The Smiley Smile Message Board

For the fun of it, would you like to share the SMiLE mix/sequence you are presently using? I use the word "presently" because if you're like me, it continues to be a work in progress, oh, for about ten years now! ;D

I'm curious to see what you're starting with, ending with, what you're using for "The Elements" (if anything), if and where you're putting "Good Vibrations", what configuration of "Heroes And Villains" are you using, and what creative links you've come up with.

Feel free to simply list your mix, or if you'd like, explain your thoughts for the sequencing.

Through the course of the thread, I'd like to get opinions on:

- How Mark Linett's experimenting (in 1992?) with the "Intro To Heroes And Villains" eventually became the "Intro To Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" - and stuck!

- How the "Water Chant", composed/recorded during the Wild Honey Sessions, became part of SMiLE - and stuck!

- Supposedly Carol Kaye said that "Workshop" was intended as the re-building of the barn after the fire. Not to get into Carol's reputation for historical inaccuracies, but, if she said that, she had to hear it somewhere from somebody. If she did hear it/say it, then why wasn't/isn't "Workshop" universally used AFTER "Fire" as a re-building song?

Look forward to your sequences and thoughts!

Mine follows the lineup on the Smile Sessions Disc 1, but uses the version of "Surf's Up" from the album of the same name.

Your mileage may and probably will vary.

Having listened to Surf's Up (the song) a lot more recently I find myself gravitating back to Carl's later vocal as well, don't get me wrong I love Brian's vocal but something about Carl singing it, as is the case with most things he sings, is something on an entire other level!

My current mix opens with the first two "phrases" of Our Prayer ( 20/20 version ) into what I call " laughing Gee " followed by a home brew stereo version of DYLW ( part 1 ) then into H&V from sections portion of the SMiLE Sessions set.  The remaining "phrases" of Our Prayer are used, in order, throughout the entire mix as, like Brian said "an intro(s)".  The last phrase used was modified as a nod to the Beatles Revolver LP.  ;)  

If you have a minute, I'm curious to see the whole sequence/mix.

Not sure if I can sum it up with a list.  I have spent about three years tinkering with my sequence or what I like to call it ...a re-vision.  There is a limited historical authenticity to this sequence.  I always wished Brian had more freedom to follow his vision.  No record company schedules...no budgets....no Mike...no format time restrictions...no pressure....no rules.  This was my approach.  I have created so many changes/edits/merges I cant describe them.  Surf's Up is the closer (kinda) and it uses four sources starting with the SMiLE session stereo backing track ( fiirst 16 bars ? ) then Carl's SU album version...then it segues into Brians '67 version starting at "Surf,s up, hmmm hmmm" then blends back with Carl's version at "a childrens soooong" and finishes with "a child" from BWPS layed on top.

I always thought Carol's comment about 'after the fire' was kind of off the cuff.

After a lot of years I've gotten to a place where I am satisfied with my sequencing. Until something new is unearthed (I believe in my heart there is more to come) I feel like this is Smile for me (all stereo):

Side 1
(Prayer)
1)Worms (with insert of Holidays a la BWPS' On A Holiday)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWCh80PqEes
goes right into
2)H&V (a 5:46 Cantina version)
(George Fell Into His French Horn)
3)Surf's Up (without CIFOTM ending)
4)Good Vibrations (a 5:28 extended fan-mix)
5)Cabin Essence

Side 2
(He Gives Speeches)
1)Wonderful
goes right into
2)CIFOTM comprised of Look(seltaeb's edit with vocals)/CIFOTM
3)Wind Chimes (with Whispering Winds fade)
4)The Elements comprised of LTSD Second Day-Air/Mrs, O'Leary-Fire (no H&V intro)/LTSD-Water (no chant)/IWBA & Workshop- Earth    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JYwBNIPRAQ
(Brian Falls Into A Piano)
5)Vege-Tables
(H&V Reprise)
6)IIGS comprised of IIGS/Barnyard/IIGS/Do A Lot (with whistling)/IIGS/With Me Tonight
goes right into
7)The Old Master Painter comprised of TOMP/YWMS (with fan-mix background vocals added)/My Children Were Raised/Barnshine

It runs about 57 minutes.

BWPS works for me. :hat

I don't know if I've ever bought that as gospel, I've always felt that was stated in jest, more anecdotal than factual.  As in, this was the first session on 11/29/66 after recording "Fire" the previous day on 11/28/66.  So it's not literally The Element that is following Fire, but it is humorously, the unusual activity they did in the studio following a different unusual activity.  You can even hear Carol say on the session tapes, after jamming on the jazz riff: "Yeah man... what happens after the fire!"  (it's 1:45 into the track on TSS)

IWBA/Friday Night works for me as a good possible suspect for what the Earth element might have been, so I accept the quote, but you do have to consider the source. As for why it's not universally used after 'Fire', when it comes to Smile, there's a lot a fans who want to follow their own path. It's a unique situation because of Smile's shroud of mystery for so many years- we feel free to make up our own version of Smile based on personal taste.

Great thread!

Mine's what I call the "Dec '66 (hypothetical) Conception" mix.  Twelve tracks from 'the memo', no repeated motifs. All in mono, using wherever possible only '66 recordings and, with a couple of exceptions, structures taken from BW test dubs and mixes. Tracks 1-3, 5-7 (Side A) and 2-5 (Side B) are 'unbanded', each track colliding into the next without fades or silences. (On Side B these selections are bridged by excerpts from the 'Pycodelic Sounds' chants.)

SIDE A
1. Do You Like Worms (3.29)
2. Heroes and Villians (2.51) (V1/Acapella V/Cantina/"Bag of Tricks"/"Children were raised"/"Stand or Fall")
3. I'm in Great Shape (2.17) (IWBA/WS/IIGS/BY)
4. Cabin Essence (3.31)
5. Wonderful (2.54) (inc. He Gives Speeches as insert)
6. Child is Father of the Man (BW test edit with extra repeat of final chorus, 2.52)
7. The Old Master Painter (1.54)

SIDE B
1. Good Vibrations (3.33)
2. The Elements: Fire (2.01)
3. Vega-Tables (1.57) (Psycodelic Sounds "Veggies Chant" excerpt/VT "Demo"/"Air Chant" excerpt)
4. Wind Chimes (2.41) (V/C/Piano bridge/"Underwater Chant" excerpt)
5. Surf's Up (3.43) (original "Demo" ending)
6. Prayer (1.06)

Total time 35:16 - only major missing '66 tracking sections are "Look", "Holidays" and "You're Welcome", "H&V Intro" (re-made in '67 as "Bag of Tricks"/"Fire Intro"), CFOTM original bridge section and "All Day".

About a year ago I had the idea to try and replicate a 1966 version of Smile, but I didn't get past an initial mix before I figured out (with the help of some here) that a true mix would leave quite a few holes unfilled, such as most of "Heroes & Villains" and "Vega Tables". So I blew that concept up and decided to take some of my ideas (mainly the decision to follow the Hand-Written Track List) and made a new version from scratch that I put up on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqQJAyhO_lI&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z12gclmy3qercx4b404cddjx2qqlednoiew

Basically it still follows the HWTL, but I took a couple of liberties by grafting in "Prayer" as part of "Do You Like Worms" and "Barnyard" as part of "I'm in Great Shape". My Elements are Fire > I Wanna Be Around > Holidays > Dada, and I utilized Brian's lead on "Surf's Up". I decided to exclude "Look" because without vocals it just seemed too unfinished and too hard to fit in.

The basic concept is two side-long suites, which is how I think it would have been released had it seen the light of day in 1967. I also worked in some of the many spoken-word segments from Brian's tapes to try to balance out some of the long instrumental segments. I do believe Brian would have incorporated spoken word in some fashion had he finished the album at that time, similar to the bridge on the Smiley "Wonderful". Smile was supposed to be avant garde, so I tried to respect that aesthetic with my latest mix.

Anyway hope you guys can dig it. Talking Smile mixes never gets old for me.

Excellent work !!!  Truly outside the box....Brian would dig it.   I agree with the spoken word thought.  I also tend to think Brian secretly .... maybe subconsciously is a better word, continued work on SMiLE for some time....ie Little Pad...The Old Master Painter.....Cool,Cool Water etc.   I need to upload my mix...I suppose YouTube is the best option ?  Soundcloud sent me a nasty letter about my DYLW stereo edit and I removed it fearing litigation.

Good points, soniclovenoize and krabklaw. Sometimes I get too hung up in trying to sequence according to lyrics/concepts, and with SMiLE that is difficult (impossible?) and I'll shoehorn a track in that probably historically never would've gone there. "Workshop" is an example of this.

What did Brian intend "Workshop" for? Why doesn't he just tell us?! ;D Seriously, I think it meant one of three things, A) the building of the "home on the range", B) the rebuilding of the barn after the fire, or C) building the cart to "cart off and sell my vegetables". And that's how I've sequenced it for years, Workshop into Vegetables but both after Cabinessence. That way "Workshop" can serve as either the building of the house OR the building of the vegetable cart. But, I gotta admit, it's tempting to put "Workshop" after that damn fire and then go off and sell the vegetables.

Well, it was marked "Great Shape" on the tape box...  It could be a self-contained track that doesn't reference building anything but itself. 

My go-to fanmix that I've been listening to for a few years follows the BWPS/TSS lineup, only using the best possible stereo mixes on all tracks.  That sequence just seems "correct" to me since I've heard it officially for so many years, and it's pretty much burned into my brain.

However......

Recently I've been listening to that fanmix with Surf's Up and Good Vibes switched (which was the original theory, right?).  And it seems to make more sense to me.  GV might seem a little jarring right in the middle, but it actually worked once I tried it.  Being immediately after Song For Children/CIFOTM there seems to be more of a connection with the GV ending phrase (you know the one I'm talking about). 

But ending SMiLE with Surf's Up just seems right.  There's a real poignancy to it, and I've always loved, I mean LOVED that grand  "children's song" ending.  There just shouldn't be anything after that!

My understanding has always been that it was just that (though I believe the year these mixes were made, for a potential SMiLE release, was 1988. This work was then used later for the GV box) - Linett put the two pieces together, possibly just to build up the fairly brief "Fire" (then one of the most famous and mythical pieces of the album) and, because it worked, the "intro" just kind of stayed there. Certainly no personal testimony has ever claimed it was originally intended to be part of "Fire"; the tape notations clearly show it to be for H&V and recorded in an H&V session; and in fact it's a more involved remake ("Bells and whistles" indeed!) of the 1966 "H&V (intro)".


Again, a similar deal, although - and I might be wrong here - it was fan-sequencers (Priore? Propoky?) who forged this particular connection.


The '69 Fusion article has Vosse talking about the workshop sounds at least in connection with Barnyard/YAMS, possibly implying it was conceived as part of the "Barnyarde suite"/Americana side of things. The tape box notation "Great Shape" backs this up as well. As regards the Kaye comment, there's an obvious reading of her comment I'm surprised doesn't get brought up more - the "IWBA/Jazz" recording was the very next Wrecking Crew session to follow "Fire" (on the 28th and 29th of Nov respectively). So, from a point of view of one of the musical participants - and not necessarily somebody "in the loop" conceptually - "rebuilding after the fire" would be exactly what that session felt like.

My two cents on the above points, anyway.

Thanks for your kind words. In my experience YouTube is definitely the best way to go if you want to share your mix. SoundCloud has some sort of copyright scanning algorithm as you indicated (I've gotten dinged in the past by them too), and filehosting sites like Sendspace have been known to trigger warnings from peoples' anti-malware software. Nothing better than trying to share your mix, only to have potential listeners yell at you for trying to give them a "virus".  :o

I definitely agree that there's a post-Smile Smile to be compiled from the albums that followed it. If you take the Smiley Smile remakes and add stuff like Cool Cool Water, Been Way Too Long, Diamond Head and the Surf's Up piano remake it actually flows really nicely. I'd be curious to hear what you come up with.

Excellent points all around. I largely agree with everything you say, but I was curious about the bolded section, as I've never seen that referenced before. Are you saying that the tape for "I Wanna Be Around" or "Workshop" is labelled as "Great Shape"? That's actually a pretty big revelation if I'm understanding you correctly.

That could have been mislabeled given the similarity of the two titles (both beginning with the word 'I'). Not much of a strech given the confusion of the project.

I agree with you on those ^ points, but what does that tell us going forward? Both the "Intro To Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (previously known as "Intro To Heroes And Villains") and the selection of "The Water Chant" (taken from the Wild Honey sessions) were "thought up" by individuals compiling fan mixes. And, I mean no offense to the talent of Mark Linett, but that's what he did for the 1993 Good Vibrations boxed set, and that's what whoever did who placed "The Water Chant" after "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow". They were fan mixes.

Darian Sahanaja must've been impressed by these two placements because he adopted them in 2004, and Mark Linett with Alan Boyd followed suit again in 2011. Darian could've changed it in 2004 and Mark and Alan could've changed it in 2011 - but they didn't. I'm getting to the point.

The point is - anything goes. When we are looking at somebody's fan mix and we're tempted to think or say, "No, that would never go there...", well, you never know. Anything goes. A lot of people viewed BWPS as the real deal and a lot of people will view CD 1 of The Smile Sessions as the definitive version. Says who? To quote the late, great Jim Morrison, "There are no rules!"

I've been tinkering with a version of Heroes and Villains today. It starts with some studio chatter, segues into Prayer, then launches into the verse of H&V.

I use bits from the psychedelic sounds boot, Pet Sounds Sessions (overdubbed some vocals over You Were My Sunshine), the ice-cream truck piano 'Good Vibrations' tune overdubbed with the 'Brian got stuck in the piano' skit, a radio station promo over Workshop, even the count-in audio from Mona Kani. There's a lot of audio tweaking in the mix, a lot of reverb and effects (best listened to with headphones). I wasn't going for a historically accurate mix, it was mostly inspired by the Atticus Ross Love and Mercy score.

It clocks in at 6:20 seconds. A glaring omission being the Heroes and Villains chorus...I'm not the biggest fan of the chorus, so I instead went straight from the verse to the Cantina section.

Sorry, SJS - I think I just got what you meant in your initial post! Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it - several pieces of fan-mixing have now become enshrined in SMiLE lore and, indeed, endorsed as actual "SMiLE" sequencing through their inclusion in BWPS and subsequently, TSS. I guess the real question here is one of "authenticity". Does these decisions being taken so long after the initial sessions mean they fall outside the "window of credibility"? Or has their common adoption by both fans and the music's creators in the last thirty years mean they're as much a part of "what we know about SMiLE" as a '66 "Cabin Essence" assembly edit?

The problem is, it's hard to see how to explore that question without going back down the "Does BWPS = SMiLE" road, which has been well-travelled on these boards. Or else one just has to conclude that every sequence is equally valid, each edit theoretically viable. Or, as you put it:


I'm quite envious actually of those that are open enough to operate like that. All my work on a mix (see my first post in this thread) has been, rather boringly, on the basis that there was at one point (October '66-ish) an actual SMiLE, not finished or finally sequenced perhaps, but largely tracked, tracklisted and (Vosse) "totally conceived". I concede of course that I might be entirely wrong on this, but all my reading on the subject (period interviews, the sessionography, contemporary press) suggests to me it's a better historical assumption to proceed upon than the alternative.

It's also, I suspect, a lot less fun!

From Krabklaw:


True, but the notation on the session log - not the tape box, sorry, I was mistaken there - is (Great Shape), no beginning "I". What's more, for the two titles to be confused as you suggest, whoever marked the box would have had to not only remember the title of a short instrumental section recorded almost exactly a month before (as part of a session for a different song entirely), but not recognise either the title or melody of an extremely well-known - at the time - popular song standard. This is, of course, possible, but is it not more likely that the session's producer mentioned that this was to be a section (?) of a track with "Great Shape" in the name?

I know exactly what you're saying. There are times when I will reach a little bit - OK, a lot - and, as I mentioned above, shoehorn a track in somewhere just because it fits lyrically. But that placement is always accompanied by the thought, "Is there ANY chance Brian would've ever done THAT?"

With so many tracks post-May 1967, it's hard to be a purist or "historical", because you'd leave out some cool pieces.

Weirdly, maybe because I quite like working within limitations creatively, I find it a bit of a relief not to be working with the whole spread of the SMiLE quilt. Certainly I'd never want to criticise a mix - musically, personally, creatively - because "Brian wouldn't have done that (I think)" or because it was in stereo, not mono (or vice versa), or because "comedy skit" bits were overdubbed onto instrumental passages, etc.

I guess the reason sometimes this approach bothers me - and a quick search for "The_Holy_Bee" on these forums will bring up a number of instances of me being bothered - is when fundamentally aesthetic decisions ("Well, Brian might have wanted all 26 minutes of H&V sections included - you know, like on a 12-sided single") are spuriously justified as being historically motivated ("I think AGD said that VDP told XYP once that one track had a bunch of different notes in it, and had another song with notes in the middle of it, and how else would you describe 'Do You Like Worms' than as a song with a bunch of notes in it? So clearly that song is really an extended bridge before the final bass notes of 'He Gives Speeches' and just before a bunch of outtakes from the GV sessions."). I have no beef with people mixing all this stuff together in any way that pleases them; nor do I deny there's a hella lot of confusion surrounding quite what the album's final form might have been, with contradictory statements coming from people who should presumably have all known the same stuff.

But there is a historical record, not quantifiable necessarily but certainly leading towards some kind of consensus on most of the tracks, and trying to form a thesis based on that material - and, as I've tried to do, construct a mix largely as a working proof (or not) of that thesis - is in its own way, I hope, a totally plausible approach to this material. And I know, SJS, that you're not arguing with that  - but the problem for me is when people want to have it both ways; throwing in all their favourite passages in order to not "leave out some cool pieces" but still vaguely claiming, despite any volume of evidence against it, that what they've done is more or less what Brian would have, given the time/money/support whathaveyou, in '66 or '67 (on which note: I believe it's quite clear from the tracking chronology, and the Anderle/Vosse interviews in '68 and '69, that the original SMiLE was dead by 1967. But I quite understand opinions to the contrary.)

I'm bothered by this not because we shouldn't be able to compile any SMiLE mix we wish to, using any information/personal tastes we wish to concentrate on, and have that function perfectly and beautifully in its own right. But because (to return to your OP) we are now living in a digital sphere in which personal mixing calls made in 1988 are often assumed to be '66 vintage; where third-hand information is frequently taken as from-the-horse's-mouth; where newbies learn from old hands - and sometimes what they learn are tired myths since disproved - and simply assume validity.

There is some kind of truth there somewhere, poking its nose out from the (swimming) pool of contradictory information, retrospective analyses and fan dreaming. And the more time that passes, the more active participants age and are lost (have you read the Crawdaddy! pieces with Anderle? At one point Paul Williams asks him point blank about "Child is Father" and  - not thinking it's important in '68 - Anderle kind of skips the question. What would even a vague description of the lyrics/structure/theme of that song be worth to us now? It's an enraging moment in an otherwise brilliant piece) the further that truth sinks down into the water.

So: yep, absolutely, we are now living in the post-TSS future, and I have no doubt dozens - hundreds? - of absolutely brilliant personal mixes will continue to emerge on youtube, dailymotion, vimeo, etc. As they should. It'd just be nice for the "historians" amongst us (and those new enthusiasts who're coming to these mixes without the years of research, learning and discoveries many of us have been around for) to have some kind of distinction made between a personal construction, based on taste, and a more academic attempt to "recreate what might plausibly have been." (For the latter - annotations, basically. Rough dating of sections, a description of method and justifications for the decisions that were made.)

Not to put either above the other, I just think it'd be useful - and increasingly so - for which is which to be made clear.

EDIT: My God. That was a long post. My apologies.

I made my own little edit of "Heroes & Villains" using the box set tracks.  Too bad I have no way of sharing it here.

If people want to hear officially sanctioned Smile product they can, y'know, buy the CDs or albums or whatever. There is also Spotify and other services to listen for free. That's the only way to know for sure that it's straight from the horse's mouth, and even then, Linnett has muddied the waters on occasion as has already been mentioned. I don't really think it's on fans to give full annotation or disclosure of where the puzzle pieces all came from with their fan-edits. As you said, the genie is sort of out of the bottle at this point, and it's hard to say what is real and what is fan-fiction, but so what? That's important to some people but not most people. If it sounds good, then go for it, I say. I think the most important thing, and I think this is what Sheriff is getting at, is that Smile is unique in it's many possibilities, and will continue to give us all pleasure in all sorts of permutations, whether released by Capitol or not.

I'm not sure I'm placing any particular weight on "officially sanctioned Smile product". If anything, the historical, commercial and personal pressures at play in official releases clearly outweigh those on the fringe efforts we've been discussing.

Actually, I think I more-or-less agree with you when it comes to most of your points above. All I'm saying is that a) the record suggests there is/was some kind of substantively if not fully "conceived" SMiLE out there at at least one historical juncture; b) many fan mixes are based on personal tastes as well as/instead of the historical record (which is absolutely fine) and c) as suggested by the original post on this thread (ie. "Water Chant" being affiliated with SMiLE and "Organ Waltz/Intro" becoming "Fire Intro") that without due annotation or acknowledgement those personal choices can be taken by newcomers as "the way it is and always has been".

Whether that matters, of course, depends on the individual, and if there's actually all that much more valuable unpacking to be done when it comes to the historical reality of SMiLE in the sixties. Maybe it really is time to accept that the "genie is sort of out of the bottle" and let 'er rip.

A
1. You're Welcome
2. H&V (including IIGS and OMP/MOS)
3. Cabin Essence
4. DYLW
5. Holidays
6. Wonderful
7. Song For Children

B
8. CIFOTM
9. The Elements (V-T - LTSDD - WC - MOLC)
10. Surf's Up
11. Prayer
12. GV (single version, no humbedums)

There you go, 12 tracks, each LP side by sheer coincidence 22:30 minutes long.

I couldn't find a good way to fit IWBA/Woodshop, so I left it off and don't miss it.

Im sure most of you know my ideas, since I list them a lot. But Ill reiterate here for newcomers/posterity.

Im a student of the two-suite school of thought. The similar moods, instruments, lyrical content and overall themes of certain songs leads me to believe they belong together. When grouped together they build off each other into larger messages and sound more pleasing than if they were interspersed randomly, and I think the third suite in BWPS sounds really forced and makes the whole album feel like less than the sum of its parts which is why Im against no-suite and three-suite mixes. Anyway, I divide the sides of vinyl by American and Cycle of Life, or alternatively, Piscean Age and Aquarian Age.

I believe the original tracklist to be more or less correct in terms of the songs listed. Since Great Shape is so bare tho, and the padding I tried with other fragments sounded very frankensteined and not good, Ive dropped that and stick with the other 11 songs. I like to use the Psychedelic Sounds to bridge together certain songs and keep the spoken word humor idea Brian mentioned in interviews and used in the Cantina Edit and Smiley Smile intact. My latest mix is 45 minutes on the dot. Probably longer than Brian wouldve done, but still plausible.

Side One

[Prayer] Do You Dig Worms?
Heroes and Villains
Cabin Essence [Taxi Cab skit]
The Elements [Fire/UnderseaChant/Breathing--Smog--Laughing]
Vega-Tables [essentially Earth, and ends with the Argument overlaid with the fade from TSS]

Prayer works well going into Worms. Goes well with the "CHURCH of the American indian" lyrics, the idea the pilgrims came here for religious freedom, accentuates the irony that they denied that same freedom to the natives, and just sounds nice.

H&V begins flutter horn, verses, cantina, children were raised, threescore and five, lala verses, Great shape instrumental, western instrumental, slower verses, tape explosion, H&V intro (because the train sounds set up CE perfectly)

CE ends with taxi cabber skit. Goes with the motif of traveling across America. First in ocean liners, then bikes, then trains and now a cab. It references Chicago specifically which is the perfect lead into Mrs O'Leary's Fire as Fire was originally called.

I had a big debate with HolyBee on the TSS forum about my elements so you can check that out for my reasonings. Basically, I believe the Undersea and Breathing skits were working ideas for Water and Air. Veggies is probably our best bet for Earth so I have that come after but still as a stand in for that element. Veggies is a great showstopping comedy finale in my opinion. The star Vega is the brightest in the constellation Lyra, an Eagle gripping a lyre, which to me is a hint it was meant to be an Americana song. Its H&Vs musical twin in sound and spirit and they went back to back on Smiley. The Elements too, could be a reference to "weathering the elements" that we think of when it comes to the first pilgrims roughing it. Also how we Americans have polluted the land ("bicycled rider, just see what you've done...")/the tranquil landscapes ruined by the iron horses, etc, and continue to pollute it (smog skit) and its throwing the elements out of whack (destructive fire, labored breathing). As for Veggies, I think it ties this elements tangent back to an Americana theme in that just as a fire leaves nutritional soil for things to grow, so too does the burning of the old Indian America leave room for a new, possibly better, nation to emerge.

Side Two

Good Vibrations
Wind Chimes [with part of Holidays as the end since side2 was much shorter than 1 otherwise]
Wonderful [opens with part of Basketball Skit, closes with original Heroes piano fade]
Child is Father of the Man [opens with Ice Cream Man skit overlaid with Workshop]
My Only Sunshine
Surf's Up [ends with George Fell after a pause as a sort of hidden track]

Where else could GV go but the beginning?

WC begins with whats usually considered the fade. I see it as a song about enjoying the simple things, the more mellow vibrations of being alone. I also see the merit in the loneliness/anticipation of death interpretations Ive seen here. I do NOT for one second, believe it to be the air element, and I think it sounds wildly out of place between Veggies and Fire.

Basketball sounds has a boy bumping into a girl and gives Wonderful an opening so it doesnt start so abruptly, as well as a foreboding feeling I think, and the new fade makes it sound more like a complete song. In a perfect world, Id like to recreate some kind of insert, which is what I think Brian wouldve done. Id like to use the backing vocals ("pretty baby wont you rock with me" and "mamamama") with the main lyrics from He Gives Speeches, as sort of the male point of view to the story, but again theres no way to do this with what we have.

I like how the piano in Ice Cream Man sounds and think it sets up Child pretty well, with the idea of recapturing youth at a later age. Your youth sets up what kind of man you become. This skit is overlaid with Workshop, which could either be read as the girl rebuilding herself after being taken advantage of, or the Man being built from the experiences of the Child.

OMP/YAMS I see as a loss of faith in traditional religion, as well as the sun setting on an older era (The Age of Pisces) and setting up the coming Age of Aquarius. I think it works great as a penultimate song, and while I completely understand arguments for it being Americana, I actually prefer it with the more somber Child songs now. I debated leaving the fade out but decided to keep it.

Surfs Up is a song about the old society crumbling and losing your way from desperation and despair, but finding hope and inspiration in the children/future/innocence. The lyric "canvas the town and brush the backdrop" recalls OMP which is another reason to put them together. The watery imagery from the title and aforementioned lyrical content seem to really convey an Aquarian mood to me. Look up astrological ages if you arent familiar, but Ive come to see this song as not only Brian showcasing how far the band came from their surfing roots, but also as his statement that the Aquarian age is here and its up to us to make the most of it. Anyway, I use Talking Horns sections for the second half and fade. Never liked the '71 fade personally. I used George Fell as a hidden track because its my speculation VT and SU were always meant to close their respective sides, and these two skits--the only ones recorded with Wrecking Crew professionals--were meant to either lead into or end these songs. Overall, I think this side of my mix is the weaker of the two but I still really like it.

If you wanna listen to this, check out my signature. I call it the Romestamo Cut.

Now, regarding the three points you make...

