Smile Playing Order: a detail I don't hear discussed much (67' vinyl LP length)

[Chris Brown]

According to many sources (books, web, interviews...), GV never intended to be part of SMiLE; it was a link between Pet Sounds and SMiLE, it was Brian's Rhapsody in blue; and once again according to many informations, Capitol put the pressure to have GV on SMiLE, because of the lack of hits in the project, as they did with 'Sloop John B' on Pet Sounds. And I never included GV in my SMiLE mixes, doens't make sense to me.

The fact that Capital plastered "Good Vibrations" on the cover slicks certainly lends credence to that theory.  Why wouldn't Capital want such a smash hit on the album?  But whether Brian wanted it on there, that's a tougher question. 

Given that GV was started during Pet Sounds and completed before Smile really took off, it obviously wasn't a part of the Smile concept initially.  On the other hand, the modular nature of GV fits perfectly on Smile, and it was clearly the impetus for creating a whole record that way in the first place.  And if you put credence in Brian's sequencing for BWPS (I don't personally), you could certainly make the argument that Brian wanted it there all along.

I myself don't feel that Good Vibrations really belongs on Smile, but it doesn't feel incredibly out of place either.  As was discussed before, its inclusion on Smiley feels far more out of place.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Totally agree with your assessment, Chris.

The part of "Good Vibrations" that makes it hard for me to include on SMiLE is the lyrics. It's a love song, it's a boy meets girl song (Mike would Love me for that ). But seriously, lyrically, I don't know where it belongs; maybe near "Wind Chimes"?  When Carl sings, "Though it's hard I try not to look at my wind chimes" and "Now and then a tear rolls off my cheek", is he singing about the girl in 'Good Vibrations"? Come to think of it, weren't "Good Vibrators" and "Wind Chimes" recorded pretty close together?

[BiG GRiN]

I'm agree with you Sheriff about the lyrics; but I'm not sure the lyrics Mike Love wrote was the original lyrics, (according to what I read through the years), I mean, Brian started to work on GV with Tony Asher, and VD Parks (cello), and the original idea has always been  the story of the dogs (Brian and his Mom); and Mike came with the hook about girls and boys, so if Brian had keep working with Tony Asher and maybe VD Parks, GV could have been more strange and weird than the definitive version, and the music more in connexion with the lyrics.
Some people even talked about an instrumental version (the Rhapsody In Blue connexion).

[Sheriff John Stone]

Good thought, BiG GRiN. It would've been interesting to hear what a Van Dyke Parks lyric would've sounded like.

You know, a good song to follow "Good Vibrations" would've been "You Are My Sunshine" with the cello and even the lyric. Ooh, gotta revisit the SMiLE mix again...

[Bill Tobelman]

"Good Vibrations" SHOULD be on SMiLE as it was part of the LSD trip that inspired SMiLE.

That trip pointed to a new direction for Brian & the Beach Boys and "Good Vibrations" was part of that.

My guess is that the trip started out as an exploration of the "mystery" (Bri's acid flashback mystery/riddle) and the positive outcome of the search gave him the basic "Dumb Angel" concept after which he tackled the "next single" question which gave him the vision for the fully produced version of "Good Vibrations."

That's why BWPS ends with "GV."

[The Song Of The Grange]

My current mix of Smile has Wind Chimes coming after Good Vibrations.  Every once in awhile I see people say that Good Vibrations was supposed to be the Air section.  I don't buy into it (there is so much mis-information with the Smile myth), but GV and Wind Chimes feel related.  As do Look and Holidays.  These four were all recorded in the early Smile project.  Look sounds like an experiment on themes from the Good Vibrations sessions.  The extended end of Wind Chimes has a GV feel too.

My current solution to the side A/side B challenge is to split the Elements over the end of side A and the beginning of  side B with Good Vibes stuck in the middle.  So it would go Americana section, then Elements: Mrs. O'Leary's Cow/Vega-Tables (flip the record over) Good Vibrations/Wind Chimes/Holidays, then Childhood section.  I have been treating Holidays as the water section.  To me Da Da is too far removed to be part of the original Smile concept (despite the All Day demo).

[LostArt]

Look sounds like an experiment on themes from the Good Vibrations sessions.

It does, but didn't Brian take that bit from Look and put it into GV (that half time part of GV just before the tag, where the vocals do that ascending and descending scale thing).  Earlier incarnations of GV don't include that part.  Does anyone know the recording date for that section of Good Vibrations?  If he did cut that part out of Look for GV, was any work done on Look after that?

[The Song Of The Grange]

Look sounds like an experiment on themes from the Good Vibrations sessions.

It does, but didn't Brian take that bit from Look and put it into GV (that half time part of GV just before the tag, where the vocals do that ascending and descending scale thing).  Earlier incarnations of GV don't include that part.  Does anyone know the recording date for that section of Good Vibrations?  If he did cut that part out of Look for GV, was any work done on Look after that?

LostArt, I have considered this same thing.  The recording of Look/I Ran/Untitled Song does overlap with GV.  I guess the real question regarding this is knowing the date in which the ending vocal scale of GV was recorded.

