I have a Plausible Theory of Surfs Up, The Elements & SMiLE as a Whole

[Julia]

I have theories for these two tracks that I think warrant their own discussion.

I'll start with the easier one first--the elements.

It's long been my supposition that there would be "talking and laughing between cuts" during SMiLE but I've never been sure exactly how that'd pan out. I tried using lots of Nov 4 Psychedelic Sounds "highlights" between every track once and it was too much. I then realized it makes more sense to limit this to "Taxi Cabber," "Smog," the "fitness elements demos" of Nov 4 (especially "Undersea Chant" & "Breathing," including maybe the "Moaning Laughter") and the two comedic scenarios Brian tries to goad the group into on Nov 4, then rerecorded professionally with the Wrecking Crew. (These being "a funny exaggerated fight" and "falling into a instrument or audio equipment.") These are the unique scenarios Brian went out of his way to record, with the rest being his friends goofing off between takes (although Im wondering if Brian didn't instigate the "Ice Cream Man" thing now, but let's ignore it for our purposes here) or some audio experiments like echo-explosions which may've inspired the "tape explosion" of IIGS & Heroes.

ANYWAY, Im wondering now, what if every single spoken word "funny" bit here was actually element related? Think about it:

1) Taxi Cabber, where the cabbie directs Brian & Vosse to Chicago, works as establishing where Fire is supposed to take place.

2) Smog is about the importance of clean air and even George Fell could be seen as "trapped in an air-blowing instrument" which sorta fits.

3) The Nov 4 "beets and carrots" & "big bag of..." chants plus Hal Blaine fight are all veggie related, which is the most plausible candidate for Earth at least at one time.

4) Then water has the swimming chants. Also, here's the kicker, what if the Lifeboat scenario in that infamous recording was also actually at Brian's insistence? My earlier hypothesis of this tape was that Brian set all his friends up in the studio to fight or get annoyed and he was somehow hoping they'd naturally learn to get along again, either because of the "friendship vibes" between them or by playing some SMiLE music--which he does later in the recording to no avail. We hear Jules Siegel set up the liferaft game scenario in the beginning, which I thought maybe was him asserting his own idea of what he thought this meeting should be. Since everyone ignores him, and he is well-known to have been disliked, it made sense he had no authority to propose that game and I saw it as an example of why he must've annoyed people--he tries to take over from Brian. But, what if I was wrong? What if Lifeboat was Brian's idea and Jules was delegated the task of explaining it to the group, which could imply this was meant to be a water-related humor skit, with some highlights of people justifying voting someone off the raft as planned "comedy fodder" bookending the water music?

^I have no proof of this beyond intuitive speculation. It would "make sense" to break up what must surely have been otherwise discordant pieces of music with some spoken word interludes (like Heroes "You're Under Arrest!" but more). Part of Brian's frustration with the track as originally conceived (an ode to fitness and how exposure to the elements leads to good health) might explain why it took such a dramatic left-turn with Fire, which is neither fitness-y nor humorous and Brian said he used it to express negative thoughts he was feeling at the time. Fire's deadly manifestation is the odd one out against Nov 4's "eat well, breath well, swim in the pool" elements which improve people's lives. What if the original happy, exercise-elements vibe wasn't gelling because Brian's friends weren't good at improv and the Beach Boys refused to do comedy sketches among other things, like Brian realized it sounded mediocre by his standards? Or what if, had the album not taken such a massive shift around December, Brian eventually would've recorded a Wrecking Crew version of Lifeboat like he did with Veggie Fight & George Fell? (I'd argue he didn't in 1967 due to the focus on singles/b-sides only plus the album was already changing to feature as little explicit Wrecking Crew as possible.)

Now, onto Surf's Up...

Ive talked before on other threads how Im convinced the "Talking Horns" exercises represent Brian getting different overdubs on tape he had planed for the song. Some of the more traditional horn "flourishes" became the sound you hear on SU proper during "some drummed along oh to a handsome man and baton." Then, some of the "laughing horn" sounds became the part you hear on "dim chandelier awaken me to a song dissolved in the dawn." That's not in dispute, it's what's on tape in the song.