1-This is one of the few 80s fan speculations/BWPS revisions Im totally cool with, personally. Why? Because the Elements was never finished, never WILL be finished and we need to accept that. Still, theres this great piece of music called fire and its a shame that such a great song is just a small fragment that'd sound out of place by itself. H&V Intro tacked onto the front makes it into a complete, standalone instrumental track. It sounds great, better than any other alternative, and salvages two fragments that otherwise would be scrapped. Thats why this has stuck around.

2-I really dont know. I personally believe Water would have been similar to the Undersea Chant from psychedelic sounds, just rerecorded with the band proper and probably made more complex. Water chant isnt perfect, its far less interesting than Undersea Chant and probably not the original idea, but its as close as we will ever get. What I dont understand is how/why it got paired with Dada, and why Dada became so synonymous with Water. Theres nothing I can see that indicates this was the plan in '67, and to me the title, and wah-wah vocals seem to indicate a child/life song if it had been meant for the album. The fact that it grew out of a H&V fragment further proves it probably wasnt the original water, but then this follows the pattern with our modern Fire--take an unfinished idea and pad it out with an unrelated H&V fragment to make a complete song.

3-I used Workshop as Earth in my Olorin mix, and its my second favorite pic for Earth outside Vega-Tables. I think the reason its not cited as that more often is because of CK's reputation as you say, and also just the way she says it on the tapes sounds like an off-the-cuff "hey this'd make sense after fire!" idea thrown out by someone not in the know. If it were Brian saying that in the control booth I think the theory would be more accepted.

i love you, man

Indeed. To me, it just says that the 67 SMiLE wouldve been a lot different than BWPS/TSS, hence why I dont feel bad remixing it. In fact, I see it as our duty as diehard fans, to offer something we consider closer to the original intent. Some people may laugh at that, but as you say those official releases took their own liberties which are just as significant as any you could accuse us fanmixers of making.

At the end, of course, as on BWPS, and actually that's where I always placed it even before BWPS. To me, Surf's Up is a too sad song to end an album called "SMiLE". Had they stuck with "Dumb Angel", it would be a very good last song.

Do you use IWBA in your mix? Woodshop is out?

Of all the SMiLE songs that drive me crazy sequence-wise, "Good Vibrations" is at the top of the list. I always include it, that's not an issue. But, as I mentioned above, I put more emphasis on lyrics than I probably should, which causes a problem with "Good Vibrations". Because of this, obviously I've experimented putting "Good Vibrations" at or near the beginning...you know, discovering the girl. But, there are too many other better SMiLE songs for the beginning of the mix. I usually link "Good Vibrations" before or after "Wind Chimes", and "Wind Chimes" usually ends up 3/4 of the way through the mix ("in the late afternoon"), so "Good Vibrations" goes there, too...which I'm never completely satisfied with because of the lyrics. He's only picking up good vibrations 3/4 of the way through the mix? Sometimes I rationalize it by him "dreaming" about the girl while getting into his wind chimes.

Good Vibrations is like the Sloop John B of Smile. It just doesn't fit lyrically with the rest of the album, but how do you leave a huge hit like that off the album? I think of it as being a song that's representative of the younger generation, at the vanguard of psychedelia, ringing in something new. It's production was certainly fresh and groundbreaking.  As such it can make some sense for Good Vibrations to follow Surf's Up and it's theme of regeneration (Am I reaching here? Maybe). Also, it just sounds great to follow the Brian & piano outro of Surf's Up with  the "ahhh- I love the colorful clothes she wears" of Good Vibrations.
      Hmmm... let me just check and see where Good Vibrations is included on that dang Capitol hand-written tracklist from December of 66. Maybe there's a clue. It's probably right at the top of the list since it was the #1 song in the country at the time and, supposedly, the list isn't really representative of the sequence that Brian had in mind anyway.  Let's see...huh, that's weird; the first song on the list is Do You Like Worms. Good Vibrations is listed fifth, between Surf's Up and Cabin Essence. Very strange indeed.

Micha, to each his own. Personally I think some of you take the title a tad too literally. I think of it as a play on words, obviously smile as a tie in to the happy cover and spoken word humor, but also S.M.I².L.E. the philosophy of psychonaughts like Timothy Leary. And just because the album has a happy name doesnt mean there cant be a few solemn spots. Just my take. For what it's worth tho, I do prefer Dumb Angel as the title. Should have stuck with that, in my opinion.

Also, I cant believe I forgot to mention it, but YES Workshop is in my SMiLE. It's overlaid with the new fade to Wonderful and the Ice Cream Man skit. I'll edit my post to add that detail, thanks. No IWBA tho, or Barnyard since we're discussing omissions. Im not personally a fan of the covers in SMiLE. I used to leave OMP out, but after really analyzing it (and the fact that its specifically on the tracklist) I came to see its importance and keep it in now. But Gee and IWBA are just extraneous and not very good compared to the other material to my ears. Since I brought it up, I like Barnyard and Look and other scraps too but somethings gotta get cut. I used to love everything and the kitchen sink versions of SMiLE but now I just see them as indulgent. Include too much and the album drags and, again, becomes less than the sum of its parts. My cutoff point is 45 because thats the cut of what LPs were capable of back then.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sheriff, yeah I would have to agree you're probably putting too much emphasis on lyrics. Pet Sounds has a bunch of songs about the course of relationships but they DONT follow sequential order at all. They're arranged by what sounds good coming after each other. Even though I group SMiLE into suites, the songs dont make perfect sense coming after one another there either. My Side two is all over the place lyrically but it works on a thematic/conceptual/musical level which I think is more important. But again, to each his own. It'd be boring if we all did the same thing.


It really is. I never used to like including it, and only do so now because it's on the tracklist and Brian specifically says it'll be on it in contemporaneous interviews. Like you say, it doesnt fit lyrically/thematically/conceptually or even instrumentally with any of the other songs. I think of Side Two as a series of vignettes about life, hence Cycle of Life suite. GV is a happy relationship, WC is enjoying 'Me time', Wonderful is overcoming an unhappy relationship/sexual experience, CIFOTM is your childhood setting the foundations of adulthood, OMP is losing faith in old ideas and moving on, SU is witnessing society around you failing but making a point of striving to do better and fix it, so the children might live in a better world than you did.

I wouldnt put too much stock in that track order. I definitely believe those are the actual songs intended (possibly sans GS) but there's no way that's the order. Aside from all the arguments we've all heard, one of our posters here uploaded a SMiLE mix following that list to a tee and, predictably, it sounded awful. Obviously not their fault, and Im really grateful they did so so that we could hear it, but that list just doesnt make any sense.

https://vimeo.com/136646972

Side A
(Our Prayer)
1. Heroes and Villains
2. Vege-Tables
3. Do You Like Worms
4. Child is Father of The Man
5. The Old Master Painter
6. Cabin Essence

Side B
7. Good Vibrations
8. Wonderful
9. I'm in Great Shape
10. Wind Chimes
11. The Elements
12. Surf's Up

Mono, no concept or side suites.  Cantina version of H&V.  I'm in Great Shape is presumed to be the mysterious "barnyard suite" which here is Barnyard/I'm in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night, making it a complete song. 

I've only made a handful of revisions to my SMiLE mix since 2013:
- All tracks are unbanded as twelve (thirteen with Our Prayer) separate songs, no crossfades or segues.
- Child is now based off the structure of Brian's 3-minute test edit (chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus) but with the opening chorus instrumental (as an intro) and the final chorus fading out, to mimic the structure "I'm Waiting For The Day", which I imagine is how the song would have been structured. 
- The Elements was greatly reworked, thanks to a thread about The Elements last year which got me brainstorming.  There I made a postulation that possibly instead of The Elements being a suite of four separate movements that each represent a different Element, what if it was one piece that represents the four elements interacting with each other?  So here I use the three different versions of Dada compiled together to represent the different elements balancing eachother out, prefaced by of course Mrs O'Leary's Cow and Water, and concluding with Whispering Winds.  This way, The Elements is a self-contained piece, and simply assuming Wind Chimes or Vege-Tables are the missing elements is no longer necessary. 

I don't agree that there's anything inherently wrong with the sequence of the Capitol list. It's not my exact preferred running order, but it sounds just fine to me. Since so much is unknown about what the final form of those 12 tracks would have been, I don't see how anyone can say definitively that it wouldn't have worked, or it would have sounded awful. I think that whatever order you put this music in, the end result would be the exact opposite of awful. So- why not put stock in the order of the list? It's the only tangible that exists that gives a suggestion of what the final form of Smile was expected to be other than BWPS.

I think it's very useful as - for me - pretty solid evidence of a) the number of selections that would have been on the record and b) their titles. On the other hand, the printed back cover slick does include the "See label for correct playing order" disclaimer, implying strongly that final sequencing of these twelve tracks had not been finalised and suggesting, in fact, that it was not to be precisely that given by the memo. The fact that the parentheses around "OMP" were drawn in and then crossed out is also pretty convincing support for the argument the listing was still in flux.

But yeah, I've done mixes of the album in that sequence and actually quite dug 'em. So I agree I don't believe there's anything self-evidently wrong with following the order given by the back cover/memo.

Aside from subjective tastes (I personally think the album sounds like a mess using the order as listed) and arguments like all the heavy hitters are on Side 1, it seems like the author was listing the songs as they recalled them (again, all the big stuff comes first then the more fragmentary unfinished stuff) and Brian didnt write it... there's a very good reason to believe this wasnt the order. The disclaimer "See label for correct playing order." Why even include that, if it was already correct as is? Doesnt make sense.

Im not saying ignore the list, just take it with a grain of salt. As I said, it's almost certain that those songs--and those alone--were what was intended in December just before the album spiraled out of control. The sticking point for me (and others) is the exact order those 12 (11) songs would go in. But you're right, we cant know how good it would have sounded. New fragments, or humor bits, couldve been recorded to make that sequence work. And awful is an admitted exaggeration. "Not nearly as fantastic as it could be" is a better way to say it.

I've always put a lot of stock in the submitted hand-written list, even believing that Brian Wilson, in fact, did write it. I know that Brian was fairly recently asked about the list, and he claimed that he either didn't remember it or didn't write it, but Brian Wilson sometimes has problems telling the truth in interviews. Maybe - maybe - it was somebody else's penmanship, but if it was, then I believe that person was simply dictating what Brian told them to write. I base my opinion on this, and correct me if I'm wrong. Brian was responding to Capitol Records' request for a list of the SMiLE songs so they could begin the artwork/graphics for the album cover. Now, why in the world would anybody intentionally send in false information and intentionally mislead the record company, and, in effect, screw up things and waste a lot of money? You'd have to be a real asshole to do that. If you weren't sure of the songs, or for whatever reason didn't want to release the titles yet, all you had to do was make a simple phone call and explain your reasons. But to intentionally submit a list of songs that you knew WEREN'T the songs on the album? Why?

That being said, I don't believe the songs were sequenced on the list, for all of the reasons mentioned above, but for another admittedly questionable reason. But hear me out. The songs weren't numbered like 1. Do You Like Worms 2. Wind Chimes and so on. But I'll go one step further. Back in those days, artists and record companies DID THINK in terms of album sides and songs that led of sides and closed sides. On the SMiLE hand-written list, the songs were just listed one after the other. There was no break in the list for the end of Side 1 and the beginning of Side 2. And again, Capitol Records wanted the song titles for the album cover/label/graphics. I know the record company would think that was important, wouldn't also the artist?

  

I agree with all of this, 100%. Hence why I say the songs are almost certainly correct, but the order is not.

I think there's no mention of side 1 or side 2 because Brian hadn't locked down the running order, so certainly he wouldn't want to commit to what would be on what side. I think the list is his best estimate at that time of what he expected the final run order to be, but, as you said, the project was still "in flux". BW wasn't committing to that run order 100%. But I maintain my opinion that  the "see label" disclaimer was included just to leave the door open, in case BW wanted to make any late changes to the order, not because the tracks are listed randomly. And I keep going back to this: if someone was just listing the tracks in the order that they came to mind, then automatically, Good Vibrations, the #1 song in the country at the time, should be at the top of the list. I just don't see how it could be otherwise.

I can agree with on the "see label" disclaimer, but not as much on "Good Vibrations" immediately coming to mind. And, that's because of one reason - we're talking about Brian Wilson. Have you seen any good movies lately, Brian? Norbit. What's your favorite movie, Brian? Norbit.

I'm not saying your theory is wrong, but I tend to believe he wrote 'em as he thought of 'em, and God knows how they came to his head at that particular time in history. And I'll go back to my shaky theory  ;D. If Brian was writing them per sequence, I still think there would've been additional markings and punctuation, even just a line separating sides. And, also, I think he might've "taken a shot" at sequencing even if he wasn't totally sure, although I agree with you that maybe he wasn't totally sure at that time. I wouldn't put an attempt at sequencing totally out of the question, I just don't think he did in this instance.

Well, thats actually an argument many bring up in support of Worms being the first song. That whoever wrote the list was thinking "ok, i know Worms is first" then listed the songs as they remembered them. Not necessarily listing them in order of importance, but thats how it played out more or less because naturally the more important songs are easier to remember. But still theres haphazard elements (wind chimes above the singles) which, to me, actually strengthens the interpretation that its someone just running down all the songs they can think of on the cuff. You can say Im reaching, but that just rings true to human nature to me.

In any case, even you acknowledge the sequence was undeniably still in a state of flux. Personally, I put a lot of stock in the interviews where Brian says the original SMiLE wouldve been "less uplifting" (see Micha, the titles not everything  ;D) and a two suite cantata. How when asked what allowed him to finish it, he said "a third movement" implying movements were always the plan, its just that certain songs were picked to fill a new elemental context. Even though I dont take BWPS very seriously in terms of evidence, I do agree with Darian about the second movement being "pure Brian Wilson" and it's undeniable that at least 4 or 5 songs all clearly work together in an Americana context. You dont get any of that by following the list as is.

There's a few things that I ended up using from the list, like Veggies after Elements...OMP and CIFOTM together...IIGS and Wonderful together (I used GS as an intro to Wonderful in my Aquarian mix) and OMP coming last (I did that in Olorin, Brian saying "This is the big finale"). There's a few I havent used but could see working, like Worms going into WC and CE closing a side. But then theres some transitions I loathe and dont think work at all. WC into H&V, H&V into SU, GV into CE, CIFOTM into Elements and Veggies into OMP. Overall, it's just a very mixed bag. I dont think anyone, even the people who say they like it, would claim this is the best sequence. Even Priore's Americana/Elements configuration, which I dont like for many reasons, works better. If this was Brians intended sequence, I think he was making a mistake, and that could maybe even be a reason he started reworking everything so extensively.

I think you're largely right (not sure the list is just "all the songs they can think of off the cuff", I like to think it was slightly more considered than that), and in fact this theory is if anything supported by the placing of Wind Chimes second. Both Anderle and Vosse refer to it on multiple occasions in their interviews (more often than "Surf's Up", almost as frequently as "H&V"), Vosse saying: "What was that thing, that think of Brian and Van Dyke's.... They played it for us all the time... 'Wind Chimes'." So maybe not one of "the important tracks" as we now think of them, but things were evidently different in '66. And if Brian was indeed "play[ing] it... all the time" little wonder it placed so high up the list - and this supports the idea the list writer (or dictator) was jotting songs down in order of familiarity as much as with any particular sequence in mind.

Very interesting. That seems to corroborate it then.

Anyway, if none of you look at it I understand, but in another thread Im discussing numerology in SMiLE, ie how he may have arranged the titles so that each side totaled to the same number. I have no reason to think this is something he'd want to do, just thought itd be an interesting experiment. Neither the Capitol groupings nor my Romestamo ones held up under this scrutiny. But what did was my Olorin sequence. That is:

Side 1: Worms, Great Shape, Veggies, Heroes, Cabin, OMP
Side 2: GV, Elements, WC, Wonderful, CIFOTM, Surfs Up

Now, Im not using this to assert that that sequence, or those groupings, must then be definitive. But it is something to consider. Id like to see if anyone else could group the accepted 12 tracks in such a way to create balanced totals too. Again, it could all be a red herring, but Brian was really interested in astrology, numerology and other new age philosophies at the time. I think looking at it under an astrological context provided some cool insight, like Vega the star and its place as part of Lyra seems to confirm my belief in Veggies being Americana, as well as both sides roughly embodying Piscean and Aquarian Age ideals. When I wrote that post, I had my Romestamo sequence in mind, but the Olorin one is similar enough that it could apply to that too. Now with this whole numerology angle, perhaps I was really unto something there with that mix. Hmmm...

IDK. Just something else to think about.

Could be that Wind Chimes was one of the most finished songs in Brian's mind.  It was one of the few SMiLE tracks in which he had completely finished tracking it and made a test edit of the assembled track with all the vocals, and fairly early on in the sessions. 

I've always interpreted that list as, whomever was writing it, put the most complete or at least visualized/conceptualized songs first:
- Do You Like Worms had all it's segments in place even though no lead vocals
- Wind Chimes was in the can, as stated above
- Heroes and Villains wasn't done, but Brian knew it was the lead single so it needed to be listed
- Surf's Up was at least demo'd in completion twice
- Good Vibrations was in the can obviously
- Cabin Essence, like DYLW, had a track assembly even though no lead vocals
- Wonderful was at least conceptually mapped out even if Brian hadn't  felt he recorded the definite version of it by January

Then the compiler, possibly off the top of his head, moved on to the songs that hadn't been fully realized yet or not even properly recorded:
- I'm in Great Shape, no one really knows wtf it is!
- Child is Father of the Man, Brian was not sure how it should be assembled and lacked anything but chorus vocals
- The Elements might have only been 50% recorded at all, with Fire and possibly Water if you believe Dada was it (which wouldn't get tracked for another 4 months anyways)
- Vege-Tables was demo'd roughly, but wouldn't even be tracked formally for another 3 months
- The Old Master Painter's fade had been gutted for Heroes and Villains, leaving it unfinished ("Should I put parenthesis around it then, Brian?")

Well said, that man. :=)

When I started mixing I originally wanted to make a new GV from scratch (or close to it) using Disc 5. It can't be done. It's just the same riff over and over. That whole disc is such a useless waste

My mix uses ONLY the organ/"gotta keep those" section merged into the hum-de-ah version......followed by the Whispering Winds .....PURE BLASPHEMY !  ::)

This is a good point. If you take the HWTL as gospel (which there's no reason anybody should) side A is where all the "hits" reside, whereas B is an almost random smattering of musical ideas and motifs, "Wonderful" excluded. And indeed, when the track list was drawn up that song was unfinished and about to be revised multiple times. There may well be something to this idea.

However, having followed this line-up myself for my previous mix, I think it works very well. Again, if we're talking two side-long suites, you've got all the proper songs on the first side (and track one of side two), followed by 15-20 minutes of interlocking musical ideas that taken together comprise a sort of grand finale that only Brian Wilson and VDP in their prime could have dreamed up. Of course we'll never know what it was supposed to sound like, but to me things like "Love to Say Dada", "I Wanna Be Around", "Old Master Painter" or "Holidays" make much more sense as segments of a unified conceptual whole than as stand-alone tracks with fades in between.

I've said this before, but the inclusion of what we call "False Barnyard" onto the end of "OMP/Sunshine" doesn't make a lick of sense, unless you consider that perhaps it was to be the fade to the entirety of Smile and not just to some seemingly unrelated ditty. As an album closer it works brilliantly.

We don't have much to go on, but we do know from test mixes that Brian was attempting to link up sections like this that were seemingly at odds with each other. This tells me that musical juxtaposition would have been a key element (pardon the pun), reflecting the madness of the times and the sessions themselves. However my gut assumption is that a finished Smile would have sounded quite a bit more unified and well-paced than years of fan mixes and seven-minute edits of "Heroes & Villains" might have us think otherwise.

Absolutely - my post above is just one interpretation, and I hadn't even really thought about the placement of Wind Chimes or the other tracks on that list until Mujan wrote about it. (I've always felt DYLW should open the record, for various reasons I won't go into here, but the possibility that the memo order might also back this up was a new one on me.) But I was struck - because it's not now seen as one of "big five" (H&V, SU, CE, GV, Wonderful) - by just how often and at what length both Anderle, and particularly Vosse, talked about it in their '68/'69 interviews when I first read them.


Except, if you look at the Anderle "Crawdaddy!" piece(s), the implication is that H&V was decided as the single almost by default/according to the opinion of other members of the band/creative team. He relates Brian doubting whether it should be the single on more than one occasion, and let's remember also that this was to be the only song on the album we know was originally slated for the band's traditional lead vocalist to sing.

By early '67 (and we think this memo was sent in mid-Dec, right?) it's very clear that creative efforts were being concentrated on finishing the song for single release (until being temporarily put aside to try the same with the "Vega-Tables" remake), but I think there's genuine doubt over whether this was ever Brian's intention/ideal situation before the album began to spiral out of control. Maybe the "chicken in tennis shoes" video idea suggests it, if this wasn't a Vosse/Wilson "put on", and was mooted at a time when H&V still included the full "Barnyard" section?

But Anderle, one of the top three or four folk "in the know" in '66, certainly makes the selection of Heroes as the critical lead single sound like anything but a fait accompli.


Ah, but this depends on whether or not one believes that early VT was indeed a demo. This is a piece of nomenclature added well after the fact (early 2000s?) when the "cornucopia" tape first leaked out, "demo" being a term never used in any contemporary documentation. Mujan and I went over this at length on another thread, so I'll keep it brief, but VDP has explicitly stated that Vega-Tables was "the only part of The Elements I worked on" and since that first version was tracked in early Nov and then untouched until well into the following year, an equally valid argument is that the '66 VT was in fact a completed section of "The Elements", considered finished until March '67, when H&V was faltering and the need for a single became increasingly critical.

Not sure what real relevance this has to the overall thread, but perhaps worth noting.


Except it hadn't been in Dec, had it? Or, at least, not as far as we know (the lyric-less fade wasn't re-recorded until mid-February). Indeed, the chronology suggests YAMS began as part of the lost May '66 recording of H&V, was cut off and augmented with OMP and fade ("the big finale") to be a separate track during the sessions proper later in '66, and then only "gutted" and the fade added to Heroes during the intense "H&V single" sessions of Jan/Feb '67. So I'm not sure where it ended up in '67 has any particular relevance to a reading of the Dec '66 memo.

Not that it matters - again, just a different interpretation while we're (kinda) on the subject.


I use it as the end of Side A, the final notes of CFTM leading directly into the opening riff of OMP. Works beautifully there too.

My sense is by the time of "the list" Brian knew what the songs were going to be. He may have had a track order in mind too or maybe not.

My guess is lyrics were not much, if any, of a consideration with Brian as to track order how ever or whenever he arranged them.

Cam, your post and the one preceding it prompted me to think about the age old argument about whether or not "Vega-Tables" was ever supposed to be part of the Elements or not. The Frank Holmes artwork and the quote from Van Dyke both seem to indicate it was, but then how to explain the track listing where "Vega-Tables" is listed as a separate track, following "The Elements"?

I see here that the initial version of Vegetables was recorded on November 11, and I'm going by the assumption that the date of Dec. '66 is accurate for the track listing.

Do you guys think it plausible that Vegetables was always the last section of the Elements, and that its placement didn't change but simply the delineation between tracks did?

In other words, say The Elements was originally Fire, "Air", "Water" and Vega-Tables. The track list might have gone like this:

Child Is Father of the Man
The Elements (consisting of all four movements)
The Old Master Painter

Brian decides he wants "Vega-Tables" to be its own thing somewhere in early December. So we get...

Child Is Father of the Man
The Elements (first three movements)
Vega-Tables
The Old Master Painter

...with no gaps in between.

Same music, but a different way of titling it. Make sense to anybody?

Jason - Mujan and I went over this, as we've both mentioned, at length in the TSS forum, so I'll try to avoid derailing this thread with a repeat of my arguments there! In short, Anderle says (and I am paraphrasing a little here) that "we knew what Fire was, obviously. We knew a little bit about what Water was going to be. And it kinda stopped there." I think the evidence is pretty incontrovertible (VDP's quote, as well as the booklet) that VT was, at one point, part of "The Elements". But Anderle's '68 interview seems to constitute a pretty clear argument that Air was basically undeveloped (or, at the very least, was not a known quantity like "Wind Chimes" or "Holidays") and that Water, as Anderle understood it, was likewise probably never recorded.

So where does that leave us with the tracklist? Personally, I use "The Elements: Fire" as a first track and segue into VT, using - almost certainly without historical basis - WC and SU to represent the other elements (though it's a theory which has met with some derision, I'll also note that Frank Holmes has stated there is "another element" present in his VT illustration, which does include a wall of Surf in one of the windows/photo frames). But your theory above sounds like the best currently plausible - even if it sadly means making an "accurate mix" which includes a full "Elements" track basically impossible.

A sidenote: On prompting from Williams, Anderle also reflects that the Fire session drama is "what basically destroyed 'The Elements'" and indeed was the first clear indication things with the album were going wrong. Again, not sure if that's relevant, but make of it what you will.

This is great stuff. You're prompting me to pull out my copy of How Deep Is the Ocean? so I can read the full Williams/Anderle interview again.

Just a couple of response points... Regarding "Air", there's that quote from Brian (paraphrasing) "a piano piece... never recorded". Sadly there's no way to gauge how accurate that is, seeing as he also told the public the Smile tapes were burned at one point. I'm sure you know all this already, but my reason for bringing it up is that it ties into what Mujan was saying (again, paraphrasing) about how it's just as legitimate for we fans to try to figure this stuff out as it is for people working for the Beach Boys in any official capacity. There's several mysteries to Smile that will likely never be solved, and several tapes we'll doubtlessly never get to hear or that may have even been destroyed. Yet I still get a kick whenever I'm doing a mix and find two tracks that are seemingly tied together that I'd never thought to match before. Maybe 30 years from now, some enterprising individual will create the "perfect" Smile mix that flows like like a bubbling stream on a gentle summer's day, using ideas put forth by all the folks who died in the trenches trying to create unique constructions of this magical group of sessions.

Anyway where was I going with this? Well my point is that, Brian simply cannot be relied on to offer anything in the way of helpful clues. Not that I blame him. Clearly the period surrounding Smile is fraught with negative emotions for him, and he has trouble revisiting it even today. There's no crime in that; it just makes it tough for those of us with a deep desire to hear how Smile "really" goes.

Van Dyke, too, seems awfully tight-lipped when it comes to the details surrounding Smile. Even people as peripherally involved with the whole scene as Mark Volman are reluctant to discuss it. Whatever it was that went down back then has left a sour taste in the many mouths.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that in regards to "The Elements", I don't think your idea of using "Surf's Up" or "Wind Chimes" has more or less merit than any other. We simply don't know what Brian was thinking on any given day 50 years ago, but it sure seems even he himself didn't have a clear-cut vision after a certain point in time. Personally, I've always stuck with "Dada" as "Water", and I think the "some idea" David Anderle had as to what it consisted of was what we now know of as "All Day" (I know, technically listed as part of "Heroes & Villains", but tape logs have been wrong before). But again, that's just my opinion, and god knows I've been wrong before.

Man, Smile is really the conversation that just keeps on going, isn't it?

