My Last (?) Crack at the SMiLE Jigsaw

[Julia]

Mr. Carter responded to me to confirm that to the best of his knowledge PJR never wrote any article about SMiLE and he reviewed LAFP issues up through March '67 where there was a gap of several issues.

[mike s]

My current on-the-go H&V mix folks.  See what you think.  I won't explain it the format should explain itself.  I'm already thinking I could cut the Smiley chorus which here I've used as a middle 8.

Audio is very lumpy as I've had to nab from so many different sources.

https://vocaroo.com/14Sm9hr5qWFd

[zaval80]

I HAVE OFFICIALLY HEARD BACK FROM DALE CARTER, WHO TOOK THE TIME TO WRITE A SUBSTANTIAL REPLY WHICH I WILL SHARE IN FULL:

Thank you, this was quite informative. So PJR even managed to put a piece on the Rising Sons past his "leftie" boss (although that band was, helpfully, "integrated"). A pity he had not done more in the pop field.

Dale describes the microfilm (microfiche mentioned by me may be a variation, possibly a flat piece of large-format film instead of a film roll). He wonders if these were junked, though I very much doubt this; any librarian worth his salt wouldn't do such a thing, to destroy valuable units with the info, esp. considering they did not demand much place for storage. In any case, in order to learn whether these can be obtained, one has to meet the chief librarian who'd be in the know about how and where such nowaday obscurities can be accessed - but I'm glad I guessed it right; somebody did microfilm the bulk of the LAFP run. And, it looks like there is no need anymore to hunt for LAFP.

[zaval80]

To BJL, that's a good point about Jan-Feb Heroes representing the perfect mix of both men's sensibilities as well as a truly fantastic track. It's possible, even very likely, that the effort it took to get just one song of 11 (GV being finished) up to standard was what killed any remaining enthusiasm Brian had. If one song took two months --and still wasn't done (by his standards)-- then how long are 10 more going to take? Especially if, as I suspect, working on these would involve sifting through hours of Vosse audio verite and Taxi Cab/Veggie Fight/George Fell/Psychedelic Sound recordings on top of the arduous task of making another GV. Then if something wasn't working, or he got a better idea, that'd mean months of wasted work. It's easy to see how this herculean task would be offputting to anyone let alone a man coming undone.

A lot of fans (including me sometimes) think "man he already had an album's worth of backing tracks in the can--all he needed was a few days worth of vocal sessions!" A few official sources even outright say as much. But then there's quotes from the main primary sources insisting Brian thought he'd need a whole other year, or an indeterminate amount of time, and when he realized that wasn't going to happen he drastically scaled down the project. This testimony is a lot more believable if we consider Brian really did want to go above and beyond what any BB album had done before--a WOIIFTM (or The Who Sell Out) level audio collage and/or a full song of sampled water sounds. We can't definitively say Brian's ambitions were quite so high as that, but I choose to believe they were. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility we would've had Dada played with water and lifeboat-themed improvised "funny" lines filling out the pauses. (Not saying this specific exact configuration was definitely the plan but it's possible and I think something of that caliber was on Brian's mind before he realized it was just too much work for him to commit to in any kind of timely fashion.)

IMO it's not a big task for an experienced music man to sit through some hours of "field recordings". He could have asked an engineer to make him a copy for listening at home, so not to spend studio time for this. And, it's not that hard to mark the interesting moments, either for use from the existing tape or for the recreation from a scratch.

As for the story of sampled water sounds - are you aware of Stephen Desper's videos? I know it happened outside of the SMiLE era, but the idea wasn't forgotten, and followed through to some kind of conclusion.

IMO he wouldn't have wanted to spend 2 months on each song. H&V and VT received that kind of attention only because planned as singles. Most others would be filler or what is called "deep cuts"; it's the A-sides of singles which are the statement. (Of course his predilection for over-perfection is always a factor.)

[zaval80]

This is just a pedantic little quibble that isn't important but I wonder if Capitol wouldn't have recouped their investment through more subtle means than that, like with the hidden breakage fees they were charging the group. (Assuming they could still pull that kinda thing with Anderle and their new lawyer examining the books more closely.)

Nah, that was for lesser companies and artists of lesser standing. I think the maximum allowable percentage of breakage is stated in the contracts.

[zaval80]

OTOH the tracklist is itself problematic and is a snapshot in time that "fell into a French horn" almost immediately. Which is why in a book that reconstructs several scenarios for a spring SMiLE, one of them should include a version of it w/o GV. Of course you are free to dismiss such a variant for whatever reason, but since the possibility of a GV-less SMiLE is at least >0%, such a scenario deserves coverage.

IMO SMiLE, with the tracks we all know, would have been a smasher even without GV if completed. Probably not a commercial smasher, as even PS wasn't, but then still a very solid artistic statement, surely not behind the Pepper IMO. So of course GV is not important in the scheme of SMiLE. What is important - we are aware of its place on the album from the only known tracklist, and because it did end up on SS. Any kind of a tracklist with it, hence, would be a "reconstruction"...without it, a possibility, but of a kind less grounded in the known facts. I'd say it's an addendum to SMiLE; some tracklists where it's integrated more thoughtfully could be expected to be better than others, but key importance rests on how well everything else is integrated. 
[/quote]

[Julia]

Time for me to comment on Mr. Carter's info.

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say case closed. It was absolutely worth getting a definitive answer or else I'd have always wondered "what if...maybe..." so I'm glad I reached out. If nothing else, his line You belong to a small group of serious nerds! is something I can wear with pride 

My impression now is that Van Dyke Parks, once he secured the gig, invited his friends (particularly Anderle, Vosse and Robbins) to Brian's place at least once--the Great Summit when the project began--which is where the cutlery symphony, playing GV before it was released and likely the I Ching consultation all happened. Robbins almost certainly just came for the experience--after all who'd turn down an opportunity to make a connection with one of the premiere figures in pop music--but that's it. His publication wasn't interested in music reviews unless they were explicitly tied to political activism (Dylan had earned that cred by then, publisher/editor-in-chief Art Kunkin allowed the Byrds review as a favor to Robbins after he'd proven his mettle by doing a long civil rights march). Brian wasn't in or accepted by that scene yet--the project itself was intended to open those doors for him and when it failed his band was rejected by the scene. Robbins seems to have been more political than musical or at least looking for crossover between the two--and GV (which is probably all he heard of SMiLE) was certainly not that.

Meanwhile, Vosse and Anderle needed jobs and had skills useful for what Brian wanted to do. He wanted to start his own record label, which is where Anderle came in. He wanted to go into movies, which is where Vosse was supposed to come in (the personal assistant stuff was to keep him around on payroll until that could happen so he didn't have to look for other work). But Brian already had a publicist and either at this point or soon after Anderle would get him a writer for a far more prestigious and widely syndicated paper (the freaking Saturday Evening Post!) to chronicle what was supposed to be the triumphant achievement. There just wasn't anything for Robbins to add, assuming he'd even wanted to stick around in the first place. (And it's likely he didn't, considering he was more of a folk/beatnik kinda guy.) If Robbins was even there after that first meeting at Brian's it was probably to say "hi" to Van and then more or less fade into the background. That would explain why everyone remembers him vaguely being there but no specific anecdotes--like they can recall being introduced to a PJR but nothing else because he didn't do anything of note. And he was long gone by the airport photo, or certainly not close enough to the group to be called in, where everyone else pictured is an employee, family or close personal friend of Brian's.

The only real surprising detail here is that Robbins didn't know or remember Vosse--so obviously the two weren't close; they just shared a common friend in Van and happened to get invited to the same "SMiLE salon" that one time. This just shows even more that it wasn't "the Vosse Posse" though it's too catchy of a name to die. It's more like Van invited his friends over to meet his new partner and then Anderle took the ball and ran with it, bringing Siegel and other hip people onto the scene. This also further corroborates what some of the sources say about Brian's choice of Van--he (Brian) wanted the hip counterculture connections Van could offer. VDP knew the Byrds, who, while they've since faded in the cultural memory compared to some of their peers, were seen at the time as the hot new band--America's Beatles. Brian wanted that kind of clout. Anyway, it's another reminder that "the Vosse Posse" were not a singular entity of aimless druggy stoner bad influences that a lot of the more conservative / SMiLE-skeptic elements of the fandom like to pretend they were. They had their own outlooks, career trajectories and reasons for sticking around or cutting out.

So, long story short, I think we can more or less assume a PJR SMiLE article doesn't exist (which is disappointing but not unexpected). There's still the remotest possibility he may've penned something in late '67 as Mr. Carter noted a big gap in the issues starting with March '67, but considering LAFP wasn't a pop culture mag (they focused on politics) it's incredibly unlikely they'd print a story about a non-event after the fact, especially from a band many thought were lame and decidedly un-political. If Robbins would've penned something it almost certainly would've been in late '66 in the context of "the Beach Boys are embracing the counterculture/Brian wants to make a statement on America*" both because that's the only angle that would've satisfied Art Kunkin and that's when Robbins was actually around. Since Carter apparently read those issues and found nothing--plus Robbins never mentioned an article--we can pretty definitively say it was not to be. So now we know.

*[ASIDE:]Remember how Vosse describes the genesis of SMiLE? "Americans talking about America" / "[Brian] wanted to talk about innocence, maybe the innocence America had lost." This is the kind of perspective Robbins would've understood SMiLE through, as he was Van's connection and not Brian's. He wouldn't have known about the humor thing or elements unless Brian mentioned it that night--and if he knew that angle, he'd probably be even LESS inclined to pitch the article to Kunkin. It sounds like he was already sticking his neck out to get the Dylan/Byrds stuff through.[/ASIDE]

The image Mr. Carter gives us of Robbins and LAFP all coincide with the previous sources I've seen as well. There's nothing he said that was a glaring contradiction, where I have to decide who's wrong or we have to accept we know less than we'd thought. Indeed, this actually wraps up the PJR tangent in a neat little bow, which is a rarity in this kind of research. With the other sources alone, there was JUST ENOUGH DOUBT to wonder if maybe perhaps we were missing something more from PJR. But now Dale Carter has proven there wasn't--at least as thoroughly as one can without a complete archive of the LAFP at our fingertips. Someone else, if they want, can try to track down the microfiche libraries he mentioned to alleviate that last 0.01% possibility (if you do and find something, you'd be the biggest hero of SMiLE research in decades!), but for myself I'm satisfied this mystery is solved.

[Julia]

Nah, that was for lesser companies and artists of lesser standing. I think the maximum allowable percentage of breakage is stated in the contracts.

Well, they were actually doing it to the BBs until their new manager Nick Grillo took a closer look at the books and found Capitol was using this bogus charge to rip them off. It was a big factor in the band suing the label. Im just saying I think Capitol wasn't above recouping costs through shady means especially when the group was being managed by Murry. But this is a minor theory about a hypothetical, so it's not really worth debating in my opinion. Point is, for the time being at least, Capitol was willing to overpay for sessions on the chance Brian made another mammoth hit.