Where I take it further is I think the "moaning horns" segment would've gone in the second half, from "Dove nested towers..." to "...a broken man too tough to cry." On the boxset, this segment is the first part of the Talking Horns track, and if you use from where Brian corrects the musicians ("you're too loud") and they start that part again, it fits PERFECTLY in that segment of SU proper. Then, as I've said many times, the "wailing horns" part would go over the fade.

This isn't new, but I listened to SU stoned yesterday and it suddenly clicked...those "wailing horns" are crying, that's Brian expressing crying through the brass instruments. This is absolutely something Brian would and did do on SMiLE, including CIFOTM (whose lyrics too are reused here in the exact same part of SU) which unambiguously was meant to sound like a baby crying! (Remember the studio chatter: "that sounds more like a baby...that's our baby!") And it fits with the lyrics, for the longest time the speaker of the song was too tough to cry (and Brian gave this lyric to VDP according to Leaf's new book--it's stated directly Brian insisted on this one line) but now as the full significance of the children's song affects him he can't hold it in anymore. The moaning horn sound is his conscience/heart eating away at him, the break (from "Surf's Up" to "a children's song") in horn parts is him heeding the call, realizing the time is right to take a stand, then all the emotions of that catharsis come pouring out in the fade.

The fact that the moaning part ends exactly on "too tough to cry" to emphasize this pivotal line is what clinches it for me, especially knowing Brian wrote this one part of SU's lyrics himself according to VDP in the new book. Everything fits. It all makes perfect sense now and I'd argue there is no stronger theory with the pieces/info available to us. It sounds great too, it's just a lot of people are too attached to the song as-is to accept it any other way, so anything "new" sounds bad. I understand their position on that, but I think with time and exposure this will come to be accepted as the definitive understanding of SU. (Perhaps someone more talented at audio mixing than I might make a version so perfect it's undeniable, I think any flaws in sound from the takes I've put out are representative of my limits in this field rather than flaws in Brian's intent.)

Ladies and gentlemen, if I may be so bold, I submit that the mystery of the second movement has hereby been solved. Maybe not "note for note this was everything Brian planned" but close enough with the pieces we have. Add the string overdubs from BWPS and what else is there to do? While those specific notes may not necessarily be vintage, I don't think the string parts Brian would've done in 66 could be more "flashy" than what we have without overpowering the song. The strings, I think, were meant chiefly as pictorial-audio "flourishes" here and there to illustrate that the speaker was seeing things clearly for the first time, and that rays of light from heaven were guiding him toward epiphany. We know Brian's whole shtick at this period was bisociative arrangements meant to evoke specific imagery, and I submit this song about a disillusioned man noticing the misguided social paradigm (and/or soulless, corporate, overly-produced "for and by the rich" aspect of music), then resolving to restore the innocence we'd lost with more genuine music going forward, could not be conveyed better in any other way.

But that's just a theory...a SMiLE theory.

[BJL]

The fact that the moaning part ends exactly on "too tough to cry" to emphasize this pivotal line is what clinches it for me, especially knowing Brian wrote this one part of SU's lyrics himself according to VDP in the new book. Everything fits. It all makes perfect sense now and I'd argue there is no stronger theory with the pieces/info available to us. It sounds great too, it's just a lot of people are too attached to the song as-is to accept it any other way, so anything "new" sounds bad. I understand their position on that, but I think with time and exposure this will come to be accepted as the definitive understanding of SU. (Perhaps someone more talented at audio mixing than I might make a version so perfect it's undeniable, I think any flaws in sound from the takes I've put out are representative of my limits in this field rather than flaws in Brian's intent.)