The thing is, I think all the songs wouldve been "proper" by the end. The stuff that seems so formless to us now, like CIFOTM, wouldve been completed as stand alone tracks, and (IMO) just as fantastic as the "big five" some of you are mentioning. The things you mentioned wouldnt have even been on the album, which is my sticking point with your theory. Unless IWBA was part of IIGS. Even so, Dada didnt exist until late '67 when the album was already all but dead. Holidays, rightly or wrongly, is commonly thought to have been scrapped. I tend to agree with that idea. And OMP, while not the best, is a totally standalone track with a fade and everything. Im not trying to dissuade you from mixing it how you like, but it just seems unlikely to have been the intent is all. Citing songs that didnt even exist yet and could've grown to be anything (Dada--which had a lost third section resembling CIFOTM) doesnt make for a strong theory to me

Yes, and I love it :hat

Thats basically how I do it now. Elements is a 3/4ish part instrumental/acapella track. Fire, Undersea Chant, Breathing. There's a lull in the middle of the breathing skit, and in there I inserted a bit of Smog, then the laughter builds up. Hence why I say 4ish, if you count the laughter as separate from the breathing/air. And then Veggies comes in for Earth, as its own independent track.

Hmmm, interesting, I have overlooked this...  It makes sense that Vege-Tables began as the Earth segment sometime in 1966, but became it's own song definitely by April 1967, where Brian gutted the Do A Lot section of Heroes and Villains to make a chorus for the otherwise chorus-less Vege-Tables for a single. 

When was it cut from The Elements?  At least by January 1967 since Vege-Tables and The Elements get their own listing on the Handwritten list, implying they are separate entities.  Perhaps after the "failure" of Mrs O'Leary's Cow put a halt to production on The Elements in general, which spurred Vege-Tables to become it's own thing, which would have been December?

imo, the nature of the cornucopia version of Vege-Tables works as a demo, because of it's drastically simplified arrangements as compared to literally every other track for SMiLE.  Also, wasn't it just Brian and no one else?  Why no additional work put into it afterwards?  It would be well over a month before Mrs O'Leary's Cow is recorded, which was introduced as Part 1 of The Elements; if Cornucopia Vegetables was the recording proper instead of merely a demo, wouldn't Mrs O'Leary's Cow be Part 2, since it was recorded later? 


Yeah, I guess we have a different interpretation...  As of 1/27/67 the most complete Heroes and Villains seems to have been Verse/Whistling Bridge/My Children Were Raised/Three Score Five.  No ending yet (and mysteriously no Cantina, even though it was recorded).  So that tells us that the OMP fade (False Barshine) was still in tact on OMP when the memo was written (I know you've said above the memo was dated Dec 66, but I've always read Jan 67).  So by February 10th, H&V needed a fade, and it was stolen from OMP.  Then 5 days later, a Prelude to that Fade was needed.  Then two weeks later, the Fade needed to be re-recorded completely (along with the verse itself, so maybe Brian was trying to restart the whole damned thing from scratch going into March?).  So there you go. 

One thing though.. The sessionology notes the My Only Sunshine lyrics for the Fade was recorded on 2/10/67...  Is this a typo?  Why would it be recorded and meant for OMP if it was to be gutted literally the same day?  Or was the vocal recorded 11/30/66, along with Part 1? 


Agreed!  I also think it makes a fantastic end to H&V itself (Cantina version of course) so what do you do?  If SMiLE ends with OMP, then False Barshine goes there; if not, it can go back to H&V imo. 

My hope in 2004 and again in 2011 and I guess it will always be my hope until it's too late, was for Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Darian Sahanaja -  and any other musicians/journalists/friends who were present for the SMiLE sessions (and sadly they are almost all deceased) - to meet at Brian Wilson's house in nice comfy chairs with a piano in the room - and discuss just what the heck was going on in the studio in late 1966/early 1967. It's not even necessary to videotape it, just transcribe what was discussed and publish it in some form. It would be priceless!

But you don't know that. Could "Holidays" ever have been part of the Elements, or "I Wanna Be Around" tied to "I'm in Great Shape"? We don't know, and we likely never will. I'm guessing he didn't just cut them for fun, but I guess anything is possible. Potentially they could have been auditioned and then dropped, or part of an earlier vision that was superseded.


Might it have existed in the head of its creator prior to that? We have "All Day" pointing the way towards it as early as January.


Might have been, but no evidence supporting that notion other than the track listing. Could it have been intended for the Elements as it basically wound up in BWPS? Again, anything is possible until we're given definitive word from one of the creators, or other tapes emerge.


I swear I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but I wouldn't call OMP as we know it a standalone track. You've got a verse from one song, and instrumental verse from another and a seemingly unrelated fade. It doesn't follow any kind of standard verse/chorus/verse song progression.


Do you mean my theory regarding Dada as Water? Well again, who's to say what Brian had going on in his mind at the time? What's to say he didn't have the idea for the track early on and just never got around to cutting it right away? That seems to be the case with Air if Brian can be believed.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be contentious. I just wanted to address your points as I see them. Party on.

That would be amazing, no doubt. Perhaps more realistically, maybe Brian's forthcoming bio with spill the beans. Hey, we can hope, right?

I'd like to hear this. Which mix of yours is it on?

It does. It used to be my preferred fade, especially when I'd leave OMP out. But now, I think there's enough decent substitutes that one can and should leave OMP alone, original fade intact. You can end H&V abruptly with either the flutter horn or tape explosion. You can use one of the 3~4 different chants to make a fade. You can use H&V intro as an outro. You can use some of the many instrumental outtakes and make a new fade that way. Thats what I did in my Aquarian mix and honestly, I love that fade so much I think I may even prefer it to the OMP one.


I want the same. There were a few nuggets in interviews for BWPS, like the third movement being totally new and Darian saying the 2nd was vintage. Some others I cant recall. But I was disgruntled how not-revelatory the TSS book memoirs were. No new insight from what I recall. I dont think Brian really remembers, it was so long ago, through a haze of mental illness and drugs, bad emotions so he's probably repressed a lot, and the damage done to his mind from Landy... I think that well is more or less dry. Darian's just an observer, same as we. He played an enormous help getting the project finished but that doesnt mean he has some special insight into the original plan. I dont think he really does, it seems to me the gang and he all just kinda looked at what was there and structured it in such a way that it would work for a live show. I have to believe VDP knows more than he's letting on tho. I think it's probably a combination of not wanting to ruin the details of what he considers Brians work, as well as wanting to put the whole thing behind him, and for him too, probably some details lost to memory (50 years is a long time.)

I'd love to have them try tho. All sit in a room, no cameras, no reporters asking the same questions for Brian to give the same canned answers to. Maybe just a hidden mic, or as you say, someone takes the role of transcriber. Just have them casually talk about it like old friends recalling old times. Maybe ask them to play some songs again on piano and see what comes back doing so, or (if it wouldnt upset Brian) listen to the old tapes. Heck, I think it'd help to have some of us uber-fans come forth and maybe offer our ideas of the music. That might jog his memory. If someone asks about what the intention of the comedy skits were, brings up the Wonderful insert, these alternate track sequences and ideas for the elements...Id have to believe Brian or VDP might have a Eureka! moment and recall a long forgotten idea they had had back then.

Sadly, with how Brian and VDP seem to avoid the subject like the plague, and their current strained relationship, I dont see this ever happening.

Romestamo

No, its all good man. I concede you may be right on all points but one here--OMP. You discount it, or seem inclined to, because it doesnt follow verse/chorus/verse structure. But a couple other SMiLE songs dont either. Heroes didnt until it became a single candidate. Elements wouldnt. Wonderful wouldnt. IIGS possibly wouldnt. Surfs Up. I've said in the past OMP was very fragmentary even by SMiLE standards and still think so. But I see it now as an experiment with using the modular style on old material to make something new. To see how else this modular technique might be used. Take two unrelated old standards, put them together and change the tense in the latter and you get a new idea conveyed about loss of faith in God/Christianity. Very amazing how such a simple song/idea could convey so much by doing so little I think. Really ties into the experimental modular style of the album.

It seems like it was part of Heroes in the beginning--like Dada (All Day) in January, and Great Shape apparently. But like those it spun off and became its own thing. Only different is, it did so in '66 and is thus a more probable candidate for inclusion than Dada. And unlike GS we actually know what it is.

Gang - this is fun!

Soniclovenoise, great post, thank you. Here are a few thoughts:


Definitely plausible. There was a lot of cannibalism happening in March/April (and, to a certain extent, Feb). In fact, I'd say there was provably much more re-recording/reshuffling/repurposing of pieces than creation/development of new ones during that period. Although this often involved pieces of other songs being moved into H&V to complete the single (DYLW's chorus, OMP's fade), when VT become the Heir Apparent A-side-wise, it seems equally likely the transferring could work the other way.

Oh - and because it'll come up later on, the memo is definitely mid-Dec. This has I believe been comprehensively confirmed (Cam Mott amongst others has written about this), plus putting its composition post-Christmas doesn't work in terms of the design/printing timetable for the cover slicks, which is essentially why it was made in the first place.

I like the notion that "Elements"/"Veggies" being separated on the list is because the whole concept for The Elements was now up in the air following the problems with "Fire". If anything, this is even clearer if you accept the mid-Dec date for the memo - only two weeks after the MOLC session, when the psychic wounds will still have been fresh but the writer may not have felt confident to scrap "The Elements" from the line-up completely.
All the BBs, plus Marilyn and Diane, are present on the track. In fact, the lead is a combo Brian/Mike. As to why no additional work on it later, my "Ockham's Razor" reply would be to say "because it was considered finished." True the sound is very different - more like the Psycodelic [sic] Sounds chants recorded by the "Vosse Posse" late at night five days later than anything else laid down during '66 - but maybe this was one of Brian's "bold new directions" (further explored, of course, on SS) of the period?

And again, an equally valid reading of the numbering of parts would be simply that "Fire" was intended to lead-off (literally be the 'First Part') of "The Elements" suite. There don't seem to be any surviving session logs/box notations for "Cornucopia" at all, so maybe somewhere in a drawer there's a faded label reading "Elements Part 4: My Vega-Tables"?


Agreed - and if, as I'm confident is the case, the memo is from December, this is actually how I'd lay out the chronology myself. In terms of the My Only Sunshine vocals taped on 10 Feb, I believe these are the wordless "oooh ah ah" backing vocal parts (I'm away from the Sessiongraphy at the moment, so would have to check, but pretty sure this is right. Also, those vocals are apparently Brian, Marilyn and Diane, no other BBs present.) The YAMS vocals proper (including the wisps of lyric in the fade) were most likely taped in '66 and survive now only on an acetate.

Darian would be my moderator - or mediator! :-D

Carol Kaye: Hey Brian, now I wanna know. Do you remember when you recorded those hammers and saws and power drills? What was the meaning of THAT? Wasn't that the rebuilding of the barn after the fire? 

Brian: (laughing loudly) Ha ha ha

Darian: Yeah, Brian, I had heard that theory, too. Why did you record the carpenter sound effects?

Brian: OK, I'll tell you why. Do you remember that song called "Barnyard"?

Darian: (singing) "Out in the barnyard the cook is chopping lumber". Right?

Brian: Right! That's it! Well, I wanted to record the cooks chopping lumber, but kind of give it a 1966 feel, do you know what I mean. I mean, we all know they didn't have power drills back then, right? But I thought I'd add a little humor, you know, using power drills back in the early 1900"s. Ha ha ha...

Van Dyke Parks: That's how I remember it. We sent Michael Vosse to the local hardware store to buy three or four hammers, saws, and power drills. And it turned out beautifully, right Brian?

Brian: Oh, yeah.

Case closed

Yes, I can dream. :police:   

I am already trying to convince myself this was an actual conversation that really happened. It's perfect.

Or playing the Undersea Chant (Brian: "Oh yeah! I remember I wanted the guys to imitate water with just their voices! We kinda did something in that vein a year later." Van: "Yeah, I remember you wanted to include all these goofy skits and vocal experiments and I just thought it was all getting too weird for me")

Playing a two-suite Americana/Life structured mix (Brian: "This really takes me back...wow, that works perfectly with the vinyl format too." VDP: "The problem was we couldnt agree on where OMP, GV, and the Elements should go. And when we decided to scrap Look, the whole Second movement never quite worked right. Haha, what a mess that whole situation was!")

Playing Surf's Up with the Talking Horns overlays (Brian: "Yeah, I was trying something in that vein but it just never seemed to work exactly right" VDP: "There were gonna be some strings in there too, I think" Brian: "And a tie-into a funny scene where a guy named Gary gets trapped in a trumpet. Or something.")

On hearing the tapes for OMP (Brian: "I said that was gonna be the finale? No way!" VDP: "No, remember, Brian? The idea was we created our own bunch of classics, that would go on to become as iconic and timeless as these old standards" Brian: "That's the most pretentious thing I ever heard. Besides, Surf's Up is definitely the finale" (they erupt into an argument, which itself gives some insight into why the project never really worked out))

Hey, if you can dream, so can I!  ;D :lol :hat :p

OK fair enough. 


Ah!  Ockham's Razor!  Well actually, according to Ockham's Razor, my theory would be the more probable one because my theory makes less assumptions (It's similar enough to the standard demo type, thus it is one) than yours (It's supposed to sound stripped down and a complete outlier; No work was done to it because ___, It's supposed to sound unfinished, etc).  ;)

Dangerous logic, on par with "Oh, I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night was mistitled on the tape box, we need to discard this data."  ;)  But joking aside, we already have suggestions of structural continuity in regards to segment naming, there's no reason we should discard it in this case, just to justify a belief.  Circular logic is sometimes prevalent in SMiLology...   



Yep, I'm suggesting that the wordless "ooooh ah ah" was recorded at a different session than the Sunshine lyrics.  They rhythmically seemed to clash with each other to my ear, suggesting that they were recorded at different times, meant for different songs (not unlike the masters of DYLW and VT that feature different verses simultaneously).  As in, the Sunshine lyrics were added o9n 11/30/66 when the Fade belonged to OMP, and the standard worldess vocals were added on 2/10/67 when the Fade belonged to H&V.  And what we have remaining is an acetate of the brief moment where they shared the same tape (before it was wiped?) 

Excellent responses, SLN. I am thoroughly enjoying this.


Ah, but that's not quite the argument I was making, though I can see how putting two fairly discrete statements in one para made it seem that way. No, my "Ockham" moment was simply to say "Nothing more done = because it was finished." The stuff about it sounding different to a lot of the sessions was a response to your previous comments about the sound, not really a justification for the theory that if the original (pre-single desperation) version wasn't amended, it was simply because BW & VDP were happy with it as it stood in Nov.

EDIT, ADDITIONAL: Re: "the standard demo type". I'd quibble - surprise! - with this assessment. As I pointed out above, "Cornucopia" is a full (vocal) band recording, plus Marilyn and Diane, layered to include overdubbed laughing effects and additional backing vox (Brian is both co-lead and, behind himself, a backing vocalist/chortler). This is more akin to the work the Boys did on "Party" (always intended for commercial release) than any genuine "demo" recordings from the period, ie. Humble Harv, both complete '66 "Surf's Up"s, plus the '67 version, or "Little Red Book" etc. Which leads me to believe it was a deliberately stripped-back Party-style "comedy" recording, rather than a demo. Unless there are other more-than-Brian-at-a-piano demoes/run-throughs I'm not remembering?


Similarly - and I may not be following you completely here - I simply meant that "Part One" could equally mean "part one of the sequence" as it could "first part to be recorded". I absolutely agree that - again, especially as we move into '67, with the constant "H&V Part Two", "intro to Part 3" stuff - the naming of segments ('structural continuity') is both increasingly prevalent and gets frustratingly complex. There appears to have been some logic to it at the time, but damned if it's easy to suss what exactly it was now.


Got you. (Meaning, "I understand!", not "My trap has sprung!") You might well be right - consulting the Sessionography (under "My Only Sunshine" listing), the Part 1 vocals (meaning Dennis, I assume) were taped on 30 Nov. Part 2 vocals (Brian, Diane, Marilyn) are recorded as being taped "late 66/early 67"- apparently all the vocals on the fade, but I'd buy it as being possible the BW "you were my sunshine..." bits in the fade were from an earlier session, preserved only on that particular acetate dub.

Peter Brown wrote that when McCartney visited the US in April 1967 and stopped in to see Brian at the studio (Vegetables one of the specific tunes we know was being recorded that day), Brian was working on the Elements "suite". Brown called it "The Four Elements Suite" specifically. Connect the dots if any exist.

Interesting, gf2002, thanks. Seems to be supporting evidence for Veggies being/remaining tied to the Elements concept. Equally - against my usual supposition - this recollection implies that "SMiLE" as a full album entity (as opposed to an increasingly panicked attempt at singles) was still actively in mind as late as April '67. The use of the specific - and idiosyncratic - term "Four Elements Suite" lends weight to it being a genuine memory as opposed to unintentional historical revisionism or a reflection of the discourse since.

I may have thought otherwise in years past, but at this point that tracklist memo which was printed on the proposed back cover slick was probably as simple as this: At that point in time, at that stage of the process when Capitol needed something to send to the print dept. to start making the actual covers, the songs listed there were what had been decided for the album. The order and sequencing was obviously not, and the memo (and cover) state that clearly. But those are the songs that came out of the process that got whittled down week-by-week. Just take those specific titles, go through the known sessions and recordings, and see which ones were close to being finished, which ones did and did not have vocals yet, and which ones were worked on as 1967 kicked off a new year. It could be as simple as that, if the question is what was "Smile" going to consist of, as of the beginning of the year 1967.

Sounds like yet another piece of evidence indicating Veggies was an element

That was my opinion too, that such a specific term as "Four Elements Suite" coming from someone like Peter Brown with a direct personal connection to Paul (and Mal Evans who traveled to the States with Paul in April '67) wouldn't seem to be a throwaway, or something cribbed from another book or report as other books tend to do. It's too specific.

And as far as challenging Peter Brown's memory or details in general, if we fact check Brown's account of Paul and Mal's trip to the states, all of the details and dates line up quite well, including placing Paul at a Vegetables session that week in April '67. Brown when his book came out had no internet timelines, articles, or much else in the way of date-specific Smile information to consult or research. If he wrote that Paul was at a session where Brian was working on this "Elements" music, and the date lines up, that's straight from either Paul's or Mal's own account of the meeting with Brian.

Brown also mentioned one of Paul's first hang-out sessions when he arrived in the US April 3 being with members of the Jefferson Airplane, and not more than a few weeks ago or so a photo of them hanging out that day showed up on Facebook.

Largely agreed, but I still think the record suggests something (or several somethings) happened in December '66 which served to throw the album off its trajectory. In terms of the first work done (Jan/Feb) in '67:

Anderle: [W]hen I left, "Heroes and Villians" was being planned to be the single, only because it was the closest thing to being finished, at that point, and sadly not even the original "Heroes and Villians"...
Williams: When I was there in December, Brian was thinking of "Heroes and Villains" as the single.
Anderle: Right. He would think of "Heroes and Villains" and then he would call up two nights later, and say it was going to be this, and it was going to be that, and it was going to be "Heroes and Villains" again, and then everyone said, No, Brian, it should be "Heroes and Villains", no Brian it should be this...

[BRIAN, part two, Crawdaddy! May '68]

Exactly. I mean, it's possible people like Jason who argue for including Dada/Holidays/Look might be right...but I really dont think so. Like someone said, why would Diane/Carl/David just give Capitol a made up list without consulting Brian? There's no way such a crucial thing as the very tracklist didnt get run by him, and while I believe he didnt actually write it, I do believe he took care not to mess it up. Long-winded way of saying those were the SMiLE songs in his mind at that time. Look and Holidays were never touched again. We get some new fragments, some repurposing of old material for different songs, a Carl song probably unrelated to SMiLE or else a last minute attempt by him to fill the gaps and get something out...and Dada.

Now, if we assume Dada was meant for SMiLE at all...my guess would be it was a reworking of the Elements. This is me combining my/Bee's theory on the elements with Sonics. I think it may be possible that without Fire, the Elements was being reworked from what it would've been to something else. Dada/Second Day/Whatever. It's possible. But personally...I think Dada was just a B-side that came from an old Heroes fragment when the two-sided Heroes wasnt working out.

Any chance you could send me that photo?

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-us7qw_3emFg/VcHEzDRqdJI/AAAAAAAARXw/gWZnaQtSbjw/s1600/jefferson.jpg)

They've been dating that Jefferson Airplane photo as April 4th 1967, which lines up with Brown's date of April 3rd as the day McCartney and Mal arrived in the US.

I dont feel like digging thru this whole thread, but didnt someone before say Brian didnt originally want Heroes to be the single but the band did? That could really explain why things went down as they did. It makes sense he might concede on that point as a way of placating them since this new music was so wild and as much as their reaction has been exaggerated, they obviously didnt much like it at first. This explains the endless tinkering to make it more commercial too, because now that it's a single, it has to be catchy and relatable. It has to be as groundbreaking as GV was. It has to really make a splash. If this is true, it makes me want to scream. Like, you already have a single on the charts. Forget singles for now and focus on the album. Choose a song that's ALREADY commercial and screw what anyone says. Again, with Surf's Up being demoed on TV and the brilliant "trick" of the title (you thought it was just another surf song? NOPE!) it wouldve been the perfect single. A simple piano demo like the Wild Honey version wouldve been beautiful, a great counterpoint to the heavy-production of GV, and wouldve kept the "real" Surfs Up and the rest of SMiLE a secret. I bring this up because Brian mentioned in interviews wanting to keep the material secret until it was released, which was another hangup about the H&V sessions. You already have Look--with vocals--in the can as a perfect throwaway B-side. Makes me wish I could go back and shake him and just tell him to do it this way instead.

Im disappointed there's no Grace Slick in the pic, but thank you kindly good sir!  :afro

Notice Jack Casady's Fender Jazz Bass with the custom modifications is shown in that photo too.

Some of the best information I've ever seen, ever read, or would ever recommend about what Smile was or may have been at specific points from Fall 1966 into 1967 comes from Michael Vosse in his Fusion article. Again, and as I've said before, I haven't seen much of anything that Vosse got 'wrong' in that article regarding the evolution and sound of certain Smile tracks, along with the history and background of the events surrounding them. And he more than perhaps anyone (other Beach Boys included) was there to see and hear this stuff happening firsthand.

Some questions raised in this current discussion I'd say were addressed if not answered by Vosse in "Fusion".

I really got get around to reading LLVS...

Just one example, he says the wood sawing and hammering was part of Brian's "barnyard" or farm concept, along with doing You Are My Sunshine in some kind of Old McDonald Had A Farm scenario...it came from Brian playing "Sunshine" while they were high (according to Vosse) in that slow sad way, then it started spinning into the barnyard direction that included the woodworking/building noises and the animal noises as heard in the actual piece "Barnyard". So it was Brian's sonic version of Old McDonald's Farm, if you take Vosse's word. And I do.  :)

So *that* is where this whole "Barnyard Suite" comes from...

When it's broken down to something other than the "rebuilding after the fire" notion of what the woodworking sounds were supposed to be, it actually makes very basic, common sense that you would probably hear hammering and sawing and building on an active farm, whether they're either building or repairing a fence, a chicken coup, the barn itself...any number of things. Sometimes the most simple possibility is actually the best possibility. The fact that some of these little sections got shuffled around so much definitely doesn't make it easier to figure out, which is why having Vosse's firsthand account (since he was *there* as the whole thing first started developing) is so valuable.

Agreed. Its frustrating how Priore, fan speculation, the shoehorning of Water into Dada and H&V intro into Fire that Sheriff brought up, and BWPS' new third movement have muddied the waters so to speak. Not that there's anything wrong with alternate ideas, but it just feels like making the historical SMiLE is that much harder because of all the "repeated so much its taken as fact" misinformation, and the PR of BWPS being the finished SMiLE (which it is...just not finished as it would have been, is all Im saying.)

That does bring up a point, though, and it's one Vosse also made clear if I remember - The fact is that Smile was left unfinished in 1967, and that was that. I think now the closest anyone may have in terms of the question "what would it have looked like in January 1967?" might just be that tracklist that appears on the back cover. Whatever was or would have been included in those individual song titles was the mystery, and always will be, because some of it was simply in a state of flux and some of the "tracks" we know from the bootlegs of the past 35 years or so were no more a part of the album than "Trombone Dixie" or the early takes of Good Vibrations was to Pet Sounds. They were tracks worked on during the sessions, but when it came time to narrow it all down, certain pieces would have been left off. For example, "He Gives Speeches"...that is a throwaway, plain and simple. Is it a "Smile" track, or a track that was worked on during the Smile sessions? I equate those things with Trombone Dixie.

At this point, there is only one finished Smile that had both the names Wilson and Parks listed as the composers, and that was what premiered live at Royal Festival Hall in 2004. Everything else is and will always be pure speculation, with some pieces of the puzzle having more clues to piece together than others.

This is something I was thinking about today.  Where did this association between the H&V intro and Fire come from?  It could be more than accidental or fan revisionism.  Let's trace the history of the pieces as they seemed to evolve over time, both conceptually and musically...

First let's look at Mrs. O'Leary's Cow--Fire--recorded 11/28/66.  Driven by a bass figure and implied notes from cellos and flutes to be a chord sequence of Gm to F, we also have non-musical bells and whistles to represent firetrucks.  The effect is dizzying and droney. Brian believes the song created flash fires in LA and the song is shelved indefinitely...  

Later. a segment for H&V called "Bag of Tricks", recorded 1/3/67, features a bouncy and abstract piano figure that, like Fire, follows an implied Gm to F chord sequence.  It also features the BBs using party favors as adornments, similar to the bells and whistles of Fire.  It's unclear how this segment would fit into H&V (which is in the key of Dd major), but due to the adornments and chord sequences, could this be a reincarnation of the musical ideas of Fire/Mrs O'Leary's Cow?  

Next is a segment for H&V called Organ Waltz, recorded 3/1/67, that is also known as H&V Intro and was later misstitled as the Fire section of The Elements, and later adapted as the actual intro to Fire by Linnet and eventually Darian S...  Here was have an organ and a descending piano riff, this time moving from F to Bb (which like the previous Bag of Tricks, doesn't harmonically jive with H&V).  Like the previous version, it featured bells and whistle adornments.  

SMiLE is officially cancelled in June and Brian picks up some of the pieces in his home studio and rebuilds it into Smiley Smile.  Among the debris is "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W Woodpecker Symphony)", recorded 6/29/67.  Here we again have a droney & dizzying two-chord sequence of Bbm to F driven by a bouncy abstract piano figure, much like Bag of Tricks.  Also featuring sparkles of percussion and a woodpecker call (comparative to the Fire bells and whistles), it notably also features a vocal part very similar to the bass riff of Fire.  

Now while there is no real direct connect of Mrs O'Leary's Cow to Organ Waltz as we all know, it makes sense the connection is made.  I believe that the four above pieces are all connected: that Mrs. O'Leary's Cow evolved into Bag Of Tricks, which evolved into Organ Waltz, which evolved into Fall Breaks and Back To Winter, which was incorporated into the BWPS Mrs O'Leary's Cow, which included Organ Waltz as an intro.  Did you follow that?  It's cyclical.  Which leads me to my next point...  

While we should probably avoid claiming the smoking gun are the Fall Breaks vocals in the BWPS incarnation of Fire because we don't know the reliability and historical accuracy of the BWPS configuration, we have another bit of evidence, albeit circumstantial: the titles.  "Fall Breaks and and Back To Winter" denotes the changing of the seasons...  The four cyclical seasons that relieve eachother, Fall, winter, spring, summer.  Just like the four cyclical elements that relieve eachother: earth, fire, air, water.  Coincidence?  Not so sure it simply is...  