IMO SMiLE, with the tracks we all know, would have been a smasher even without GV if completed. Probably not a commercial smasher, as even PS wasn't, but then still a very solid artistic statement, surely not behind the Pepper IMO. So of course GV is not important in the scheme of SMiLE. What is important - we are aware of its place on the album from the only known tracklist, and because it did end up on SS. Any kind of a tracklist with it, hence, would be a "reconstruction"...without it, a possibility, but of a kind less grounded in the known facts. I'd say it's an addendum to SMiLE; some tracklists where it's integrated more thoughtfully could be expected to be better than others, but key importance rests on how well everything else is integrated. 

Agreed and Im not just saying this as an uber-fan of SMiLE. I like a lot of stuff I can admit was not and never will be popular--this isn't fanboying--I just think SMiLE was sure to be a hit. With all the hype, the success of GV, the band being most popular in the world, under-reported sales of Pet Sounds (which DID NOT flop and was actually a gold-seller unreported by Capitol, as per one of the sources I've outlined) it would've been a top 10 definitely, top 5 almost certainly and top 1 very likely. The "it was too weird" angle is a non-issue in 1967 and plus, audiences would have to actually BUY the record first to realize that, at which point the sale is still tallied. If SMiLE was too much even for the Flower Power kids in the summer of love, the album that would've paid the price for it is the follow-up. This detail seems to go overlooked by those who equate commercial success with quality--the Pirates of the Carribean sequels outsold the original not because they're better movies (even fans wouldn't say that) but because people were primed for more after liking the last one.

In any case, would it have outshined Pepper in the eyes of the masses? Maybe, maybe not. I think it's at least possible but if Beatlemania is still too strong to overcome, I'm confident SMiLE's stature against it would've grown over time. Like how Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction and Saving Private Ryan lost the oscar in their respective years but are remembered as the best films of 90, 94 and 98 while their competitors have more or less faded in comparison. And even if this somehow didn't happen either, I think at the very least there'd be a strong, outspoken undercurrent of music-buffs who actually know their sh*t singing it's praises while the masses are satisfied to accept the narrative the Beatles "won." I don't understand why so many BB fans seem so eager to put down their own band but I attribute it to ingrained bias from the way things happened in our SMiLE-less timeline. IE, the band's reputation tanking was somehow inevitable no matter what they did--personally I dont buy it.

You made me think of something else, how SS could and perhaps ought to be treated as more of a clue than it often is for tracklisting. I sort of made this argument earlier in the thread but didn't apply it to every single song. Imagine a "Dumb Angel: Clarence" mix with the following--

Heroes/Veggies/Fire/HGS/In Blue Hawaii (Dada) & GV/WMT/WC/Tones (it sounds like a slowed down GH sorta)/Wonderful/DYLW
^Maybe we could sub out HGS for CE since the former was almost certainly junked during SMiLE, and sub out WMT and/or Tones for CIFOTM and SU so as to include all the major SMiLE songs in this framework. Is it my favorite configuration? Not even close, but it's something and at least as plausible as anything else. Don Malcolm, this is probably one of your proposed 4 spring possibilities.

IMO it's not a big task for an experienced music man to sit through some hours of "field recordings". He could have asked an engineer to make him a copy for listening at home, so not to spend studio time for this. And, it's not that hard to mark the interesting moments, either for use from the existing tape or for the recreation from a scratch.

As for the story of sampled water sounds - are you aware of Stephen Desper's videos? I know it happened outside of the SMiLE era, but the idea wasn't forgotten, and followed through to some kind of conclusion.

IMO he wouldn't have wanted to spend 2 months on each song. H&V and VT received that kind of attention only because planned as singles. Most others would be filler or what is called "deep cuts"; it's the A-sides of singles which are the statement. (Of course his predilection for over-perfection is always a factor.)

For any other artist, I would agree. But I'd also say it isn't a big task to attend a few business meetings, open the door for Anderle, take what was in the can and turn out a serviceable 30 minute release (even if it wasn't the Godly symphony he imagined), tell Siegel to his face he isn't welcome anymore, or tell the guys "I'm producing Redwood--I'm not your slave." But somehow these normal tasks that any adult has to do were beyond Brian at this time. He had some combination of avoidance issues and executive dysfunction, where sifting through hours of tape would just be one more tedious obligation weighing him down. As someone with actual diagnosed ADHD myself, I can understand this--just mundane stupid tasks like cleaning my room, finishing a writing project or even making a new SMiLE mix feel like monumental challenges that're so unpleasant I just put them off for days, weeks, months. It sounds so stupid to say aloud but that's how it works sometimes--mental illness by its definition isn't rational.

Also, I think it should be clarified when I throw out theories or explanations for why the project stalled, they shouldn't be taken as the sole or primary reason Brian didn't do it. They're all contributing factors adding up to a giant mental block where it was just easier to start something new than finish what was increasingly becoming a big hassle with significant pressure to be perfect, significant commitments of time for tedious tasks and distressing legalistic manuevers for this self-styled "adult/child" who just wants to make cool music and move on. Really, SMiLE died of a thousand cuts, but I think the complicated legal situation getting in the way of the music was probably the biggest single factor.

Also, there's at least some plausibility to the idea that Brian just wasn't digging where the project was heading anymore, as I said in the first post on page 7 and elsewhere. So it wasn't exactly hard for him to just wash his hands of it as the going got tough, perhaps it was even a convenient excuse to abandon a project going in a direction he himself was skeptical of. For example, his biggest most primary goal was humor as just about EVERY source (sans VDP, which is further proof of my theory in itself) has said, where Van definitely saw it as a statement of Americana first and foremost. Not only does Van always describe the impetus as a variation of "reasserting it was ok to be American amidst the British Invasion and Vietnam" but even in BWPS he told the musicians "let's go show those teabaggers!" I'm convinced based on a preponderance of the evidence the two were putting emphasis on different things from the jump. Brian obviously had the idea for Heroes before Van came in, but I think he intended it as a one-off fun cowboy song, Van used it as a springboard to do more "snapshots of American history and locales" and Brian thought it could work under the humor umbrella but eventually realized it couldn't. (Again, as I say, how do you make the subject matter of Worms, CE and SU funny?) For me this matter is settled, it's just a question of how Brian was internally reconciling all the different thematic weights the project was adding on until he realized it wouldn't work--and what was the breaking point. (Fire? SU? Difficulty working in spoken word humor in Heroes? Notice how the "you're under arrest" and left-turns are excised in the final mix in favor of a more straightforward structure.)

[mike s]

In LLVS Brian mentions the interior of Robbins apartment - he had obviously been there.  He mentions planning to film the clip for Barnyard in there.

[Julia]

In LLVS Brian mentions the interior of Robbins apartment - he had obviously been there.  He mentions planning to film the clip for Barnyard in there.

Ah! Right you are. I forgot he wanted to film chickens or something there. Ugh, there's always a fly in the soup with SMiLE, isn't there?

All the same, I think the point is there's almost certainly no PJR article and he was a lesser member of the Vosse Posse / "Anderle Assembly."

EDIT: So clearly Brian came to know PJR to some extent as things went on, the exact extent of their friendship (more likely a friendly acquaintanceship) can never be known. I suspect it must be lesser than the "usual suspect" names who always make themselves available to give interviews, write liner notes, etc. That or PJR is a very private person who just refuses to dwell on this topic on principle--except to Dale Carter. It feels significant that David Leaf got virtually everyone on the record between his two books plus Beautiful Dreamer yet told me point-blank in an email he "never talked to Paul."

Anyway, for our purposes it's probably more important to know that *in terms of involvement/proximity to SMiLE,* Robbins was more on the level of Danny Hutton, Daro, Shapiro and Mark Volman, IE spectators, than Vosse, Anderle, Siegel and Taylor, who were employees or officially sanctioned chroniclers. He almost certainly never committed his testimony to writing while it was fresh and very likely didn't see as much of the creative process as the "Big Three" who provided our main primary accounts. That's because he isn't mentioned as often, had no reason to be there beyond friendship, had another full-time job and would've been nursing a wound after that protest. I think this general understanding is still sound even if Brian apparently got to know him well enough to invite himself over to film chickens in tennis shoes.

^Now I'm curious if this film ever existed--which I doubt--and if it did it's probably lost like the Oppenheim outtakes and Vosse field recordings. But no harm in asking Mr. Carter a follow-up question, eh? 

[guitarfool2002]

Just a few random replies and comments to the latest posts and comments. If anything is wrong please correct.

The Michael Vosse connections: Maybe Robbins just didn't remember him, that's fair, but if Robbins worked on the Monterey Pop program, he was working alongside or at least on the same project as Vosse. One of Vosse's first "other" projects after Spring '67 when the so-called "posse" drifted away from Brian's everyday activities was working on that same Monterey Pop program and various art and design surrounding it. And I was beaten to the punch on the chicken with tennis shoes film mentioned in the Teen Set article written by ...Vosse. And when the Sunset Strip/Pandora's Box marches were happening and Robbins got roughed up by the police, Vosse was right there with Brian, Anderle, and others when talk of wanting to do something to support the protests was being discussed. It's not as if Robbins and Vosse would not have at least crossed paths more than once, if Robbins visited Brian's house or the studio (as shown in two photos of Robbins and Brian at Western) since Vosse was a regular presence at that time. And as mentioned, how would Brian (and therefore Vosse who wrote the piece) know Robbins had a cool pad if they had not actually visited said pad.

Brian and the "counterculture": This is an interesting point that's worthy of another side discussion, probably too involved for this topic. But seriously, how many pop bands in 1966 were openly voicing opinions or waving the flag of the counterculture, and I'm talking about open discussions of politics here? And more frustratingly, define "counterculture"! For many in 1965-66, it was having long hair and looking/dressing a certain way, for others it was an association with drugs or drug culture, for others it was a deeply held political set of beliefs that went beyond being tagged left or right. I agree if Robbins was coming from the folk music scene, he ethos were different as was his basic musical taste. His covering The Byrds was more in line with that, coming at a time when The Byrds were breaking down the wall between folk music, folk purists, and "pop music" that was actually selling records, getting airplay, and getting into the ears of people under 18 who were not snapping fingers at folk and beat clubs. Did Brian want to tap into this - absolutely! Good Vibrations would eventually help him do just that. Enough psychedelia for the heads, enough boy-girl content for the teens, and a fantastic musical delivery system to appeal to a wide audience. Just like The Byrds had done in '65...they weren't folkies, and they were just enough of a pop band to sell records singing Dylan's poetry with a strong backbeat and an actual drum kit. I think musicians in the counterculture were listening to what Brian was putting out there. The hardcore folk scene, the purists if you will, would not have embraced anything that looked or sounded like a full band or - horrors - "pop music". Just look at the reactions to Dylan in 65-66 for wanting to play with a band backing him.

