The initial structure of Heroes and Villains

[Cam Mott]

I feel like this is selective reasoning.  

There were Part 2s for H&V (#57020) and Part 3 and Part 4. We agree.

There were several parts for "H&V-Part II" (#57045) also but a second part of an "H&V" (57020) master is not the same thing as a "H&V-Part II" (57045) master.

One is a master take for a master and the other is a master made from many master takes.

If H&V Part II was a reboot of side one, what was Part I? Why "part II", why not just stay with H&V as the title with a different master number (as he had done before December 19) if it was just intended to be a single master or a single master divided in two ala LARS?

Maybe we aren't going to agree.

[soniclovenoize]

There were several parts for "H&V-Part II" (#57045) also but a second part of an "H&V" (57020) master is not the same thing as a "H&V-Part II" (57045) master.

If H&V Part II was a reboot of side one, what was Part I? Why "part II", why not just stay with H&V as the title with a different master number (as he had done before December 19) if it was just intended to be a single master or a single master divided in two ala LARS?

I'm not seeing where you are saying the Verse Remake was labeled "part 2".  The Chorus was (because it is a second part of the song) but I'm not seeing where the Vere is.  Listening to the oscillator sessions, I don't hear it slated at all.  Am I missing a piece of evidence here?  Also, which january recordings were under master 57045?  I thought they were all 57020?

Maybe we aren't going to agree.

That's fine.  I can agree to disagree.  As I said before, we seem to be looking at it differently.  And as I guess I implied above, I don't know if there ever was a unique H&V b-side.  But if there was, I am estimating it based on the recording chronology, test edits, segment structures and harmonic variance, NOT Master Number or segment slating. 

I will say your idea of an Album Sampler as a b-side is interesting. 

[Cam Mott]

There were several parts for "H&V-Part II" (#57045) also but a second part of an "H&V" (57020) master is not the same thing as a "H&V-Part II" (57045) master.

If H&V Part II was a reboot of side one, what was Part I? Why "part II", why not just stay with H&V as the title with a different master number (as he had done before December 19) if it was just intended to be a single master or a single master divided in two ala LARS?

I'm not seeing where you are saying the Verse Remake was labeled "part 2".  The Chorus was (because it is a second part of the song) but I'm not seeing where the Vere is.  Listening to the oscillator sessions, I don't hear it slated at all.  Am I missing a piece of evidence here?  Also, which january recordings were under master 57045?  I thought they were all 57020?
 

As I understand from TSS, it was recorded for "H&V-Part II" (57045, session number 14247-C, master take 4) but I don't know of any designation of the master take 4 as a "part 2" of master 57045.

January 5 for "Heroes & Villains - Part 2", master number 57045, session number 14247, TSS doesn't give a master take number for this day.

All subject to clarification or correction by better info from c-man.

[The_Holy_Bee]

Maybe I misunderstood but the first recording for a master take of a section of the #57045 master was January 5th.

Yep - I completely missed that. Will edit my post above accordingly. Jan 5 sees a session for the 'Bicycle Rider' chorus vocals, logged as 'Heroes and Villians Part 2' - the first time the 'Part 2' nomenclature appears in the logs for H&V. Interestingly, it's also the first recorded incidence we have of a section of one SMiLE song being re-recorded for apparent inclusion in another.

[The Old Master Painter]

Here is a quote from Brian himself in February 18th, 1967:

“I’m doing the final mix on the A-side tonight, but I can’t decide what to do on the other side. The easiest thing would be to pull something off ‘Pet Sounds’, but I feel that that would be cheating the record-buyer. On the other hand, I want to keep as much of ‘Smile’ a surprise as possible. I may end up just recording me and a piano-I tried it last night in the studio. It would be an interesting contrast, anyway.”

[The_Holy_Bee]

“I’m doing the final mix on the A-side tonight, but I can’t decide what to do on the other side. The easiest thing would be to pull something off ‘Pet Sounds’, but I feel that that would be cheating the record-buyer. On the other hand, I want to keep as much of ‘Smile’ a surprise as possible. I may end up just recording me and a piano-I tried it last night in the studio. It would be an interesting contrast, anyway.”