I mean, yeah, but like Holy Bee, I do think there was a general outline of sorts come November/December and that this is worth recreating (to the best of our abilities). Similarly, Id disagree with Vosse about "it ended and thats that." Fact is, it never really ended. It evolved (or devolved, depending on your perspective) into Smiley. Pieces of it were constantly reworked and recycled through the years, from CCW and CWTL to the riff in Little Bird and workshop in Do It Again. No fan mix will ever be official or the real thing, but theres more than enough material, a lot of unexplored ideas (in BWPS, and Smiley) and enough conflicting reports that we can make a totally new album from BWPS/Smiley, which depending on your perspective is closer to the original intent. In my opinion, they usually sound a lot better than BWPS/Smiley and are more interesting. This is without getting into arguments about whether BWPS should "count" because it was sequenced for a different context and different band (not trying to derail this awesome discussion with that can of worms tho).
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Sonic, what's your take on any Water Chant/CCW and Dada connection?

But honestly though, just how much of the recreating process is nothing but the preferences of the person doing the recreation versus anything concrete or beyond a fantasy mix? Don't take me the wrong way, I don't have issues with fan mixes and recreations at all, but at the same time I'd say how much would someone 49 years after the fact be able to get any closer to the creators' intent than either that tracklist of songs or even the sequence agreed to in 2004 by Brian and Van Dyke when the project was revisited? Again, how much closer does anyone expect to get to the pulse of the Smile project than a back cover tracklisting that was approved and printed in early 1967 and a finished performance and recording of the music in three movements done by the two primary composers and creators who did the original sessions?

I'll offer this as a parallel example to consider, no opinion but just food for thought:

Say the final mix and released version of Good Vibrations never happened in 1966. Brian never did that final mixdown and edit that got released.

Years later fans have access to several discs full of various sessions done for Good Vibrations. Take after take, remake after rework after experiment. Which we do have, officially and unofficially for years now.

Could anyone have come close to what ended up on that 45 single that hit #1 on the charts as Brian created it?

There would be several hours worth of various snapshots in time of the working process that could have suggested a different edit, different feel, different sequences, different this or that...and would any attempt to build as close to a recreation of Brian's concept for the song be anywhere close to what it would end up being in reality?

Take even that production flair Brian added by simply muting a lead vocal track on the words "we find" in order to boost the effect of the multiple drum tracks and bass line building to a climax before the hook...if an early rough mix of that lead vocal even existed, would any fan mixers think to mute those two words out of the track to supercharge the effect of that build-up in the instrumental tracks as Brian did? You'd lose one of the prime examples of what Brian as producer would do to make hit records come alive, those little things like a simple mute in a mixdown.

And even taking any number of the existing GV sessions available and trying to mix them into a conceptual version as it might have been in 1966...would anyone have come close?

It's a microcosm of trying to recreate a working Smile. At some point, I'd rather consider the attempts a fantasy mix and judge them on those aesthetics rather than trying to do a historically correct version of what was left unfinished and in a state of flux for decades until the two guys who came up with all that stuff decided to finish it as they chose.

Well...   sh*t.   That's actually really interesting. 

Then why in god's name is Vege-Tables listed separately from The Elements on the tracklist if they were meant to be together!?!?!?!?

My sentiments exactly as  I suggested earlier in this thread.  In fact, if you consider that it took 7 months to record GV, minus a couple of months dedicated to Pet Sounds, that is roughly 5 months which is 216,00 minutes to record a 3.5 minute song......or 61,714 minutes per 1 minute of final product.

Apply that to a 45 minute SMiLE album and it becomes reasonable to assume it would have taken over 5.28 years to complete SMiLE.....roughly late 1971.

This is just one the ideas used in my mix along with Zen Interpretation, American Suite, Elements and the overwhelming feeling that some songs, like Wonderful, were meant as metaphors.

Well, let's look at the history of the piece... 

It first emerged as a little instrumental pieces called "Da Da" taped on 12/22/66.  Not sure if these were simply experiments or recordings proper. 

Next they were recorded as a H&V segment called "All Day" on 1/27/67, with both Part 1 and 2 fully formed (or at least the session tapes sound like it was being arranged while it was being recorded).  Interestingly enough Brian mentions that dialog would be inserted in-between the song's pauses.  That segment was obviously not used in any iteration of H&V (we know of anyways) and the segments went unused and shelved for two months....

Brian seemingly reworked All Day into it's own song in March 1967 after moving to Bellagio Road, and conceptually the song was about a baby and titled "Love to Say Da Da (As in, what a baby would say, evidently). 

On 5/16/67 it was recorded properly as "Love to Say Da Da", recording the Part 1 (a sort of introduction) initially.  The following day, attempts were made to track a Part 2, and the infamous "wah wah" vocals were added to the Part 2.  The following day on 5/17/67, Part 2 was completely rerecorded, called out as "Part 2, Second Day" (as in the second day that Part 2 was worked on.  That was essentially the final SMiLE Recording session, as the album was scrapped in June. 

Then it gets a bit sketchy... Someone certainly feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong, but the droning Water was always believed to have been recorded on 6/7/67.  But we now know that sessions was actually for Cool Cool Water, which was the next evolution of I Love to Say Da Da, and it was Water that was recorded during the late Wild Honey sessions later that fall (perhaps the session tapes were only vaguely labeled as "Water", making confusion inevitable?). 

But of course a short version of Cool Cool Water was tracked in October '67, left off of Wild Honey but heard by Lenny Waraonker who implored the BBs to remake it in 1970 for Sunflower.

So as you can see, Da Da/CooL cool water had a long gestation, with at least six known iterations (12/22/66, 1/27/67, May '67, 6/7/67, October '67 and July '70).  But it's important to know that based on the chronology, when SMiLE ceased to exist the piece was I Love to Say Da Da and it didn't become Cool Cool Water until Smiley Smile was begun.  With that in mind, I Love To Say Da Da--no matter that the arrangement sounds "watery" and that it evolved into a song about water--probably couldn't have been the Water Element. 

guitarfool prompted me to re-read the Vosse interview, which states he specifically recorded water samples that Brian was going to assemble into a piece, which was never completed...  Not sure about you guys, but that sounds like what should have been the Water Element.  Not I Love to Say Da Da, as convenient as it was. 

I used to think of Veggies separately for that very reason. After debating the point with HolyBee, Im thinking now that it started off as part of it, but then grew into its own song. Like once Fire happened and all that, Brian mustve decided hed sort out the elements trouble later and do something new with it, but still used Veggies as a song.

I just wanted to reiterate my point/wish one more time before I put it to bed - I promise. :police:

Yes, absolutely the various articles circa 1966 and 1967 are invaluable, but they only take us so far and not all the way there. Michael Vosse mentioned that the wood sawing and hammering were part of Brian's "barnyard" and "farm concept". I appreciate him saying that, but, we kind of assumed that; that's not in question. The question remains, what was Brian going to do with these sound effects after he recorded them? On BWPS (though I put little creedence in the BWPS sequence; it's a combination of fan mixes), "Workshop" isn't even near "Barnyard" or "The Old Master Painter". What was Brian's original intention(s)? That's what I want to know.

You can literally make a multiple choice question out of it:

a) the sound effects were the building of the home of the range
b) the sound effects were the building of the cart to cart off and sell the vegetables
c) the sound effects were the re-building of the barn after the fire
d) the sound effects were the re-building of a broken heart (not sure where that one came from)
e) the sound effects were to be incorporated into a Barnyard Suite
f) Brian just thought it would be cool to record barnyard/farm sound effects not to be incorporated anywhere in particular
g) all of the above at some particular moment in the SMiLE timeline

That's why it is necessary to dig deeper and follow up on basic questions/answers. And the only way to do that is an in depth Q & A with the parties involved. Yes, I'm glad we have the magazine articles, but we need more than that!

I welcome more fan mixes if anybody would like to show their sequencing. I especially like to see what opening and closing tracks people are using, where they are placing "Good Vibrations", and if they are splitting up "Heroes And Villains" into Part 1 and Part 2 and incorporating BOTH parts.

Kinda, on the latter point. I operate on the basis (and I think Humble Harv/the transcription of the Durrie Parks acetates provide sufficient grounds for it) that H&V began as a much less unified song than it became in '67, and that "I'm in Great Shape" as given by the tracklist is shorthand for a medley of the excised sections. Mine, and this is just a matter of personal preference, goes "I Wanna Be Around", then about thirty seconds of "Workshop" (an inclusion based on Vosse's recollections as well as the contentious (Great Shape) session notation), then IIGS - the piano part of the first leads quite nicely into the intro of the other - and finally "Barnyard" out of the tape explosion to fade (as we know this and IIGS were together in the Nov "H&V" demo).

It functions, then, as both a standalone track named "I'm in Great Shape" and essentially an "H&V" Part Two - and, interestingly enough, a "Barnyard suite... four short pieces, we never finished that." I know Soniclovenoise has taken a similar approach, though the sequencing is a little different.

EDIT, ADDITIONAL: Mujan has suggested that "Do a Lot" (the Heroes version) could also be a contender for IIGS. It's not present in my mix because a) I tried to primarily use pieces actually tracked in '66 but mainly b) because I wasn't able to satisfyingly fit into the song. I really dig the notion though.

Re-reading the Vosse article was enlightening for me on a number of levels. For those people interested in creating a "vintage" 1966 Smile, there's a number of clues that he drops:


Surf's Up -- "It was going to kind of close the album, and then after it was over they were going to a sort of choral, a-men thing".

Wind Chimes -- A dub existed at one point featuring a break with voices as percussive elements.

Barnyard/ Sunshine/ Workshop -- As discussed.

Cabin Essence -- Originally two songs, "Cabin Essence" (sung by Dennis) and "Who Ran the Iron Horse" (including "Grand Coulee" tag). "Who Ran the Iron Horse" supposedly attempted to be merged with "Bicycle Rider" at one point.


The "Who Ran the Iron Horse" comments got me thinking of the chronology Vosse presents. He mentions being at a dinner party at Brian's where he heard "Good Vibrations" prior to its release, and where Brian and Van tried to integrate "Horse" with "Bicycle Rider". Likely this is the same party Jules Siegel described as Brian's "first hip social event".

However, I don't think this is what we're hearing on the infamous "Brian's Smile Party" session, because engineer Ralph Valentin was also present for that, and you can hear Brian speaking through what sounds like a talkback mic later in the tape, which leads me to believe that they're in a recording studio and not Brian's house. This recording has been tentatively dated from October 18, and Vosse as I mentioned states the dinner party was prior to "Good Vibrations" being released, which occurred on October 10 if Wikipedia can be believed.

Yet the part that doesn't make sense to me is that, according to the established studio chronology, "Cabin Essence" in its instrumental entirety seems to have been tracked at the same session on October 3, which casts aspersions on Vosse's recollection, especially since "Bicycle Rider" was apparently not tracked until October 18 as part four of "Worms", after "Good Vibrations" was already released, and the same day as the "Smile Party". Indeed, later in the "Party" tape you can hear Brian cueing up "Bicycle Rider" over and over.

All of which leads me to three possible answers: Either my session dates are incorrect, or there are earlier versions of "Who Ran the Iron Horse" and "Bicycle Rider" that haven't emerged, or Vosse is conflating the two get-togethers.

Anybody want to help me get to the bottom of this?

I actually thought you/we stumbled on a likely explanation for this earlier in the thread: It's mid-Dec 1966, Capitol are still looking at a Jan release for the album, and covers need to be printed. Diane/Carl/A. N. Other pin Brian down and get a list of titles for the slick, making sure to inform Capitol that final sequencing is still being decided ("see label" etc). The first few songs ("H&V" aside, but at this point in December - Anderle/Williams - it's set to be the single) are reasonably complete, with rough assemblies completed and in some cases, full vocals added. There are problems with the latter five or so, however - not least the fact that following the "Fire" debacle, Brian has "basically destroyed The Elements" (Anderle). No one's willing to completely scrap the idea of an Elements track/sequence, however - perhaps Brian is still thinking about reconceiving the selection ("a candle instead of a scary fire like that") or the writer hopes he won't end up giving up on a promising musical direction - so it goes on as one vague heading, open to interpretation and amendment.

Vega-Tables goes on too, because the ultimate fate of "The Elements" is still to be decided, as the only other part of the sequence to actually have been recorded - or, at least, recorded with the full involvement and understanding of the rest of the Beach Boys. Perhaps the assumption, as mooted above, is worse-come-to-worst, Vega-Tables can simply follow a "three element" medley under the simple title "The Elements". This way, when things are beginning to really get messy, a conventional twelve-song listing can be printed without having to pin Brian down too closely on what exactly some of these selections are going to be.

As it happens, I think the same can apply to "I'm in Great Shape": it's December, Brian is being strongly encouraged (see the Anderle/William exchange I quoted in above post) to make H&V the 45. As a result the original, rollicking "three minute comedy" version is having to be reconfigured into a more conventional pop tune - you know, one with repeated verse chords and choruses and so on. But there's a bunch of these fun little sections, originally planned/recorded for "H&V", which - like "Vega-Tables" - it seems a pity to scrap just because the track that originally housed them is being reconceived. So Brian is pushed for a "cover-all" heading to potentially include all/some of them, and the lyric "I'm in Great Shape" comes to mind.


All supposition, of course, but I don't think a totally implausible interpretation of the facts as we have 'em. Any thoughts?

Yup, I took particular note of these comments too. My mix has a little vocal breakdown in Wind Chimes just before the booming chorus comes in (I believe I took it from SOT and mixed it down to mono - the stereo effect was really cool, actually) which has this kind of feel. And, rather perversely, I follow Surf's Up (my final full track) with "Prayer" - realising, of course, the "intro to the album" comment on the session tapes argues against this.

I always liked the spacey kettle drumming of DYLW kicking off this eccentric and innovative album anyway.

I think Vosse must be conflating two separate occasions, yeah. His interview was in '69, so between 18 months and 2 years after he departed the BR organisation. Which doesn't mean the bulk of his recollections are necessarily inaccurate, of course - just saying that if you asked me to cleanly separate out the events of two similar functions at the same mate's place which occurred between August and October 2013, I'd have some trouble doing so.

As to the Bicycle Rider/"Home on the Range" mash-up, I see no reason to doubt Vosse that this did indeed happen at some point - I can, for instance, distinctly recall my mate Matt's ipod on shuffle seguing directly from Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" to the rather tedious John Mayer cover while we sat on the deck drinking red wine, but whether or not that occurred at his birthday function in November '13 or the drinks we had in September after I finished a pretty punishing week of jury duty is now lost to the ether.

I enjoy Worms as a starting track too. I think it would have been a bold move to open the album that way.

Could it be possible that that "Prayer" would have both opened the album and closed it with the final "ahhh", similar to BWPS? I seem to remember an authentic mix existing that eliminates that final part.

That's exactly my thoughts as well. I just wanted to be certain that I had all the session info accurate before I made any bold pronouncements.

Absolutely it could. goshdarn, having just felt my "'66 mix" was complete - and, in fact, having full CD cases/covers and discs printed up - now I'm going to have to go back to Audacity and reconfigure.

Don't get me wrong, though - it's brilliant and simple and plausible observations like that which mean I'm digging this thread so much.

I don't know if this is news to anybody, in fact I'm guessing it isn't based on the time you all have put in studying this stuff, but there appears to be some aural evidence of this water symphony, vis a vis the November 4th track titled "Chewing Terry's/ Water Hose/ Tea Pot". Re-reading the Vosse article prompted me to give it a spin last night, and you can clearly hear Brian mashing up the sounds of the hose and tea pot in an attempt to create something musical.

No problem, I'm just spitballing here like everybody else. That's the fun of the whole enterprise.

Definitely post us a link to your '66 mix once you've finalized it!

Jason, you said above, "closed it with the final "ahhh, similar to BWPS"....well, that's a part of the BWPS mix that I like a lot, and came to use, in a way.

Maybe I was influenced (prejudiced?) by the 20/20 album placement of "Our Prayer" (yes, I know it has absolutely nothing to do with the SMiLE sequencing), but then BWPS did the same thing, as you say, in a way. So I have ended my mix for a long time:

- Our Prayer
- Surf's Up

I never bought "Our Prayer" as the opening track (but that's for later discussion I'm sure), and thought it was perfect near the end (a la BWPS, except the WHOLE prayer) and then ending with the masterpiece, "Surf's Up" (another topic for later).

Again, thanks. (I'm just about to head out, so you can all feel relieved this will be my last effusive post for a while.) I was just thinking last night that "we had some idea of what water was going to be" (Anderle) and Vosse's comments about recording different water sounds might be connected. This bit of tape, which I had completely forgotten ever hearing, might be another clue as to the original (?) plan for "The Elements".

Conjecture: Fire (instrumental, some "crackling" FX)/Water (actual water sounds blended and cut up to create something akin to "music concrete")/Air ("a piano piece" - the much debated bio)/Earth (stripped down, largely vocal effort to close the sequence). Perhaps linked, as Mujan suggests, with "Psycodelic Sounds"-style chanting/vocal effects?

What's nice about this notion is we have two innovative instrumental pieces that nonetheless use conventional instrumentation, expansively and minimally arranged ("Fire" and "Air" respectively) interspersed with two equally avant garde sections, using non-traditional sounds ("Water") and a stripped down fragment employing SMiLE's much-referenced "humour" aspect ("Cornucopia" Veggies). Plus, the Boys being all involved in the last part means "The Elements" can be truthfully described as a Beach Boys track and not essentially a BW solo instrumental effort.

This is probably both a) total reaching and b) madness, but something about the idea tickles me regardless.

Somebody has to mix this^! Please. ;D

Makes sense to me. I still tend to think "Dada" might have been water based on its ultimate manifestation on Sunflower and ultimately BWPS, but the "all water" track makes for a tempting alternative. Vosse actually muddies the waters somewhat by first stating Brian wants to record a water album, but then later has him talking about an individual track composed of water sounds.

Just for the record, does anyone know where the "Dada" = song about a baby quote comes from?

Sadly it can't be done, unless "Air" were to somehow materialize. I could make a quick mix using something in its place, such as the "whispering winds" section from "Holidays".

Yeah, the "whispering winds" section would be fine, or if anybody has any other suggestions of "windy" piano pieces floating around, just for the fun of it...

When the "psychodelic sounds" chanting session happened, Brian and those with him already knew what the "fire" element was musically. Consider that once Brian got away from the humor skits, the falling into the microphone and Good Humor and falling into the piano comedy, he focused the assembled chanters into what to my ears has always sounded like three elements.

"I got a big bag of vegetables, wheres my beets and carrots..." - Vegetables grow from...The Earth.

"Underwater, swim fishy, etc" - Fish, underwater...Water.

"Breathe, inhale/exhale, all of the breath noises"...Air.

For those who wrote off those chant sessions as stoned experiments, is it a coincidence that once these guys got focused on a theme that didn't involve comedy skits, they chanted and breathed and hummed and whatever else around the themes of those three elements other than fire.

I never saw that as accidental. What i did see it as was almost a tragic loss of whatever creative spark Brian and his buddies had that night, because once they got going and jelled together, some of it makes for compelling listening, especially the "water" sounds when studio effects and echoes/reverbs were added to the vocal montages. I think it's brilliant, and for whatever reason the closest actual use of those sounds we ever got was Cool Cool Water on Sunflower, and even on that apparently Brian was really against the band using the chanting on the new track to the point of asking them not to do it. (Corrections on that welcome, as always)

Air as a piano piece...Vosse mentioned the "tag" to Wind Chimes, the multilayered overdubbed piano section...at some point in time, 1966, why could that not have been considered as a musical section for the "air" element? As a musical tag, in the edits we've heard, is it welded to the actual Wind Chimes vocal track in any way, or could it just as easily have been moved and used elsewhere? It could have been, it's definitely sounding like something "air" in nature, and it lines up with what Brian called "a piano piece" that was never finished.

Wind Chimes survived structurally and lyrically on Smiley Smile, but this original "tag" did not, replaced by the whispering winds vocal outtro and fade. Which suggests it may have been more than a tag and may have been interchangeable to serve another musical purpose. It wasn't crucial to the actual song, it was a "tag". Or was it "air"?

Not true - or at least, not true according to the record as we have it. The Psycodelic Sounds session happened on 4th Nov. The "Fire" recording session happened on 28 Nov (as I posted above), almost a month later. If you have data supporting "Brian... already knew what the "fire" element was musically" on the fourth of November 1966, I'd be genuinely thrilled to learn it.  :)

What record as we have it states exactly when in 1966 Brian created and developed the Fire music, or even the concept that "Fire" was to be an instrumental piece? Brian and Van Dyke were working off and on that fall, some weeks doing back-to-back sessions four or more days each week, in October alone there were three weeks that were basically filled with sessions for Smile music...when was all of that written? Not recorded, but written? Some sources say "Surf's Up" was written minus some final lyrics as early as the summer of '66, yet wasn't actually taken into a recording session until November. So does that mean Brian didn't know what "Surf's Up" was conceptually until he actually recorded take 1 in the studio? Of course not.

Can we see where the logic of something like Surf's Up being written months before it first got a recording session would open up the "Fire" issue more than assuming it was conceived and written the week of or even the month of the studio session when it was recorded?

I do love it how sometimes in these discussions one sentence out of many gets pulled out, then the fact-checking machine starts cranking up, made even more confusing in this case where the discussion is centered around nothing but fantasy versions of Smile that only exist in the minds of fan-mixers, not to mention trying to find every which way to bend and shape the actual evidence that does exist from Smile (like the only tracklist that exists from 1966 which we know of) in order to fit some fantasy running order or self-styled notion of what the album was going to be or what songs were going to represent this or that. It's entertaining, at least.  :)

I'd suggest trying to see the forest instead of the trees, hopefully some others reading this might go back to the chants and hear something new or at least get a different take on them, perhaps a more 'elemental' take on what they were beyond stoned studio hijinks.

Unless it was a pure accident and coincidence that three of the chants were centered on the three elements that up to 2004 did not have specific music to represent them, but rather those three elements had only theories and suppositions as to what they may have been.

I mean...they do chant and riff on things related to water, air, and earth on those November '66 tapes...right? And we're trying to find any evidence of something "elemental" in songs that have no relationship at all to any elements? Hmmm.  ;D

My mix

https://youtu.be/yXjLo3mYVVI

https://youtu.be/Z5Y03Yldd8w

https://youtu.be/10lsycE9t1k

https://youtu.be/aYtjCZTBDWI

https://youtu.be/7HTiVweBCv8

https://youtu.be/DoFi59asxZ4

Very nice! You used very clear versions and the mixes are smooth, not jarring. I enjoyed it very much. Won't YouTube allow you to put all of your segments together or do you prefer it that way?

Hit single material.

I don't know but that Peter Brown bit is potentially sort of third hand or a presumption by Gaines.  Maybe not.

However, the booklet shows (as Brad Elliott once pointed out) "My Vega-tables" was a lyric of "The Elements".  Anything is possible I suppose but to me the booklet implies The Elements was self contained at the time of the booklet illustration (September 1966 according Frank's best memory) including the lyric "My vega-tables". As I remember, Frank has also said the illustration for the title "The Elements" included all four elements which to my mind also implies a single track and title for all elements at that time.

I agree in speculating that, sometime in September or October after the illustration, Brian's mind changed and The Elements became something else and Vega-tables evolved to a stand alone track.  The Elements then being Fire and then maybe not and/or possibly a discarded WC fade and/or skits and/or etc., etc......

The six YouTube videos are because it was created with six Audacity projects and then six .wav files which I burnt onto a CD.  I just never took the time to assemble them all for YouTube.

Well let's think about this here...  We learned that with Vege-Tables, we can indeed have a stand alone track as one of the four elements...  What if this "unfinished piano piece" of Air is actually the Tag Remake to Wind Chimes taped 10/5/66? 

Brian says the Air piano piece was unfinished...  Well, while the mix of Wind Chimes itself was obviously finished for SMiLE, that version was never released and what was released--the Smiley Smile version of Wind Chimes--does not use that Tag Remake.  Thus, that segment was technically "never finished". 

Hmm, I posted about this, the chronology of Dada on the previous page...  It didn't seem to take on a Water theme until SMile was dead. 


I need to state my opinion here, that the ending Child reprise tagged on to Surf's Up--which Brian so adamantly believed should go there when the BBs were finishing it up--sounds like a metaphorical "amen" to me.  I could be wrong, but Vosse's comments, to me, seemed to describe that part, and the "Their song is love and the children know the way..." is the "amen" of SMiLE, not Our Prayer. 

yeah, it's pretty much the only rational explanation, that the final 5 listings were more "Song Ideas I need to somehow finish!" and Brian knew he had a few months to figure them out. 



Relistened to Psychedelic Sounds the other day (not one of my favorites... sorry, I just don't buy into the whole supposed humor/spoken word element of SMile) and it occurred to be, they vocalized three of the Elements right there:  Earth (several vegetables chants), Water (several underwater and bottom of the sea chants) and Air (heavy breathing). 

This has to be more than coincidence...  What if Brian himself was not sure how to create the Elements and thus experimented with several types of audio design to create a suite of the four elements (from formal, organized music in Mrs O'Leary's Cow, to sound samples to experimental spoken word segments)? 

Echo in here?  :)  You just repeated what I wrote yesterday, chants/elements, etc... whether a coincidence or sharp minds thinking alike, check it out...you even got the Wind Chimes tag mentioned. Hmmm. ;D

Yes, I read your post, and with all due respect it didn't provide any information that anyone who owns a copy of TSS or was familiar with the chronology wouldn't have already known, which is why I didn't address it.

What I'm looking for is a direct quote from somebody confirming that Dada is indeed about a baby. What I've found so far is Marilyn Wilson saying that she provided Brian with a baby bottle filled with chocolate milk as he was writing the song, and Brian saying he wrote the gist of "Cool Cool Water" in March of 1967 on the first day he moved into his Bel Air house, neither of which proves or disproves anything in regards as to whether or not it was considered to be "Water" at any given point.

We already know according to the dates you posted that he was toying around with the melody as early as December, so I think the jury is still out on this one unless someone can produce solid evidence.

Could it initially have been about a baby until March when it was re-written or fleshed out? Quite possibly! I'm just looking for more evidence.


I was tempted to believe the chants had to be part of the album for a long time. Indeed, it couldn't have just been coincidental that these chants, whatever their purpose, were largely elemental in nature. However, there's a quote from David Anderle that's somewhat problematic in that regard:

"We were aware, he made us aware, of what fire was going to be, and what water was going to be; we had some idea of air. That was where it stopped. None of us had any ideas as to how it was going to tie together, except that it appeared to us to be an opera." (Williams p. 56)

Again this is somewhat cryptic, but since Anderle had participated in the chanting session, doesn't it stand to reason he would have had "some idea" of what earth was, had it included the vegetable chants?

Okay, granted Brian might not have been inclined to share most of his ideas with anyone other than Van Dyke (indeed, the band themselves were largely unaware of how the songs fit together according to Anderle), but Anderle does mention being made aware of water, so it stands to reason that if water had included chanting, he would logically draw the conclusion that earth did as well and thus have "some idea" as to its structure.

The reference to an "opera" is interesting too. In the past The Elements was considered by some researchers to be a purely instrumental suite, but operas by definition contain singers.

Of course all of this is total conjecture on my part based off the quote. Just throwing it out there in hopes somebody can run with it.

Somebody did.

Not to mention what I've been saying for months. Nearly a year now, actually. Thank you, guitarfool. I think you're the only other person who has appreciated how important Psychedelic Sounds is in the scheme of things. I don't understand why some people can't make the connection between the elements we don't have and the material recorded there. I get it if someone isn't a fan of the spoken word humor idea, but to argue for Wind Chimes and Dada over Breathing and Undersea Chant is baffling to me.

*ahem*

I put some weight on Psychedelic Sounds. I believe that Brian recorded just about everything he thought of during that time, and, everything he recorded he intended for SMiLE - in some form - even if for a brief, fleeting moment.