Again too much to cover, but it is frustrating sometimes to hear talk of "counterculture" specific to a time (1965-66) when the lines between what was folk versus pop, what was mainstream versus underground, and all the rest of those nuggets were starting to blur at a rapid pace and would soon be shattered. A great teacher I had once told us if you wanted to see the enormity of the changes that happened in 1966 going into 1967, look at a high school yearbook from 1966 next to one from 1967 (and even more 1968) and look how rapid everything changed in the basic fact of how people looked and dressed.

I'm sometimes incredulous at the standards of some members of the counterculture in terms of how someone looked versus what they could actually do to promote the narrative and the movement itself. If there was a vehicle to inject some of the philosophies into the mainstream, as in a major pop group that appealed to young people and could introduce some of that counterculture narrative into the mainstream while looking like pop stars versus beatniks and whatever other label you could apply...wouldn't that be a good thing? And right there is where the narratives as would have been laid out on a project like "Smile" would have been delivered to the mainstream via what the hardcore folk base and whatnot may dismiss as a pop act...Brian and The Beach Boys singing about manifest destiny and all of the other topics via an album that had a cartoonish cover, a happy "smile shop" cover, while on the actual grooves of the record there were heavy topics and messages. And if you read Vosse's Fusion piece, that was exactly 100% what they were going for and purely by design. If people couldn't get past the fact that the Beach Boys were "square" or didn't sport the right clothing or haircuts enough to see what the music was actually conveying, then right there is the major flaw of many such movements throughout the 20th century.

I'll tie this briefly to the Sunset Strip/Pandoras Box protests and riots. Just a tangential thing here, but the CBS News film crew who captured some of the most compelling film of those riots as they got violent was there to film Brian Wilson for Inside Pop. So one could stretch the point and say had CBS not been in the area to film Brian Wilson, a lot of that compelling film would not exist.

And what's forgotten too is how - among others - Sonny and Cher were main faces and instigators of these protests, which were about something as seemingly benign as a curfew being imposed on the Sunset Strip clubs that would have excluded audiences under a certain age from going to the clubs and the shows. Speaking of teeny-bopper labels and misconceptions, The Monkees' "Daily Nightly" was a song whose lyrics are a direct commentary on these events, and who was more teeny-bopper than the Monkees according to the hip counterculture? Daily Nightly is more cryptic and isn't as surface level as Stills got on "For What Its Worth", but again the delivery system used to tell millions of kids about what was happening at these protests was dismissed as being too poppy, too bubblegum...and it's nonsense to dismiss something that's essentially reporting on a topic that eventually went beyond opposing curfews at music clubs in LA.

Just one more: "Inside Pop". A CBS documentary aired in April '67 and again that July about the youth culture bubbling under and soon to take over the mainstream that featured Brian Wilson as one of the key participants and leaders of that movement. How square was that? I mean, he's no Pete Seeger or a member of The Weavers... (sarcasm)

Capitol and the "breakage clause": Beat me to it, but yes that was the key point in the band's lawsuit against Capitol, which they eventually settled and won. And it was a dirty tactic that Capitol and other labels were using to essentially steal money from their artists. The amount of records ostensibly broken and returned which would take money from the artists' profits on sales was in some cases ridiculously and unrealistically high, and was one of a handful of ways these labels would take more money from their artists. No lawyer would approve a contract stipulating breakage and return items that would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars against the artists' earnings, so they'd hide these things, or simply do it with creative bookkeeping that the artists never noticed.

This is how Anderle's lawyer Abe Sommars found it by auditing Capitols' and the band's books, and it was a tactic at the time which was used by other managers to woo bands into hiring them or their firm as a manager, by auditing the books and finding these gaps that were hidden under breakage/returns and other items, then telling the artists "hey, look how much you're getting ripped off here". Apparently that tactic was also used by Allan Klein with The Stones, among others. Maybe even Anderle with Dylan when he helped persuade Dylan to leave Columbia for a short time...not sure on that one exactly. But Dylan did leave Columbia!

Record contracts, label deals, studio time, etc: I think there may be a misunderstanding of what a record label and a record contract actually is and how the money works. To boil it down to the basics, a record label is essentially a bank lending money to the artist, and the artist is essentially taking out a loan. When a label gives some artist an "advance", and that artist is all happy and can go out and buy new gear and cars and fly to some exotic place, they have to pay that money back. And they do so by selling records, selling their music, and touring. That label is not handing out money, just like a bank is not going to give anyone money and not expect a repayment with a profit on top generated through interest or other means.

So all this talk about how much money Capitol was spending on Brian's studio time...I just don't think it's an accurate topic from the outset. The label invested in their artists, and expected a return on those investments. Beyond that, the return came from earnings that artist made while being promoted by that label. So it wouldn't be case of a label being so generous that they would write check after check to pay studio costs and not take that money back from the artist's earnings and budget. I think there is a misconception out there that Capitol was squandering money on Brian's studio experiments and that they wouldn't have a way to recoup that money. I don't think that's true, and unless someone can produce a copy of the band's contract as a Capitol artist as of Fall '66 and Brian's contract as a producer as of Fall '66, a lot of these suggestions that Capitol was losing money just don't hold water. The labels are not benefactors, they act as a bank who gets repaid. And when they don't, they sue for breach of contract.

The timeline and role of Van Dyke: I would check the timeline of how each of these people around the so-called "posse" got involved in Brian's inner circle. Van Dyke came into it after Loren Daro, after David Anderle, after Tony Asher. Anderle first got into it around the time of the Summer Days album, he says so in the Williams interview. Vosse was a friend who was living with Anderle and his wife for a time, and first met Brian in order to interview him for a Teen Set article - prior to that he was involved in TV production including somehow booking The Byrds on the Arlene Dahl TV show "Beauty Spot". Daro went to school with Tony Asher, and could have been the catalyst for a lot of these people initially coming together around Brian. He and Anderle had connections in and around LA that went beyond the norm. Hutton came in through Anderle who was his manager. Volman was a neighbor of Brian's. Van Dyke first met Brian at a party hosted by Terry Melcher. I could be wrong on this point, but wasn't that also where Brian invited David Crosby to hear his new single California Girls?

Anyway, it wasn't as much a case of Van Dyke inviting his friends to come into these events and house parties and whatnot...the main players had already been in place, and that role would be more fitting to apply to Anderle, and before him, Loren Daro. Van Dyke did bring people in later, most notably Frank Holmes, but not in the timeline or in a role as described in a post above.

The entire LA scene in 1965-66 was much more close than some histories would suggest. Many if not most of these people either knew each other, interacted with each other, or hung out together at each others' pads or in the clubs. There has been for years a suggestion that these groups were much more insulated than they really were, separated into various camps or cliques, when in reality it was much more open and closer than that.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now.

[Julia]

Guitarfool, great post and info.

Just one thing--when I say VDP invited Anderle, Vosse and Robbins over which started the scene, I'm getting that from the Fusion article. Unless Im wildly misremembering it since 4 months ago when I reread it, he says that Van started working with Brian in "late summer" and eventually invited him and Anderle (some sources include Robbins, some forget him) over. The way he tells the story, it sounds like it and the other specific events I mentioned all happened the same night or at least subsequent nights very early in what we call the SMiLE era. If all these people knew each other before then, I don't doubt it although I wasn't aware but the clear impression from Fusion and other sources is that the scene (re)coalesced for SMiLE when Van invited his friends over. Maybe they all already were friendly with Brian, maybe Vosse is misremembering or simplifying the timeline for the sake of the story (why spend precious column space giving a needless backstory? It'd make sense to leave only the important details I suppose). Bu that's the way the story is told in Fusion and at least a few other sources, which is where I was coming from with my statements.

Again, not saying I couldn't be wrong just wanted to back up where Im getting that timeline from. But if this whole endeavor has taught me anything it's that we'll never have a calendar date by date of specific, pinned-down universally agreed upon info. There's always 3+ versions of every anecdote, contradictory details, you think you've got a solid narrative and someone reminds you of something that blows a hole in your theory... Like Frank Holmes says outright in Priore's 2005 book he was commissioned in like June '66 as I recall but then WillJC says it was actually August or October (forget which) which is a huge difference but I don't think Will would say something if he wasn't sure. Even Priore's timelines between sources, like in LLVS and the BWPS liner notes, there's some discrepencies but he doesn't clarify why he changed his outline, like where the new info came from...

It really is like analyzing the Gospels or the overlapping accounts of some mythical figures--there's a general understanding of "Jesus was a traveling preacher to whom miracles were attributed who claimed to be the Son of God" but then you try to hash out the specifics of what else he preached, for how long, where, when, who was there, in what order and you get a bunch of different stories plus endless speculation and harmonizing to make even more versions of the same thing. To some extent it's inevitable people are going to have to pick their own version of the story that makes sense to them based on which sources they believe. (Not saying we shouldn't still try to be as accurate as possible but it feels like any time I try to definitively sum things up someone reminds me why it can't be done  )

[guitarfool2002]

I know exactly what you mean with the reference in Vosse's Fusion piece where he mentions the timeline, the way Vosse told it, Van Dyke told them what he was doing with Brian at the end of summer '66 and suggested they all come over. But according to Anderle, he had first met and had known Brian since the Today and In Concert years through various family connections with the band, I was wrong in citing Summer Days in my post, it was even earlier than that. And of course Anderle managed both Van Dyke and Danny Hutton with MGM. Anderle knew Brian as far back as the Today era, then he left, then got back in with him when Good Vibrations was being finished up.

So as you said, it adds up to a lot of connections, some that don't jive with each other, and the timelines can get hazy. Was Van Dyke the catalyst? Perhaps in some ways he was. But recall too the first time Van Dyke went to see Brian at his house, he got pulled over by and escorted to Brian's house by the LAPD because he was riding a motorbike...to which Brian responded by buying him a Volvo. So I'd suggest Van Dyke didn't have the same clout someone like Anderle had at that time, although Van is downplaying himself a bit in various tellings of the stories.

And like him or not, Daro was at the center of some of these connections and meetings too, prior to the Smile/GV happenings and more at the time Anderle first met Brian.

What I can't recall hearing much about is how involved as a peripheral friend or associate Daro was around the Smile/GV time period, like whether he would drop in for visits or just hang out, even after he was out of the picture and Brian's inner circle. But he was definitely there at the time Anderle describes meeting Brian, and he and Tony Asher were close friends.

