SMiLING compilation

[Jonas]

Not sure how I feel about Tree being in there, but the rest looks great!

[Jeff]

Tree occasionally sounds not so good to me, since the vocals of course aren't great.  But if you look at them as part of the effect--an anguished tree dying of pollution--the song works much better.  And in terms of the instrumental track and the words, it's very Smile-ish.

[Mr. Cohen]

I initially though I would include Little Bird, but to my ears, it doesn't use all that much of of CIFOTM, and  is otherwise fairly similar to the other Friends tracks ("guess I'll go and mow the lawn").

I always took that as being a sly reference to smoking pot, which would make it fit in with SMiLE. Paul McCartney said that any Beatles lyrics in the mid to late-60s that mentioned grass were about marijuana, and so I think it goes for this song. Of course, "Get Back" is the only Beatles song I can think of off the top of my head that mentions grass, but the point still stands. It's no coincidence that Carl starts singing about what a beautiful day it is afterwards.

[Roger Ryan]

I initially though I would include Little Bird, but to my ears, it doesn't use all that much of of CIFOTM, and  is otherwise fairly similar to the other Friends tracks ("guess I'll go and mow the lawn").

I always took that as being a sly reference to smoking pot, which would make it fit in with SMiLE. Paul McCartney said that any Beatles lyrics in the mid to late-60s that mentioned grass were about marijuana, and so I think it goes for this song. Of course, "Get Back" is the only Beatles song I can think of off the top of my head that mentions grass, but the point still stands. It's no coincidence that Carl starts singing about what a beautiful day it is afterwards.

The "Get Back" lyric is so blatant I never doubted that McCartney was singing about pot. After all, California is not known for it's lawns! I don't think any of the Beatles drug references were sly; they were almost all straightforward, from "had myself a smoke and went into a dream" to "trying to make a dovetail joint".

"Guess I'll go and mow the lawn" on the other hand is so oblique that I find it hard to see this as a drug reference at all. Taking Brian's lead of writing songs about daily experiences, I think Dennis is simply describing a typical suburban day. Now the title "Cabin Essence" (Cannabis) is something else entirely...

[Jeff]

Didn't the drug references often need to be oblique to make it past the eyes and ears of the record company?  I could imagine Kalinich, being a poet, and Dennis, being Dennis, coming up with something like that.

[Bill Tobelman]

The idea of oblique references in SMiLE inspired the first part of an article that was presented in ESQ a few months ago.

It can be found here for those interested.
http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/

[Roger Ryan]

Didn't the drug references often need to be oblique to make it past the eyes and ears of the record company?

Yes and no. The Beatles' "Dr. Robert" is obviously a song about a drug dealer (and a positive one at that) and was released by Capitol in '66 without much consternation. "I get high with a little help from my friends" is another blatant line. The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" and "I'm Waiting For The Man" were both released by a major label in '67 (although, to be fair, both feature a fairly negative slant on drug addiction). Getting these songs played on the radio was more of a problem.

I'm not saying that there aren't any drug references in the Beach Boys lyrics from the mid-to-late 60s, but if they really wanted to slip in a line about potsmoking, they wouldn't have had to resort to something as arcane as "mow the lawn" in my opinion. After all, later that year Dennis was recording himself having sex with a hooker and putting it on an album!