That being said, I still have questions how he would've incorporated the "vocals" of Psychedelic Sounds into "The Elements". We know that "Fire" was an instrumental, Brian specifically mentioned in the Preiss book that "Air" was a piano piece, and there were reports of Michael Vosse being commissioned to record "water sounds". So, that would result in three of the four elements segments being "instrumental". Yes, there is the possibility of the various chants of Psychedelic Sounds being "element-related", and the possibility of the chants being recorded OVER the instrumental track, much like Darian did on BWPS with "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow". Speaking of BWPS, and not to open that can of worms (pun intended), but Darian had the chance to employ chants for an "Elements" track on BWPS - and didn't.

Just as Fire has vocal "oos" couldn't this Air piano (if that's what it was) have breathing overdubs? When I refer to Undersea Chant I'm not talking about the "fish fish underwater SHARK!" chant, but the extremely atmospheric recording where they imitate fish, that literally sounds as though you're on the ocean floor. It's possible those water sounds could have been overdubs for that, or gathered for inspiration. In any case, UC exists and Vosses recordings don't. So when it comes to reconstruction that's the most plausible piece we have.

Absolutely...no argument here. It was certainly possible. And, as I posted above yesterday, now would a great time for some of the talented "mixers" on this board to give it a shot and record an "Elements" track using whatever snippets are out there. It would be fascinating to hear.

Well I've done one using the four most likely (out of what we have) pieces--Fire, UC, Breathing and then Veggies as a separate track. I made another one out of Fire, Water Chant, Workshop and Breathing which transitioned into Wind Chimes. Maybe someone could do that, but have the fade of Wind Chimes be part of Air and play along with Breathing and transitioning to WC proper. Not sure what else there is to do. Even if you believe in Dada and WC and a four song suite, it's been done.

Yes, your Romestamo "Elements" mix is quite impressive, almost operatic!

I could just as easily say I want a quote circa '66 or '67 that it was water. Me and HolyBee brought this up, but you cant make that demand with this material because for the most part there are no definitive quotes. But essentially, you guys arguing for Dada or Wind Chimes as elements are relying on their placement in BWPS, later fanmixes/boots and Sunflower for your evidence. I used to feel the same about Veggies until HolyBee brought some legit, vintage evidence it was an element at one point to my attention. Anyway, while it definitely became Cool Cool Water and the Water element, I see no proof that was the original intention for Dada. What we have is a "feel" that Brian was prone to record more and more of from December~January on. This one, while I forgot about this dec recording Sonic brings up, nevertheless wasnt on the tracklist. What does that mean? Either a fragment, a non-starter (With Me Tonight, He Gives Speeches, Look, Holidays...one for the scrap/recycle pile) or maybe a possible standalone single or B-side, to me.

I propose that any OFFICIAL recording of an element would have been called "The Elements Part _____" on the session tape recording and tape boxes as Fire was. This was my main sticking point against Veggies, but there was enough references and quotes otherwise that I had to outweigh this barrier. But for Dada I see nothing that warrants doing so. Where is Anderle, Vosse, Brian, VDP calling Dada the element as there is for Veggies? What's "watery" about Dada? Fire is unmistakably a raging inferno, especially with the crackling effects left off in the TSS official release. Undersea Chant is unmistakably an ocean scene expressed perfectly with nothing but vocals--pure SMiLE/Brian. Breathing is undeniably airy. Veggies...eh, not so much, but again there was enough direct references to it that I can mostly let that slide. With Dada tho, taken out of context I dont think "Water!" like I do with those others. And if you say you do, I contend its only because you already have the anachronistic connection implanted because of Cool Cool Water/In Blue Hawaii, OR you're being stubborn. Similarly, the name doesn't evoke water at all. Mrs OLeary's Fire, Undersea Skit, Breathing, Vegetables....Love to Say Dada?? One of these things is not like the other. Aside from the art deco, Dada does sound like something a baby says. The wah-wah vocals sound like a baby crying. There's a cut-off third section thats supposed to sound like CIFOTM, and the vocal imitation of crying parallels THAT songs horns imitating crying. Now, you could say the Wah Wah is like them saying water. I say Brian wasnt that lazy to have his Water element just be the repetition of the word like that. Imagine if Fire was just them saying "F-F-F-Fire! F-F-F-Fire!" we wouldnt be calling that genius, it'd be lame as hell. Even these psychedelic sounds skits he did off the cuff with friends are WAY more ambitious and innovative than that. Sure its just vocals, but without a single spoken word, Undersea and Breathing convey SO MUCH and are unmistakable in what that is.

There is precedent of Elements songs spun off into their own thing...but I think that only worked with Vega-Tables because it was already nearly a complete track in its own right by itself, and it made sense outside the Elements context. Dada? If it was meant for the album in December, I'd argue even then it was probably a piece of something like Heroes or IIGS. We get it explicitly as a Heroes fragment just a month later, a setup for spoken word humor. When it comes up again, still no indication on tape or the tape labels that it's an element. By then, I'd argue the elements concept was dead anyway and any pieces that could work outside that context were up for grabs. It's my interpretation that after the two-sided Heroes didnt work, the back-up was Veggies and Dada (why he wouldnt just use Holidays or Look for the B-side is beyond me, but...)

Im totally with you about wanting more information. And if Im wrong about this like I was with Veggies, Ill happily admit so. But the evidence seems to suggest it was just a random feel Brian got that he really liked and was trying to find some way to use somehow. It undeniably became CCW/IBH eventually, but just because that happened later doesnt mean we should assume it was always that way. The fact that it was recorded relatively soon after Elements Part One and wasnt explicitly called Part Two is a big hurdle. The fact that no sources cite it as water is another. The fact that there's all these obvious elements skits and chanting on PS except Fire as guitarfool (and myself!) have been saying seems to suggest the other 3 were being worked out. There are All Day sessions on there though. IIGS too. If anything, I think that's a sign maybe All Day was part of this mysterious IIGS track, maybe this "Barnyard Suite" not Elements. In any case, I'd say the burden of proof is on you and/or anyone else to bring forth a quote proving it was Water, not the other way around. Because all evidence that's important (1966-1967 primary sources and hard evidence) doesnt support your claim.


That's one of the things that bugs me about Veggies as Earth. Even though I support the theory now, there's still plenty of evidence against it, and this is one example. I think my compromise, of having it be Earth but come as a separate track, is really the best solution to this conundrum.


Appreciate that. Thanks.

No. We learned that the material was very fluid. Pieces of Cabin Essence and Worms getting shuffled around. Something that was almost certainly an element branching into its own thing. Come January, everything getting shuffled in and out of Heroes and Villains. But this myth of a multiple-song Elements suite needs to die a hard death as far as Im concerned. Theres no proof of that whatsoever. In fact, the tracklist we were all so keen to take seriously a few pages ago lists it as ONE SONG.

Far more believable to me there was another planned piano piece (probably with breathing overdubs?) or Brian misremembered (intentionally or not) than that Wind Chimes was an element. I accept that explanation for Veggies only because there's a lot of proof (check out me and HolyBee's debate) for it. And even with that, there's nearly as much proof even Veggies WASNT an element. Wind Chimes doesnt have even half of the evidence going for it that Veggies does. There's absolutely no way, and the only reason people are so eager to shoe-horn it in is because of Priore and BWPS.

Someone wants to recreate this piano theme with the only semi-close thing we have in their fanmix, fine. But I dont think you can take one nugget--years after the fact--from the worlds least reliable interviewee and this thread and say "ah yes, clearly the Elements was more than one song in '67. Wind Chimes is air. Case closed."


Glad we can at least agree on Dada. But I dont understand how one could argue WC is air but then not think Dada is Water? At least Dada grew into a Watery song just a few years later by Brian's own hand. WC has nothing but a vague quote that could refer to ANYTHING and fan speculation that influenced BWPS (same as the Fire Intro and, by your own admission, Dada). Not trying to be argumentative but this just seems like inconsistent reasoning to me.


Or...maybe those are your other elements, albeit in rough, unfinished form? I think Undersea Chant and Breathing would've been more refined and rerecorded with the band, perhaps with some instrumental overdubs. Veggies I'd argue he was experimenting with chants and comedy to mix in there somehow.

Id argue Veggies was siphoned off because it had proper lyrics and none of the others did or would. It just doesnt fit. Even if, and I cant stress enough I dont buy this theory, but even if the Elements was four songs...Veggies in and of themselves just dont equal Earth to me. I know they grow out of the Earth, but still. It just seems a tenuous connection. If the song was more about them growing, the relationship they have to the Earth and nutrients out of the soil... but no. Instead its all comedy and hidden drug references, and with the idiosyncratic spelling, a reference to a STAR (the exact OPPOSITE of the Earth.)

I think maybe that's why it became its own thing even if it started off Earth. That makes sense why its in the booklet and PS skits, but then its own song on the tracklist and in '67.

Theyre primary sources. Theyre flawed--you have to take in account biases, what the person could or couldnt have reasonably known or witnessed, faulty memories (even within the year)--but theyre still necessary to know and understand if you want to have a clear picture on the subject. They have to be taken with a grain of salt but if you get a good witness, which I think Vosse and Anderle mostly are (better than Brian and VDP, who are in turn better than Frank Holmes or the Band members) you can gain a lot of insight only possible if you lived thru the events in question.

Id argue the Workshop effects dont necessarily have to be literal. The joke of the track itself is that the narrator in IWBA wants to mend the pieces of a broken heart, and then we get all these saws and tools presumably doing just that. It's typical goofy, not laugh out loud but makes you grin, SMiLE humor. In my mix I used it after Wonderful since the girl's heart was broken and she's building herself back up. I didnt use IWBA but that way it preserves that original humorous idea. Workshop could conceivably go after any song really, with figurative meanings in mind. I still maintain its the best candidate for Earth we have. Veggies is probably what was actually intended, but Workshop works best as part of a small instrumental piece that could conceivably fit with 3 other instrumental or a capella pieces, which is what the other 3 elements are.

I agree about Heroes and IIGS. I think Heroes would've followed a verse/comedy skit/verse/comedy skit/bridge/something kinda format. We have cantina as one comedic setup, and then maybe with things like All Day he was trying to make another. IDK, and the track went through so many changes who can say? IIGS is even more mysterious and frustrating than Elements. I tried doing a mashup of tangential Heroes pieces but I didnt like it much, which is why I simply left it off my latest mix. Your sequence sounds plausible enough. I personally dont really care for the Barnyard and IWBA pieces so I never thought to try it. I must say though, we DONT know that those two pieces went together necessarily. Brian says "oh and this is another section" or something similar. It comes off like hes just playing a few random pieces he knows will be in there somewhere, but not necessarily right after the other. My impression is Cantina replaced IIGS and the Western instrumental theme (prelude to fade) replaced Barnyard. Maybe the OMP fade replaced a transition to OMP itself too, since we know that was there at one point?

I think Do A Lot fits the lyrics/theme of a track called IIGS as well as the known lyrics from that piece perfectly. But again, the current Do A Lot we have doesnt sound so good shoehorned in there. It works great as a Veggies chorus now anyway so I just leave it alone now.

You raise a good point. I'd always heard Elements was an instrumental and took that as fact...but really, where IS the actual proof that was the case? Was there ever a plan to do something lyrical for Fire? Even something like more complex vocals than just the ooos we have? Has VDP ever weighed in? HolyBee showed me a quote earlier where he says "the only part of the elements i worked on was Vegetables" but did Brian want him to do more? With UC and Breathing being likely as anything to be our Air and Water it shows it was never going to be an instrumental. I've rationalized that in the past saying maybe it would be half instrumental, half a capella. But then if Veggies is an element that ruins it. It's clear, at least to me, that even the demo Veggies is a lot more complex than the other three elements. It has lead vocals, backing vocals and instruments...it just doesn't sound right with Fire as we know it and the other elemental skits. This is possibly why it was made its own song but then you have to wonder if at some point the others were meant to be more complete songs, or if there was another Earth--an instrumental or a capella--in Brian's mind? I guess going by Anderle he never got around to it or never told anyone.

And I think I get you. The point is SMiLE was ever evolving. ESPECIALLY the Elements, it seems. I still think its sensible to narrow it down to those 11~12 tracks on the cover. Specific alterations for most of those tracks are fairly negligible, although each definitely has an air of mystery about them. Worms with the new vocal melody, would Wonderful have an insert, what was the second half of Surfs Up, how would H&V be structured, would the Reconnected Telephones lyrics have been in CE, what were the verse lyrics to CIFOTM, whats this break with vocal percussion Im only just hearing about in WC? What are the other 3 sections in both the Elements/IIGS? And of course...in what order would they go, and would there be comedy bits in other songs besides Heroes like there was in Smiley and as the PS seem to suggest?

The point is there's an unbelievably fascinating and brilliant train of musical thought to sift through and discuss but no one SMiLE. Gotcha.

Mujan, I didn't have time to read through everything you posted just now outside of the thread where you quoted me, but I wanted to quickly say thanks for taking the time to reply to my points and for not being dismissive. For the record, Dada as Water is not a hill I'm willing to die on, and I'll readily admit that it's simply a gut hunch I've had for a long time. You make a passionate case against it and I can respect that. These days I'm really more into the anything goes type of Smile reconstruction as opposed to the vintage '66 type, so I'll defer to you guys that are dedicated to following that path. If time permits, I may just for fun compile a list of all the relevant quotes surrounding the various Smile tracks to use as a reference if something like that doesn't already exist. Enjoyed your latest mix very much by the way.

Hey thanks, Im glad you dug. And yeah, I dont blame you...kinda went overboard but I wanted to reply to all the major points brought up I missed  :P See for me, following the vintage path actually IS anything goes, in a sense. Or at least, its presenting a wild new mix, because what's so often done (that I can see) is following BWPS, or the Priore/80s-90s speculative Americana-Elements construction which I think is inaccurate. So by presenting what I see as close to the original (keeping guitarfool's points about authenticity in mind, of course) it's also presenting something unique I havent seen done before, an Americana-Life construction, with heavy Psychedelic Sounds and Elements as one (two) track(s) as opposed to a whole side.

I do wanna get around to doing a mega-suite where everything's Heroes and Villains at some point though. Im just not sure how yet. And I'd also like to stitch together a bunch of the studio chatter in some meaningful way, but same problem. I guess since the two-suite format is the one I most believe in, its most important for me to get that right and argue WHY I believe it's right first, or at least as often as a thread comes up where I can.

Ha!  I didn't go back and read your post till I posted mine, so I didn't see it!  Pretty silly!


Gee thanks. 

No, this has nothing to do with BWPS or Priore. 

It has to do with the song WIND Chimes being about WIND blowing through WIND chimes. 

Right. And Surfs Up is water because of Surf in the title. And Worms is Earth because it has Worms in the title. ELEMENTS SOLVED, pack it in boys, we're going home!

Ah but Surf's Up isn't really about surfing at all, is it? 

I mean...that was the whole point...

...That it wasn't about surfing?  I'm not getting you.

Surf's Up is not about water, it's about the relationship between The Artist and his Art and the attempt to extract the art from the pretentiousness of it's surroundings; nor is DYLW about earth, it's about Western Expansionism and the plight of the Native Americans. 

In contrast, Wind Chimes is actually about wind/air. 

But also I'm, taken back by your assertion that you know the underlying motive of my logic, that clearly I must have been brainwashed by Dominic Priore and Darian Sahanaja!

My point was just because it has something vaguely airy in the title means nothing. It's not about air or the actual wind, it's about an object that happens to be called a wind chime. If you look into it a certain way, read between the lines as they say, it could also be about loneliness, enjoying the simple things, or anticipating death. It has prominent piano and horns, as well as a more somber tone, like CIFOTM Wonderful and Surf's Up, which leads me to believe it was actually originally intended as part of that Cycle of Life context rather than Elements. It certainly sounds a lot better rubbing elbows with them than wildly different songs like Veggies, Fire and Dada.

Quotes like this: Marilyn Wilson said: "We went shopping one day and we brought home some wind chimes. We hung them outside the house and then one day, while Brian was sitting around he sort of watched them out the window and then he wrote the song. I think that’s how it happened. Simple. He does a lot of things that way." and what HolyBee brought up before about the song being super important to Brian and everybody back then leads me to believe it was a standalone track. Anderle seems to know what Air and Water were more or less, but doesnt cite Wind Chimes at all. It makes all the sense in the world that he WOULD if thats what it was. Why make vague comments about it when he could easily just say ("air was Wind Chimes--but it sounded a lot different than the version you know on Smiley.") Neither does anyone else say anything about Wind Chimes in an elements context. Even this quote from Brian everyone's latching unto doesnt mention Wind Chimes and could very well be anything (or nothing, ie if he misremembered, was lying, or didnt record this piano thing). Vega-Tables is also separate on the tracklist but at least we have direct quotes from VDP, Frank Holmes, and vague comments about health in the elements from others that supports it.

I want some evidence that Wind Chimes was air aside from "well...its got wind in the title." Which, as I demonstrated, could be used to assert that anything is an element. I could still say "Well...the Pilgrims and Indians fought over land, ie Earth. So therefore Worms is about Earth." You acknowledge how silly that is, but youre doing the same thing with Wind Chimes. The only reason this "Wind Chimes is Air" theory gained so much traction is because that was the assumption from Priore and other boots in the 80s and that got so entrenched it was written in to BWPS with the creation of the new third movement. The elements was a single song in 1966. One part was officially recorded, hence "The Elements Part One" on the recording and tape labels. One part was going to be, but for a variety of reasons got spun off into its own thing. The other two pieces were brainstormed while the Boys were away but never officially recorded. Wind Chimes was something else entirely. It had been worked on before the Elements, was NEVER referred to as an element then or since, wasnt labelled as such and was listed separately on the tracklist. Period.

EDIT: Plus, as I said with Dada as Water...do you really feel "Air!" when you listen to Wind Chimes? I feel tranquil and relaxed, like Im safe at home on a cool breezy day enjoying some time alone and taking in the little things most people take for granted. Fire is unmistakably Fire. Undersea Chant and Breathing are unmistakably their respective elements. If you pulled someone off the street and gave them no context, just said "listen to this" theyd know those are Fire, Water and Air. Try the same with Veggies and Chimes. I highly doubt anyone would just immediately think Earth and Air there. If you gave them some coaching, explained the context, theyd probably say "yeah, i can see that" but its not the visceral feeling those others bring on. I have a suspicion thats part of the reason why Veggies got spun off from the Elements; even Brian realized it didnt really work there. With Wind Chimes and Dada tho, its irrelevant BECAUSE THOSE SONGS WERE NOT ELEMENTS UNTIL 30+ YEARS LATER.

We'll have to agreed to disagree Mujan

 :afro

I suppose. But, like I said to Jason and HolyBee I'm open to be proven wrong. HolyBee eventually convinced me with Vega-Tables.* If you have any actual evidence besides Wind in the title and a gut feeling Id really like to see it.

*Ive kinda merged our two theories since then. It was an element early on, but then Brian realized it wouldnt really work because it didnt evoke that same unmistakable, visceral feeling and it had full lyrics which the other elements didnt. So Earth was going to be rewritten and Veggies became its own song, but once the elements was put on indefinite hold that never happened. This would explain all the conflicting evidence of some people pointing to Veggies, talking about health themes in the Elements, but then why Anderle and others say they have no idea what Earth was gonna be.

This all seems rather familiar, somehow...


Except this (and a lot of other material above) is not the reason I used WC as "Air" in my current mix. And my reasons probably aren't any better, frankly, but what I do find troublesome - and thought so in the TSS forum too - is what SLN terms below as



and a continuing tendency to hold what seems to me to be a contradictory position on burden of proof. Ie: To say:

and offer examples of what evidence doesn't exist to connect 'em is fair enough.

But on the other hand, when we come to a personal hobbyhorse - ie. "Psycodelic Sounds" being a work-out for/development of/potential actual recording of parts of "The Elements" (I believe usually posited as all parts except "Fire") - then suddenly it's legitimate to make statements like this:


And to use an argument like this:
Right, so the Crawdaddy! pieces count when being used to discredit one theory. Great, that's what evidence should do. But in that case, the following statement (regarding the same interview and individuals) should hold equal water for you:

"Anderle discussed both The Elements and the PS Chanting at length in that interview, but doesnt ever draw a connection between them. It makes all the sense in the world that he WOULD if thats what it was."

Not that it matters, but sometimes your posts do look and taste a bit like cake being held and also eaten. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong about PS - in a way that I have conceded Wind Chimes almost certainly isn't/wasn't air - but if one is going to go about calling "Flimsy evidence!" on people I think it behoves them to hold their own arguments to an equally rigorous standard.

And, in case the above seems too harsh (I don't really post anywhere but here, so I suspect I often get the tone wrong): a very genuine  :) to all.

Somewhat connected to this, I just went back to have a look at the famous "summary" given in GSHG!, and was struck by how many water/beach/oceanic references (naval battles, booze, tears) there are in Brian's explanation of the song as quoted by Siegel:


To be clear, I am definitely not using this an argument for SU=Water or anything of the kind. Just thought it was vaguely interesting to note.

Defer to my previous post.  It's clear you want to misrepresent my suggestions to perpetuate an epic internet debate, which is not what I am interested in doing.  Maybe someone else will humor you, but I'm not interesting in hearing the feelings I get from a piece of music is wrong,and feelings you get from the same music is right. 

Have a nice day. 

What I thought was really interesting, was:

“The joy of enlightenment, of seeing God. And what is it? A children’s song! And then there’s the song itself; the song of children; the song of the universe rising and falling in wave after wave, the song of God, hiding the love from us, but always letting us find it again, like a mother singing to her children.”

...which ties into what I said earlier:


I guess we all see what we want to see. 

I mean, tell me truthfully, if it had not been such a popular theory in the 80s and 90s...enough that it got repurposed for BWPS, would you all be so willing to call it air? Would you really sift through all the material and say "ah yes, clearly Veggies, Wind Chimes, Fire and Dada were meant to be together." Maybe its presumptuous of me but I really dont think so. Not as many as there are, Id reckon. The idea that the album be divided into an Americana Side and Elements side is an old idea still prevelant today, but I dont think theres any evidence for it except the echo chamber that began in the 80s. As far as I can see, it was ONE SONG. And nobody has yet to convince me otherwise. Rather than acknowledge my points directly, it seems nobody can or will defend this position and acts like Im a jerk for daring to challenge it, or raise the possibility that MAYBE just MAYBE you guys are letting past assumptions sway you, even just a bit.

How is it so hard to believe that PS ISNT a collection of random ideas being played around with by Brian while his band was away? I mean...thats objectively what it is. This isnt a debate--there's a collection of experimental ideas he was working on at the height of the SMiLE sessions. The fact that it even exists at all shows he was playing around with ideas. You could say "yeah but maybe those werent meant for SMiLE!" to which I say Occams Razor. Youre trying to infer that a bunch of comedy bits about vegetables, traveling across America and doing little kid activities (buying ice cream) arent connected to an album with a song called vegetables with Americana themes and children? You mean these recordings where he has his friends act out an ocean landscape, breathe in rhythmic fashion, chant about fish, chant about veggies were completely unrelated to this song called the elements that was missing those three elements? Mighty big assertions, dude. I'm not the one pulling random interpretations of songs out of nowhere and claiming them as fact because "feelings!", I'm arguing common sense--if it looks like a horse and smells like a horse...well...

I guess the fact Brian took the time and money to have Wrecking Crew musicians record the Argument and Geroge Fell DURING THE SMILE SESSIONS means nothing too? No evidence there, right? Not to mention the fact that he's in complete command of these sessions, dictating exactly the scenarios he wants Hal and Vosse to enact, and for those Horn players to say. No, those are just Brian being stoned and goofing off. They arent important in the slightest--even if they were included on the boxset, albeit in bastardized form. I'm just making things up to support my "hobbyhorse" and ignoring the spellbinding reasons others are providing that we should continue to ignore PS exists, and keep on perpetuating the completely disproven myth of an elements side.

In any case, you took my words "unmistakably their respective elements" out of context. I meant, when you listen to those tracks, is their ANY doubt you're listening to some expression of air and water? Compare that to Veggies, Dada and WC and Id say there is doubt for the latter three. Thats whats significant and what Im bringing up. One set undeniably evokes the imagery of their respective elements and the others dont. Im not having my cake and eating it too, Im merely point to factual evidence as well as aesthetic evidence for my claim.

I thought we discussed that point in our earlier debate, but if you're gonna pretend we never went over this, I guess I'll repeat myself: Why would Anderle say "ah yes, Air was Breathing and water was this undersea chant. You all know those from the bootleg that wont be released for many years." It makes no sense. What he could and Id argue would do, is cite the song WC since that was released and known to the public, albeit in a different form. The public had no idea what Breathing and UC were, nor any of the chants or anything PS. Why would he specifically cite any of those when nobody would know what hes talking about? Hell, those probably arent even the real names, just whatever someone who leaked the boot came up with. So he wouldnt even know what to call them. I suppose you could argue he ought to have went into greater detail about them regardless. But its possible he didnt want to steal Brian's thunder in case the track was ever released someday. That defense doesnt hold for WC because it was already released. And as I said in our earlier debate when you brought this up, if he did describe these recordings theyd sound stupid. "He had us breathe into a mic/imitate fish" Hed be doing a disservice to the recordings.

I think I present a pretty compelling case against WC and Dada. Far better than the arguments for them (no offense to anybody personally). It's just frustrating that theres virtually no hard evidence or primary sources for these two songs being elements, except where they eventually ended up, "gut feelings" and the title of one having wind in it. I present a long, pretty all-encompassing case against, and get "well we'll just agree to disagree" or "well I still have a gut feeling" as a response, and somehow *Im* being unreasonable. All I'm doing is calling attention to a bizarrely ignored fact--there is a plethora of experimental recordings that seem to give insight into his plans for Water and Air, as well as some rough ideas for the "spoken word humor" he mentioned in interviews, used in the Cantina Edit, and Smiley Smile.

/rant

Y'know, I might have had some respect for where you were coming from if it was a well-reasoned idea with some evidence. We're not talking about how each song makes us feel, we were talking about what we think Brian's plans were. When discussing history, or recreating a "crime scene" you need things like plausible motive, evidence, and timeframes to prove your case. Not "feelings." Not that your subjective feelings dont have merit, they obviously do, just not when debating the past as I said. What statements of your's have I misrepresented? Please enlighten me, because I dont recall taking any of your words out of context or with any malicious intent. I dont want an epic internet debate necessarily (tho admittedly Im not against it) Im just a SMiLE nut and hungry for information I may have missed or misinterpreted. I was curious if you had some well-researched reasons behind your argument you hadnt had a chance to list yet but I guess not. And please, lighten up. I'm not trying to argue your feelings are wrong, but I *am* going to argue your assertion of what a historical SMiLE would be is wrong if I think so and you cant defend it.

"In contrast, Wind Chimes is actually about wind/air."
"We learned that with Vege-Tables, we can indeed have a stand alone track as one of the four elements..."

^Those dont sound like feelings to me, but assertions of fact, which are free game to be challenged and potentially proven wrong. Sorry if that hurt your feelings but I thought disagreements backed up by logic and evidence were par for the course on a discussion forum.

Anyway, if you dont want to discuss the point further, fine.

To change the subject, and find some common ground...

I totally agree. I'd still like to try Prayer after Surfs Up sometime for curiosity's sake, but there's no reason that the "Amen" need be a literal church choir or prayer. Vosse seems like a reliable source, but still I think I'll go with a '66 Brian on the tapes in regards to Prayer.

With all the talks of how he saw humor and laughter as religious experiences in their own right at this time, is it possible that maybe Moaning Laughter or something could be the Amen too?

Righto. This was a nice little thread once.