[Julia]

You're right about Daro. Honestly, my biggest single regret in my time on the forums (besides being dismissive of Cam Mott) is how I talked to Daro. Yes, he sounded like a self-serving jerk, was needlessly crass about Brian's wife (I'd expect an old man with decades of hindsight to be more understanding and contrite) and absolutely full of bologna with some of his claims. But I should've let him speak and get his version on the record unhindered, then let history judge how accurate his words were against the rest of the evidence. I shouldn't have played morality police and helped to chase him away. I hope other posters can accept my apology for that.

There's no clear cut Heroes or Villains in SMiLE, though the behavior of certain people before and especially after leaves a lot to be desired. But when it comes to SMiLE, I think just about everyone was acting in good faith and things falling apart was just a series of bad luck. Mike earns my ire for some things he did long after the sessions were over, but during them he only voiced his opinion they were going in the wrong direction. He could've perhaps been nicer about it but ultimately did his job. VDP I think wasn't totally on the same page as Brian but he was hired to collaborate (IE add his artistic sensibilities to the project) and did a fantastic job of it, inspiring Brian to make some of his best work ever. Anderle pushing for a single threw things in a tailspin but he didn't know that would happen, and was doing the job Brian hired him to do. Marilyn must've seemed like the annoying fun police to everyone in the moment but she had to live with the guy and saw his dysfunction on an intimate level they didn't. Brian is so seemingly innocent and talented we all love him but he was genuinely acting irrationally and in many ways his own worst enemy; plus he treated the people around him like props, didn't give anyone the big picture to understand his vision or delegate. I could go on, but the point is they're all flawed people and I don't begrudge anyone for what they did in this time the way I used to.

Daro may be the least sympathetic person everyone knows about but he did ultimately open Brian's mind to psychedelics and new age spirituality. As you said he introduced him to fruitful connections. He probably shouldn't have supplied Brian with drugs but it was the 60s, the guy was gonna get them one way or another and no one could've known the damage it'd do. He wasn't evil, just young and irresponsible. What bothers me about Daro is the juvenile way he called Marilyn a cow and laughed about how Brian chose him over her--for a 60 year old man who can see the horror that poor woman endured, that's vile. But again, that's a value judgement on 80s-10s Daro, not 60s Daro. The only person who I know of from these sessions to which I have no positive spin is Shapiro. The only anecdote about him I've found is convincing Brian to go to the real Carol Mountain and profess his feelings, which sounds like it was a really humiliating experience for Brian and her but the guy treats it like this funny story. He sounds like a genuinely bad friend, the kind who just uses you to get what he wants, who likes to stir the pot and witness other people's drama voyeuristically. Maybe he had his good moments too but they haven't been recorded for posterity--to me based on what I can find of him he just sounds like a mean-spirited hanger-on who shouldn't have been allowed near Brian. (I genuinely wonder if this lesser-known story isn't an understated factor in Brian coming undone--a major humiliation and demystifying of his muse, seeing his personified ideal of innocent love as an old housewife with curlers in her hair rejecting him openly. I think this is a missing piece that's been overlooked in Brian losing faith in himself and his art.)


Elsewhere you mentioned Tony Asher in relation to the Vosse Posse but I dont think anyone has ever claimed he was part of that scene. In fact he seemed to do everything in his power to avoid it, openly disdained Brian's "goofy book(s)" and wasn't a new age hipster but a "square" working for the man. (Can't imagine anything less Aquarian than being an adman for corporate America--not a value judgement, just saying.) This is the one thing you've said that I fundamentally disagree with based on what I've read. To be clear here, I think Asher's instincts were right on the money to avoid Brian--he seemed the most prescient of the ancillary figures in Brian's life circa 1966. Asher made the smart choice to stick with a stable career and avoid the trainwreck he saw coming.

[Julia]

I thought about playing around with that SS-derived SMiLE tracklist idea and came up with this:

(IIGS instrumental as intro) Heroes (ending with Veggie Fight) / Veggies (ending with Moaning Laughter) / Fire (maybe w/ intro?) / WaterChant/Workshop / CE

(Prayer) GV / OMP (HGS vocals over fade) / Wonderful / WC / Worms / SU

^Call it "Dumb Angel, Bythos."

My current on-the-go H&V mix folks.  See what you think.  I won't explain it the format should explain itself.  I'm already thinking I could cut the Smiley chorus which here I've used as a middle 8.

Audio is very lumpy as I've had to nab from so many different sources.

https://vocaroo.com/14Sm9hr5qWFd

I love how you made a mix and are already thinking of things to change about it--Im the same way. I really like the stuff you did here that's new, like the whistling bridge after the wordless chorus into the harpsichord (?) backed slow verse. Constructive criticism, but I wasn't as into the new instrumental track for the Bicycle Rider chorus although I applaud doing something new. Initially I wasn't into repeating the opening verse either, but the transition from that to "threescore and five" was really nice. At this point, the best thing SMiLE mixes can be to me is different (I feel the same about movies now too).

[zaval80]

Went to Anna's Archive and found Dale Carter's book there (searched for "Dale Carter"). Also, I think I saw some other books wanted by Julia there, with the simple search for "Beach Boys". Noticed that the site doesn't work with any VPN; some are clearly more useful than other useful VPNs, but again, nothing that the Google app store wasn't able to supply for free.

[mike s]

Cheers for listening. The problem I had with the chorus (my middle eight) is that neither the actual Smiley vocals nor the alt keyboard part are in perfect time with themselves let alone each other - so I had to do a lot of fiddling and it still isn't quite in time.  I changed it because I think the Smiley chorus backing is too heavy and droney - its not really pop or pop/rock like the rest of the tune.

Overall I think it works as a sequence:  fast - slow middle - fast again.  Its just hard to make it really flow with so many different audio sources.  I think A /I now could just even it out with one prompt.

My current on-the-go H&V mix folks.  See what you think.  I won't explain it the format should explain itself.  I'm already thinking I could cut the Smiley chorus which here I've used as a middle 8.

Audio is very lumpy as I've had to nab from so many different sources.

https://vocaroo.com/14Sm9hr5qWFd

I love how you made a mix and are already thinking of things to change about it--Im the same way. I really like the stuff you did here that's new, like the whistling bridge after the wordless chorus into the harpsichord (?) backed slow verse. Constructive criticism, but I wasn't as into the new instrumental track for the Bicycle Rider chorus although I applaud doing something new. Initially I wasn't into repeating the opening verse either, but the transition from that to "threescore and five" was really nice. At this point, the best thing SMiLE mixes can be to me is different (I feel the same about movies now too).

[guitarfool2002]

You're right about Daro. Honestly, my biggest single regret in my time on the forums (besides being dismissive of Cam Mott) is how I talked to Daro. Yes, he sounded like a self-serving jerk, was needlessly crass about Brian's wife (I'd expect an old man with decades of hindsight to be more understanding and contrite) and absolutely full of bologna with some of his claims. But I should've let him speak and get his version on the record unhindered, then let history judge how accurate his words were against the rest of the evidence. I shouldn't have played morality police and helped to chase him away. I hope other posters can accept my apology for that.

There's no clear cut Heroes or Villains in SMiLE, though the behavior of certain people before and especially after leaves a lot to be desired. But when it comes to SMiLE, I think just about everyone was acting in good faith and things falling apart was just a series of bad luck. Mike earns my ire for some things he did long after the sessions were over, but during them he only voiced his opinion they were going in the wrong direction. He could've perhaps been nicer about it but ultimately did his job. VDP I think wasn't totally on the same page as Brian but he was hired to collaborate (IE add his artistic sensibilities to the project) and did a fantastic job of it, inspiring Brian to make some of his best work ever. Anderle pushing for a single threw things in a tailspin but he didn't know that would happen, and was doing the job Brian hired him to do. Marilyn must've seemed like the annoying fun police to everyone in the moment but she had to live with the guy and saw his dysfunction on an intimate level they didn't. Brian is so seemingly innocent and talented we all love him but he was genuinely acting irrationally and in many ways his own worst enemy; plus he treated the people around him like props, didn't give anyone the big picture to understand his vision or delegate. I could go on, but the point is they're all flawed people and I don't begrudge anyone for what they did in this time the way I used to.

Daro may be the least sympathetic person everyone knows about but he did ultimately open Brian's mind to psychedelics and new age spirituality. As you said he introduced him to fruitful connections. He probably shouldn't have supplied Brian with drugs but it was the 60s, the guy was gonna get them one way or another and no one could've known the damage it'd do. He wasn't evil, just young and irresponsible. What bothers me about Daro is the juvenile way he called Marilyn a cow and laughed about how Brian chose him over her--for a 60 year old man who can see the horror that poor woman endured, that's vile. But again, that's a value judgement on 80s-10s Daro, not 60s Daro. The only person who I know of from these sessions to which I have no positive spin is Shapiro. The only anecdote about him I've found is convincing Brian to go to the real Carol Mountain and profess his feelings, which sounds like it was a really humiliating experience for Brian and her but the guy treats it like this funny story. He sounds like a genuinely bad friend, the kind who just uses you to get what he wants, who likes to stir the pot and witness other people's drama voyeuristically. Maybe he had his good moments too but they haven't been recorded for posterity--to me based on what I can find of him he just sounds like a mean-spirited hanger-on who shouldn't have been allowed near Brian. (I genuinely wonder if this lesser-known story isn't an understated factor in Brian coming undone--a major humiliation and demystifying of his muse, seeing his personified ideal of innocent love as an old housewife with curlers in her hair rejecting him openly. I think this is a missing piece that's been overlooked in Brian losing faith in himself and his art.)


Elsewhere you mentioned Tony Asher in relation to the Vosse Posse but I dont think anyone has ever claimed he was part of that scene. In fact he seemed to do everything in his power to avoid it, openly disdained Brian's "goofy book(s)" and wasn't a new age hipster but a "square" working for the man. (Can't imagine anything less Aquarian than being an adman for corporate America--not a value judgement, just saying.) This is the one thing you've said that I fundamentally disagree with based on what I've read. To be clear here, I think Asher's instincts were right on the money to avoid Brian--he seemed the most prescient of the ancillary figures in Brian's life circa 1966. Asher made the smart choice to stick with a stable career and avoid the trainwreck he saw coming.

I didn't connect Tony Asher to the "Posse" as in late 66 into 67 happenings, but there was a deeper connection between Asher and Daro who went to school together and Daro called Asher his best friend at one point. So yes you are correct about Asher taking the corporate route, yet one of his close friends was Daro who was the opposite of that lifestyle and career path, and also a new-age hipster to the Nth degree who helped introduce Brian to all those same goofy books and was a connoisseur of all the hip drugs and psychedelics around LA. Important to note too that after Pet Sounds, Tony Asher landed a few songs on various artists' albums including one done by Herb Alpert which Tony co-wrote with Roger Nichols. So Tony soon got his foot back into the music world separate from the corporate world just the same, and Daro his friend from school was invested deeply in the new-age lifestyle, the drugs, and those hipster books he claimed disdain towards regarding Brian.