Ladies and gentlemen, if I may be so bold, I submit that the mystery of the second movement has hereby been solved. Maybe not "note for note this was everything Brian planned" but close enough with the pieces we have. Add the string overdubs from BWPS and what else is there to do? While those specific notes may not necessarily be vintage, I don't think the string parts Brian would've done in 66 could be more "flashy" than what we have without overpowering the song. The strings, I think, were meant chiefly as pictorial-audio "flourishes" here and there to illustrate that the speaker was seeing things clearly for the first time, and that rays of light from heaven were guiding him toward epiphany. We know Brian's whole shtick at this period was bisociative arrangements meant to evoke specific imagery, and I submit this song about a disillusioned man noticing the misguided social paradigm (and/or soulless, corporate, overly-produced "for and by the rich" aspect of music), then resolving to restore the innocence we'd lost with more genuine music going forward, could not be conveyed better in any other way.

But that's just a theory...a SMiLE theory.

Do you know of an available fan mix that uses the horn parts you're describing over the solo piano track without the 70s additions? Would be curious to hear it! The way you describe this sounds incredibly compelling. I've definitely heard mixes that incorporate those horn parts but I don't know if I've ever heard a mix that sounds quite like what you're describing.

I think that with the information we have, yea, this is a great and fascinating theory. But I also think it's worth considering that what we're doing is a little like, if all we had were the basic track of Don't Talk (Put You Head on My Shoulder), but knew something more elaborate was planned before Pet Sounds was tragically scrapped. And then a bootleg came out with the Don't Talk vocal snippet, and we were like, ohhhhhh so that's what it was going to be!

But then someone else was like, no! Because Brian gave an interview in the 70s where he said it was going to be just strings! And then there was a big fight about it.

The point is, we would know a lot more than before we found the vocal snippet on one level, but on another level, we would actually know *less*, because it would trick us into thinking we could know what Brian was intending or what the song would have been, but we would be wrong...

[Zenobi]

I like a lot that idea about Surf's Up. It solves rather elegantly the mystery of the fabled 2nd movement, and it would be good to believe that no unknown 2nd movement was tragically lost forever.
I understand the quest for that sort of musical Grail: the 1st movement we all know and love is so awesome that it's only natural to yearn for more of the same.
It's right that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I think it's far more probable that if a 2nd movement of the "Lost Grail" kind had existed, we would have like half a dozen to a dozen different "takes" of that, in varying states of incompleteness.
So, it's possible that Julia nailed this.

[mike s]

I'd have to hear it - from the TH takes I can't imagine it.

[Julia]

I'd have to hear it - from the TH takes I can't imagine it.

There's versions of it in my Voynich SMiLE & Dumb Angel Romestamo fan mixes but I wanted to punch up the edits a bit anyway for my new mixes. I'll upload versions with just SU proper and these horn overdubs & with the horn overdubs, string overdubs and "Child" vocals. I finally found a version of SU online that had the CIFOTM reprise vocals without the "their song is love and the children know the way" parts I was avoiding. I'll post these hopefully soon.

Right now I made a new version that adjusts the volume levels a bit and slowed the "wailing horns" overdubs on the fade down 3% (admittedly it cuts out just a smidge before the vocals which was distracting me on subsequent listens--not sure offhand if that's all Brian recorded of that section or if that was a boxset trim).

In the interest of fairness I'll point out some potential flaws with this theory Im noticing in playing around with Surfs Up in audacity again:

1) Neither the "moaning horns" part nor the "wailing horns" part match the pitch of the sections I overdubbed them to. (I "know" this by highlighting the section, going to "change pitch" and it tells me what key its in with an option to change it to something else). However, coincidentally, the wailing horns part I use for the fade is in the same key as the "dove nested towers..." thru "...broken man too tough to cry" parts. ANYWAY, I tried transposing them to the same key as the song proper and they sounded noticeably worse, while I still think they sound good in different keys. Is this a no-go for music composition, or is this an example of a "Brianism" where he did something that shouldn't work but somehow did against the "rules" of music theory?

2) Chink in the armor--I first made a version of this edit in like 2015 and have more or less been using it ever since. I only just noticed now that I actually took the "too loud" first take of the "moaning horns" overdubs, de-amplified it, then stitched it on to make it fit over the "broken man too tough to cry" lyric. So, unless this horn exercise was longer in the unedited master tapes and the boxset shortened it, that may be a hole in this theory, I admit.