My apologies to SJS if I helped to derail his thread. Hope y'all get it back on track in my absence.

Jason - I'll fire you a link to my mix once I've done the suggested rejigging.

Oh give me a break. All Ive done is respond to ideas that were brought up in the thread sincerely and in good faith. I realize I can be pretty long-winded in my replies but its because I like to discuss this subject and feel strongly in my position. If youre gonna accuse me of inconsistent logic and "having your cake and eating it too" Im sorry but Im gonna defend myself. Am I just supposed to let you call me out and not explain my reasonings? I mean, really, what did you expect?

One of my favorite Smile's, which I call Dumb Angel:

Our Prayer (w/laugh at end)
Surf's Up (man at opera, trippin' out, literally, figuratively or both, is enlightened to the "children's song")
Wonderful
Child Is Father of The Man
Do You Like Worms
The Elements
My Vega-Tables

Good Vibrations
Wind Chimes
Cabin Essence
I'm In Great Shape (w/Barnyard)
The Old Master Painter
Heroes And Villains

*the Elements used "water chant" but since it's been revealed that this was recorded later, I might nab Mujan's idea and sub the Underwater chant in its place.  My "air" was the WC piano tag, which I might keep - the separate WC track here is a hybrid of the Smile and Smiley versions.  The "earth" segment is FN/Woodshop, which I might also keep - though I do like Mujan's thoughts on the "skits" being element related.   Whether intended for that purpose or not, I think they could be utilized to great effect in such a psychedelic suite as this.  

I love how creative this sequence is, especially swapping Heroes and Surf. Any place to stream or download?

I have a "gut feeling" that Wind Chimes was not intended to be the Air element back in 66. I have a "gut feeling" that Second Day is Air, and was, along with LTSDD a late, last ditch effort towards completeing The Elements before BW shut Smile down. It is a short piano piece with a happy airy feel and bird chirping sounds. Maybe it was Air, but who knows? That is my "gut feeling". I have a "gut feeling" that LTSDD was intended to represent Water. The first part has always reminded of river rapids out in the country, and the second part sounds like rain drops turning into a full rain shower. These impressions were made on me prior to me finding out that the track had a water association to it, so that is my genuine take on the imagery of LTSDD without that background information. I have a "gut feeling that IWBA/Friday Night/Workshop" was Earth because it sounds earthy and  I have a "gut feeling" that Workshop is a metaphor for the earth rebuilding itself after a fire, not some guy actually building something. That's my "gut feeling' on Earth. I guess I have a lot of "gut feelings". I'm not really very famialiar with all these Psychedlic Sounds pieces, but they're food for thought.

Thanks.  SU as an opener even kind of works.  :angel:
but this is an old mix i have on cassette , however I ought to be able to re do it easy enough. 

It's an interesting point about Second Day. I hate quoting another board member when I cant find the exact quote, but I remember reading from my lurker days AGD said he talked to someone in the know who said Elements would be two variations of two separate themes. He seemed to take that to be Fire/Fall Breaks and Dada/Second Day. I remember being fascinated by that idea at the time. I loved the title Second Day too, especially after someone pointed out that the Second Day is supposed to be when God separated the water and the air. More recently, I interpreted this evidence as two instrumental pieces and two acapellas. Fire/Workshop and UC/Breathing. Veggies as an element kinda throws a wrench into all this tho. Such is SMiLE.

I have a "gut feeling" I put too many jalepenos on my taco this afternoon.

Hang in there, The_Holy_Bee. Your contributions are invaluable.

SenorPotatoHead, I find your ending with "Heroes And Villains" interesting. For a period of time, I was doing the same thing, again going back to my preoccupation with lyrics, but also because of the fade (I used "False Barnyard" fading over the sunset/horizon). Every time I hear "Heroes And Villains", it strikes me as a "review song". It's in the past tense. "I've been in this town so long", "I've been taken for lost and gone", "fell in love years ago", "but she's still dancing", "just see what you've done", "my children were raised", and on and on. But then he switches to present tense with "I'm fit with the stuff to ride in the rough". That's the line! After all that he went through - the trip to America, the Indians, the bullets, the railroad, and the elements - he survived, he's fit with the stuff, and now he's ready to ride off into the sunset!

EDIT: I forgot to say why I eventually changed it, but it wasn't so much that I didn't like ending with "Heroes And Villains". It was because of "Surf's Up". I could never get comfortable hearing it anywhere but as the closer. And I tried! So, I moved "Heroes And Villains" toward the middle/end of the mix, AFTER he went off to sell his vegetables but BEFORE he confronted the elements. ;D

I used to think of it as a great in media res opening. Now I can see it both ways.

My feeling on HV is similar.  The whole "man at the opera" thing with SU (which Brian himself relays in GSHG) seems to naturally follow the opening invocation of "Prayer".   The children's Song he discovers is the rest of the album, the "trip across America, east to west" (though keeping in mind that trips are not always linear, they often take tangents, excursions - be they physical/geographic trips, or trips of the mind/heart/soul, stimulated by substances or not).
Generally speaking, though not exclusively, the other music on the album is more cartoony, more childlike.  As the Sheriff theorizes, HV caps off the whole thing with a recap of the events just transpired over the course of the album.  He's the same man from the opera (SU), but now he's found the way and all is well, and off into the sunset he goes.   :)

Thanks for the kind words, Sherrif. I was feeling a bit that I'd danced to this number before - and might put some of the dancers off with my textual flailing -but there's a lot happening on this thread I'm still really intrigued by. :)

This, for instance:


Not sure if I can apply this (really lovely) interpretation to my mix without a major overhaul/equivalently major rethinking of my assessment of the album, but it's a great notion. I've tried not to apply too much lyrical analysis to my sequence 'cos I think one of the big problems faced in '66 was BW and VDP's increasingly divorced stance on that issue. This said, there's something quite evocative and appropriate there in this idea, and if I get the energy I might mess around with something along those lines myself.

If you're referring to me, you didn't "put me off" but you have to expect that if you accuse someone of double standards and not having any evidence for their own theories, they're going to defend themselves and their arguments.

Anyway, it's done. Let's just move on.

For what it's worth, I like this idea of Heroes coming last too. Could definitely be the last song in the Americana side especially. And if you're assembling your Heroes like Brian originally did, ending with OMP, even more so.

Rather what I was trying to do, Mujan. And, just to be clear, I never claimed you did "not have any evidence for [your] own theories" - nor conscious double standards as such - simply that your posts sometimes seem to expect a higher burden of proof on some points than they do on others. And that this was making this thread a lot less fun for me, at least, than it was two days ago. It was the thought that we in collaboration might be doing the same for other readers and posters - that our rehashed debate might potentially be putting off "the other dancers" I was referring to - that made me consider opting out.

Anyway, I don't intend to engage with you any more on these issues. My last post was actually a relatively polite attempt to move past it, which seems not to have been read as such. What I'd really like to do now is continue to read, enjoy and contribute to this thread while, as I think soniclovenoise managed to say earlier in a much better way, making it clear I have no interest in continuing to do so in the style you seem to prefer.

On which basis, I've been intrigued by a lot of what has been discussed above re: Elements (and other aspects) and am currently trying to put together a possible  rough timeline for the various conceptual phases of the "The Elements". If that still seems an appropriate subject to discuss in this thread, I'll fire something through when I knock off properly in an hour or so. In the meantime, I'm loving the various approaches to and angles on all aspects of SMiLE coming out of this discussion.

Yes, and what I was going along with. That bolded text is exactly what I was referring to before tho, you realize. You say potato I say potato it seems.

Anyway, I think the best way to move forward for everyone is put the conversation back in its original context, taking Guitarfools points in mind especially. Perhaps focus on our personal SMiLEs and not *The* SMiLE. Because as I even admitted in my response to him, there's unanswered questions about EVERY track. Not just Elements and IIGS, much less the sequence. There really never will be a consensus on anything. I still think it's worth discussing, Brian's intentions, but not if I'm gonna be made to look like a jerk for putting forth my arguments.


Neither do I. I presented my case as best I can, which is all I'd want to do. I'd still love to read any new evidence either you or sonic could present for your ideas, but it seems like a genuine request for information has been taken as some kind of mean-spirited challenge, and now I feel like I'm getting looked down upon for it, and for fighting for my own interpretations in an admittedly thorough (or long winded) way. But anyway, if we're agreed to keep this about opinions and not debating the historical record it's irrelevant anyway.

Yes, I realized that dude. I just thought it'd be a good idea to address the elephant in the room--that you more or less accused me of ruining the thread and stormed out. Silly me.

I acknowledge I get extremely passionate about the issue. From now on, I'll operate under the assumption that we are discussing opinions and not Brian's intentions or *the* SMiLE. I just figured before that we were trying to debate what the real SMiLE was, and if that were the case, it seemed bad form to me to put forth grand assertions and offer "feelings" as evidence. Similarly, it would seem unfair to essentially shame and disengage with me for having the stronger argument.

It's not necessarily the method I prefer, it's just...if you're having a disagreement...well, for me the best way to support your theories is to disprove the opposing argument and put forth your own as completely and persuasively as possible. That applies even if the topic is SMiLE. Anyway, like I said, from now on I'll assume we're just discussing opinions. In any case, my views have been stated more or less completely these past two pages so it's unnecessary to keep reiterating the same points.

Okay, so here's a synthesis of my own views and the various points re: "The Elements" that have been made above, the most revealing of which for me was guitarfool's reference to the Pete Brown quote about "The Four Elements Suite".

There is some basis, I think, to the argument that "The Elements" was always more Brian's baby than Van Dyke's. To support this, I'd use the comparatively very few comments from VDP on the track/suite/sequence, at any point in the last 50 years; the fact he has said that "Vega-Tables was the only part of 'The Elements' I worked on"; and his rather disparaging view of the Fire sessions. Anderle and Vosse both speak about the increasing tension between BW and VDP as the sessions wore on - drawing a deliberate distinction from any tensions involving the Beach Boys - and make note of a difference of approach specifically in view of the part the lyrics were to play in the piece.

In the "positive" evidence category: "Fire" is notated as "The Elements: Part One", a session produced and written, apparently, without any input from Van Dyke. A track called "The Elements" is on the Dec '66 tracklist, which Cam Mott has comprehensively argued would not have been submitted without Brian's approval. Anderle speaks about Brian's "obsession" with the elements, his active interest in elemental forces. Vosse talks about recording water sounds. They both reference "the Fire tapes" as part of Brian's intended "Elements" track. At no juncture - and I'm just saying this as a fact, not to say there aren't possible justifications for it not being said - do either of them refer to "Wind Chimes", VT, "Surf's Up", Psycodelic Sounds or "All Day/Dada" as pieces of a suite that was, even in '68 or '69, fairly well-known in the relevant circles and readerships to which those magazines were directed.

So, on the basis of actual testimony/paperwork, in Oct-Nov we have two known "Elements": "Fire" and "My Vega-Tables" (vis-à-vis the Van Dyke quote above, Frank Holmes' booklet illustration based on lyric sheets provided by Van Dyke). According to Anderle, "We were aware, he made us aware, of what Fire was going to be, and what water as going to be. We had some idea of air." We also have - as Jason points out above - contemporary audio tape of Brian trying to mesh/augment different water sounds (such as it splashing from a teapot) into a melodic whole, which seems to tie in with Vosse's recollections of being sent out to "record water sounds" in Fusion.

[My conjecture, in context of both that statement and an interview in which a few minutes earlier Anderle spoke about the "Psycodelic Sounds"  session  - in which he was an active participant - at some length, is that if the remaining elements had anything to do with the vocal chanting done by "the Posse" and intended for full execution by the band, he would have mentioned it at this point in the interview.]

Dec: Things are fracturing, the Nov 28 "Fire" sessions being - again, Anderle: "the first sign that we were going to have problems with the album." A tracklist still has to be compiled, for printing purposes, so "The Elements" (a session/tape notation used only for "Fire") is employed, along with a partial title for the only other piece ("My Vega-Tables") that appears to have been actually recorded for the suite, at least with band vocals. The pressure for a single suddenly increases (again, see Crawdaddy!) and so, though other material is worked on, H&V completion starts to become Brian's focus as the month goes on. The fate of "The Elements" remains in flux...

Jan/Feb: H&V becomes a vacuum into which almost anything can be absorbed. Most other work on named album tracks suspended.

Mar: End of month, H&V temporarily abandoned. A new potential single is identified in "Vega-Tables."

April: Sessions continue, with a new focus on VT. Mid-month, Paul McCartney and Mal Evans visit, as recorded by Pete Brown in his memoirs - specifically noting "The Four Elements Suite" on a day on which a VT session occurred. "Da da" sessions kick back in around the same time, the last two of which are:

May: Cancelled, not long after Derek Taylor announces the album is "scrapped".

TOTAL CONJECTURE - 2012-2015: My own mix, originally made as "proof of thesis" that something happened in early Dec '66 to throw the album off course, uses "Fire" and "Cornucopia VT" as separate elements/tracks, because I'd set the task for myself of proving the album was "totally conceived" [Vosse] and largely instrumentally tracked in 1966. Following the facts given above, and the dictates I set for myself, I had only two known Elements to work with - so used MOLC to open "the suite", VT next and then Wind Chimes (the tag being "a piano piece" and also, according to Fusion, not finally "finished" in any version we now have to listen to). Surf's Up followed, partly because it gave me a comfortable mid-sixties 16-min runtime for the side, but also because of the Frank Holmes quote about "more than one element" I gave above. Each of these three tracks is linked with excerpts from Pscodelic Sound chanting. I don't now believe a completed '60s SMiLe would have gone that way; I feel it works quite nicely.

Subsequent thoughts? Corrections of the data? (TSS book being currently hidden in an unremembered corner of the bedroom.)

I said I wasn't going to do this, but Mujan, in the context of our discussion (on both threads to date), and bearing in mind you a) have time to write enormously long posts, often asserting other people's lack of evidence or claiming an entrenched position, b) have acknowledged you own a copy of LLVS and c) could just google all relevant articles in question in the space of thirty minutes if you wanted to (I don't own LLVS, and I managed to find and read them), then this:


and this


can only be read as taking the proverbial.

EDIT: I already regret posting this, but seriously, how much of your contradictory bullying are these boards expected to take? Because bullying, though I absolutely believe you don't see it as such, is just what you're doing.

EDIT: Accidental quote, now deleted.

Interesting thread.

I think what strikes me most here is that we have some real learned (and in some cases old school) smile devotees posting, yet when it comes to subjects such as the contents of The Elements Suite or whether Dada is/isn't water, there is very little hard evidence and the arguments get pretty subjective.

I, for one, was convinced that Dada started life as a song about a baby, but it's only from reading this thread that I realise the sole 'hard evidence' for that is the Marilyn quote in the Smile box book. The rest is subjective, based on the fact that fatherhood was a subject BW revisited in other songs, namely When A Man Needs a Woman, but also the baby sounds in Child suggest it was a fascination at that particular time. In fact the idea of babies (and the blurring between adults and babies) crop up quite a bit, especially the Love You period. I think this tells us a lot about Brian's psychology but that's another topic for another day ...

As for Fire, I'm in the 'Workshop is rebuilding after the fire' camp. Again, outside of the Carol Kaye quote, this is subjective. I remember reading Priore making the case for it in his post BWPS smile book. I was in the airport at the time and I could just about reshuffle the pieces on my iPod so that Workshop immediately followed Fire. Talk about an 'a ha!' moment. Never have two Smile fragments flowed so effectively to my ears. Not only did the two pieces flow musically, but they also create a very effective joke in the contrast from dark and scary (Fire), to the arched eyebrow humour of the loungey vibe of Workshop. It just seems exactly the type of gag Brian was into at the time. I think Brian used humour as a defence against the darker aspects of himself so it fits that he would create a very dark, serious piece of music and then flip on his head with a gag as if to say  "No need to get bummed out - I'm just messing with you folks!"
I'm a big fan of BWPS and support whatever revisions the team chose to make when they put it together. However I do feel a trick was missed in not grouping Fire & Workshop. By following Fire with the water chant it becomes a very heavy, dour section of the album and that fabulous joke is lost.

Was it AGD that suggested Country Air may be a reworking of the Air Element? Not sure if he still stands by that but I always loved that idea.

And, you're absolutely right. The evidence and arguments can be/are subjective. So, I'll add another one! ;)

I also believe that "I Love To Say Dada" started out as a song about a baby. And, I'm aware that some of Brian's song titles were working titles. "I'm Grass And You're A Power Mower" comes to mind, although that's an extreme case, but you know what I mean. Anyway, with "I Love To Say Dada" you have the story of Marilyn Wilson and the bottle of milk - AND YOU HAVE THE WORKING TITLE! I'm sure somebody can come up with another guess, but I can only think of one meaning for Dada or Da Da or DaDa - on an album with other song titles like "Child Is Father Of The Man" and other "child/children" references in various songs.

Yes you're right - that is two pieces of evidence. I have seen it argued that dada is a reference to the art movement but I think that's less likely given the bottle of milk anecdote.

If it is a song about a baby, then does it belong with Child Is Father Of The Man? That is another song that contains a baby reference (the trumpet cry). This sets me up to explain another pet theory  ;) ...

The slow piano and bass section of Child represents a father's anxious wait for the arrival of his new baby. The bass sounds just like a ticking clock to me. Then of course it breaks with the trumpet wail as the baby arrives. I'm sure the sections of this song are designed to clearly illustrate something and I suspect the baby plays a significant role given Brian's exclamation in the sessions: "There's our baby!".

I sincerely don't believe that either sides of the LP would start with any other tracks than Heroes And Villains and Good Vibrations. They were the singles selected at that time (see all the press coverage in 1966) and Brian started sides with the singles.

Considering that these were the songs mainly recorded by Brian from Early August to late December 1966 (when the LP was conceived as a full entity, according to Michael Vosse):

(song with partial and/or complete mixes are highlighted)

Good Vibrations
Wind Chimes
Look
Wonderful
He Gives Speeches
Holidays
Cabin Essence
Prayer
Child Is Father Of The Man
Im' In Great Shape
Heroes And Villains
Do You Like Worms
Barnyard
Surf's Up
Psychedelic Sounds
Talking Horns
Vegetables
My Only Sunshine
Vegetables arguments
The Elements pt 1: Fire
I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
You're Welcome

And considering that 2004 Ear Candy interview with Brian from after the release of BWPS:

E.C.: Also in "Beautiful Dreamer" you said - "We touched up the first two movements and we created a third movement. Now we have a rock opera - a three movement rock opera." Did you originally think of SMiLE as a "rock opera" or was that a recent…

Brian Wilson: We thought of it as 2-movement rock opera. Then we added a third then we called it a 3-movement rock opera.

"We added a third." Bingo. So, imo, there is a good possibility that side A and B were the Americana and Life suites presented on BWPS with a few alterations and with 12 "banded" tracks as Van Dyke Parks once confirmed.

I wanted to include both Look and Holidays so parts 3 & 4 of The Elements are Holidays mixed with the Psychedelic Sounds. Maybe not what The Elements track of 1966 would have been, but as with Im' In Great Shape there is so little that we know about the backing tracks both these tracks that imo it's up for grabs for anyone to mix them:

Side A (Americana Suite) 20:00

Prayer (first 15 seconds)
Heroes and Villains (Cantina version until distortion - then Barnyard)
Do You Like Worms (with added lead vocals)
Im' In Great Shape (Eggs And Grit/I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night)
Vegetables (Vegetables demo/Vegetables arguments/Smiley smile version ending from ''I know you'll feel better'')
The Elements (Mrs. O' Leary's Cow/Holidays/Psychedelic Sounds "Down On The Ocean Floor" and "Breathing")
The Old Master Painter (My Only Sunshine Pt. 1 & 2 with "Barnshire" fade)
Cabin Essence

Side B (Life Suite) 17:45

Good Vibrations
Wonderful/hard edit into Look
Wind Chimes (piano tag with "Moaning & Laughing" Psychedelic Sounds)
Child Is Father Of The Man (3 minute BW edit with added lead vocals)
Surf's Up (Smile Sessions version of part 1/Bruiteur mix with strings for part 2/"Talking Horns" mixed with part 3 and ending on the demo piano version fade)

Total LP running time: 37:45

http://www69.zippyshare.com/v/qqotF7ya/file.html

I agree with you, and I also DON'T think "Prayer" - partial or otherwise - would've preceeded 'Heroes And Villains" opening Side 1, but I admittedly have a problem with "(Our) Prayer" as an opening track. :police:

I always saw the bass as their shared heartbeats. Like, the dad can express himself in this profound way when all the baby can do is cry and yet what unites them is their heartbeats that'll stay the same all through their lives.

There should be a separation between discussing the historical issues versus the aesthetic, the latter especially in the way of decisions made by those editing their own "Smile". If it's aesthetic, anything goes. If it's attempting to be a historically accurate attempt, as tough as that may be due to the state of flux certain parts always seemed to be in during the process, then I think a debate or a challenge is appropriate. Having said that, I won't debate aesthetics because it's all subjective as to what sounds better to the person doing it.

That said, let's tackle "Love To Say DaDa" historically and musically to start.

Is there something to be challenged in the labeling and placement of this music in the Smile Sessions box set?

Consider there are several attempts dating from December 1966, one specifically with the taped piano strings where Brian even takes it into a 3/4 "waltz" section with the familiar chord progression. Then there is the clip of Brian playing the piece on a Fender Rhodes electric piano, what must have been one of the first of those instruments around the LA music scene since it was a fairly new invention at the time.

So that's December, 1966, taped piano strings and all, and those tracks fall under the 'Love To Say DaDa' title.

Then in late January 1967, we have a full reel of sessions labeled/titled "All Day", it's the same chord progression played by Brian where he cycles through various takes including doing the taped piano strings which are also treated with tape echo (if I recall). Yet these attempts - keep in mind, the same chord progression, feel, and in sonic terms it had the same taped piano strings effects - are placed under the "Heroes And Villains" sessions.

Then we move to May '67, as has been mentioned in this thread already, and now it has a part 1 of "Dada" and a part 2, which is the same material heard since December 1966 and those first piano run-throughs. This time it's actually slated as "Love To Say Dada", replacing "All Day".

So what does that mean in terms of what this piece actually was?

There is a pretty modern term that has been popping up in the collectors world, "re-purposing", as in buying an old beat up table at a yard sale and "re-purposing" it into something else for resale.

Question is - This chord progression and feel, called All Day, Love To Say Dada, whatever the case...it seems to be Brian re-purposing the idea as almost all songwriters do as a general rule. It's a good idea or fragment for a song, but where can I take it to call it finished? What else can I do with it?

So the question becomes with this piece, historically which of the possibilities is the more accurate one, was it "Love To Say DaDa" when Brian played it in Dec. 1966, and if so why did it become "All Day" a month later, and how did it become a part of Heroes instead of elemental? Or was it actually elemental at all in Dec 1966, meaning where did the label come from that was in the Smile Sessions tracklist? Was it a tape box?

OK, assume it was "DaDa" even if it was or wasn't labeled that way from Dec 1966...It was on a full reel of "All Day" sessions a month later, and assigned to the Heroes batch of session work. Repeating myself, same music, same chords, same sounds, same feel. But now it's labeled part of "Heroes" according to the box set.

Then May 67, as stated in this thread, it's "Love To Say DaDa" again, this time with a part one and part two along with other ornaments. Well, press reports at the time already pretty much sounded the death knell of the original Smile, entirely accurate or not, and within weeks of this DaDa session the band would be in the home studio cutting Smiley Smile tracks like "Hawaii Song" or whatever the working titles of the tracks were. THEN in the fall of 67 Brian does "Cool Cool Water"...same basic music framework as he had demo'ed in December 1966.

So even a piece like this "All Day" or "DaDa", what was it? Did it change shape and purpose from December '66 to May '67? Is the labeling as we saw in the box set accurate as far as placing it in "Heroes" versus a fragment called "DaDa"?

Food for thought.

It is a bit baffling. I'm not sure if he still subscribes to it, but I like Cam's theory (apologies if I misrepresent it here) that the b side of H&V was at one point to be a sampler for the album - Smile in microcosm - featuring small fragments that reference the larger songs. This then explains the existence of anomalies such as All Day (it is a reference to Dada), Heroes Intro (ditto Fire), Tag To Part One (Vegetables? Wind Chimes?) etc.

I think you're being pretty ridiculous and unfair. I acknowledge there's more out there SMiLE-related I need to read and hope to get around to some day, hence saying "I wouldn't mind being proven wrong" and "I'd like to see what evidence people have to argue different theories."

Maybe you're right, and I could finish it faster than I think. But in my mind it's a lot easier and less time consuming to type a few posts, even enormously long posts, off my phone between classes or between home work assignments for a day or two when theyres an interesting thread going on than commit to reading and taking notes on a fairly large book when I've got chapters to read in textbooks and novels to read for a literature class. It's definitely something I want to get around to tho.

Honestly, i think that bullying assertion is pretty uncalled for. I haven't called anyone names, insulted their character, essentially question their right to post here, and accuse anyone of ruining the thread and make a big self-important show of storming out like you have. All I've done is try to discuss and debate in good faith. I acknowledged that the latter approach may be unnecessary in this particular thread and that I get carried away, tried to explain where I was coming from and offer to just move past it. But you can't seem to let it go. For whatever reason you seem determined to call me out personally and paint me to be some kind of malevolent person the past two pages. You're not even acknowledging anything I've been saying to you. You just go from one condescending smear to the next outright attack.

And somehow I'm the bully? I've dealt with actual harassment on these threads and real life. If you think I'm being a bully for writing long posts and not getting around to reading a specific book just yet, I'd say you need to toughen up. And that's coming from ME. Anyway...

Exactly

FWIW Mujan, the Vosse article that was discussed earlier isn't in LLVS if memory serves. I think it's on the internet (or buried in these threads somewhere) but if you can't find it I can scan it.

Appreciate the tip.

That theory doesn't hold up as well with me because we have Vosse specifically saying there was a Heroes with a 3-minute A side and a 3-minute B side, then there was, of course, Chuck Britz saying he remembers a side A/side B version of Heroes...but a "Sampler" of the album? If anything I'd think it was more along the lines of a more tightly edited version of "Heroes And Villains Sessions" from the '93 box set on the B-side, with the A side being that Chuck Britz "Cantina" mix...***at that point in time***.

And that also beings up the point that Vosse knew this and heard something that he remembered a year later, Chuck Britz did something and remembered doing it, and those are firsthand sources who were actually there in the process if we're trying to figure out things that happened at specific times, and this was obviously before magazine columns reported Brian was going to go with Vegetables as the lead single rather than Heroes in spring '67.

Click here for the Vosse Fusion scans: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,17157.msg430386.html#msg430386 (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,17157.msg430386.html#msg430386)

I was hoping to zero in more on the All Day and Love To Say Dada topic, but since it was raised, the influence of Child Is Father... has been pretty definitively addressed by Van Dyke, and the inspiration comes from a Wordsworth poem "My Heart Leaps Up" aka "The Rainbow":

My heart leaps up when I behold
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Van Dyke told Brian about the poem after what I'm assuming were one of their songwriting talks like Tony Asher described, where they'd talk about life and philosophy and love during the writing sessions, and Brian (according to Van Dyke) was dealing issues of growing up, adulthood, becoming a man, and there is a quote where Van Dyke remembered thinking of the song "When I Grow Up" that Brian wrote a few years before that was on the same issues. So he tips Brian on the Wordsworth poem, and the inspiration came from the verses in the poem as well as the talks about religion, spirituality, and dealing with growing up, as summed up by the Wordsworth verses.