I had totally forgotten about this quote! I'm ashamed to admit I no longer own a copy of LLVS - is anyone able to provide attribution (the publication etc) for this? The reason I ask is that though the quote above may be dated Feb 18, it's unlikely that the article was published the same day Brian was interviewed. (The Teen Set piece, for instance, covers events of Oct-Nov '66, but appears in the April '67 issue.) This said, if the quote comes from a story in a newspaper, say, it's likely to be a shorter gap between interview and publication than in a monthly magazine.

Likewise, can someone shed any further contextual light on this BW quote, apparently from Oct '66:

'The song (H&V) is going to be a three-minute musical comedy. I'm using some new production techniques that I think will surprise everyone. This LP will include 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes And Villains' and ten other tracks, I've written them all in collaboration Van Dyke Parks. The album will include lots of humour - some musical and some spoken. It won't be like a comedy LP - there won't be any spoken tracks as such - but someone might say something in between verses.'

[Cam Mott]

“I’m doing the final mix on the A-side tonight, but I can’t decide what to do on the other side. The easiest thing would be to pull something off ‘Pet Sounds’, but I feel that that would be cheating the record-buyer. On the other hand, I want to keep as much of ‘Smile’ a surprise as possible. I may end up just recording me and a piano-I tried it last night in the studio. It would be an interesting contrast, anyway.”

I had totally forgotten about this quote! I'm ashamed to admit I no longer own a copy of LLVS - is anyone able to provide attribution (the publication etc) for this? The reason I ask is that though the quote above may be dated Feb 18, it's unlikely that the article was published the same day Brian was interviewed. (The Teen Set piece, for instance, covers events of Oct-Nov '66, but appears in the April '67 issue.) This said, if the quote comes from a story in a newspaper, say, it's likely to be a shorter gap between interview and publication than in a monthly magazine.

Likewise, can someone shed any further contextual light on this BW quote, apparently from Oct '66:

'The song (H&V) is going to be a three-minute musical comedy. I'm using some new production techniques that I think will surprise everyone. This LP will include 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes And Villains' and ten other tracks, I've written them all in collaboration Van Dyke Parks. The album will include lots of humour - some musical and some spoken. It won't be like a comedy LP - there won't be any spoken tracks as such - but someone might say something in between verses.'

As I remember Derek Taylor's byline was at one time something like "Hollywood Tuesday". Perhaps the interview date would be in the week preceding the Tuesday before publication (Feb. 7 - 14) or earlier.

The "three-minute musical" quote is from New Music Express, published November 18, 1966.

[The_Holy_Bee]

Many thanks, Cam.

EDIT: Hmmm - while trying to dig out a scan or the full text of the Nov 18 NME article online (presumably 'Meanwhile... What's Brian Doing Back at Base?' by Tracy Thomas), I did find this quote from the news column of Crawdaddy for their Jan '66 edition:

'BRIAN WILSON calls his next single, "Heroes and Villains", "a three-minute musical comedy, with some new production techniques that I think will surprise everyone." The next Beach Boys LP is now named 'SMiLE'; nearly all the songs were written by Brian in collaboration with Van Dyke Parks.'

Paul Williams notes this edition 'rolled off the presses' in the first week of December '66, so the interview material would date from around the same time as in NME, or slightly later. Is it likely that the NME piece (minus the follow up comments about humour, etc) was the basis for the Crawdaddy mention, or did Brian make an almost identical statement to two different reporters (from two different continents, no less)? Not that it matters hugely, I suppose, I just find it interesting.

Does anyone have a scan or the text of the NME piece? My online searches have come up empty.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Likewise, can someone shed any further contextual light on this BW quote, apparently from Oct '66:

"This LP will include 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes And Villains' and ten other tracks, I've written them all in collaboration Van Dyke Parks. The album will include lots of humour - some musical and some spoken. It won't be like a comedy LP - there won't be any spoken tracks as such - but someone might say something in between verses."

This statement is important, isn't it? Of course we'll never know because SMiLE never came out, but Brian is basically laying out a/the blueprint. And, the December 1966 handwritten list to Capitol also lists twelve tracks.