^Despite these potential hiccups I still firmly believe in the idea. Otherwise I think we need to come up with a theory for what these last two horn exercises on Talking Horns are for. (I personally dont believe Brian ever recorded anything in the studio he didn't intend to use in some way at some point--like, he might've changed his mind the next day sure, but when he got things on tape at that moment there was a plan or tentative first stages of one in his head. Every recording had a purpose and tells the story of how the music evolved in some way.)

[Julia]

Sorry to "double post" but damn...now Im still certain these pieces are (or were briefly) meant to go in SU but I admit noticing the different key signatures threw things in a tailspin.

I decided to ignore the moaning section and take the wailing section into the main body of the second movement where it matches the pitch of the backing track...and it sounds pretty good. I tried where the wailing section begins at "the laughs come hard at auld lang syne" and it works well tonally and conceptually. In this context, the horns could still be laughing as they were in the first movement but shrouded by bittersweet longings for past simplicity. Like, it's the same laughing part filtered through a nostalgic lens, remembering only a fainter echo of that memory when music was purer. Also, while the lyrics describe old happy gatherings with loved ones, the horns in this context could "pictorially represent" party horns (those things that snap out like tongues and make a muted whiney tone) or something similar. In this configuration they peter out around "a choke of grief." (Maybe where the moaning part might fit in?)

Then in the interest of trying everything at this point, I lined up the end of the wailing section with "broken man too tough to cry" so that the sync begins around "the glass was raised..." and I wasn't as impressed. I think if we try to find a spot for the wailing section that isn't the fade it's in the earlier spot I just described, perhaps with the moaning section coming in somewhere before or after in a shorter edit. It may be that the strings and horns were not meant to exist at the same parts of the song, but maybe it'd go "moaning--wailing--strings (from roughly "too tough to cry" through "childrens song" or somewhere thereabouts) and the fade can stay the same after all. (I still don't like Reilly's new lyrics but whatever.)

I know there's something to this, I just haven't got it perfect yet. I'll try a few different edits and post them to see which catches on and then maybe someone better at audio mixing than me could be inspired by the rough ideas and take it to the next level. (And hey by all means, if just hearing me talk about this makes anyone want to take their own shot at it, please do so and share the results! Would love to get another person's opinion on this, especially someone with an audio-engineering or musical background. Im not even an amateur so Im not totally sure what Im doing.)

[BJL]

I'd have to hear it - from the TH takes I can't imagine it.

There's versions of it in my Voynich SMiLE & Dumb Angel Romestamo fan mixes but I wanted to punch up the edits a bit anyway for my new mixes. I'll upload versions with just SU proper and these horn overdubs & with the horn overdubs, string overdubs and "Child" vocals. I finally found a version of SU online that had the CIFOTM reprise vocals without the "their song is love and the children know the way" parts I was avoiding. I'll post these hopefully soon.

Right now I made a new version that adjusts the volume levels a bit and slowed the "wailing horns" overdubs on the fade down 3% (admittedly it cuts out just a smidge before the vocals which was distracting me on subsequent listens--not sure offhand if that's all Brian recorded of that section or if that was a boxset trim).

In the interest of fairness I'll point out some potential flaws with this theory Im noticing in playing around with Surfs Up in audacity again:

1) Neither the "moaning horns" part nor the "wailing horns" part match the pitch of the sections I overdubbed them to. (I "know" this by highlighting the section, going to "change pitch" and it tells me what key its in with an option to change it to something else). However, coincidentally, the wailing horns part I use for the fade is in the same key as the "dove nested towers..." thru "...broken man too tough to cry" parts. ANYWAY, I tried transposing them to the same key as the song proper and they sounded noticeably worse, while I still think they sound good in different keys. Is this a no-go for music composition, or is this an example of a "Brianism" where he did something that shouldn't work but somehow did against the "rules" of music theory?