Then factor in how David Anderle knew Daro going back to grade school. Daro claims to have known Van Dyke prior to any of the Brian collabs or meetings too. It would make sense since Anderle managed Van Dyke for a time. 

And factor in further how Daro's gatherings at his pad would have seen a number of these same people who ended up in Brian's orbit from 65-67 come and go and hang out, including members of the Byrds, Van Dyke, etc.

So again I'll say, like him or not, a lot of the peripheral information out there suggest Daro could very well have been the keystone or the catalyst in bringing all of these people together over those few years. If he knew both David Anderle and Tony Asher when they were students, there you have the genesis of the Pet Sounds collaboration and a lot of the events surrounding Smile and the formation of Brother Records being connected to relationships from years prior. Whether direct lines can be drawn to say "if not for Daro, none of that would have happened" or not, by sheer coincidence that's an awful lot of coincidence.

A lot of connections there, simply too many to ignore. And I won't even touch on Subud yet, which saw Daro, "Jim" McGuinn and other Byrds, Brian, and numerous others in that scene studying Subud and meditation well before the band's "official" history says they met the Maharishi in late '67. Want to take a really deep dive down a wild rabbit hole? Look up "Subud". 

[Don Malcolm]

Glad to have you back in the thread, GF--I still remember how fraught that thread with Daro was, it had quite an ultimate effect on the composition of the SS board as well...leaner, but not meaner! 

I think it is safe to say that without Daro, we would likely not have the music that cements Brian Wilson's musical reputation. Of course he had very little to do with its actual creation, but the individuals he connected to Brian and the life issues that he helped place in front of Brian fueled a level of introspection that, coupled with his competition with the Beatles, brought us a series of compositions/productions that we are still viewing with slack-jawed wonder sixty years later.

I just want to note that the exact details of how SMiLE coalesced, crested, imploded, exploded (like a star turning into a red giant), dispersed/scattered across the sky, disappeared, then kept popping up in a thirty-year game of whackamole until the events depicted in David Leaf's latest brought forth BWPS will never been definitely known. What we DO know is that the record industry moved much faster in terms of marketing product then, and the pace involved in that world was not conducive to the type of project that SMiLE was aiming to be--even a version that didn't have so many simultaneous (and likely incompatible) moving parts.

In terms of looking for a scenario where the pitfalls that doomed SMiLE could have been avoided, however, I think we need some basic either-or decisions for what would/might/might not/couldn't appear on a mid-late Aoril SMiLE. I think we have to respect Brian's later reconstruction, tainted as some of it might be from the speculations/incursions that ensued once the bootlegs started appearing.

I think this needs to a separate exercise from fan-mixing, which is endlessly fascinating but is not based on what actually could have happened in the first quarter of 1967 to produce a single LP version of SMiLE. My lone exception to using a fan-mix mindset for "spring SMiLE" is H&V, which needs some kind of creative leapfrogging to achieve what seems to be have proven impossible--a track that could be both a hit single and an extended leitmotif for (at least) an integrated, inventive thematic suite (which seems to be what VDP was aiming for). It does appear that something went awry with Brian and VDP in November, with the elements and the escalation of humor into the project (which might explain VDP's references to Brian's "buffoonery") and this resulted in MOLC, which clearly freaked everyone out (except, perhaps, for the Wrecking Crew folks).

Julia's latest track order suggests that both humor and MOLC would appear in a "spring SMiLE." I wouldn't say that this is categorically impossible, but I think that it is one of the lowest possible combinations that could have succssfully emerged, especially factoring in the rest of the band's involvement (remember, their experience with it accumulates through November/December, as they get pushed in many directions at once--the strangeness of what they're hearing colliding with the massive commercial success of GV--talk about mixed signals!!).

I would urge a look at all the tracks from the standpoint of the destabilizing events we have confident knowledge about, plus other evidence (the track list), to determine some kind of guideline for assessing the likelihood of the various tracklist configurations that can be devised. If I used the could/might/might not/could not gradations (with "could" being 90-100% and "could not" being 0-10%), the aggregate grade for the newest track list Julia created is somewhere between 10-20%. It jumps up to ~50% (IMO) without the spoken word interpolations and MOLC. It would be even higher (again IMO) if Worms is on the same side with H&V. I could be convinced that a scenario exists for Brian doing that in 1967, but I need to see a more detailed rationale for it.

I do think a version of "spring SMiLE" that has MOLC on it should be one of the options...but I think it should be acknowledged as the long-shot scenario, since MOLC seemed to freak out Brian, VDP and the band...

Last thought for now: imagine being VDP and dealing with an escalated confrontation about your lyrics that had become a inferno-esque flashpoint over a piece of music that had no words at all! 

[Julia]

In terms of looking for a scenario where the pitfalls that doomed SMiLE could have been avoided, however, I think we need some basic either-or decisions for what would/might/might not/couldn't appear on a mid-late Aoril SMiLE. I think we have to respect Brian's later reconstruction, tainted as some of it might be from the speculations/incursions that ensued once the bootlegs started appearing.

I think this needs to a separate exercise from fan-mixing, which is endlessly fascinating but is not based on what actually could have happened in the first quarter of 1967 to produce a single LP version of SMiLE. My lone exception to using a fan-mix mindset for "spring SMiLE" is H&V, which needs some kind of creative leapfrogging to achieve what seems to be have proven impossible--a track that could be both a hit single and an extended leitmotif for (at least) an integrated, inventive thematic suite (which seems to be what VDP was aiming for). It does appear that something went awry with Brian and VDP in November, with the elements and the escalation of humor into the project (which might explain VDP's references to Brian's "buffoonery") and this resulted in MOLC, which clearly freaked everyone out (except, perhaps, for the Wrecking Crew folks).

Julia's latest track order suggests that both humor and MOLC would appear in a "spring SMiLE." I wouldn't say that this is categorically impossible, but I think that it is one of the lowest possible combinations that could have succssfully emerged, especially factoring in the rest of the band's involvement (remember, their experience with it accumulates through November/December, as they get pushed in many directions at once--the strangeness of what they're hearing colliding with the massive commercial success of GV--talk about mixed signals!!).

I would urge a look at all the tracks from the standpoint of the destabilizing events we have confident knowledge about, plus other evidence (the track list), to determine some kind of guideline for assessing the likelihood of the various tracklist configurations that can be devised. If I used the could/might/might not/could not gradations (with "could" being 90-100% and "could not" being 0-10%), the aggregate grade for the newest track list Julia created is somewhere between 10-20%. It jumps up to ~50% (IMO) without the spoken word interpolations and MOLC. It would be even higher (again IMO) if Worms is on the same side with H&V. I could be convinced that a scenario exists for Brian doing that in 1967, but I need to see a more detailed rationale for it.

I do think a version of "spring SMiLE" that has MOLC on it should be one of the options...but I think it should be acknowledged as the long-shot scenario, since MOLC seemed to freak out Brian, VDP and the band...

Last thought for now: imagine being VDP and dealing with an escalated confrontation about your lyrics that had become a inferno-esque flashpoint over a piece of music that had no words at all!  

Thats fair and I appreciate your feedback.

For myself I think there has to be fairly strict adherence to three qualifiers when trying to "finish" a "realistic" '66-'67 album:

1) that what you put in a "reconstruction (of Brian's intents best they can be determined*)" includes only music from the SMiLE sessions or those that can be convincingly argued as derived from something he did in that time. Like, Water Chant isn't vintage SMiLE but it fills the "water niche" void from The Elements and is a fairly obvious evolution of what he did for Underwater Chant/Swim-Swim. (Also, when I talk about "music from the SMiLE sessions," in this context I'm including the rough experiments with the Posse as well as the humor skits. They're recorded material from the era and he said spoken word humor was on the table, so it's fair game.) I think this one is self-explanatory, and in practice it just means Three Blind Mice, Little Red Book, Untitled Instrumental, CWTL and Diamond Head are out. (Country Air probably too, but I admit I think there may be a case, albeit much weaker, that it might've been a reworked "air" from SMiLE's conception. But there's no one-to-one piece we can use as proof of that as is the case for Water.)

*this as opposed to a fanmix, which could be the same thing or something totally different. Like, for example, Purple Chick never would've happened in '67 because it's based on BWPS which isn't intuitively compatible with a 2-sided vinyl format, or Alternate BWPS which is balls to the walls "just do something cool, damn the plausibility."  

2) that you follow the list given to Capitol for the back cover or the Smiley tracklist, or some convincing midpoint between the two (which seems to be your MO and makes total sense) with well-reasoned arguments for any deviations from the two (which you have done). This may be getting into stickler territory for some, but those are the only two concrete artifacts we have that show where Brian's head was at at the time. They're a snapshot of what the album was in Nov-Dec and July, bookending the period where it would've been finished, the endpoints of its evolutionary conception. This isn't even really a hindrance to using most songs, since all the major material is on there (IIGS almost certainly includes Barnyard and/or IWBA, Look could plausibly have been a "part two" section of Wonderful ala the two sections of SU...Holidays is out though, sorry  ). This is just me saying that despite things like Tones, I Dont Know, Teeter Totter Love, Good News and Hawaiian Song technically being "SMiLE/Smiley sessions," they clearly weren't going to be included on a finished album. Not all material from this era was created equal, essentially.

Dada is trickier since it rose and fell within that 7 month window, not important enough to get on the first list but scrapped by the second. I give this one a pass since it's the most convenient thing we have in the can to plug in the water/air holes from '66-'67 and/or could've been intended as a part of the standalone IIGS(/Barnyard Suite) or a Heroes fragment. It's close enough that it counts, in my opinion. Cool Cool Water less so--I wouldn't begrudge anyone using it to "cheat" as a water-piece but I think it clearly post-dates SMiLE. It's Brian taking the idea of the Water Chant and fleshing it into a standalone song, something he'd only do if the Elements track and likely by extension the entire album were dead. And Prayer/YW, while not explicitly included in either tracklist are the two unlisted "intro to the album" contenders. We know at least an unlisted intro (and likely unlisted outro) are on the table thanks to that studio chatter as well as Vosse's testimony.

3) that the album be "funny" in some way. Again, this may sound like a gatekeeping persnickety point to some but I'd argue that with Brian's contemporary statements, the fact that all primary sources who knew him emphasize humor as the keystone aspect of the project and Brian's spirituality (sans VDP, frustratingly) and that he scrapped an entire album of brilliant music any other artist would kill for because the comedy wasn't gelling properly makes this an important consideration. Without some attempt at humor, it isn't SMiLE it's Pet Sounds 2, which Brian very easily could've cobbled together with what he had but deliberately chose not to in favor of a goofy album of irreverent laughs. I'm not saying one has to include all, most or many of the Wrecking Crew & Psychedelic Sounds skits, or the false start in WC and "east or west indies, we always get them confused" from Worms, but something of that vein should be in there or it isn't the album Brian clearly wanted to make. (Personally I think the album would be better without most of this stuff myself, so this isn't me trying to force my "hobbyhorse" on anyone, just saying I think the evidence bears out how important it was to Brian.)


