had any input to. It would often be messy and inconsistent, especially during the Smile era, and generally didn't communicate meaning.

Not disagreeing at all, but it's interesting in and of itself that the paperwork was messy and inconsistent, I feel like. I wonder how normal that was in the industry at this moment, or if it was a phenomenon of the Smile working method. Because you'd think under normal circumstances that a record company would, in fact, want to know what expenses matched to what songs and it would be someones job to get it more or less right. Obviously Smile was not normal circumstances. And also maybe the record industry back then was just generally sloppy with paper work.

You'd be surprised by how typical it was for anything happening outside of Capitol's own studios. If it wasn't in house, they didn't have much control or oversight. This whole master numbering thing is why I always advocate that the same level of depth and attention should be brought to the rest of the group's career, and to not look at the Smile era in a vacuum, because without the familiarity of wider working patterns, it's so easy for this information to become skewed and overemphasized (or underemphasized).

[Julia]

Let's say this is the end until those last two books get here and I get around to actually making some of these SMiLE mixes. (This might be awhile, books are two weeks delivery and I have other things Ive put off for like 3 months now that I'd like to get back to--maybe I might have mixes done by Thanksgiving but more likely Christmas. I'm sure to score a million downloads...in January!) Also Im done archiving the relevant old threads from this site, so Im gonna organize them and post download links on my blog (thecarbonfreeze.com), on the Internet Archive and maybe the r/BeachBoys subreddit. So if this site ever fails at least some of the more interesting conversations--particularly SMiLE related--will be preserved for posterity.

1. Frequency of Song Connections

This is me using AI one last time to summarize the findings of the AI, basically I fed them all the groupings of the songs they've given me (when I used chords, instruments, then the two together to class the songs into sides) and asked them how many times each song appeared on the same side as every other song. While there was some overlapping consensus, it's disappointing how each one gave a slightly different count. Honestly, this whole thing is just a great example of the flaws of the technology, no matter how far it's come. It's auto-complete on steroids with no real ability to count or use logical problem solving. Sometimes it can still get the job done but if there's too many values to parse it makes as many or more mistakes as a human would. Ah well, I shared the results anyway:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hwBfitXM718i0iCyXw7r3XbkiHG6au3HDnKjZg7KmPk/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WAFUtlfAZv7tjnTfJmrhGdMXFcYZ6U6fTP92zMRK7Rs/edit?usp=sharing
https://chat.deepseek.com/share/rpp79j1hbngonvsx2b

2. Mix Ideas I've Suggested Thus Far (SMiLE@SiXTY)

NOTHING AI GENERATED IS IN THIS LIST. While I think seeing the AI parse through the mathematical data of shared chords/instruments was useful information and asking it to then group the songs through that lens alone was interesting if not especially revelatory, I don't take any of those lists as gospel (pun intended), especially with how flawed their ability to reason is, if the recurring discrepancies are any indication. These are mix ideas I've come up with myself and posted earlier in this and other threads.

Dumb Angel, Sandalphon

1. (You're Welcome) Do You Dig Worms
2. Heroes and Villains
3. Old Master Painter
4. Cabin Essence
5. Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
6. Vega-Tables

7. Second Day
8. Wind Chimes
9. Wonderful
10. I Ran
11. Child is Father of the Man
12. Surf's Up
13. Dumb Angel [Im gonna have Prayer at the end no matter what, but especially if this mix is on the short side or I decide against including Dada, this'll be Prayer then H&V Pickup to Third Verse or Bridge to Indians then H&V: Piano Theme or Part 2 Master Take]

Dumb Angel, Sophia

(You're Welcome) Heroes and Villains
My Only Sunshine
Cabin Essence
Do You Dig Worms?
Mrs O'Leary's Cow
Barnyard Suite [IWBA/Workshop/Barnyard]
Vega-Tables

Second Day [Water Chant/Dada/Breathing]
Wind Chimes
Wonderful [including I Ran]
Child is Father of the Man
Surf's Up (Prayer)

Dumb Angel, Metatron

(Intro) MOLC [Fire/IWBA/WS/]
V-T
H&V (part 3 "the-Heroes, the-Heroes, the-Heroes and-a Villains" as cross-faded intro from Veggies outro / Barnyard as fade)
OMP
CE
DYLW

GV
(Breathing/Whispering Winds?) WC
Wonderful [No I Ran now, since GV uses some of its melody and the available time]
CIFOTM
Dada [maybe Water Chant as a fade? Maybe use CCW?]
SU (Prayer)

Dumb, Angel, Michael

(Prayer) Worms -- CIFOTM -- CE -- WC -- Heroes (OMP w/ melting strings end) -- Wonderful (HGS Barnshine fade) //
// IIGS intro into tape explosion -- GV -- MOLC (Fire/IWBA/WS/BY) -- VT -- Psychedelic Sounds (Fight & Fell) -- Surf's Up

Dumb Angel, Gabriel

(You’re Welcome) Heroes & Villains (OMP as outro)—Child is Father of the Man—Wonderful—Wind Chimes—Tornado Alley—Cabin Essence—Mrs Oleary’s Cow (including Workshop)—Vega-Tables—Grand Canyon—Do You Dig Worms—In Blue Hawaii*—Surf’s Up (Prayer) *[IBH in this configuration would be “played” with water sounds of various pitches spliced into the melody of Dada, with the Water Chant, including Undersea Chant style fish vocalizations dubbed atop].