2) Chink in the armor--I first made a version of this edit in like 2015 and have more or less been using it ever since. I only just noticed now that I actually took the "too loud" first take of the "moaning horns" overdubs, de-amplified it, then stitched it on to make it fit over the "broken man too tough to cry" lyric. So, unless this horn exercise was longer in the unedited master tapes and the boxset shortened it, that may be a hole in this theory, I admit.

^Despite these potential hiccups I still firmly believe in the idea. Otherwise I think we need to come up with a theory for what these last two horn exercises on Talking Horns are for. (I personally dont believe Brian ever recorded anything in the studio he didn't intend to use in some way at some point--like, he might've changed his mind the next day sure, but when he got things on tape at that moment there was a plan or tentative first stages of one in his head. Every recording had a purpose and tells the story of how the music evolved in some way.)

I don't think the key thing means anything, it's not even a matter of being "against the rules". (Any piece of music can technically be transcribed in any key, after all, just a matter of more accidentals But whatever key your software decides those overdubs are in doesn't really tell you much when you're only looking at one piece of a larger arrangement, especially when you're dealing with chromatic harmony, which by definition isn't really in any key. All of which is to say, if it sounds good, it's fine.

Listening to your Voynich mix, I'm not entirely sold on the second movement, though it does work on some level, but the fade sounds really amazing. In its own way, as beautiful as the usual vocal tag, really. That said, Brian couldn't have intended these sections to be *literally* overdubs for part 2, because no basic track for part 2 had been recorded yet, right? The piano track you're overdubbing onto was recorded like a month later, and working on tape especially, the idea of recording an overdub before the basic track just doesn't really make sense. And in that context, I really don't think the minutia of the timing makes any difference either, whether something is a few seconds off, because that would change in the final version. I can really only see it as something Brian was doing as he tried to work out the arrangement idea in his head, in preparation for recording the final track.

[Julia]

I don't think the key thing means anything, it's not even a matter of being "against the rules". (Any piece of music can technically be transcribed in any key, after all, just a matter of more accidentals But whatever key your software decides those overdubs are in doesn't really tell you much when you're only looking at one piece of a larger arrangement, especially when you're dealing with chromatic harmony, which by definition isn't really in any key. All of which is to say, if it sounds good, it's fine.

Listening to your Voynich mix, I'm not entirely sold on the second movement, though it does work on some level, but the fade sounds really amazing. In its own way, as beautiful as the usual vocal tag, really. That said, Brian couldn't have intended these sections to be *literally* overdubs for part 2, because no basic track for part 2 had been recorded yet, right? The piano track you're overdubbing onto was recorded like a month later, and working on tape especially, the idea of recording an overdub before the basic track just doesn't really make sense. And in that context, I really don't think the minutia of the timing makes any difference either, whether something is a few seconds off, because that would change in the final version. I can really only see it as something Brian was doing as he tried to work out the arrangement idea in his head, in preparation for recording the final track.

Thanks for the feedback, that's good to know!

I totally get it, SU is ultimately a hodge podge of pieces that doesn't represent what would've been the ultimate plan. As you say, we're using Brian's guide vocal (is that the right term?) with a piano that wouldn't necessarily be part of the arrangement. It's just a matter of doing the best we can with what we have. Like you said, maybe this wasn't a matter of laying down the definitive take he'd use to overdub the second movement but trying out some ideas while he had the musicians in the studio. Like, the main thrust of the session was to get George Fell on tape, same as the Hal fight was its own dedicated session, but he figured he'd try out these weird overdub ideas while they were getting paid by the hour. Get his money's worth. That would make sense to me.

I think the timing of where the horns come in on the fade in Voynich was off in hindsight. I fixed that in some of the experiments I've been doing today. It's possible the entirety of the "moaning horn" section wouldn't have been used any more than the entirety of the laughing and playing sections were. (How many individual instances of the laughing sound do we hear, especially in the 9 minute version on some bootlegs, compared to just that one single instance used in the finished part 1 track?) This could've been like that, where he may've used a quick snippet of the moaning sound, perhaps over "a choke of grief" or something else to emphasize the lyric? Could the "moaning" have been a "choking" instead?