Beyond that, while we might debate which groupings or inclusions and excisions are likely (and I do believe some are more plausible than others) they're no longer "requirements" to a claim of "historical accuracy."

^Again, this isn't meant to be me policing other people's right to have fun and do unique uncharted things with their fan mixes, I just think those are the three ingredients to getting as close to what Brian might've done had he soldiered on with the material already recorded instead of starting fresh. While you're certainly entitled to your opinion, Don Malcom, with regard to things like Worms being on the same side as Heroes representing a much stronger plausibility than not, and I don't necessarily disagree, I think it's important to make that distinction. I say the clearer cut Americana/Cycle of Life layout is still probably the most conceptually and aesthetically satisfying, but I'm not convinced that following it rigidly is necessary to claiming historical authenticity per se -- or not worth quite so much as 80 percentage points of difference (Just minor quibbling friendly disagreement.)

I say this because the Americana songs are certainly about loss of innocence as well (Heroes--wife dies, guy is griefstricken, kids grow up / Worms & CE--cultures destroyed or exploited, beautiful wilderness spoiled / MOLC--silly cow title hides anxiety attack set to music ... IIGS and Veggies are the exception but maybe the Hal Blaine fight was meant to evoke a similar "rude awakening to carefree frivolity" I guess). And the Cycle of Life songs could well be about America albeit less explicitly (SU--gilded age opera house and spurring contemporary Americans to make a better future for the children / Wonderful--a metaphor for Columbia the personified continent getting spoiled by "non-believers" / CIFOTM--without lyrics it's all hearsay but I've argued in the past perhaps it might've been America dethroning Britain as the global superpower / WC and GV are the notable exceptions). There's strong arguments for "mixing and matching" tracks between the groupings that settled in place with BWPS that I think personally are more in the ballpark of 50% "give or take" odds as opposed to longshot 10% odds.

It's also arguable that if we look at the bisociative/pictorial aspect there might be clues at yet another two-side structure, perhaps where one side evokes the image of a specific place and time in history (Heroes/CE/Worms/MOLC might be the best examples) and the other a more generalized object or setting that could be of any epoch (Veggies/WC/GV/CIFOTM/Barnyard Suite are the best examples). Wonderful, Surfs Up and OMP are more ambiguous in this framework. Brian obviously wanted us to think of jewelry in the first half of Surf but that's not the entire song's vibe or message like veggies is with veggies. Wonderful is a music box sound with lyrics of hopscotch, ring a round the rosy, lockets, woodland creatures but the remake in Version 2 sounds more like a nightclub so maybe that song's pictorial identity was more in flux. OMP certainly makes me think of an old timey 1800s pioneer but the songs sampled aren't THAT old and the sentiments are timeless.

When trying to get as detailed as a proposed "historically accurate song order, track by track" I think there's enough gray area to allow more freedom than you seem to be proposing. (If I understand correctly.) Even some of the techniques people use to try to narrow potential track placements down (like that singles should be the first and last songs on Side 1 as well as the first song on Side 2) may not necessarily be accurate if it's true that there was originally no new single on SMiLE. Even remaining in the Americana/Cycle of Life box, I'm never fully satisfied with any particular sequence for long--there's always nagging thoughts of "but this would go well coming after that too!" All that said, I personally still think Heroes, Veggies GV & SU bookending the sides is the most plausible format, especially come spring '67, but it's fun to think outside my own box these days. 

[Julia]

I feel the need to expand on my last post. I said the best bet for being historically accurate as to a hypothetical early '67 SMiLE should be between the Capitol memo tracklist and Smiley Smile's tracklist. This last "suggestion" isn't so much a hard and fast rule but I propose the best way to go is using the songs from the former in the rough grouping of the latter. I said this earlier in the thread but I'll repeat, I choose to believe the SS song order is more of a clue than has been acknowledged by many people.

My last attempt at doing a 1:1 "sub in the SMiLE version where it is in Smiley" isn't the most likely outcome, that was just a fun thought experiment to pitch an idea I'd never seen anyone else try. From a historically accurate perspective, the "problem" with my 1:1 "SMiLE version of Smiley" mix is that I placed songs such as Worms where their Smiley-analogue (Whistle In) go. In real life, that new song (WI) was placed on side two after being stripped of its verses, chorus and lyrics--leaving only a hollowed out version of the bridge with a chant. While one was derived from the other, they're so different that where one may fit the other does not. Similarly, She's Going Bald appears on SS because they were desperate for material that could potentially be funny, and I presume the "silken hair" line made Brian imagine a woman going bald. But that isn't proof the original HGS would've been included when SMiLE had so much better material to work with. The SS sessions didn't have time to spare or higher ambition ("don't think you're God, just be a cool guy") like SMiLE did--the band just used what was in the can that was serviceable. So, again, while there are very likely CLUES to what SMiLE would've been in Smiley, I'm not suggesting they'd be exactly the same.

As specific examples, I choose to see significance in SS Veggies rubbing elbows with Heroes (the other most overtly fun, bouncy song + the other single) as well as the "candle version" of MOLC but not WC, which is its own thing on the opposite side. (Need I say again--WC is not and never was air!) I also think it's noteworthy that Side 1 has the closest thing to a watery track in Little Pad, (perhaps an early "In Blue Hawaii" maybe Brian always intended to tie his water with Hawaii the way his fire was tied to Chicago) and thereby ends with Hawaii--the newest and westernmost state. Admittedly this was more in the BWPS era, but Brian did speak of Americana going from Plymouth Rock to Diamond Head and that could definitely have been a vintage idea at some point in the process.* On Side 2 of SS, I notice all the songs are sadder and more romantic than the previous--this is the boy/girl "suite" with less than half the funny asides of its preceding half. In its way, SS still has a side of "rockers" and "ballads," or two halves of larger than life concepts of American nature against intimate personal longings. (Also, I know there's an interview earlier in the thread where Brian explicitly says he likes to split up the slow and upbeat songs...but Today and Smiley don't really bare this out as a "no exceptions" rule and he always contradicts himself on the record anyway.)

*Yes, I know I've said the Americana stuff was more Van's idea but that doesn't mean Brian wasn't down to go in that direction, at least for awhile. I mean, he did write and record those songs didn't he?

Looked at in this context, it's interesting how the fandom let Priore (and I do think it began with him) lead everyone astray with his America/Elements framework when it's more likely in practice that "Americana: meant "the history and the natural beauty of America," IE as much a celebration of the natural elements as a reflection on our history. The elements likely would've been symbolic of the continent's diverse outdoor wonders (Chicago Fire, veggie-laden farmlands, seas of Hawaii and country/fresh "zen" air) and was therefore part of the "Americana suite" rather than a separate "movement." In this new, more plausible context, Side 2 of SMiLE would be songs of love--from man to woman (GV), man to his simple treasures (WC), man to child (CIFOTM), child to parent (Wonderful), possibly man to God or man to his pasture (OMP and/or Barnyard if they have to fit here) as well as man to music and his fellow men to come (SU). Not only is this intuitively a smoother listen than the jumped "GV/WC/Veggies/Fire/Dada/SU" playlists, not only are the lyrics between sides more thematically cohesive and the musical leitmotifs more apparent in this presentation...but the only concrete, Brian-approved, official tracklist we have from 1967 bares it out. As someone who's read virtually all the stuff now, this is a far more convincing argument than anything Priore lays out in his many strained justifications across 40 years of propaganda. My position is based on the hard evidence--what's right in front of us, from Brian's own hand--rather than forced, awkward explanations inappropriately forced into the liner notes and "secret unverified conversations" with a post-Landy Brian 20 years after the fact.

[ASIDE:] I know it's ironic I'm arguing for the America/Nature & Love/Innocence model again after I just posted the songs need not be so rigidly grouped together to be plausibly historical. My point is, those previous "three rules" are virtually non-negotiable, where I think there are other potential '66-'67 SMiLEs Brian may've settled on within that context. That said, in my heart of hearts I still personally opt for this interpretation. I hope that makes sense.[/ASIDE]

How SMiLE Evolved Over Time

I think the real riddle left for us to solve isn't so much "what foundational structure would SMiLE '67 have used," because in my opinion we already have the most likely candidate laid out, with more evidence than any alternative I've ever seen. At this point, I'm more interested in determining how things changed throughout the process. I'd like to offer my less-certain theories below for consideration:

1) I wonder if there wasn't a point in time where Side 1 began with Worms and ended with the Water section on a cross-fading single-track "Elements suite." Prayer makes a lot more sense as an opener going into Worms than Heroes, due to far greater number of shared chords, same key, theme of pilgrims coming over for religious freedom only to destroy the "church" of the Indians already here. In this context, the album begins with the narrator heading towards Hawaii while reflecting on how the American experiment began in Plymouth Rock. It comes full circle, climaxing in the destruction of nature as well as of the cutesy image we have of our history (Fire) but ending with a renewing baptism and promise for a better future. Indeed, it could be seen as the foundation of a new creed, where one must acknowledge the sins of the past and vow not to repeat them before being admitted into the coming "Aquarian" or "psychedelic" new age religion.

Then after Anderle says they need a single for BRI, this previously single-less body of music (GV aside) now must be reworked--a single "has to" come first according to convention, so Heroes becomes the opening song. Then, as it becomes apparent Prayer doesn't really work going into Heroes, we get YW as a new opener and Prayer becomes an "amen" epilogue at the end of the album. As Veggies becomes to second single, convention dictates it would come on the end of Side 1 (which is the second most frequent placement for singles in BB albums up to this point--I counted). That's assuming Brian was even still thinking in terms of the album when Veggies becomes the single. When Veggies is reneged as the single for Heroes again, it's no longer the side 1 closer and Brian returns roughly to his original plan of ending what remains of the "Americana suite" with Hawaii. The middle tracks throughout this evolution are completely uncertain and guessing their exact location is a total shot in the dark. Since middle tracks are less important than the songs meant to hook you in and sit in your mind for longer as you flip the disk, I doubt they received that much thought. Probably only at the final mixdown would Brian choose what order flows the best, which I suspect is what he did on every album.