I find the part about "someone might say something in between verses" significant, too. Verses = plural. Let's be honest, there are some, but not many mixes - including TSS - that uses a lot of humor and spoken parts between verses. "Heroes And Villains" comes to mind as maybe the most prominent example, but I wonder which other tracks Brian had in mind. Actually, BWPS uses some spoken parts, but they are not humorous.

[wantsomecorn]

I think Smiley Smile might have more of that style of humor than anything else, even The Smile Sessions as released. Take the beginning of Little Pad, or the middle part of Wonderful.

And honestly, I prefer the material without it.

[Micha]

If there ever a stand-alone track called "Heroes And Villains, part 2" was planned, I don't think it was the second half of one whole song, but related to "Heroes And Villains" in the same way as "Shut Down, part 2" is related to "Shut Down". The A-side wouldn't have been "Heroes And Villains, part 1" but plain "Heroes And Villains" proper, the whole of it as it was supposed to be, and the B-side "Heroes And Villains, part 2" joyful fooling around with the intention to avoid using a track from Pet Sounds nor from SMiLE as a B-side. Brian is quoted with not wanting to use an album track, maybe just recording himself with a piano for the B-side, but not having decided yet.

Here is a quote from Brian himself in February 18th, 1967:

“I’m doing the final mix on the A-side tonight, but I can’t decide what to do on the other side. The easiest thing would be to pull something off ‘Pet Sounds’, but I feel that that would be cheating the record-buyer. On the other hand, I want to keep as much of ‘Smile’ a surprise as possible. I may end up just recording me and a piano-I tried it last night in the studio. It would be an interesting contrast, anyway.”

Thank you, that's the quote I was thinking of but was too lazy to find and type. Was Feb 18 the date it was published or the day of the interview?

[The_Holy_Bee]

Thank you, that's the quote I was thinking of but was too lazy to find and type. Was Feb 18 the date it was published or the day of the interview?

Yeah, it's a useful one. I asked the same question earlier, and Cam replied that:

As I remember Derek Taylor's byline was at one time something like "Hollywood Tuesday". Perhaps the interview date would be in the week preceding the Tuesday before publication (Feb. 7 - 14) or earlier.

Of course, Taylor was then doing his second (I believe) stint as the Beach Boys' publicist, so perhaps not an interview in the usual sense. Not that I doubt this is what Brian said, just that Taylor's circumstances in gathering this material was different to, say, Tracy Thomas' for the NME piece we were also discussing above.

[mike moseley]

very very interesting stuff folks

the problem for me with H&V - as always - is that the various brilliant sections don't connect together very well to make a complete and naturally flowing song:  it seems that a lot of the sections are variations of fade outs that just repeat, so for example its hard to get back out of barnyard (we presume it was supposed to be the fade but its not certain)

there probably IS an order which can be put together from the various backing tracks but there are chunks of lead vocals missing so you get an incomplete version

[The_Holy_Bee]

I think Smiley Smile might have more of that style of humor than anything else, even The Smile Sessions as released. Take the beginning of Little Pad, or the middle part of Wonderful.

It's interesting, that 'humor element', in that Brian speaks about it in a couple of articles at the time, Vosse talks about musical humour re: the musical change into the chorus of 'Wind Chimes' and what's probably 'Workshop', and Barnyard is pretty consistently described as 'comic' - but very few actual edits or assemblies survive from the period which incorporate the 'talking between verses' or verbal humour aspect. In fact, I think it's just 'You're Under Arrest!' that could be classified as being along these lines.

Mujan made several arguments for the 'Psycodelic Sounds' recordings being early versions of ideas Brian was developing for the final album - mainly in terms of the Elements with the Nov 4 chants, but this could also include 'Brian Falls into a Microphone/Piano' and the similar 'George Fell Into His French Horn' session, etc - and they could probably have fit the 'laughs between the verses' bill, suitably edited. But the Beach Boys themselves (apart from Brian) don't seem to have ever actually recorded any such pieces, at least that made it into an actual edit. Even 'You're Under Arrest', in Cantina, was performed by Gene Gaddy, apparently 'on set' because he was dating Barbara Rovell at the time.

Then there's the separate 'humour album' concept about which Brian was apparently fitfully enthused at the time. Anderle and Vosse both speak about it; the former probably summing things up best (and being very much in line with wantsomecorn's comment quoted above) when he says:

‘DAVID: I think what Brian tried to do with Smiley Smile is he tried to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his humor album. 'Cause it's so—I hear elements in that of our discussions about the humor album, just little pieces of it.’
 

