The SMiLE Timeline

[A Million Units In Jan!]

One of the things that I tend to foget about when regarding SMiLE is the time frame in which this all took place. Recording in earnest stated the beginning of October (there were 4 sessions total for SMiLE related songs in Aug. and Sept.) and lasted through the end of January. There were other sessions in Feb thru the middle of May, but those were for only 2 1/2 songs-H&V and Vegetables, with ILTSDD representing the 1/2 song, because I don't think it was finished.

Anyway, my point is that the majority of the stories we've heard, read, the music we've grown to love, all happened in a very short period of time;beginning of Oct-end of January. That's a small period of time for all of these things to happen. We have this idea in our head of everything being spread out over months and months, but it was all really a whirlwind period.

Which brings me to another point; does anybody know at what point Michael Vosse left the scene? Or for that matter David Anderle? If you read 'Goodbye Surfing', it gives this impression of things happening over a long period of time, when they really didn't.  Were those guys told to take a hike around the beginning of the year? Or was it in the spring? Can you imagine what it would have been like for them, to suddenly come into Brian's world at that time, be involved in all of these different things, hear all this mind blowing music, feel like your part of this huge creative process-and then pretty much one day you're more or less told you aren't wanted? You can understand why they still, to this day, feel so strongly about it. And you could also understand why maybe they'd be a little bit bitter about the whole deal, but I've never heard them put Brian down too much.

So when you think about not just the album, but all of the interviews, the things like Brother Records that were getting set up, the lawsuit, dealing with the other guys in terms of explaining  the music-you can see where that could wear on a guy, especially in such a short period of time. It's also interesting when you see the dates on paper, and you can see the point where it looked like Brian pretty much started to cool out on the music. Those last few months of 1966 were the last months for a long time that Brian Wilson really put everything he had into an album.

[Bicyclerider]

The original date planned for release was before Christmas, then January 15th, so you can see why most of the activity was August (besides GV, Wind Chimes, I Ran/Look,  and Wonderful) through the first two weeks of January.  Besides the frenetic activity on the Heroes single, slated for release Jan 13th, the only other work Brian did in January was the Wonderful remake (Jan. 9th, no doubt for the Bside of the upcoming single) and then the strange Surf's Up session Jan 23rd that has been lost to time.  So except for the Surf's Up session (why then?) Brian stopped working on the "album" by the end of December and was just working on the single.  Not coincidentally it seems Van Dyke had left in December after the Cabinessence lyric blow out, and his song writing collaboration with Brian was finished, notwithstanding his helping him out on some Heroes sessions as a contract player.

So it was five months of working on the album, only to abandon it to concentrate on the single and never to return to the album in a major way, unless you count the Dada sessions as an attempt to finish The Elements.

[Cam Mott]

Which brings me to another point; does anybody know at what point Michael Vosse left the scene? Or for that matter David Anderle?

Michael Vosse was still around on Feb 18th but says he was working for Monterey Pop Fest by March, so maybe late Feb or early March.

I think David Anderle must have quit in the last half of April or very early May.

[The Song Of The Grange]

I think this is an excellent point to consider.  Especially when some folks try to put forth the notion that it was drugs and spacey thinking and laziness that killed Smile.  The fact is that it was a frantic pace of work.  Much ground breaking work done in a short span.  I do consider Smile dead by the end of January 67, February at the very latest.  I think after that point he was working under an altered concept for an album, most likely more along the lines of what Smiley Smile became.  It appears that the most challenging material was ruled out some time around this point.