2) GV, as the old single, was always going to be the first track of the second side (if it wasn't the last track of Side 1, as was the case in Pet Sounds). This song's placement was probably set in stone from the very beginning and never changed. GV, in my opinion, doesn't totally work with the content of either side but it goes better with Cycle of Life than Americana for sure, so I opt as the side 2 opener. No way should that freaky alien sound be butting up against the likes of CE, Heroes and Veggies. Then, SU was always going to be the last song of the entire album as soon as it was named. Vosse says as much and with the intentional nod to the band's past, it just makes sense as a "clincher" to call attention to their growth. (Otherwise it'd be like putting "A Day in the Life" anywhere on Pepper but as the finale.) So in my estimation, the placement of these songs were more locked-in and done out of "meta-contextual necessity" than the more dynamic bookends of Side 1. Even if there was no clear "second theme/movement" outside a vague "America" and "humor" thing, even if what we now call the Cycle of Life was largely just the leftover Pet Sounds songs Brian was getting out of his system early in the process, I believe they would've organically come together on Side 2 by the end because they're just so organically connected. The second movement is almost everyone's favorite part of BWPS for a reason, CIFOTM was a natural companion to SU at least as soon as that coda was written (in '66 or '71 you be the judge) and the connection between Wonderful and Look (if you include it) is so obvious Brian immediately and passionately recognized it 35 years later.  

It's undeniable that Brian didn't have a concrete outline going in for the album; he and Van were just making music that sounded good in the moment and assumed they would figure it out later. All that was holding the project together thematically was "Americans talking about America" and "the innocence America had lost" and "[Brian] still had some 'When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)' in him" according to VDP. In this context, it's not unreasonable to theorize Wonderful and SU, for example, might've started life as semi-political metaphors, IE more "Americana" than we've been set up to think. Van's famously oblique wordplay lends itself to many interpretations, including coded statements on America, and that's what he saw as the nexus of the project, remember. Therefore, Wonderful may've been intended to come after Worms at one point for all we know. The closing bars would flow nicely into that harpsichord song and the theme of spoiled natural beauty is a fitting connection. (In this context, it would've been written in such a way that it works as a standalone "love song" as well as a deeper personified abstraction of Worms' message on the ravaged Columbia.) Or CIFOTM might've been linked to Heroes if only for a time, with the idea of children growing up and surpassing their parents ("healthy wealthy and wise"). The "crying horn" leitmotif shared in these Cycle of Life core songs may well have been coincidental rather than a planned suite that either Brian or Van set out to make. Indeed, if such specific, purposeful side-long musical connections were consciously planned out from the beginning, I think we would've heard someone admit it by now. The music was recorded in a free-form manner, with lots of nebulous connections between individual pieces. That seems obvious, taking the witnesses at their word. BUT when it came time to sit down and make the final sequence, I think Brian would've likely mirrored what he did with Today, Smiley and BWPS (WC aside). What we call the Cycle of Life songs may well have just come together organically in the editing process because they're so obviously cut from the same cloth. (Whether it was intentional or subconscious.)

Thoughts on Two "New" Books

As it happens, I got my hands on The Beach Boys by John Tobler, which was in my list of the "last" 10 books I'm aware of about the band that I didn't consult yet for this deep dive. Predictably, there really isn't anything new here except a slightly revealing quote where Brian says "We were into things that just didn't have any value for vocals, tracks that weren't made for vocals, so the group couldn't do it." (Page 35 has the quote, I can't provide a link to the text this time.) Is it possible SMiLE was an album of Caroline Nos, with less room for harmonies and therefore even less room for the group to shine? With the genius campaign there was already some resentment, maybe by offering songs without room for the group to show their own talents it was a bridge too far? That's the only thought-provoking take I'm getting from this otherwise bare bones (in terms of SMiLE lore) source. On page 37 Brian reiterates that "[VDP] had written lyrics that were all [VDP] and nothing of the Beach Boys," before suddenly and bizarrely correcting himself that actually SMiLE died because he bought too much hashish. Elsewhere the author quotes Brian, presumably from a separate interview, blaming the usual group politics, drugs, fire.

The author doesn't even seem to realize that Bicycle Rider and Do You Dig Worms are part of the same song, nor the same for OMP and YAMS, or that CWTL came after the sessions concluded. You get jumbled up info like "Cabinessence was originally part of a larger song called 'Who Ran the Iron Horse'" when it's the other way around, as well as the baseless declaration that GV is the air element. Veggies is claimed to be a co-production with Paul McCartney and Smiley-Veggies is said to be "the nearest track to the original intended for SMiLE of any subsequently released." Uhh, CE says hello. And prayer. Even '71 SU and single-Heroes are more accurate than Smiley-Veggies in my opinion. There's absolutely nothing here revelatory or unique, and even as a summation of the basic events I think I or most other posters who care enough to hang out on the forums could've done a better job. I'll give some benefit of the doubt that when this book was published there probably wasn't as much information available--but as a chronicler of the band's history, presuming to write a whole book and charge money for it, your job is to be the one to suss out and present that very information. The same year this was published, David Leaf was getting Anderle on the record to give perhaps the single most important firsthand account of the SMiLE sessions that we have (its only peer is Vosse's Fusion article).


And I also obtained access to BB Silver Anniversary by John Milward, so that's two off the list, with eight books left.

The anecdote of Brian buying VDP a car is relayed in a significantly different way--instead of a cop pulling Van over as he comes to Brian's, here Brian proactively asks if Van needs anything. Van says a car, Brian calls Murry to send over a check.

Tones is mentioned as one of the songs Brian demoed for guests (wearing their own sets of headphones) at his house, among his unmarked acetates. However, it's described as "an ensemble of horns bouncing alongside a jaunty clarinet," when the only recording we have of Tones is string instruments. Because of this, as well as the fact that Tones was said to be Carl's side-project and it was recorded in March (long after Brian's salons had ended) I doubt this anecdote. I think sometimes authors write this kind of half-true "flavor text" in their accounts, where they take two accurate statements (in this case Tones existing and Brian demoing songs) but combine them in such a way to get an untrue statement. They probably figure it makes no difference, the spirit of the quote is true if not the concrete facts, only a completely obsessed fanatic with no life 40 years later would ever notice or care...but it distorts the historical record. I think it's because of things like this that we have so many contradictory quotes floating around, which in turn are half-remembered, cherry picked and thrown around carelessly in SMiLE discussions when attempting to find the truth. That's largely why so many SMiLE conversations tend to be unproductive and full of incompatible statements of "fact," to say nothing of bad faith actors poisoning the well.

The author quotes Cabinessence's lyrics incorrectly although not egregiously so--the biggest change is he omits "hello" from the second line. "Who Ran the Iron Horse" is written with brackets around the first two words, "The Grand Coulee Dam" is proceeded by "Have You Seen" also in brackets. I can't recall seeing them written that way before.

Pet Sounds is said to have been "crafted from separate movements" in the context of how SMiLE was nothing new, that it was seemingly within Brian's grasp. This is absolutely news to me--I've never seen tell nor do I hear for myself any "movements" in PS beyond the individual songs which means virtually every pop album has "movements." Barnyard is referred to as "a suite of songs" and so is elements. (The author lists them as Veggies, WC and Fire but considering this account of SMiLE has been noticeably riddled with inaccuracies I don't consider this a serious challenge to my thesis that WC was not and never was air. It's almost certainly the author parroting the then-consensus on bootlegs without doing any hard hitting research of his own.) Strangely, Dada isn't mentioned until many pages later, in connection to its place on Sunflower under the new name CCW. The author lists this fact in a paragraph at the end of the chapter that summarizes the fate of all SMiLE songs eventually released on different albums. He explicitly calls it "part of the elemental suite, the water section entitled 'I Love to Say Da-Da,'" that was "incorporated into 'Cool Water.'" (Notice again his spelling/exact wording is off from how these songs are usually written, for whatever that's worth.)

^Some might say I'm being too hard by quibbling about the use of the word "songs" with regard to the pieces in Barnyard, but "songs" implies multiple standalone tracks in a larger "movement/suite" rather than 4 small, 30-60 second "feels" making up an individual track. I think consistent terminology is important if you're publishing a book and thereby presenting yourself as a serious source of accurate information on the topic.

Brian is said to have "attempted but failed" to burn the Fire master tapes.

Surf's Up is said to have been written "during a single session" which I dont necessarily disbelieve but also don't recall reading anywhere else and this source has been "off" in its recounting of other anecdotes, as demonstrated. Plus, if SU was really the second song written, as is frequently attested especially by VDP, the famous Dennis striped shirt detail wouldn't totally line up--at least by my reckoning. (In fact, I seriously wonder if that story isn't apocryphal or misremembered by VDP considering the European tour overlaps with the SU sessions rather than preceding them, at least according to AGD's site. It's always said to have come after Dennis returned from England complaining about the crowds' reactions to their uniforms but the timeline doesn't seem to line up unless I'm missing something. Maybe they were talking to Dennis on speaker phone, played the song to him long-distance but no one thought that detail was necessary, so it was shortened in retellings for the sake of the story? Or not, someone feel free to tell me what I'm not getting here.) In any case, the Dennis anecdote at least implies a second session considering other sources say they had everything written but part of the lyric that included the phrase "Surf's Up," when he came over. It's not impossible for all of this to have happened in one night but seems unlikely, especially when Dennis didn't go to Europe until well-into the sessions, too late for SU to be the second song written.

^All that said, I do like Milward's description of the song on page 136: "...a picture of history that embraces war and peace in the context of innocence denied and redeemed." I don't think this is inaccurate but I'd add that it seems to be more of a class and culture war than a war of bullets. Maybe the war within an artist's heart, on whether they should embrace fame and fortune or stick to their roots, making music that evokes family memories and advocates for the vulnerable.

The author mentions "the recording studio was in his house now" in the same paragraph he talks about the Arab tent, implying they were simultaneous developments when one was in late '66 and the other mid-67--also they were in two different houses. Later, gym mats are also mentioned but curiously nothing of the famous sandbox and heated pool.

Tensions with the group are mentioned, as is the CE incident, with VDP here quoted as saying "frankly Mike, I don't know what this means. I can't tell you." Mike's exact response as well as his exact interrogation are left ambiguous. Milward returns to this train of thought on pages 147 & 150, emphasizing the break that was forming with "Brian's ego music" as well as the group's complicated lives and obligations necessitating sure hits. He uses the word "mutinied" to describe the Boys' reactions to Brian's new direction.

The H&V chaos is alluded to and a 12 minute version hinted at ("one version was said to be 12 minutes long..."). I never believed this rumor myself, I attribute it to David Leaf, and considering Milward's book is dated 1985 I assume he's parroting what he read without doing any investigation of his own into its veracity.  

The Oppenheim film is briefly mentioned, including the now-lost swimming pool section with Murry jumping in. Brian is said to have needed coaxing into playing for the film crew.

Anderle asking for a single and Brian leaving him outside the door are relayed here. VDP is said to have been "offended" by Brian's "less than steadfast support of the lyrics." The Seconds anecdote is mentioned but greatly simplified--Brian talking to Anderle and Marilyn about it is excised.

The Monterey anecdote is punctuated with Hendrix' "you'll never hear surf music again!"