[Sheriff John Stone]

I think Smiley Smile might have more of that style of humor than anything else, even The Smile Sessions as released. Take the beginning of Little Pad, or the middle part of Wonderful.

It's interesting, that 'humor element', in that Brian speaks about it in a couple of articles at the time, Vosse talks about musical humour re: the musical change into the chorus of 'Wind Chimes' and what's probably 'Workshop', and Barnyard is pretty consistently described as 'comic' - but very few actual edits or assemblies survive from the period which incorporate the 'talking between verses' or verbal humour aspect. In fact, I think it's just 'You're Under Arrest!' that could be classified as being along these lines.

Mujan made several arguments for the 'Psycodelic Sounds' recordings being early versions of ideas Brian was developing for the final album - mainly in terms of the Elements with the Nov 4 chants, but this could also include 'Brian Falls into a Microphone/Piano' and the similar 'George Fell Into His French Horn' session, etc - and they could probably have fit the 'laughs between the verses' bill, suitably edited. But the Beach Boys themselves (apart from Brian) don't seem to have ever actually recorded any such pieces, at least that made it into an actual edit. Even 'You're Under Arrest', in Cantina, was performed by Gene Gaddy, apparently 'on set' because he was dating Barbara Rovell at the time.

Then there's the separate 'humour album' concept about which Brian was apparently fitfully enthused at the time. Anderle and Vosse both speak about it; the former probably summing things up best (and being very much in line with wantsomecorn's comment quoted above) when he says:

‘DAVID: I think what Brian tried to do with Smiley Smile is he tried to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his humor album. 'Cause it's so—I hear elements in that of our discussions about the humor album, just little pieces of it.’

Agree about the humor in Smiley Smile, but again, I wonder how Brian (at one point in time) intended to employ it in SMiLE. If you do a rundown of the tracks, or specifically the subject matter of the tracks, other than possibly "Vegetables", which other tracks could've Brian employed humor? I have to think that the songs=serious and the spoken word=humor, but I don't know how he would've pulled it off, and I seriously don't know if the ying and yang would've worked. Although, at that time I wouldn't put anything past Brian...

[The_Holy_Bee]

I have to think that the songs=serious and the spoken word=humor, but I don't know how he would've pulled it off, and I seriously don't know if the ying and yang would've worked. Although, at that time I wouldn't put anything past Brian...

I agree that it's one of those things that we'd only know if the Brian of '66 had managed to do what the Brian of 1967 couldn't (unless, of course, he did, and the result was Smiley Smile...). In the quotes excerpted upthread (dating mainly from late '66) he certainly seems confident about interpolating humorous verbal material within the more 'serious' musical sections. Then again, we have a decent number of BW-directed rough assemblies, edits and full mixes from that time, and with the one exception ('Cantina') I mentioned above - it doesn't happen.

I think, actually, this gives a clue as to why the whole record eventually collapsed: according to the people that were there, Brian needed (needs?) to work on instinct, in the moment. Supported by his friends, family/band, and label, he can raise things to a high pitch. Without that, the conceptual framework deflates like a badly mixed soufflé.

As Anderle (I know I quote this too much, but it's a fantastic interview) says in '68:

'See, people should never be allowed to say "No" to Brian Wilson. Brian is a person that never should be said no to. 'Cause if you just get behind him, or next to him, and go with him, it's gonna come out okay. But he was forced into that. And maybe that's why what's happening now is happening. He probably hasn't recovered from that. It was a big shock for him. It's like taking a person, exposing him to something he's always wanted to be in, taking him right to the brink of it, and leaving. And saying, "Gee Brian, how come you haven't followed up with that whole thing? Why have you fallen down?" He zoomed right up there, alienated from a lot of things that had been his strengths in the past. Those strengths were ripped away, shown to be shallow and phony, taken away from him ... but no foundation put under him. And the foundation that we all had, that we were trying to supply him with, was us? And when we went, there was nothing left there. Just him, hanging ... and, urn, perhaps we never should have gone in in the first place.'