[Bicyclerider]

According to many sources (books, web, interviews...), GV never intended to be part of SMiLE; it was a link between Pet Sounds and SMiLE, it was Brian's Rhapsody in blue; and once again according to many informations, Capitol put the pressure to have GV on SMiLE, because of the lack of hits in the project, as they did with 'Sloop John B' on Pet Sounds. And I never included GV in my SMiLE mixes, doens't make sense to me.

Share some of these sources with us - hopefully first hand sources.  There is no evidence Capitol forced Brian to put Sloop John B on Pet Sounds - it was on an early track list of PS that Brian made before the album was even named Pet Sounds.  This is a classic example of "retropectoscope" history - because many people feel the cut doesn't fit in with the other tracks lyrically, Capitol must have "forced" Brian into putting it on the album, ruining his artistic vision.

David Leaf  has fostered some of these notions when he was full bore into the anti Brian conspiracy theories - Mike was against Brian, the other Beach Boys didn't believe in Brian, Capitol didn't believe in Brian, Landy was evil (well OK, I'll give him that one) if they had all just let him do whatever he wanted then he wanted to, there would be world peace and Smile would have hit number 1 in 1967 and everything else.  That one sided perspective has given birth to all sorts of false impressions.

the only first hand quote I remember about Good Vibrations being forced to be on an album was from the Anderle interview with Paul Williams, and I recall if you look at the quote in context it's actually Smiley Smile he's talking about, not Smile.  And wouldn't we all agree that GV doesn't "fit" on Smiley with the lowkey minimalist production of that album?  It fits just fine on Smile IMO.

[Julia]

One of my biggest problems with the 2004 Smile is that it literally couldn't fit on one disc of vinyl.  Plus the 3 movement structure wouldn't have worked to well in the side A/side B format. 2004 release of Smile is 46.8 minutes—about 2 minutes too long for an LP in 1967.  From this we can conclude that the 2004 version couldn’t have been released in this order and content in 1967.  Thus another of my nagging obsessions: what do I cut from the 2004 version and what do a rearrange to get as close as I can to Smile Junkie Nirvana--the experience of hearing something very close the real deal.  It seems easy enough to trim 2 minutes right?  But what about the great 2004 sequencing?  Would you just split the Childhood section in half and maybe lead off side two with Surf's Up (what "God Only Knows" did for Pet Sounds"?  I guess I could live with that.  But then there is the matter of the 1960's era evidence that Surf's Up was going to be the closing track.  2004 release is no help because the vinyl version was issued as a double LP.  There is no evidence that a 67' Smile was planned as such--though it would have been a great idea if I had a time machine and also ruled the world.

I think the longterm reception to BWPS would've been a lot stronger if they'd just framed it as "Brian reexamined this long abandoned material from his past" / "Brian revisiting SMiLE with fresh eyes and seeing how it makes sense to him now" / "SMiLE with a new twist" instead of "we finished SMiLE!" That just invited endless comparisons, debates over its authenticity to what was going on in the '60s, the desire to sort out what's definitive (the "finished" work or the unfinished but much more interesting fragments). It invited criticisms like yours to how BWPS couldn't have been vintage, and sounds flawed compared to nearly any plausible sequence built around 2-sides, that wouldn't be there if not for the bold "Brian finally completed SMiLE" marketing push. I'm not sure how much of this was due to actual interviews or just people assuming, but I saw a lot of people at the turn of the 00s-10s who thought "Brian finally spilled the beans!" / "this was the plan all along!" and it rubbed me the wrong way. Not that there's any problem whatsoever if someone honestly prefers the BWPS template, evidently the man himself does too and good for him, but it's objectively NOT what he ever would've done in '66-'67 and that's an important historical fact I don't think should get lost in the shuffle. It may seem pedantic, and it's true there was no unshakeable master plan in the '60s, but there were clear "trains of thought" as well as plausible guesswork which should remain part of the conversation at least when discussing the historical album. That's all I've ever been trying to communicate with my insistence that 60s SMiLE and BWPS are separate entities, same as with Smiley.

But the allure of "SMiLE has finally been finished after 37 years!!! Brian solved the puzzle with a little help from his TRUE band/family!!!" was too much for Melinda and the marketing department to pass up, even if its misleads people in the process. That's what bothers me.

[BJL]

But the allure of "SMiLE has finally been finished after 37 years!!! Brian solved the puzzle with a little help from his TRUE band/family!!!" was too much for Melinda and the marketing department to pass up, even if its misleads people in the process. That's what bothers me.

I totally get what you're saying, and I agree about some of these unintended consequences of how BWPS was presented to the world. But I also think that it had to be presented this way, because I think this is how Brian understood - and probably had to understand, or inevitably was going to understand - what he was doing. Which was finishing Smile. Not revisiting it, not taking another stab at it, not exploring, but finishing it. So that he could get the weight of it off his chest. Brian put the material together in the way that made since in 2004 with the people he was working with in 2004 because what the hell else could he have done, and they marketed it with a narrative of completion because it was true to the emotional reality of the situation at the time.

