BWPS: How much input did Brian have?

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Isn't it easier just to listen to the music?

Hell yeah.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Sometimes just listening to the music is the hardest thing to do, actually.

[buddhahat]

 In the meantime, watch what happens when you play it for people who don't know the backstory - like your children.    Do they bop along to it or tune out?  

My 10 month old son seems to light up when I put this on. He starts jumping up and down to H&V and really starts grinnning and bouncing during the Who Ran the Iron Horse bit of Cabinessence - he even slaps the speaker like a bongo!

I believe too that this recording will stand the test of time and show up increasingly on dubious best of lists. It's already in the book '1000 albums you should hear before you die' btw. Somebody posted asking if it was in any top 100 lists so thought this might be worth mentioning.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Gimme The Beach Boys
And free my soul
I wanna get lost
In your rock & roll
And drift away... 

[Bicyclerider]

I would echo Cam's request for confirmation or more information about there being a voting down of the movement version of Smile.  Certainly Al and Mike would recollect such a crucial point in Smile's genesis/destruction, and yet they've never mentioned it in interviews.  Perhaps someone could ask them?  Peter, do you have a source for this vote or is this supposition based on what Brian has said about originally conceiving three movements?  Which is fine if that's what it is.

I think the notion that Carl and the boys could finish the 12 tracks on their own after "taking control" of Smile after a vote is mistaken - Carl and the boys couldn't even finish it in 1972 when they had a lot of money riding on their finishing it.  They were nowhere near that point musically in 1967.

[JRauch]

One more thing:

Today I was sent a lengthy essay "MacAndrew" once wrote about the meaning of Hawaii in SMiLE. Reading it again, it reminded me how much thought and care was put into SMiLE, both in 1966/67 and 2003/04:

The whole spiritual-rebirth-theme that Van Dyke is expressing with "In Blue Hawaii"; the hawaiian queen Lili'uokalani, mentioned in "On A Holiday", who once wrote a song which lyrics amazingly resemble "Wonderful"; the idea of the pirates as synonym for the bootlegers; mentioning a "wholly holy cow" as a mirror/yang to Mrs O'Learys Cow etc etc etc.....

I think it's almost an insult to say that Brian, Van Dyke and Darian just randomly put some songs together for a flowing live-show.

[Compost]

Good point, JR - there's an authenticity to this album that is not accidental.  The lyrical connotation and denotation is too well-crafted (as you've noted), and the music's flow is never jarring to these ears.  It sustains common motifs through each movement, e.g., reflection/discovery, joy/lamentation, comedy/tragedy, and is treated in a tasteful manner (at the very least, "tasteful" in a relative sense to this day and age, for the keyboard naysayers).  All said and done, the album works and one would be hard-pressed to find a chink in its collective aesthetic.

[Peter Reum]

The family dynamics centered around the family business and Brian wanting to take the BBs into fm album rock, which he correctly realized was the next thing to happen in radio. The BBs were stuck in am singles mode. Brian went along out of family duty, feeling he was no longer trusted. After the session on 12/6/66, they met on 12/7 or 12/8, with the BBs rejecting Brian's movement concept for a more conservative, 12 track conventional lp concept. This was submitted to Capitol on 12/10/66, and Smile as a rock opera or cantata was dead.

Brian began working on a 12 track album, when he got told he had to do a single. The rest of the Era we call Smile was essentially a search for that single. Brian's mental state, already fragile, deteriorated rapidly after 12/10/66. Carl took that list to Capitol, but he was not a rebel. His suggestion was probably the 12 track album. But make no mistake about it, Brian stopped having complete control after that meeting in December 1966, and never was the same. He was deeply addicted to amphetamines by January 1967.

[Jeff Mason]

Does this comment make anyone else wish even more we had those Inside Pop reels....?

12/15 would be an interesting date to eavesdrop in on if what Peter is saying is true.

[Cam Mott]

What was his intention for all those fades for all those titles recorded after PS but before 12/7-8/66 I wonder?

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

So then, really, by the time Derek Taylor wrote that piece saying SMiLE was "scrapped", it'd really been dead for months, really. Interesting.

Gimme The Beach Boys
And free my soul
I wanna get lost
In your rock & roll
And drift away...

Ha! Ya know for the longest time I thought Dobie Gray WAS singing "Beach Boys" as opposed to  "Beat Boys".

[Jeff Mason]

What was his intention for all those fades for all those titles recorded after PS but before 12/7-8/66 I wonder?