The Capitol lawsuit and BRI launch are briefly mentioned but hardly at all next to the group fracturing and Brian prioritizing his family over his art. Carl's draft is never mentioned. Brian's drug use is mentioned but dismissed as the "official BB line" before the author "reveals" the truth--group dynamics killed SMiLE.

Smiley Smile gets an entire 5 sentences, just listing the SMiLE songs included in its tracklist and reiterating the party line, right down to the "bunt instead of a grand slam." Is SS the single most overlooked album by a major band in the history of rock n roll--perhaps even all of pop music? I think it just might be. Everyone who ever wrote about this opus is content to dismiss it as a pathetic stopgap, nothing more than a desperate salvaging of SMiLE's scraps. There's never any attempt to analyze it on its own terms, or uncover the details of its conception and recording process, beyond SMiLE's shadow. (At most, we get the "recorded in an empty pool" line and references to its quick turnaround--neither of which are specifically listed in this particular book.) It's a shame we'll never know more, because I find myself far more fascinated by Smiley than OG SMiLE at this point, if for no other reason than its poor treatment by historians. (I love underdogs and obscure media--my favorite movie has only two reviews on IMDb and one of them is mine.)

The author makes the bold, and to my sensibilities unfounded claim that "there's no reason to believe that the CE on 20/20 is at all like what Brian would have released." Once again, I completely 100% agree with the general sentiment but I think he chose the wrong song to illustrate it. In fact, exclusion of the "reconnected telephone" lyrics aside (possibly), CE is maybe the only SMiLE song that was finished according to Brian's vision sans GV. I really don't see how anything else could be added to it, I don't feel any sense of "hmm this section is uncharacteristically bare" like I do with almost everything else. I think SU, Worms, Wonderful and especially CIFOTM would be better examples to illustrate this point.

This source is serviceable enough for most non-super fans to get a basic idea of SMiLE I guess, but there's a lot of small yet noticeable differences from the consensus and it doesn't feel like that's because Milward had some special access to info. Instead it feels like if someone from the fandom (including me) were asked to write down the history of SMiLE and had to do the best they could pre-internet with only some scattered rumors, a few books on the shelf and half-remembered factoids at their disposal. I don't recommend it for anyone who'd be reading a thread like this.

[mike s]

I think Little Pad is a rewrite of DYLW - obviously a very loose one.

[zaval80]

3) that the album be "funny" in some way. Again, this may sound like a gatekeeping persnickety point to some but I'd argue that with Brian's contemporary statements, the fact that all primary sources who knew him emphasize humor as the keystone aspect of the project and Brian's spirituality (sans VDP, frustratingly) and that he scrapped an entire album of brilliant music any other artist would kill for because the comedy wasn't gelling properly makes this an important consideration. Without some attempt at humor, it isn't SMiLE it's Pet Sounds 2, which Brian very easily could've cobbled together with what he had but deliberately chose not to in favor of a goofy album of irreverent laughs. I'm not saying one has to include all, most or many of the Wrecking Crew & Psychedelic Sounds skits, or the false start in WC and "east or west indies, we always get them confused" from Worms, but something of that vein should be in there or it isn't the album Brian clearly wanted to make. (Personally I think the album would be better without most of this stuff myself, so this isn't me trying to force my "hobbyhorse" on anyone, just saying I think the evidence bears out how important it was to Brian.)

But there's very little on SMiLE as we know this cache of tracks / possible tracks that would make an impression of PS 2. Brian knew full well it was expected from the top bands to change their sound with every new album, and change sound he did. PS, IMO, creates a fairly uniform mood, it's "melanholic-to-happy", while quite a lot of SMiLE tracks or track fragments add the "creepy" dimension to make the latter collection more varied. Maybe he was under the influence of the humor concept at some time, but concepts come and go, and the already recorded tracks remain. IMO his problem was, he tried too many designs with certain key tracks like H&V, trying fragments from the other songs for it, and in the end he was just losing the bigger picture, what it all was about, how to go from A to B to C, etc. (not counting on his personal and business problems, the state of his mind, drugs, relationships within the band, etc.). I mean, if he was intending to keep the humor concept, the easiest way out for him would be to try creating the "links" of humoristic kind between the main tracks he already had in some degree of readiness... but it seems the problem for him lied in not being able to make the decision, how he wanted certain tracks to go. In the end, an album is an album, if a concept goes well with it, good... if not, that's not too bad either, because the main purpose was still an album of music. I'd say his history with GV and H&V demonstrates only too well that he wasn't able to stop at something good, if his thoughts were on making it even better, and better is always an enemy of good, and IMO the key in abandoning the project lies within his creations, not in his inability to follow any concept to its conclusion.

[zaval80]

^Some might say I'm being too hard by quibbling about the use of the word "songs" with regard to the pieces in Barnyard, but "songs" implies multiple standalone tracks in a larger "movement/suite" rather than 4 small, 30-60 second "feels" making up an individual track. I think consistent terminology is important if you're publishing a book and thereby presenting yourself as a serious source of accurate information on the topic.

IMO Milward's not far off the mark here, the second medley on "Abbey Road" is basically this, bits of "songs" thrown together (and now that it is known that the "bonus", "Her Majesty", was originally a part of that medley, it's even more fitting).

As for Tobler's, I suppose his given task was to assemble text for an "almost pictorial" book for which the publisher was known, and the subject clearly more demanding than his deadline allowed, so he did quite decently. 

[Julia]

But there's very little on SMiLE as we know this cache of tracks / possible tracks that would make an impression of PS 2. Brian knew full well it was expected from the top bands to change their sound with every new album, and change sound he did. PS, IMO, creates a fairly uniform mood, it's "melanholic-to-happy", while quite a lot of SMiLE tracks or track fragments add the "creepy" dimension to make the latter collection more varied. Maybe he was under the influence of the humor concept at some time, but concepts come and go, and the already recorded tracks remain. IMO his problem was, he tried too many designs with certain key tracks like H&V, trying fragments from the other songs for it, and in the end he was just losing the bigger picture, what it all was about, how to go from A to B to C, etc. (not counting on his personal and business problems, the state of his mind, drugs, relationships within the band, etc.). I mean, if he was intending to keep the humor concept, the easiest way out for him would be to try creating the "links" of humoristic kind between the main tracks he already had in some degree of readiness... but it seems the problem for him lied in not being able to make the decision, how he wanted certain tracks to go. In the end, an album is an album, if a concept goes well with it, good... if not, that's not too bad either, because the main purpose was still an album of music. I'd say his history with GV and H&V demonstrates only too well that he wasn't able to stop at something good, if his thoughts were on making it even better, and better is always an enemy of good, and IMO the key in abandoning the project lies within his creations, not in his inability to follow any concept to its conclusion.

In this context, when I say "Pet Sounds 2" I mean "an album of all beautiful music, no filler, none of the spoken word bits from previous albums like 'I'm Bugged at My Old Man.'" I think a lot of people wish SMiLE was this and not without reason. But I don't think that's what Brian had in mind based on a preponderance of the evidence, not the least of which he scrapped what he had to do a far more overtly humorous Smiley. I agree Brian was putting too much into the new album and lost the plot, but where I think he differs from the sensibilities of virtually everyone else is, his idea of "re-centering" and re-prioritizing what was most important (to him) meant scrapping the Wrecking Crew symphonies for laid back comedic songs. To most of us then and now, what we wanted was a worthy follow-up to Pet Sounds, with the same harmonious complexity but that wasn't Brian's number one goal. He wanted to share his spirituality, which by all accounts revolved around humor, and if that wasn't getting through he was willing to throw out some of the best music ever recorded to express it as he saw fit.

Back in the day, when I was first advocating a greater emphasis on the Psychedelic Sounds skits, the most common pushback was that those were for a separate comedy album and Smiley represents Brian merging the two ideas. I simply think those fans, as well as any primary sources speaking of SMiLE and "the comedy album" as separate entities misunderstood Brian's intentions. There seems to be a disbelief that anyone could sully the beauty of this music by shoehorning in goofy, mostly unfunny (if I'm being honest) comedy sketches or "false starts" in there but I'd say the evidence bares it out. If the spoken word parts of Heroes, Veggie Fight, George Fell and everything else in the PS bootleg were not strong enough evidence, for me the vintage edit of WC with the false start chorus clinches the deal. "Mistakes" were to be left in, off-beat sensibilities abound. I think Brian realized though this would just be off-putting because the music was so pristine, and Van's lyrics often too poetic and evocative of genuine suffering, so to keep the comedy he'd have to make the music and lyrics less "serious" to match.

Anyway, this is why I say SMiLE was a completely different beast than Pet Sounds and in the past I even said "if you don't like Smiley Smile, you wouldn't have liked SMiLE as much as you think" which rubbed some people the wrong way. (But I stand by it.)

IMO Milward's not far off the mark here, the second medley on "Abbey Road" is basically this, bits of "songs" thrown together (and now that it is known that the "bonus", "Her Majesty", was originally a part of that medley, it's even more fitting).

As for Tobler's, I suppose his given task was to assemble text for an "almost pictorial" book for which the publisher was known, and the subject clearly more demanding than his deadline allowed, so he did quite decently. 

I'm sure the book has other positive qualities and I can't pretend to know the goals or constraints of the author. I'm only reviewing each book in the context of how accurate and revelatory the info on SMiLE is.

I don't think we can assume what Brian would've done based on what a different band did two years later. AGD says he spoke to Van and other insiders who confirmed SMiLE was to be a banded 12 track album with only one song crossfading (presumably the Elements). I believe him, both because I don't think he'd stretch the truth to suit his agenda of what SMiLE ought to be (unlike, say, Priore) and because I come away with the same impression looking at the sources for myself. Maybe there might've been a spoken word bit in between a song or two, but the "one song flows into the next" of Abbey Road or BWPS is less believable to me.

I know I've used Zappa and some other artists for reference when talking about what SMiLE might've been but I've been careful to clarify this isn't "evidence" so much as "assurance" or "possibility." While these are definitely examples of what's possible and what Brian might've been thinking about, there's no proof he would've done the same thing. And while it's certainly possible, even likely, that Elements and/or Barnyard would've been 4 pieces in sequence, no repeats, let's not forget that for almost every other case with small "feels" (Who Ran the Iron Horse, Grand Coulee Dam, Home on the Range, Bicycle Rider, etc) they repeated and were fit into a verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure. Admittedly OMP seems to be the exception as well as Wonderful (I'm convinced there would've been an inserted middle 8 or part 2 ala SU). Anyway, the fact that Brian called these snippets "feels" and not "songs" or "tracks" feels significant to me as well--he wrote the little pieces/feels as they came and then fit them into songs, but the album as a whole would have still had distinct tracks rather than flowing freeform "movements." (BWPS opted for the "movement" thing to keep a live show going and what Brian did 35 years later is not proof of what he would've done in '66).