[Julia]

I totally get what you're saying, and I agree about some of these unintended consequences of how BWPS was presented to the world. But I also think that it had to be presented this way, because I think this is how Brian understood - and probably had to understand, or inevitably was going to understand - what he was doing. Which was finishing Smile. Not revisiting it, not taking another stab at it, not exploring, but finishing it. So that he could get the weight of it off his chest. Brian put the material together in the way that made since in 2004 with the people he was working with in 2004 because what the hell else could he have done, and they marketed it with a narrative of completion because it was true to the emotional reality of the situation at the time.

There's no doubt about it--Brian considered BWPS his own final word on the project. As I now understand it, he even insisted that TSS follow its format, to the great detriment of those song's native structures and intention. That's a key source of my admitted slight resentment of BWPS' legacy sometimes. Its influence extended backwards into the historical record, retroactively justifying some out-there fan theories and coloring how future generations are/will be introduced to this material for the first time. (They're going to go to the official release, more than likely think "wow, there's great stuff here but the songs sound kinda half-baked and jittery, plus there's all these awkward 30-second snippets breaking up the flow" and write it off as a lesser work. "No wonder it wasn't released, it's so far from being finished!") Brian is my musical hero, my favorite celebrity, an inspiration, I all but consider SMiLE the symphonic gospel of God...but I disagree with him on how it should have been formatted. I have the integrity, or perhaps the audacity, to argue with the man himself (albeit a very different one than who made the material).

I don't think it's insignificant that even the liner notes of BWPS and Diane Rovell admit that it's not a faithful reproduction of exactly what the old album would've been. But, it's not like BWPS got it so wrong either.

As far as sequences go, for what it's worth, I find myself actually closer to BWPS than I used to be. I think the team behind it did a good job sorting out most of the natural groupings within the available material. Americana stuff needs no introduction. If one digs deeper at the non-Priore curated sources, as I now have, VDP admits childhood innocence and anxiety of growing up was still part of Brian's muse at the time, which clearly gave rise to Wonderful, I Ran, Surf, CIFOTM (VDP singles this one out as trying to give Brian a more sophistocated "When I Grow Up.").

Then Elements as a single crossfading track was clearly abandoned, which leaves Fire alone, Veggies may've been Earth but became a standalone single in '67, WC sort of predated the SMiLE creative direction and was a spur of the moment inspiration kinda grandfathered in like GV, Dada was a feel that couldn't find a home and might've been anything at various points. These four tracks have an argument for going on either side, while the same is not true for the Americana and "Cycle of Life" songs--they belong where they are or nowhere.

So it makes logical sense, if you're gonna insist on 3 "movements" and an "elements suite" (because that's what everyone's expecting after hearing about it and all the speculation over decades), to have Elements as the bridge between the societal-historical themes against the individual-aging stuff. Elements are the natural world, greater forces than any man/child, but every primary source attests to the physical fitness component. It makes sense for it to the the keystone holding the two more distinct movements together. On that front, clearly I believe Fire/Workshop(?)/Veggies belong closer to the Americana, or on the same side of a vinyl. Then Dada/Chimes more naturally fits as what leads into Cycle of Life, be-it as the final pieces of a second movement, or first tracks on a second side.

Frankly, I think BWPS was almost there, they almost tied it together brilliantly, except they put Fire (always "part 1" in '66) as the third element rather than first, and pushing the others back a place. Then Elements should've been movement 2, while the entire "symphony" concludes with Surf's Up (or GV as an "encore" or epilogue after the true ending). Those two small but significant changes would've been the definitive final word on the material as far as I'm concerned. All you'd have to do to get it perfect is restore the fades and run the BWPS sheet music through an AI "'66 Beach Boys & Wrecking Crew" sound-font replicator. But I think Brian (or, cynically, Darian) goofed that up and the music suffers noticeably for it. The problem is, nobody felt like they could question the "genius" even if it would've improved the final product--just like George Lucas when he made the prequels. (Darian admits this in interviews, how Brian just intuitively put the pieces together and "9 times of out ten he gets it right." This implies even the third-man of the team knew there were some missteps, but didn't think it was his place to speak up.) I'll die on this hill.

My current mix of Smile has Wind Chimes coming after Good Vibrations.  Every once in awhile I see people say that Good Vibrations was supposed to be the Air section.  I don't buy into it (there is so much mis-information with the Smile myth), but GV and Wind Chimes feel related.  As do Look and Holidays.  These four were all recorded in the early Smile project.  Look sounds like an experiment on themes from the Good Vibrations sessions.  The extended end of Wind Chimes has a GV feel too.

My current solution to the side A/side B challenge is to split the Elements over the end of side A and the beginning of  side B with Good Vibes stuck in the middle.  So it would go Americana section, then Elements: Mrs. O'Leary's Cow/Vega-Tables (flip the record over) Good Vibrations/Wind Chimes/Holidays, then Childhood section.  I have been treating Holidays as the water section.  To me Da Da is too far removed to be part of the original Smile concept (despite the All Day demo).

^This guy gets it. It's so vindicating yet frustrating to look through these old SMiLE threads and see other people got it 20 years ago