What fades do we know are Brian Wilson mono mixed-fades and which are acetates-in-progress (i.e. faded for convenience possibly) or Mark Linett-mixed fades?  It was my understanding that the only real BW mono mix of any Smile track we have was for H&V as released on the twofer.

[Chris Brown]

What was his intention for all those fades for all those titles recorded after PS but before 12/7-8/66 I wonder?

Judging by the session logs, the songs that Brian may have recorded fades for before 12/7 or 12/8 would be Cabinessence, Child, Worms, Holidays and Wind Chimes.  Heroes probably didn't have a fade yet, the end of Wonderful isn't really a fade, and the ends of other songs could have been intended for crossfades.  Maybe he intended crossfades for some of the other titles like Worms and Holidays also, and maybe Cabinessence was meant to end one of the movements with a fade out.  Or it might even be as simple as Brian didn't know which songs were going to end up closing out movements, so he recorded fades for a bunch of them just in case.  Always more questions it seems...although I totally believe what Peter has been saying.  Makes a lot of sense to me.

[Old Rake]

What was his intention for all those fades for all those titles recorded after PS but before 12/7-8/66 I wonder?

What fades do we know are Brian Wilson mono mixed-fades and which are acetates-in-progress (i.e. faded for convenience possibly) or Mark Linett-mixed fades?  It was my understanding that the only real BW mono mix of any Smile track we have was for H&V as released on the twofer.

They are mostly (as with Barnyard, Worms, Vegetables, etc) Brian Wilson-created fades.

And Cam, just because Peter is talking suite does NOT mean that he means a suite that is identical to the one released. Do the songs necessarily have to run together to be a "suite?" They could have simply been songs grouped into themes -- much like the suites on "After Bathing At Baxters" or something. I think suite or no suite, the fades were meant to be fades.

THERE IS LITERALLY NO WAY that BWPS is an identical rendering of EXACTLY how Smile would have gone in 1966. I think if anybody is clinging to that idea, and I'm not saying anybody is, that they have to let it go.

[al]

And, to restate the obvious, we know that Brian would go home after the studio with a collection of acetates and was continually playing them in a different order. By the time he stopped work it is by no means likely he had any sort of finished order, merely a set of tracks, some of which had an obvious thematic and musical link that could be placed together - even if some of the order of parts within songs themselves still needed to be worked out - and others which really were of themselves.

Surely part of the recoginised problem was that Brian had lost the will and the facility to finish what he had started, hence the decision to stop.

37 years later he puts the pieces together in an order that works. There could have been many ways in which it would have differed back in 67 - in fact in any given week there would probably have been at least 7 ways it could be put together.

It is what it is, the only version we are ever going to have that can claim to have been assembled by the people that wrote it, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, Darian and pro-tunes!

It's always the same, you solve a mystery and people debate what sort of mystery it could be if someone has actually managed to solve it, and is it the right answer anyway. They want their mystery back!

There is a monster in Loch Ness that could do with photographing anyone has the time.....

[Ron]

Or, like King said to end the Gunslinger, the real story is in the journey, not the destination.  Once the album's done and released, it lost a little magic and of course never lived up to the 40 years it sat on a shelf. 

[Cam Mott]

They are mostly (as with Barnyard, Worms, Vegetables, etc) Brian Wilson-created fades.

And Cam, just because Peter is talking suite does NOT mean that he means a suite that is identical to the one released. Do the songs necessarily have to run together to be a "suite?" They could have simply been songs grouped into themes -- much like the suites on "After Bathing At Baxters" or something. I think suite or no suite, the fades were meant to be fades.

Jon, we are talking about what Brian said which was "Yeah, I wanted to do a long piece with 3 movements like the Rhapsody in Blue that would take up an album."  [http://vandykeparks.com/miscfiles/opensky.html].  So 3 movements of individual tracks with fades is not inconsistent with a 12 track album, I guess since virtually anything could be called a movement, but is that consistent with a long piece like RIB?  Does RIB really have 3 movements, are there fades? I'm just wondering what other evidence there is besides this one mention by Brian.

I'm also interested in the evidence for this meeting; I noticed it has gone from conjecture to fact. 

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Rhaphsody in Blue does not have multiple movements.  It's a concerto in one movement, with a continuous score.