[Summertime Blooz]

I think Smiley Smile might have more of that style of humor than anything else, even The Smile Sessions as released. Take the beginning of Little Pad, or the middle part of Wonderful.

It's interesting, that 'humor element', in that Brian speaks about it in a couple of articles at the time, Vosse talks about musical humour re: the musical change into the chorus of 'Wind Chimes' and what's probably 'Workshop', and Barnyard is pretty consistently described as 'comic' - but very few actual edits or assemblies survive from the period which incorporate the 'talking between verses' or verbal humour aspect. In fact, I think it's just 'You're Under Arrest!' that could be classified as being along these lines.

Mujan made several arguments for the 'Psycodelic Sounds' recordings being early versions of ideas Brian was developing for the final album - mainly in terms of the Elements with the Nov 4 chants, but this could also include 'Brian Falls into a Microphone/Piano' and the similar 'George Fell Into His French Horn' session, etc - and they could probably have fit the 'laughs between the verses' bill, suitably edited. But the Beach Boys themselves (apart from Brian) don't seem to have ever actually recorded any such pieces, at least that made it into an actual edit. Even 'You're Under Arrest', in Cantina, was performed by Gene Gaddy, apparently 'on set' because he was dating Barbara Rovell at the time.

Then there's the separate 'humour album' concept about which Brian was apparently fitfully enthused at the time. Anderle and Vosse both speak about it; the former probably summing things up best (and being very much in line with wantsomecorn's comment quoted above) when he says:

‘DAVID: I think what Brian tried to do with Smiley Smile is he tried to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his humor album. 'Cause it's so—I hear elements in that of our discussions about the humor album, just little pieces of it.’

Agree about the humor in Smiley Smile, but again, I wonder how Brian (at one point in time) intended to employ it in SMiLE. If you do a rundown of the tracks, or specifically the subject matter of the tracks, other than possibly "Vegetables", which other tracks could've Brian employed humor? I have to think that the songs=serious and the spoken word=humor, but I don't know how he would've pulled it off, and I seriously don't know if the ying and yang would've worked. Although, at that time I wouldn't put anything past Brian...

On the 'All Day' session from TSS, Brian very specifically talks about what will happen in the quiet spaces on the track:  "Now in those spots we're going to have a bunch of talking. We need all of us together."" So, there is at least that example that jives with his other statement about using spoken humor. I guess this could also go hand-in-hand with early descriptions of H&V as a musical comedy.

[Summertime Blooz]

I've been digging deep in to lyrics for H&V for my next video and this line has me bugged:

"Once at night Catillian squared the fight"

Doing a Google search, I don't see any usage of or information about any words or names spelled C-a-t-i-l-l-i-a-n other than in reference to this song H&V. So it's either a misspelling (deliberately or accidentally) or it's just something that VDP made up. I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically, the spelling is wrong, but I thought maybe "So a fight broke out at a dance resulting in a gunfight?". Oookay... Only thing is, the word Catillian is capitalized, so that's a problem. There's no need to capitalize the word cotillion. So could it be the name of the girl he fell in love with? That could make more sense grammatically, "squared the fight" meaning "Catillian acted as a sort of referee for the gunfight". "She" (Catillian?) is immediately referred back to in the next line "And she was right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down." I always thought that the girl that was shot down was named Margarita, as I suppose most people do, but now I'm not certain. Or my other theory is that "Catillian" is a misspelling of 'Castilian' which is another word for 'Spanish', specifically a form of Spanish used in Spain. I'm not a language scholar, but as I read about it, my understanding is that with certain dialects of Castilian (particularly from Latin America), the 's' sound is pronounced as an 'h' so it would sound like Cah-tilian when spoken by a native of the region. With this in mind, it would make sense that, as Our Hero (or Villain) in the song recounts their life, they would misspell the name of the language as Catillian (no 's' sound). So if this theory is correct, then the line might mean 'Once at night the rules of the gunfight were spoken in Spanish'. Was VDP really that clever that he knew all of this stuff and that he spelled the name of a language the way it might be spelled by someone that was not entirely familiar with it? Right now I think I lean towards my second theory.

Your thoughts on this line of the song are appreciated. What do you think it means?