[BJL]

I don't think the key thing means anything, it's not even a matter of being "against the rules". (Any piece of music can technically be transcribed in any key, after all, just a matter of more accidentals But whatever key your software decides those overdubs are in doesn't really tell you much when you're only looking at one piece of a larger arrangement, especially when you're dealing with chromatic harmony, which by definition isn't really in any key. All of which is to say, if it sounds good, it's fine.

Listening to your Voynich mix, I'm not entirely sold on the second movement, though it does work on some level, but the fade sounds really amazing. In its own way, as beautiful as the usual vocal tag, really. That said, Brian couldn't have intended these sections to be *literally* overdubs for part 2, because no basic track for part 2 had been recorded yet, right? The piano track you're overdubbing onto was recorded like a month later, and working on tape especially, the idea of recording an overdub before the basic track just doesn't really make sense. And in that context, I really don't think the minutia of the timing makes any difference either, whether something is a few seconds off, because that would change in the final version. I can really only see it as something Brian was doing as he tried to work out the arrangement idea in his head, in preparation for recording the final track.

Thanks for the feedback, that's good to know!

I totally get it, SU is ultimately a hodge podge of pieces that doesn't represent what would've been the ultimate plan. As you say, we're using Brian's guide vocal (is that the right term?) with a piano that wouldn't necessarily be part of the arrangement. It's just a matter of doing the best we can with what we have. Like you said, maybe this wasn't a matter of laying down the definitive take he'd use to overdub the second movement but trying out some ideas while he had the musicians in the studio. Like, the main thrust of the session was to get George Fell on tape, same as the Hal fight was its own dedicated session, but he figured he'd try out these weird overdub ideas while they were getting paid by the hour. Get his money's worth. That would make sense to me.

I think the timing of where the horns come in on the fade in Voynich was off in hindsight. I fixed that in some of the experiments I've been doing today. It's possible the entirety of the "moaning horn" section wouldn't have been used any more than the entirety of the laughing and playing sections were. (How many individual instances of the laughing sound do we hear, especially in the 9 minute version on some bootlegs, compared to just that one single instance used in the finished part 1 track?) This could've been like that, where he may've used a quick snippet of the moaning sound, perhaps over "a choke of grief" or something else to emphasize the lyric? Could the "moaning" have been a "choking" instead?

I think all of this makes sense. On a larger level, what I think is really obvious just reading your ideas and listening to your old mix is that these experiments need to be taken seriously as a crucial part of the overall picture of the songs development, which I don't think they really have been.

[Julia]

Thank you for that, and I agree. The central thrust of my SMiLE position is that the overlooked pieces of the sessions, from Talking Horns to the Psychedelic Sounds, need a critical revaluation. In general, I think the goobers like Priore led people astray, chasing an elements suite that largely doesn't exist (not as they want it to anyway) rather than looking at what's actually in front of us and building our theories from there, with no preconceived notions of what the album ought to be, starting from the ground up. Put another way, a lot of the old guard I think had preconceived notions they refused to let go of, and forced a square peg in a round hole rather than change their positions as new evidence came to light.

Like, if Priore really was such an authority and his ideas so self-evident, he wouldn't have to lie all the time. Meanwhile, for whatever my own faults: exhaustiveness, pettiness, pedantry...I go with the evidence. Even in this thread, Im willing to bend on my theory as new evidence comes to light. That's the way we should all be, not just with SMiLE but everything.

[zavarov]

I had a similar movin about the comedy stuff on smile but i limited it to the barnyard section (with the swedish frog) and to the end,with surf's up, you're welcome and "George fell...".
I like the way the end takes his part...just because the album finished with a Smile.
If you want you can listen to it here

https://youtu.be/nwCdeF0RzSI?si=349rJXFNZU_GFcKZ

Tnx for the rest
D.