The notion of getting excited by seeing a rainbow as a child, that excitement continues as an adult, and Wordsworth both states it as fact and hopes he never loses that childlike wonder for natural beauty, and if he does..."let me die". And the feelings as a child are what can and should govern the adult (man) as well, may the man never lose that childlike wonder as something as simple as looking up at the sky and seeing a rainbow.

That pretty much sums up the "Teenage Symphony To God" aspects of Smile (and Brian's mindset during the project) as well, separate from the Old West and other pioneer/America aspects that sprung from the Heroes And Villains themes.

The sticking point I have with this is that Brian used that title for months even coming back to it a second time after a long hiatus. That grass/mower title was just a one-off funny quip he said behind the board one day. I'm fairly confident Dada was the real title myself.

I agree 100% with your structure. I never thought I'd see the day someone else supported a American/Life mix  :)

I disagree about H&V and GV tho. This was supposed to be a very innovative little record, even then. Not the 3 movement symphony it became, but still a groundbreaking experiment recorded modularly, with humor worked in and with meaningful groupings along the sides of vinyl. I see no reason one of the rules broken couldn't be starting off with the singles.

But again, isn't Brian quoted saying he wanted to keep as much of the SMiLE material a secret as possible until it was released? It's definitely an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Many thanks, I'll read it tonight sometime.

Is it really not in LLVS tho? Seems like a huge omission

To SOME extent, this could also be a description of Smiley Smile, and, what songs opened Side 1 and Side 2?

I think what Vosse and Britz say about a two sided H&V is supported by the documentation. Two sides of an H&V single would take two masters and beginning in January H&V has two concurrent master numbers and two concurrent titles: H&V #57020 and H&V Part 2 #57045 which are noted according to their separate titles and master numbers. The fact that the H&V Part 2 #57045 with its separate master number is for a second side of H&V is confirmed by a note on a H&V Part 2 master #57045 recording identifying it as "Side 2".

I may be out of date but as far I remember all of the known recordings identified as Side 2's H&V Part 2 master #57045 are samples of album tracks. I guess they also are samples of album tracks that were also considered for inclusion in Side 1's H&V Master #57020.

Subject to correction.

Fair point. I'm not sure how much influence he'd have on sequencing but VDP seemed the more intentionally avant-garde of the two. Depending on their relationship I think he'd have argued against following the trends and possibly convinced Brian.

The issue is, Smiley while a great album and really creative, did not really have many standout tracks that could supplant the singles either. SMiLE has a lot of worthy songs that could still get people's attention and kick things off with a bang. Also, I thought I read that Brian didn't want GV on Smiley but Capitol insisted. The non-single tracks all sound similar as well so in that case, putting H&V anywhere else would disrupt that albums flow whereas in SMiLE it can comfortably fit almost anywhere.  

The issue I mentioned before is a simple one: Was Vosse wrong on any of the musical descriptions? Anyone can fact-check what he said back in '68 with material from the Sessions box or other sources, and I cannot think of a point where he got it wrong. I think some of what he heard is in fact stuff that no longer exists, may have been lost or wiped over, or was simply a fleeting moment in time that was replaced by something else in the process.

Point is, if the guy in that article got it so right, I'd say well into the 90's percentage wise, and he was there firsthand, then if he says there was a H&V "single" in the works with a 3-minute A side and B-side, then I believe it.

It's the whole "preview of the album" deal I don't agree with...if we're assuming, I'd assume it would be a shorted and more tighter edit of something like "H&V Sessions" on the GV box set.

Oh wait, I already said that. 

That's really fascinating and something I'd like to look into further. I don't have my copy of TSS on me but next time I visit my parents I'd like to check that out. Are the master numbers listed in that sessionography or is there a different source I should look up?

From what can be identified with the Part 2/Side 2 master number it could be both at the same time because those known samples are both associated with album tracks and the H&V Side 1 master number.

Just to return to Dada for a second, where did the labeling of the Dec 1966 piano and Rhodes tracks Brian recorded originate? Was "Love To Say DaDa" on the 12/66 tape boxes? Because I don't think they were slated, yet they're labeled and grouped with the Dada tracks on the box set. When it was slated in the studio, for a full session, it was late January 1967 and titled "All Day". It was first slated "Love To Say Dada" in May 1967 after it got a second part and full instrumentation.

I mention this too because in between the taped piano recordings for "All Day", Brian says "In those spots we're going to have a bunch of talking, all of us together..." which adds another layer to what this fragment may have been as of January 1967.

I don't remember if the master numbers are on TSS or not. My info on it might be outdated now since C-man's landmark work on TSS.

Maybe C-man will happen by with some input on that and how/why tracks associated with LTSDD got grouped the way they did.

Can anyone else confirm or deny then?

Anyway, I got around to reading the Fusion article today. Honestly, Im not sure why certain people have such a holier-than-thou attitude against me for not having read it before, since there's nothing there that disproves any of what I've been saying. I was always meaning to read it and Im glad I finally forced myself to do so, but I think I heard most of what's in here before through quotes on this board and corroborated by other sources, so aside from one or two factoids I didnt learn much. Still a great read and I agree with Guitarfool that I believe what Vosse says 100%. I gotta say tho, most of what's presented here seemed to support the theories I had had already. Namely:

1-Humor was a very big part of the album and its inspiration. Brian equated it to religious epiphanies and thought that if you were laughing you were vulnerable and thus more open to be enlightened or taught. This doesnt necessarily mean humor skits on the album, but with the other evidence Ive cited ad nauseum it adds up to a bigger picture. He also says sound effects and other experimental oddities would be on the album

2-Going off that, he mentions the cover and booklet photos being intentionally badly done, that is to say, very simplistic and crude for the former and unflattering and "out of their element" for the latter. Ive brought this up before, how the cover ties the whole idea of the music and PS together. Its that idea of subverting expectations, hearing about this great new experimental album, this symphony to God...and its bundled in a drawing your 10 year old couldve made. These guys who are synonymous with the hot beaches...are floating on a boat in the chilly rivers of Boston--the last place you'd expect. Aside from the obvious tie-ins to the climactic "childrens song" at the end and Cycle of Life themes, Vosse mentions Brian specifically wanted people to laugh at them. I propose then that if he wanted people to laugh at the cover and booklet, it stands to reason he would want people to laugh at certain points in the music too. For the hundredth time, the Cantina Edit, Smiley Smile and contemporaneous quotes from the man himself corroborate this. The very existence of the PS themselves is pretty strong evidence too. Combined with Vosse's insight about the packaging and Brian's intent at self-deprecating humor it really isnt as far fetched as some of you make it out to be that some comedy skits, or funny elements of some kind, would be worked into the music itself.

3-The album, he (Vosse) believes, existed as a fully conceptualized entity in ~November or so. I tend to lean the same way. Obviously specifics were changing week to week, month to month, and as I said in a reply to Guitarfool before, there's unanswered questions about every single track much less the sequence or inclusion of PS. But there was an *outline* a general "skeleton" which had only to be fully fleshed out and put to tape, before late December and 1967.

4-He specifically mentions Elements as a four part suite, but the implication is clearly that it was all one song. He also mentions the Tag of Wind Chimes very specifically but as its own thing, outside of the Elemental context. Again, as with Anderle, I have to believe that if Wind Chimes--even just the tag of it--was Air, Vosse would say that. More especially since he goes out of his way to talk about both and STILL doesnt make the connection/distinction.

5-He mentions Brian and Van fighting, Brian asserting dominance over Van and the latter resenting him for it. But he also specifically mentions Mike and Brian fighting often, and the band in general in a sort of fragmented state with two camps complaining about the other here and there. This, to me, proves that while the band didnt kill SMiLE (which is pretty commonly accepted now) the tension was still very real. Far more than the revisionist "all Mike did was innocently ask about CE one time" position. THAT BEING SAID the arguments between B&VDP were almost certainly more significant and it seems according to Vosse that the others only felt comfortable bashing him openly because Brian more or less already was.

6-The songs were very fluid, and CE/Worms were originally pieces of 2 or 3 songs each combined. This shows that the same was almost certainly true of Heroes and IIGS too. If two fragments called "Who Ran the Iron Horse" and "Home on the Range" could be cobbled together into one song, who's to say the same isnt true of H&V, IIGS? BUT...would that really mean just straightforward one section/another section/another section structures? What I mean is, those two CE fragments REPEAT. One part became the verse, the other the chorus. Another section, Grand Coulee Dam, became the fade. Now this is more speculation that anything, but I think this lends precedent to my earlier idea about IIGS: that Do A Lot was originally the chorus to that song, and GS as we know it would be the verses. Maybe Barnyard wouldve been the fade? Can someone more talented than me try that? An IIGS track that goes maybe: Do A Lot/GS/Do A Lot/GS with tape explosion/Barnyard

7-Piggybacking off that, if the pieces of Americana were so undeniably fluid that they shuffled from one track to the next, that to me is further evidence they were meant to be together on the album. OMP, Barnyard and H&V are all together too at one point. IIGS is part of H&V, then its own track, then (if you buy my earlier hypothesis) part of that track goes into Veggies just as part of Worms goes into Heroes. This paints a picture of a very interrelated set of music, what we now call the Americana songs. It seems hard to argue against my assertion that these tracks should be placed together on the album when, ignoring the instrumental/thematic/lyrical/conceptual connections Ive been harping on for a year, each one was part of another song in that same group at some point or another. Anyway, Im not sure if the same can be said of the Cycle of Life tracks, but even so it's irrelevant. If you put all these tracks which shared pieces at various points on one side...what remains on the other are the Cycle of Life songs and The Elements anyway. I strayed from this structure with Romestamo but this is how I did it in Olorin. And now with this reasoning, and the numerology and astrology interpretations Ive put forth in the recent past...Im becoming more and more convinced I had it right before with that earlier mix. Perhaps just dial back on the PS and maybe fine tune the exact order a bit.

These next points werent ones Ive specifically mentioned before but that Id like to touch on:

8-Vosse mentions these water recordings were his idea. Again, while he talked about the Elements before in his article and undeniably spoke a great deal about these Water recordings with Brian (since it was his idea and hes the one who made them) he makes NO MENTION of this being the water element. He does mention Brian saying they could make a song out of them, since every musical note had been represented by the various water sounds in these tapes. But again, no clear indication this is water and it sounds to me like another off-the-cuff Brian idea that never panned out, much like his silverware idea.

9-The scene he describes with the I-Ching sounded like something out of a movie. Insanely prophetic although he himself didnt believe it to be so. Similarly I loved the idea about meetings in the swimming pool and didnt know Brian wanted to have a slide that went to his bed or that he painted his house pink.

10-It seems this idea of the album coming apart because "using the Wrecking Crew wasnt cool" and wanting the band to play on their own album might be overstated. Sounds more like Brian wasnt satisfied with their vocal performances and kept rerecording all the parts himself. This could explain the "lazier" or if you prefer, "laid back" production on Smiley, where they're all a group again and mistakes are intentionally left in. Seems possible SMiLE was a very personal album for Brian that had to be just so, and when he realized they couldnt do it--or his expectations were too high and it was killing the group--he realized it was more important to make a fun album with his band, imperfections and all. At least thats the feeling I got. "Dont think youre god, just be a cool guy"

11-Very interesting to hear there was more to the Inside Pop demo, with the gang all around a pool. I would literally kill to see what that was supposed to be. I loved the anecdote too about Murray trying to hog the spotlight by diving and badgering Brian to say good things about him to the cameras. Classic Murray.

12-He does mention a two sided, 6 minute H&V single. As I recall tho, he never said that was the intended edit or the one Brian really wanted, just that it was his personal favorite. He claims it was one of a dozen or so. I personally dont really have a stake in this H&V single debate. Im far more interested in the album, personally, and my thoughts on the H&V single basically amount to "waste of time; shouldve used a stripped down Surfs Up as heard on TV." Still, I do recall reading a quote from Brian during the sessions where he said he didnt want to reveal too much in the next single. Where he said the B-side would probably be something simple like himself at a piano. Obviously a sampler B-side would be the exact opposite of that, and even without the quote it seems crazy to reveal so much to people before they buy the album, and to your competition during a virtual arms race before youve actually won. I tend to believe H&V II wouldve been similar to what Ive proposed for IIGS the track--a mashup of the more tangential pieces of the H&V sessions. But where IIGS might be something like what I outlined above, H&V2 would be things like the various chants worked on ("a-Heroes, a-Heroes, a-Heroes and a-Villains"/"doot doot doot-Heroes and Villains!") intercut with a comedy section or two--All Day, with "lots of talking" in the pauses for example. Basically the scrap heap for all the sections that got sacrificed so that H&V I could be more commercial for the single. But again, I really dont feel comfortable throwing my support to either side fully. If what Cam says about the Track #s is true, that's some significant evidence that could throw a wrench in this idea. And again, I think it's more interesting and historically important to work out the most likely structure the album wouldve taken, not a b-side to a single that (IMHO) was doomed to come up short after GV anyway.

My current mix runs almost 89 minutes. By no means "historically accurate." Just an excuse for me to get all of the actual music in the most "finished" takes possible in one place in a listenable fashion. I must say, it works well.

1. Our Prayer - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

2. Heroes and Villains Part One - At 6:32, one of two tracks under the name "Heroes and Villains" and one of the two "epics" on the mix. 0:00-1:06 is the usual verse a la the Smiley version, but with several fake "overdubs" of the stereo vocals plus some other bits flown in from the various test mixes released on the box set. I was so shocked that it turned out as well as it did; I spent at least three hours on this one section alone trying to get the balance perfect and avoid any flanging or phasing on the vocals (I was working with FOUR vocal "tracks"). The segment was then mixed to mono and compressed to sound like a 1966-era mix - the bass was pumped up considerably but not so much as to overwhelm the rest of the music. 1:06-1:46 is a "bad edit" (one of many on the mix, meant to emulate the occasionally choppy edits on some test mixes of the time) into the chorus, just like the Smiley version with the Baldwin overdub bonus track from the box mixed in LOUD on purpose to pummel the listener. A bit of that music that would "scare a lot of people." 1:46-2:32 is the same as the Smiley version with the "la la la" vocals and the a cappella tag. 2:32-3:01 is the Cantina section. 3:01 to 3:34 is the same as the end of the Cantina mix before the "false Barnyard" tag. 3:34-4:06 is the "Western theme" taken from the "sections" mix on the Smile box. 4:06-4:34 is the "chimes intro." 4:34-5:08 is "Do a Lot" from the January 1967 comp reel. 5:08-6:32 is some fragments from the "Bag of Tricks" session that segue into the actual fragment, which then immediately "bad edit" into the "pickup to 3rd verse" and ends abruptly, immediately going into...

3. Do You Like Worms? - Same as the Good Vibrations box version, but using the Smile box fragments to avoid the tape speed issues on the former.

4. I'm In Great Shape - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

5. Barnyard - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

6. My Only Sunshine - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

7. Cabin Essence - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

8. He Gives Speeches - Same as the bonus track on the Smile box.

9. Heroes and Villains Part Two - At 11:07, the other epic track on the mix. 0:00-1:20 are some outtakes from the tack piano sessions for Heroes and Villains from February 1967, which segue at 1:50-2:39 into some "bad edits" of the February 1967 "piano rehearsal" made into a somewhat listenable melody. 2:39-3:34 is an outtake from the tack piano sessions from February 1967. 3:34-4:15 is the undubbed tack piano/harpsichord "Bicycle Rider" track from February 1967. 4:15-4:58 is the same track with the overdubs. 4:59-8:12 consists of the various "Part 2" fragments from February 1967 that were also excerpted, in the same order, on the "sections" mix. 8:12-8:35 is the "My Children Were Raised" bit from the Smiley version, seguing at 8:35-9:36 into "Sonny, Down Snuff" and the Smiley chorus once again. 9:36-10:25 is three takes of "Tag to Part 1" in various stages of the overdub process. 10:25-11:07 is the fade remake from March of 1967 with Carl scatting over the track.

10. Wonderful - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

11. Child is Father of the Man - This one follows Brian's 1966 backing track edit for the first half, providing the chorus, verse, chorus, bridge structure. At 1:52 the "verse" from the first version plays and then immediately "bad edits" into the April 1967 version of the track, which then edits back into the chorus once more, ending with an EQ'd and compressed BOOM from the bass and vibes.

12. You're Welcome - Same as the bonus track on the Smile box.

13. Good Vibrations - Same as the "album" on the Smile box.

14. Untitled - Basically an "intermission" of sorts. Just the chorus from the first Child is Father of the Man session which segues into the unfinished remake of the Heroes and Villains verse from March 1967.

15. Untitled - 0:00-0:53 is the "vocal insert" from the January 1967 sessions for Wonderful. The remainder is the "rock with me Henry" version of same from January 1967.

16. Untitled - An edit of the finished takes from the original sessions for Wind Chimes in August 1966.

17. Look - Same as the "album" on the Smile box but without the vocals.

18. You're With Me Tonight - 0:00-0:28 is the Hawthorne "You're With Me Tonight" and the remainder is the June 1967 track.

19. I Don't Know - Not much could really be done with this one, so I just took the better takes and some rehearsal notes from the session excerpt on the box and edited them into a listenable order.

20. Tune X - Same as on the Smile box, but without the count-in.

21. Vega-Tables - Same as the stereo mix on the Smile box, just collapsed to mono.

22. Holidays - Same as the "album" on the Smile box but without the vocals.

23. Untitled - I jokingly nicknamed it "All Day Dada" since it's just a mix of all of the different versions of the Dada melody that were recorded before May 1967. In order, just the taped piano version, the electric piano version, and the "All Day" Heroes and Villains fragment with some session noodling thrown in.

24. Wind Chimes - Same as the stereo mix on the Smile box, just collapsed to mono.

25. Mrs. O'Leary's Cow - 0:00-0:28 is the organ rehearsal from the March 1967 "intro" session, 0:28-0:53 is a later take from the same session with piano and organ, and the remainder is the same as the "album" on the Smile box minus the vocals and with the fire noises flown in from the bonus track on the box and mixed louder.

26. I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night - Same as the "album" on the Smile box, with a small edit to remove the segue into Vega-Tables and continue the "Friday Night" portion.

27. Love to Say Dada - Same as the "album" on the Smile box for the first half, minus the vocals. 2:22-2:32 is a bit of session noodling from the first of the two May 1967 Dada sessions, which features a reprise of the Child is Father of the Man melody. The remainder is the "second day" track.

28. Cool Cool Water - This involved a lot of creative editing and cutting and pasting of elements to create an "intro" which features yet another reprise of the Child is Father of the Man melody. 1:18-2:28 is the June 1967 version. The remainder consists of the November 1967 track in various stages of vocal and instrumental overdubs.

29. Untitled - Just the April 1967 version of Wonderful until 1:19, and then a reprise of the same piano melody with Michael's vocals.

30. Surf's Up - Same as the "album" on the Smile box, but with one notable difference. For the first movement, both Brian and Carl's vocals from 1966 and 1970 respectively are heard singing the lead vocals; the latter possible thanks to the bootleg a cappella mix which was then applied carefully over Brian's vocal. This was another arduous process; in some cases the vocals had to be matched word by word if not syllable by syllable at some points. Flanging and phasing was again a problem; much time was spent adjusting pitches (the a cappella bootleg mix ran about a half-step flat) and ironing out some digital noise on Carl's vocal thanks to the lossy nature of the leaked recording.

31. Untitled - The "Jazz" session from November 1966. Think of it like the house music after a concert.

So yeah, it's not "historically accurate." It's just what one bored guy did over several nights because he wanted all of the listenable bits in one place minus session chatter and much of the noodling.

Can one get a link?

Here are the Heroes & Villains Sessions with master numbers of #57020 & #57045 (and their recording dates) according to the TSS book (I entered them into my iTunes tags, very helpful, but also DISCLAIMER: I may always have entered in something incorrectly). [not pictured, My Only Sunshine Part 1 & 2 has master numbers of both #56866 & #57020, presumably because Part 2 ends up as the fade in Heroes & Villains for a spell]

(http://i.imgur.com/ci8ccem.jpg)

Not included in this image are the Heroes & Villains sessions with master numbers #56727 (Verse, Barnyard, and the June Smiley Smile version recordings), #56738 (Great Shape), and sessions with no known master number (such as "Intro [Early Version" which is slated as Heroes & Villains Part 3)

Thank you so much!

Hmmm...idk Cam. These groupings seem pretty random to me.

To me it appears that master number #57045 represents an attempt at the end of February to start from scratch based on all the different experiments he'd made in #57020 (thus he re-records his verse -- which we could call Part 1, his latest version of Part 2 which is now the Bicycle Rider section that he toyed with on Piano Theme and Part 2 Revised Version, the fade that he'd taken from OMP as heard on the 2/10 Cantina version, and the so-called "Intro" which I think we really should stop referring to as an intro, because the only thing I ever hear that music called on any of the sessions I can recall hearing it called is "Part 3")

This looks fun. Are you able to share somehow please? I appreciate it's probably a huge file.

There is also a January 5 1967 session for H&V Part 2 master #57045 that is on disc 3 .

To me it is quite systematic. It's a handy list but it might be the layout of the list that gives it an appearance of random. It helps to remember that master #57045 had a title of Part 2 but the "part 2" used in association with #57020 is not part of the master's title like it is on #57045.  The "part 2" shown for #57020 is just a notation of the "slate" on the recording used to designate which particular part within H&V #57020 it is and was not used a part of the title like it was on H&V Part 2 #57045.

Though the known recordings for H&V Part 2 #57045 are samples of other SMiLE album tracks, are they in different keys than the original SMiLE album tracks or their re-purposing for H&V #57020?

Maybe I'm explaining it worse or I'm wrong but I think it is pretty clear evidence of the two part H&V single. There was a time when the 2 part single was dismissed as just legend or false memory or some such.

Is there one other than "Do You Like Worms: Bicycle Rider Overdubs (Heroes and Villains Part Two)"? I'd love to fix my info if it's wrong!


The only samples/repurposings of other tracks I see under #57045 are the fade to Old Master Painter/You Were My Sunshine which had already been used under #57020, and Do You Like Worms (Bicycle Rider) which had already been recorded under #57020. The other pieces recorded under it appear to only be sections original to Heroes & Villains (the Verse Remake and the Organ Waltz/Intro.


I'm not saying there wasn't a proposed two part Heroes and Villains single, there's a lot of evidence for it, I just don't really see how the Master #s point in that direction.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ep0a3i

I have to agree with this conclusion now that I've seen a list. And yeah, to reiterate, nobody doubts a 2 sided Heroes was the plan at one point

Many thanks

Thank you for sharing your mix. I enjoyed it very much. I don't know where you guys find all this stuff...The "kitchen sink" SMiLE approach, a nice sampler for personal listening, but also nice to share with other friends/acquaintances and you don't wanna leave anything out.  :police:

Did anyone have an issue downloading his mix?  Chrome is blocking it, saying it may harm my computer.

Worked fine for me. Firefox, bro.

Yeah...use Firefox with NoScript and Adblock and you'll have a just-about-perfect browsing experience.

Very well stated. The mystery continues.

So Barnyard, OMP/Sunshine, and Workshop were meant to be the Barnyard Suite? But I've also read that IWBA and Workshop were meant to go with Great Shape, and since OMP and Great Shape are listed as different tracks on the Capitol tracklist that kinda creates a contradiction (Smile is full of contradictions though so that's not really surprising). Maybe You Are My Sunshine only gave Brian the idea of the Barnyard Suite and wasn't actually meant to be a part of it? So the actual Barnyard Suite would have been Barnyard, Great Shape, IWBA, and Workshop?

That's according to Michael Vosse, and as I said I'd take his word at 99% accurate, because his descriptions line up with what we eventually heard as it came out decades later.

Keep in mind the preview Brian did for Humble Harve, he goes right from Heroes into Great Shape, no break, like a segue. Then they break, small talk, Brian says "another section..." and he kicks off Barnyard. It made me think Great Shape was more of a Heroes thing by design, especially since Brian does the horn's "flutter tone" link right into Great Shape. Part of the same album side perhaps, the Heroes "American" side, but IIGS more of a Heroes link than Barnyard. Maybe.

I think the fan mixes and compilations through the years have muddied the waters on this Barnyard music far more than it was at the time Vosse (for one) heard the plans as they were being made. If Barnyard weren't separated by Brian himself showing it to an outsider while he deliberately did a live segue right from Heroes into IIGS, it may have been harder to place.

Want to return to this again and ask again, where did these titles/labels come from?

It would be great to have a list of both the slated names of all the different sessions as well as their labels in tape documentation where that information is available (I know there's plenty of stuff where the assemblers of TSS just don't have anymore info)

And again, I had some extra time tonight so I made a point of reading the other big article I keep getting hounded to, that is, The Crawdaddy interview with David Anderle. As I read it, I'll list some thoughts Id like to get out, similar to what I did with the Fusion piece. These are my musings on Part I of that interview:

1-Its so sweet hearing him faun over Brian in the beginning. I agree with him, about Brian being ahead of the curve, the forerunner of Rock music, and SMiLE being one of the great albums of all time. What's significant is he too specifically mentions the band not believing in him, fighting about it, and Brian nervously awaiting their return, knowing theyd give him grief for what he was doing. I reiterate, I dont believe in the old "Mike killed SMiLE!" smear campaign, but I've seen the pendulum shift too far the other way lately. Clearly their animosity was a factor, if an over-emphasized one, for the album's collapse. He specifically mentions Mike as the most antagonistic and how Brian would dread going into the studio. Again the "all Mike did was innocently ask about CE once" apologism just doesnt ring true reading these old primary accounts
                        ^He predicts the next big thing from Brian wont come from the Beach Boys. I think this couldve been true had his illness not made leaving them and doing something new for himself next to impossible. I still think this is kinda true if youre like me and consider Love You a solo album featuring the Boys, or perhaps look at BWPS as the big thing.


2-Contrarily, his point about Brian getting bored and then instantly changing gears seems to give an alternate narrative why things happened as they did. Brian realized after 4, 5 months into 1967 that this thing wasnt going anywhere, was gonna take forever to finally get off the ground and got bored of the whole thing. So he pursued another direction as Anderle seems to say he was want to do. Interestingly tho, he accuses Brian of simply giving up with Wild Honey, of retreating to the basics and not progressing anymore. I have to agree personally; not a big fan of WH, I always saw it as a huge step backward after the innovation of SMiLE and Smiley. The interviewer offers the idea that Captiol released WH, and this must mean it doesnt count in Brian's eyes, which Anderle agrees with. Very fascinating.
                ^Its interesting he mentions Brian's tendency to drop people suddenly for the same reasons. Ive seen people on the board here mention that a lot.

3-Oh there it is AGAIN, talking about how important humor was to Brian, how he wanted to make the first pop humor LP, how he sent them to record humorous conversations. Some of you will argue theres no proof this is PS, no proof this first humor album would be SMiLE but rather a second project, etc. I have to say, I think you'd have to be grasping at straws at this point to argue against humor on SMiLE. In spite of how unfairly ignored they've been all these years, all the flak and accusations of "hobbyhorsing" Ive been getting for sticking up for them, how Ive recently had my arguments dismissed for not reading this article yet.... it seems increasingly undeniable that PS, in some capacity, would be on SMiLE. All the main sources you all agree are reliable and cite as the most important to read point to this very thing Ive been saying all along. It's undeniable that humor was important to Brian and intertwined with the SMiLE project. The very name, the cover and packaging Vosse mentions, desire for the group to be laughed at in the pictures, all the OTHER evidence Ive been talking about BEFORE I was aware of these articles, and now finally Anderle corroborating it. Its the very first thing he brings up once the topic turns to SMiLE and its catharsis. You cannot accuse me of playing double standards with evidence when the very evidence you seem to care about so much, and look down on me for not reading, supports my argument too.
          ^He goes back to this point again later, reiterating that Brian was all about humor--so much so that he couldnt work or function with someone he deemed humorless

4-He specifically seems to recreate one of these PS recordings, describing the chanting into the mic, how Brian put it to music after, and everyone agreeing it sounded great. Again, the PS seem to be rough working ideas. They almost certainly wouldnt be on SMiLE as is, but would be shortened, refined, probably rerecorded with the Boys or Wrecking Crew and set to music.
              ^Once again, this isnt such a bizarre idea as its made out to be. Think Smiley Smile and the Cantina Edit.