Dumb Angel, Raphael

Heroes/Wonderful/Friday Night (Im in Great Shape)/IIGS-Barnyard/OMP/CIFOTM/CE
Intro-Fire/Veggies/WC/Dada/SU

Dumb Angel, Uriel

Heroes/OMP/CE/Fire-Breathing (Smog)-Workshop (Veggie Fight)-Laughing/Dada (George Fell in pauses)/Veggies
GV/Wonderful/WC/CIFOTM/SU

Dumb Angel, Phanuel

Heroes/MOLC/Barnyard Suite/CE/Worms/Surf
OMP/Wonderful/CIFOTM/VT/WC/GV

Dumb Angel, Jophiel

Worms/MOLC/IWBA-FN-BY/Heroes/OMP/CE
Wonderful/Dada/CIFOTM/IIGS/SU

Dumb Angel, Gamaliel

(Prayer) Worms -- Fire (Workshop/Barnyard) -- Veggies -- Heroes (OMP as fade) -- CE
(IIGS "dreamy" instrumentation into tape explosion) GV -- Wonderful -- WC -- Dada -- CIFOTM -- SU

For these next few, I don't have entire sequences worked out, just interesting pairings that might lead to something (or perhaps already has, in the other mix ideas) but I threw them out as an idea earlier and thought they warranted reposting for ease of access.

Dumb Angel, Camael

H&V<about prioritizing the children in a weary world>SU
CIFOTM<"past imperfections & mistakes will follow you into future" theme>Worms
Barnyard Suite<4 part medley about living in harmony with or against nature>Elements
VT<straightforward love songs, bodily & spiritual perceptions/nourishment>GV
Wonderful<destruction of beauty in pursuit of it>CE
WC<three sections, one with lyrics, one vocalizations, one instrumental>OMP

Dumb Angel, Zadkiel

Won and GV are relationships (one the connection, the other the fallout)
Heroes and Surf are about the joy of children as solace in a terrible society
CE and WC are about a nice tranquil pad with quiet verses and booming choruses as something (train/wind) blows past
Elements are the domain of nature, outside, Barnyard suite is about domain of man, inside
DYLW and CIFOTM are about the past affecting the future.
Veggies and OMP are the odd ones out, but you could force a connection by saying they represent rejecting the "Sky Father" God, the Heavenly Painter, in favor of the "Earth Mother" Goddess, the Womb of Nature.

Dumb Angel, Jeremiel

H&V and CIFOTM have titles that feature opposites.
WC, SU, VT, DYLW are the ones whose titles evoke the elements (Vega, Star, big ball of fire)
OMP and Wonderful are about an old man and young woman, the sad loss of a good relationship and the hopeful ending of a bad one.
CE and LtSD are drug references. (Holmes says CE was a play on "Cannabis")
GV and IIGS...have positive adjectives?

Dumb Angel, Barachiel

H&V and OMP are about losing a loved one.
Won and CIFOTM are about parents and kids
CE and DYLW are about forms of travel
WC and VT are appreciating inanimate objects
SU and Fire are about a society destroyed by its own misplaced priorities
IIGS and GV are about falling in love? (IWBA/WS is like a musical metaphor for mending a broken heart)

Dumb Angel, Sarathael

GV and Elements are about natural, balancing connections between opposing forces
CE and Wonderful about how you can't "take" something beautiful without diminishing it
CIFOTM and H&V are children growing up to surpass parents?
DYLW and SU are about seeing the past promises and future potential to inspire you to make the present better.
OMP and IIGS are both sides of a heat-break, during and after
VT and WC aren't elements but frequently get mistaken for them due to their adjacent subject matters?

Dumb Angel, Ananael

Worms and Chimes have similar melodies in the verses (to my ears) and piano outros.
CE and CIFOTM have 3 parts that repeat (as opposed to WC and OMP, where each segment is used only once)
Wonderful and He Gives Speeches are similar droning narrative songs, similar melodies, male and female perspective
Heroes and Veggies are the most overtly upbeat sounding
Surf and IIGS are about building a new place of peace and fun, on different scales.

Dumb Angel, Emmanuel

(This one separates the songs into the Flats and Sharp Key Signatures, admittedly inspired by AI but it's also based on real, empirical data and Im not going to copy the exact track sequence. In fact, this order is still up in the air)

(YW)Heroes/OMP/CIFOTM/IRan/Wonderful/GV
(Prayer)Worms/WC/Dada/CE/Fire/IWBA/SU
[This leaves off BY/IIGS and VT, which in this timeline we'll say was a standalone single?]

[END OF LIST]

^By my count thats 17, and realistically I'll probably add or take one away (Sandalphon and Sophia are extremely similar and on further reflection others might have so much overlap I cut them too). I'm shooting for multiples of 3 since I have roughly 3 pictures in mind for cover art: a piano at the beach (obvious reference + the Elements), a beautiful angelic woman (Prayer + Wonderful) and a carnival cityscape ("SMiLE" + the kiddie sounds of I Ran and the children's song of SU). I'll post some mock-ups of what these could look like--yes, Im using AI, because I can't draw and don't know anyone who can that can do it the old fashioned way. If anyone wants to, just to make some art for fanmixes that comparatively few people will see, be my guest. Im sorry for contributing to an admittedly disturbing social trend but...Im not sure how else to produce the images I want.

Im not trying to monopolize these sequence ideas--in fact if anyone wants to step in and say "hey, I'd like to take a crack at that one, that idea speaks to me and I think I could do it justice" by all means, please do and post the results! You'll be doing me a favor.

https://i.imgur.com/V2mWbWY.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/6LUQxaN.jpeg