[yonderhillside]

I've been digging deep in to lyrics for H&V for my next video and this line has me bugged:

"Once at night Catillian squared the fight"

Doing a Google search, I don't see any usage of or information about any words or names spelled C-a-t-i-l-l-i-a-n other than in reference to this song H&V. So it's either a misspelling (deliberately or accidentally) or it's just something that VDP made up. I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically, the spelling is wrong, but I thought maybe "So a fight broke out at a dance resulting in a gunfight?". Oookay... Only thing is, the word Catillian is capitalized, so that's a problem. There's no need to capitalize the word cotillion. So could it be the name of the girl he fell in love with? That could make more sense grammatically, "squared the fight" meaning "Catillian acted as a sort of referee for the gunfight". "She" (Catillian?) is immediately referred back to in the next line "And she right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down." I always thought that the girl that was shot down was named Margarita, as I suppose most people do, but now I'm not certain. Or my other theory is that "Catillian" is a misspelling of 'Castilian' which is another word for 'Spanish', specifically a form of Spanish used in Spain. I'm not a language scholar, but as I read about it, my understanding is that with certain dialects of Castilian (particularly from Latin America), the 's' sound is pronounced as an 'h' so it would sound like Cah-tilian when spoken by a native of the region. With this in mind, it would make sense that, as Our Hero (or Villain) in the song recounts their life, they would misspell the name of the language as Catillian (no 's' sound). So if this theory is correct, then the line might mean 'Once at night the rules of the gunfight were spoken in Spanish'. Was VDP really that clever that he knew all of this stuff and that he spelled the name of a language the way it might be spelled by someone that was not entirely familiar with it? Right now I think I lean towards my second theory.

Your thoughts on this line of the song are appreciated. What do you think it means?

That's some rabbit hole you've found yourself in. 
Albeit, a very interesting theory. "Once at night the rules of the gunfight were spoken in Spanish." I like that. Very spaghetti-western. And really, VDP lyrics are, especially rewarded after repeated analysis, some of the wittiest, intellectual poetry I've ever heard. So I'd vote yes, he could definitely be that clever.

[Micha]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

[The Old Master Painter]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

Over and over the crow cries and HOVERS THE WHEATFIELD

Over and over the thresher UNCOVERS THE CORNFIELD.....

Makes more sense if you switch em around. Typical VDP wordplay! 

[Micha]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

Over and over the crow cries and HOVERS THE WHEATFIELD

Over and over the thresher UNCOVERS THE CORNFIELD.....

Makes more sense if you switch em around. Typical VDP wordplay! 

Except it's "hover" and "uncover", not "hovers" and "uncovers"...

[Summertime Blooz]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

The bigger problem for me, beyond the order of the words, is that there is no such word (or name as far as I can tell) as C-a-t-i-l-l-i-a-n. I wonder why it is capitalized and what it's supposed to mean? It's cool that VDP doesn't supply us with answers, but I think there's value in looking deeply into his Smile lyrics for meaning. That's exactly why he doesn't supply answers.

[Micha]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

The bigger problem for me, beyond the order of the words, is that there is no such word (or name as far as I can tell) as C-a-t-i-l-l-i-a-n. I wonder why it is capitalized and what it's supposed to mean? It's cool that VDP doesn't supply us with answers, but I think there's value in looking deeply into his Smile lyrics for meaning. That's exactly why he doesn't supply answers.

I bothered to look it up, in both BWPS and TSS it says "cotillion" - not capitalized. You got a source who got it wrong methinks.

[Summertime Blooz]

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

The bigger problem for me, beyond the order of the words, is that there is no such word (or name as far as I can tell) as C-a-t-i-l-l-i-a-n. I wonder why it is capitalized and what it's supposed to mean? It's cool that VDP doesn't supply us with answers, but I think there's value in looking deeply into his Smile lyrics for meaning. That's exactly why he doesn't supply answers.

I bothered to look it up, in both BWPS and TSS it says "cotillion" - not capitalized. You got a source who got it wrong methinks.

Thanks for the input. Not sure how far back that spelling (with the capital C) dates back or the exact origin. I have Word files going back to 2000 with that spelling and also with an alternate spelling of Catillion. I've been checking the internet with not much luck.