[Ron]

Brian's such a mess sometimes, you can't ever figure out what he's saying.... on one hand he said Rhapsody in Blue has 3 movements, but if you look at it again, he doesn't necessarily mean that... he could have just meant he wanted something that had similar themeatic repetition like rhapsody in blue, and his would be a long piece with 3 movements that take up an album. 

[buddhahat]

It is what it is, the only version we are ever going to have that can claim to have been assembled by the people that wrote it, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, Darian and pro-tunes!

It's always the same, you solve a mystery and people debate what sort of mystery it could be if someone has actually managed to solve it, and is it the right answer anyway. They want their mystery back!

I think these are very good points. What's amazing (perhaps unique) about Smile is that the 'the album that might have been' is different for every listener to the incomplete 66/67 sessions. It's a fantasy album and as such is a very personal experience for fans of the sessions. Therefore, putting a lid on Smile, which Brian and VDP have every right to do, threatens the existence of this fantasy 67 Smile and will cause such a debate - Is BWPS the finished Smile?

I posted earlier that I have problems with people saying Smile is finished and that this is not what Brian et al set out to do, but as somebody's pointed out, Brian is saying they've finished Smile with BWPS. I think that's ok. I believe it is a conclusion to Smile - what further developments could there be regarding the original composers organising and adding to the Smile material? Compositionally, they will do no more with this. Even if they had some assistance, you can't deny their right to alter and 'finish' their own work. Now, like it or not, BWPS is part of the story of Smile - but it doesn't negate the possibilities of what a Smile 67 may have been. That amazing music still exists in a parallel universe. Evidence may arise that gives a clearer picture of Brian and Van Dyke's intentions, the box set may be released, but that won't minimise the achievements of BWPS imo.

So I think Smile 67, Smile 72 and Smile 04 can all exist without cancelling each other out. I think BWPS is stunning. I put it on after a break recently (Some of the doubts raised on this board had given me concerns about it's 'autheticity' and diluted my obsession somewhat) and it took me by surprise just how amazing this is - not just the old stuff but the new stuff too, like the pirate rap that Old Rake expressed appreciation for. And as J Rauch commented, there is a lot of thought behind the new lyrics and concepts that give it credibility above and beyond it just being a presentation of the original music.

[Jeff Mason]

I'm also interested in the evidence for this meeting; I noticed it has gone from conjecture to fact. 

Cam, until you can say you have unreleased interviews with every band member and many inner circle folks as well, you won't have the right to call this sort of thing "conjecture".  "Conjecture" means that you jump from known to unknown by a leap of logic or intuition.  You are filling in the gaps.  Peter is reporting his understanding from discussions with the principals who have told him what they wouldn't have told a newspaper reporter.  Just because he doesn't cite a book we all would have read (and had we read it the debate wouldn't have existed) doesn't mean that his view is conjecture.  It just doesn't have evidence we have access to.  BUT it is the only explanation I have seen that fits the evidence we DO have access to.  No explanation of the known facts has ever satisfied me as much as this has.  Certainly "they all loved Smile and hated to see Brian junk it" never came close to satisfying me.

[Andrew G. Doe]

OK, time to stop my usual pussyfooting.

The person I asked about how Smile - the original, 1966 version, just to make this totally clear -  was going to be structured was Van Dyke Parks, and his reply was that it was going to be a single disc of banded (i.e seperate) tracks with no segues and crossfades between them. He then added that the only crossfades and/or segues were going to be within one track, and that track was "The Elements".  He also denied that "H&V" was in any way concerned with Viet Nam.

This exchange took place five, six years ago.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Kittyfooting ? 

I think the filter needs tweaking.

[Andrew G. Doe]

I'm also interested in the evidence for this meeting; I noticed it has gone from conjecture to fact. 

I think the fact that Peter is prepared to stand up here, in public, and say what he has, removes much of the conjecture. Speaking as one of considerably lesser eminence in this particular field, I'm very careful about what I state as fact as, legal considerations aside, my ego doesn't take kindly to others pointing and shouting "wrong !".

[Cam Mott]

Cam, until you can say you have unreleased interviews with every band member and many inner circle folks as well, you won't have the right to call this sort of thing "conjecture". 

Peter called it conjecture in his first post: "I think that what happened is that the Boys voted Brian down on the movements concept...".  Maybe speculation or supposition would be a better word?

The later posts state it as fact which implies evidence rather than thought process; I'm just wondering which it is.

Certainly "they all loved Smile and hated to see Brian junk it" never came close to satisfying me.

To each his own they say.