5-There's much ago made about a "second album" a "humor album" separate from SMiLE. People point to some of Brian's offhand experiments like the silverware thing, PS (erroneously in my opinion) and other things. I personally interpret this as NOT a humor album, at least not specifically, but as an experimental album. Things like, again, the silverware thing, Vosse's water recordings edited into a song and stuff like that. Im sure someone will disagree with me on this interpretation but the way Anderle describes it all makes me believe this to be the case. I dont think even Brian would think a whole album of nothing but "Argument"/"Bob's Real Trip"/"Smog" would be an enjoyable listen for anyone. Those recordings are interesting curiosities, but not something even I listen to for pleasure alone. They DO work brilliantly with the SMiLE context because of the matching themes explored and as accompaniments to that music. HOWEVER, I think an album of very experimental minimalist recordings like people playing a song with silverware and water would be very cool and enjoyable. I concede this point is mostly speculation, however.
                  ^It could very well be possible that the silverware thing and water recordings be worked into SMiLE too. Im not against that in any way. Its a moot point anyway, because they were either never preserved or never leaked.

EDIT: Furthermore, off that last point, alot of that describes Smiley too, the more I think about it. The glass of water poured in Vegetables, cork popped in Wind Chimes, etc. Now, whether you take this to mean SMiLE would have these oddball elements or Brian only felt free to work this in when free of the SMiLE framework is up to you. Personally, I choose the former.

I dunno, to me it just sounds like Brian couldn't think of a transition between Great Shape and Barnyard at the time. He calls it another "section," not another "song," so it's pretty ambiguous. And just a month later Great Shape was put down on the Capitol tracklist as its own separate track. I don't really see that as evidence of Great Shape having a stronger link to Heroes than Barnyard.

And it's interesting that every section that came out of that whole barnyard brainstorm (Barnyard, Sunshine, Workshop) ended up being recorded for different songs. Barnyard was recorded for Heroes, Sunshine was recorded for OMP, and Workshop was recorded for, well, something. Maybe Brian originally envisioned them together as some sort of Barnyard Suite but later decided that they would be better split up into different songs, sorta like how different sections that were originally meant for Heroes were split off into other tracks. I also found this Van Dyke Parks quote regarding Great Shape:

"Eggs and grits and lickety-split, I’m in the great shape — of the agriculture." Obviously Brian had come up with some more notes there, so the lyrics once again are following the notes. He decided not to include those notes or that section in "Heroes And Villains", but put them in another place later. But it’s interesting how there was, all of a sudden, this turning to eggs and grits. It’s because it had something to do with the thought of a barnyard, and that related to that place we were trying to come up with in "Heroes And Villains". All those lyrics were visual efforts.

So if Parks is to be believed, Great Shape did come from the whole barnyard concept that Brian was thinking up. Sure, Brian ended up trying to fit it into Heroes, but it probably originated from that barnyard brainstorm that Vosse was talking about. That means that the connection between Great Shape and Barnyard is a bit stronger than I originally thought.

My thoughts on Part III of the same interview. Heres my source for finding this article: http://www.lysergia.com/LamaWorkshop/Crawd/lamaCrawd.htm (http://www.lysergia.com/LamaWorkshop/Crawd/lamaCrawd.htm) It seems to skip the May issue which I assume contains Part II. Can anyone provide me with scans to that? I do own LLVS, but its at my parents house, and besides that I dont have the time to read and flip thru it right now. Thanks.

1-Love how he now points out that Brian was also first in the back to basics movement of 1968. He just did it *so* ahead of everyone that nobody noticed or gave him credit for it.
     ^However, I think Brian did that earlier than even Anderle gives him credit for, with Smiley, not WH.

2-Also find it sadly ironic how he goes on about Brian first recording Surfs Up on piano and how it blew everyone away. Gah...that should have just been the second single, dammit!  :(
          ^Funny that unlike Vosse, he doesnt weigh in on the single issue. Vosse mentions that he thought Heroes should be the single and that once the focus shifted to that, the album died a slow death.

3-I disagree with this lengthy discussion on how artists SHOULDNT innovate. Frankly, to me, the late 60s is by far the greatest period of pop music BECAUSE of all the innovation and competition going on. The production race and using the studio as an instrument, every release pushing the boundaries of what could be done...this, to me, created the best albums ever. I also disagree that SMiLE would be an extension of Pet Sounds, and that Brian must have thought it was unnecessary. I realize the reasons for its abandonment are multifaceted but I dont believe that was part of it. I realize the transition from SMiLE to Smiley was more smooth than we had previously believed but I still believe that collapse was indeed a collapse and crushed Brian's spirit in many ways. Overall, its interesting to note Anderle's change in perspective since the three months from the last interview. Somewhat casts doubt on his memory, then. Like, if his stance on WH and SMiLE did a near 180 here, what does that say?
           ^He makes a similar change of opinion on Mike, tho here it makes more sense since Mike recently got into TM

4-Very bizarre and sad in hindsight how Anderle believes Brian's dark period is over and hes back to where he was pre-Pet Sounds again. He says he imagines Brian must be happy...going into the studio and being as productive as before. Hey says he believes Brian will recapture the old audience and capture the newcomers in the near future. Its heartbreaking to read this section, knowing what we know now. And again, he returns to HUMOR and how important it is for Brian to explore that.
        ^You would think that he would see Smiley as something of a nervous breakdown, a cry for help, a sign of giving up, I would think. Its actually really annoying how much focus is given to WH and not Smiley

5-At the end, he seems to confirm that the main cause of SMiLE's death was Brian's need for instant gratification. Makes sense, yet not a theory you see put out by others. Interesting.
         ^Thats about the ONLY thing SMiLE-related in the whole piece, annoyingly.

So yeah. I really hope there was more SMiLE related discussion in the missing second part, otherwise I cannot for the life of me understand why it was so important for me to read this for my theories to be taken seriously, to prove Im not a bully, etc. It was interesting as a general character study of Brian from someone who knew him and clearly cares very deeply about him, but I didnt learn anything about SMiLE. Again, nothing that disproves anything I had been saying. Overall, this is a good read in general but very frustrating for someone like me looking for SMiLE information--particularly anecdotes that it was apparently so crucial I read to be worthy of commenting. Of far more interest to me is the story about The United States of America in that same June issue I look forward to reading soon. Love that band, my all-time favorite (completed) album, would kill to have footage of their sole tour. And regarding SMiLE, I think the Vosse piece is far more indispensable and revealing.

Im of the camp that Barnyard was originally the fade to H&V, and got replaced. Now Im thinking it wouldve been the fade to IIGS. Who knows about Workshop. Personally, especially since Im starting to lean towards going back to my Olorin groupings and separating Veggies and Elements to different sides, I think Im leaning towards using it as a suitable standin for Earth again. I dont buy into this literal "building the barn/cart" interpretation. I think it works better as a humorous musical pun--rebuilding after the fire, rebuilding the girl's heart/confidence after Wonderful.

That quote from Parks is interesting. Id like to redo my effort at an IIGS track, this time using a more simple chorus/verse/chorus/verse/fade structure, using GS as the verse, Do A Lot as the chorus, and Barnyard as the fade.

Guitarfool, I agree that Vosse is a very good source, and I totally believe his account for how OMP/barnyard and possibly Workshop were related. I just...well...I think things changed since then. This was obviously incredibly early in the SMiLE sessions. By November/December I think those songs split up. I dont believe Workshop is really what he wanted for Earth, but its by far the most acceptable standin we have. And I think OMP is a standalone and Barnyard was worked into Heroes and then probably IIGS.

I agree fan mixes, boots and Priore have muddied the waters when conducting an informal investigation into the "real" SMiLE. I just dont think this is one of those cases. Not doubting Vosse, or what he experienced, just pointing out his witnessing of Brian's first playing of these songs was incredibly early in the albums recording, not an official recording, and it seems due to later evidence from that crucial Nov~Dec period point to these sections splitting up.

Yes this is how I always hear Barnyard in the demo - as part of Heroes & Villains. When he says "There's another section" I think he's either saying, "there's another section after Great Shape which we're still working on so let's miss it and jump straight to this cool other section: Barnyard" or he's saying "There's another section - and here it is: Barnyard". It just doesn't seem plausible to me that he's demoing Heroes and then plays Barnyard as part of a totally different song.

Actually, listening it sounds like he says "There's another section now" then moves into Barnyard. Although I might be mishearing that now - he could be saying "there's another section after"

Halfway through playing Barnyard he slows down and says "I haven't finished this" which suggests to me that when he says "We're still working - there's another section" he's more than likely talking about Barnyard - that's the section that still needs the work.

It seems like he's humming a lot of lyric parts so perhaps VDP was still working on lyrics and that's what the "We haven't finished this" refers to?

There's certainly a lot of space for lyrics if you listen to the backing track.

Listening to the demo there's a pause in the Barnyard section and a short exchange between Brian and maybe Danny Hutton and VDP? It sounds like this to my ears:
BW: "You're the lamb and he'll do the chicken ..."
Hutton(?): "... thing (or "ya think?" hard to hear) 'cause that's something he's having trouble with - You're still nowhere near."
VDP: "OK"

Are they talking about Brian having trouble with Heroes and Villains, the Barnyard section, or are they talking about the difficulty VDP is having writing lyrics for Barnyard or just the difficulty one of them is having making the animal sound(!)?

I'm rambling a bit but, listening to this demo, I wonder if Barnyard was more significant than is generally thought in that it was a part that Brian or VDP or both was having trouble with. Perhaps, if Barnyard was a substantial part of the song, after the flutter tone it was just to be Great Shape/tape explosion followed by Barnyard as the coda.

My speculation? Barnyard wasn't super important. It was the fade to Heroes and then a little later, it wasn't. Personally I think most of the other candidates for Heroes' fade work better and make more sense. The stolen OMP fade is probably the best, but if you want to keep that in its original track, there's a dozen others you can make from all the various sections.

I also think GS would be the interlude section that Cantina eventually became. It comes in like a dream, or a memory, and the tape explosion is like waking up or coming back to reality--ie the song proper.

Can we all just agree tho that the fact that we can take all these little sections and argue whether they're in Heroes/IIGS/OMP is significant? And that Brian going back and forth himself, as well as back and forth on CE/Worms and IIGS/Veggies too, is even more significant? You don't hear about this kind of jumbling of Heroes into Wonderful, Worms into Surfs Up or OMP in Wind Chimes for example. It's always between the songs we typically associate with Americana. I take this to be extremely compelling evidence those songs would go together on a side since they're all part of the same train of thought, and their individual pieces interchangeable. Furthermore, since its pretty clear the Americana idea was more VDP's thing, I wonder if this correlation means anything? If he was more prone to writing in snippets or rather, he had a lot of little ideas of vignettes of America he wanted to express but not so much full songs?

Vosse may have explained what Brian had in mind for Workshop (IWBA/FNB), OMP <with Sunshine Fade later used for the cantina Heroes) and Barnyard early on in the recording process, and it kind of makes sense - but we have two fades, Barnyard and Sunshine in one song, really three with Friday Night, so it's hard to understand how they would fit together.  And if there is a Barnyard suite, why isn't it on the list of tracks in Dember?  As someone pointed out, IIGS aand Barnyard are closely linked and I suspect they came out of Heroes together - so if there is still a Barnyard suite post the track list, it would have to be the IIGS track listing.  Putting the pieces together is still problematic.

Another possible piece of a Barnyard/Great Shape suite - Do A Lot, recorded Jan 3 at a Heroes session.

I agree with this post completely.

I think somebody upthread mentioned the 12.22.66 tapes were labelled simply "Dada", and you're right in saying neither is slated on TSS. I think only C-Man can confirm what the December tapes say, unless it's mentioned in the booklet somewhere.

True about December but the All Day session is slated as "All Day" so that's where that title comes from.

Does anybody buy into my latest admittedly specious theory that "I'm in Great Shape"/ "Barnyard" was meant to replace "Look" as the bridge between "Wonderful" and "Child Is the Father", once it was excised from "Heroes" in favor of the new chorus? Somebody did mention a quote from Darian earlier in the thread that the second movement of BWPS was "vintage", and that would seem to explain "Shape"'s inclusion on the track list, particularly given its placement (I know, see label for correct order).

Nope, not at all. The more Ive considered it since this thread started, Im convinced the sides would be grouped as such: Worms, Cabin, IIGS, Veggies, Heroes, OMP, and GV, WC, Wonderful, CIFOTM, Elements and SU. Not necessarily in that order. Reasons include all the tracks on the first side shuffled sections between each other frequently meaning they were all extremely inter-related and of the same train of thought. Instrumental/Thematic similarities among the songs on each respective side (the outliers being GV and Elements). The songs, when grouped thus, also work in an astrological context, with Side One representing the old Piscean Age and all the trappings of monotheism, colonialism and imperialism that are associated with it, while Side Two explores individuality, growth and personal expression more, associated with the coming Aquarian Age. Finally, if you follow numerology and add up all those song titles, they come out evenly on each side. Brian was really into astrology and numerology according to various sources, so those last two reasons MAY be reaching but I think they're plausible things he wouldve considered, and in any case they stay true to the influences of the album so it fits even if he specifically didnt think of it.

I dont believe in the linking tracks as we had in BWPS. I think, while the songs build on each other when grouped this way, each would still individually fade out and form its own complete thought. The songs stand alone, but still add up to a bigger message. 

I think for somebody who claims to want the facts that you're engaging in some highly speculative lines of thought there, but fair enough. Admittedly my own theory was rather circumspect.

Again, I havent read LLVS yet, but I did finally read the two big articles harped on in this thread as THE things to read. I've done a lot of other research through the years--Beautiful Dreamer, websites, old Smile Shop essays, etc, played around with the music for myself to determine what "sounds right" as well as spent a lot of time here, seeing various quotes from LLVS and articles/sources as well as taking in other people's speculation and playing around with the ideas Ive gathered.

Ultimately, the sequence of SMiLE is nothing BUT speculation. There's no source that says "yes, this song goes here and that one goes there" so the best thing to do is weigh the evidence you're familiar with, be open to new sources presented, and admittedly a personal aesthetic preference factors in too to an extent. For all the accusations of speculation and double standards Ive gotten so far, Ive yet to hear anyone actually make a more compelling argument for an alternative sequence/groupings. And the articles that I was led to believe would shatter my understanding of SMiLE, and that I was a novice for not having read yet only really supported my ideas or else offered little insight I wasnt aware of from other sources already.

RE. "H&V Part 2" #57045: I'm not going to argue with anyone's second guessing of Brian but if you accept a 2 sided H&V single, as per Vosse and Britz, how much more evidence do we need that H&V Part 2 #57045 "Side 2" was for that side 2 of H&V than a new master number with a separate H&V title of it's own marked as "Side 2" ?  It was marked as "Side 2" right? Is my memory playing tricks on me?

What was the master number for the side 2 if not #57045?

GV may have had multiple master numbers but they were all for the same title and no one has suggested that GV was to be a 2 sided single. #57020 was for the title H&V and #57045 was for the title H&V Part 2. So that and #57045 is marked as for a Side 2 are differences with GV. 

People heard this 2 sided version back in the day as I understand it. Someone on this board has heard it I believe. But no one seems to have a description. Bruce has claimed he has a copy of the recording, right? Unless it really is in a time capsule in a cornerstone in Hawaii or whatever, I wonder why it wasn't in TSS?

You and me both. MANY questionable omissions from the boxset, while a whole disc is wasted on useless GV outtakes. I want that, the Durrie Parks stuff thats new, any vintage test edits--especially the new CIFOTM one they found--as well as the sessions cut out from UM 17. Im probably alone, but I wouldve liked more Psychedelic Sounds too. Even the stuff we got, like the snippets of the Veggie Argument, were pretty useless. They didnt give us enough to actually work with.

No one has specifically said they heard the two sided single, they have said Brian planned and was recording a two sided single.  Chuck Britz said both sides were completed and mixed, which means he must have heard both sides if he was involved in mixing Part 2 but he never described them.  From the tape evidence it appears no second side mix was in fact completed but if you listen to the test mixes on TSS a there is a mix of the "Part 2, revised"sections with the Animals/Swedish Frog section edited out.  Perhaps that's what Britz is referring to, but it's not a finished mix.  And if you are continuing to dogmatically assert that the master numbers means something, well those were recorded under the 020 "A side" number so that rules it out for the Bside according to your criteria.

The ONLY tape marked side 2 on the box is the instrumental version of what became the Heroes single chorus, and that was also marked as "Heroes Bridge with low spooky strings and percussion." 

I would add people (journalists) have claimed to have heard five to six minute versions of Heroes, as late as June 67 (LLVS), but no descriptions - you could suggest that such a mix might have been split between  two sides yet the journalists (nor Mike playing the tape)  don't mention anything about a 2 sided single at this point.

It is possible "Heroes" became the catch-all for all these fragments that seem to be stray. Put it this way, of all the Smile tracks, all of the stray fragments with odd or unrelated names (Soul Made Beautiful, etc), is it more than coincidence that almost all of them can be shoehorned into a "Heroes" box of some kind? When Brian got these ideas, when he put these fragments on tape, they got put into Heroes, labeled as parts of Heroes.

There are also more test edits, some very rough that sound like Brian did them himself by stopping and starting a tape recorder rather than doing actual razorblade tape edits, under the Heroes name than any other known track from Smile. Second place would be Vegetables with similar test edits from the period.

It might go to show that in the bigger picture, he needed a single that was to be similar in construction to Good Vibrations, and he had reel after reel of sections to work with. It was in a state of flux as to sequencing and order. Then Vegetables was announced as the single to replace Heroes which he wasn't pleased with, and coincidentally that had a number of test edits done with the sequencing and order too.

And the only hard evidence we have unless an acetate or undiscovered tape surfaces is Chuck Britz who actually did the mixdown and editing work and Michael Vosse who was there hearing all of this stuff saying there was to be a two-sided Heroes single, and via Chuck's so-called "Cantina" mixdown we know what that was at least one point in time. Everything else is trying to make or prove points without any actual hard evidence or even memories of those who were there to back it up.

I just also want to throw a reminder in here about these acetates, and the great mysteries of the Durrie Parks discs and everything else like the Holy Grail of Smile...

If an acetate were made, and if that were the "keeper" version, edit, mix, sequence, etc, we'd have more than an acetate recording of it. These acetates were one-offs to take home and evaluate, after the ears and creative thinking process got a break from a studio session.

In terms of getting closer to a "finished" or "definitive" Smile, regarding order or sequencing or anything else, they don't necessarily prove anything except what had been tried at any given session on any given day during the process of making the album. The order was in constant flux in some cases, meaning there was no definitive answer.

I'd argue that if something was in fact "a keeper" that worked and was to be used for a definite purpose, it would exist on tape as well. All we're hearing on acetates is what was, not what would have been. Are they valuable and interesting? YES! But do they tell more than what was going on the day they were cut? Most likely not. If they did, we'd have a clean copy on tape.

My understanding is the original box for the first H&V Part 2 #57045 recordings of January 5 1967 is labeled as "Heroes And Villains Side Two".  Is that not right?

Yes and no. Brian is supposed to have wiped a lot of vocal tapes he deemed no longer necessary. Not just to scrapped songs, but old classics too. An acetate is almost certainly our best chance to hear what Look really couldve been. What other vocals--or at least REAL (not humble harv) vocals for the IIGS session. These would provide our only real clues to what those songs wouldve been.

Its essential to have every acetate we can for the sole reason that many of the old tapes are missing and have never been booted or backed up. They are the only posterity we have--and theres no way of knowing whether they would have been used or expanded upon had the album bee finished. These latest Durrie Parks acetates are said to have a recording of the Great Shape vocals worked into H&V--with Heroes and Villains instrumentation. This would provide the clearest vintage version of those vocals (dig that alliteration) we know to exist, as well as another clue into the evolution of H&V and IIGS. The new CIFOTM chorus is near-universally regarded as better than the one we knew of before and we only found it through an acetate. Again, our understanding of that track, the possibilities of it and the evolution of it, were greatly enhanced with the discovery of this acetate.

Considering SMiLE was in a near constant state of flux, not just as a whole but each individual song, having as many snapshots of time as possible is incredibly valuable for fanmixers as well as historical posterity. Everyone latches unto some bits of evidence that sounds right to them (including me) and then utilizes the material available to make the best mix they can. Every new recording helps immensely with that.  ;D

So people heard it.

Yes those were Part 2 of #57020, which shows he didn't have a separate master number just for Part 2s of 020 as he recorded several Part 2s for 020 under their own master number 57020.  

I assume Britz and Vosse mean there was a two sided H&V and viola "H&V Part 2" #57045 was logged, as I understand it, as "Heroes And Villains Side Two" on January 5 1967 followed by additional recordings for that master.  Seems pretty straight forward as SMiLE goes.  What is under 57045 as far as we know (I think) are new recordings/arrangements of samples of album tracks; they also were or had been a considered/active/discarded section of H&V 57020 but as a different recording/arrangement.  What am I missing?

The picture that was posted which seems to show that thats not the case. Again Im mostly holding back judgement on this because I myself am not well versed in master numbers and am not really invested in the single

The Harv demo is important because it gives us a snapshot of an earlier Heroes and Villains - one that contained both GS and Barnyard. There are some quotes that suggest that H&V lost something the more Brian tinkered with it and I'm always curious about that - what was the initial character of the song?

A H&V that contains Barnyard and GS (as per the Harv demo) has a stronger sense of narrative imo and a recurring single protagonist throughout.

At a guess (a big guess but please indulge me) the overall lyrical content of Heroes at the point of the demo might have been something like the following. I've highlighted all the points where the central male character is present:

I've been in this town so long that back in the city
I've been taken for lost and gone
And unknown for a long, long time

(I) Fell in love years ago
With an innocent girl
From the Spanish and Indian home
Of the heroes and villains

Once at night Catillian squared the fight
And she was right in the rain of the bullets
That eventually brought her down
But she's still dancing in the night
Unafraid of what a dude'll do in a town
Full of heroes and villains

My children were raised
You know they suddenly rise
They started slow long ago
Head to toe healthy, weathy and wise

At three score and five
I'm very much alive
I've still got the jive
to survive with the Heroes and Villains

Freshened air around my head
Mornings tumble out of bed
Eggs and grits and lickety-split, look at me jump
I'm in the great shape of the open country

Out in the barnyard
The chickens do their number
Out in the barnyard
The cook is chopping lumber

Jump in the pigpen
Next time I'll take my shoes off
Hit the dirt, do two and a half
Next time I'll leave my hat on

So it's a guy that moved from the city long ago, out into the countryside/a wild west town maybe? He's 65 now and looking back on his life - a love lost, three children which have grown. Then we're very much in the present (maybe via the tape explosion), he's tumbling out of bed out into the fresh air of his barnyard and surveying all the animals etc. Admittedly the narrative tails of a bit around the barnyard section, but if more lyrics were to follow, then that's not a problem.

The more I consider this the more I think the "We're still working" line in the demo refers to VDP and Brian's attempts to create an ending to the narrative - either with further lyrics to Barnyard (if that's the fade), or in creating another extra section after barnyard that would be the conclusion of the song.

They would go on to create the 'Sunny Down Snuff" section which fulfils that purpose.

I've run away a bit there and made lots of fanciful leaps of logic! I do stand by my point though that a Heroes that includes GS and Barnyard has a clearer sense of narrative, less abstract than the final release.


I think the two suite idea is attractive and I sometimes lean towards it when I group the songs. However, it just seems a bit too clean. Your argument that American songs are only mixed with Americana songs and so on just doesn't hold up - Wonderful ends up with the Heroes/bicycle rider major key variation in its final Smiley incarnation so I don't think Brian was so precious as to only rearrange sections of songs within certain suites.

I'd love to believe that the american and life suite songs always existed as separates but I'm not 100% convinced. I think Brian & VDP got in that sandbox and just went where inspiration took them. There were certainly separate themes of Americana and the Wordsworth poem maybe inspiring some cycle of life songs but I doubt they decided at that point that they would form separate sides of the album. I really think they were just going where the muse took them. Certainly, for Brian, if he felt a section would sound cool in another song I can't imagine him being bound by the divisions of suites and a heroes section ending up in Wonderful bears that out.

But then somebody mentioned a Darian quote that said those two suites were vintage. Are we sure about that? What's the quote? I only remember him saying they had two clear suites and they created a third (the elements). I get the sense that the music lent itself very obviously to two suites and anything that didn't fit neatly ended up in a catch all Elements suite.

No that's not right.  The tape box for the eventual chorus of the single is the only thing labelled "Heroes and Villains Side Two" and it also had the notation "Heroes Bridge with spooky low strings and percussion."

Some people might have missed this because I mistakenly "buried" it in a quotebox:

Yes the idea of a sampler B side just doesn't work.  And the two master numbers are a red herring - the recordings with the 045 number don't make any kind of coherent B-side, and the first session with that number, the Jan 5 session overdubbing lead vocals and fuzz bass on the Bicycle Rider section from Worms, was obviously intended for the A side as a replacement for Great Shape which had been pulled to its own track.  The vocal mixes on Unsurpased Masters with the 2 verses edited into the beginning of bicycle Rider (these are the verses with Brian on lead and Mike echoing/doubling on the last three words of each verse) demonstrate that.  So BR was to be Part 2 of the Aside replacing the previous Part Two, IIGS ( with a subsequently abandoned Part 3, the chimes "Intro" from December).  Also there's a test edit in circulation of the verse music hard edited into the Bicycle Rider music WITH the backing vocals of the Worms version before the lead was added on Jan 5.

So that means the new master number was being used for Part 2 of the A side, perhaps a new master number because Brian was planningg several parts to Part 2 and wanted to keep them distinct for ease in editing later.  Another reason why the master numbers are a red herring- the "Part 2" sections that we associate with a Bside or part 2 of an extended 7 minute single - Gee/aum diddy wadda heroes and villains/the fast dit dit dit heroes and villains with handclaps/"Animals"(Swedish Frog)/slow dum dum dum heroes and villains - were recorded under the 020 master number, which would be the Aside.  Even with Brian's deteriorating mental state, I find it hard to believe that he would consider 2 minutes plus of repetitive "the heroes the heroes the heroes and villains" chanting as a commercial Aside.  So in this case the 020 master is most likely for the Bside.  So I think the assignment of master number, initially starting with the new master number for Part 2 of the Aside, becomes somewhat random and not Indicative of Brian's intent.  And didn't Good Vibrations sections that ended up in the final single have different master numbers?  So there's precedent for that.

Alan Boyd has said "HOWEVER, the original box for the "Heroes And Villains" theme that eventually became the chorus of the single logs that piece as "Heroes And Villains Side Two"." Is that not right than?

Isn't that what I just said?  The Jan 5th Bicycle Rider overdub session was a Heroes session and was not marked "Heroes and Villains Side Two" as you asked, the single chorus session recorded Feb 27th was the one marked Side Two.

Are you referring to the test edit that runs 1:59, that goes Verse / Bicycle Rider / Verse (instrumental)?

Note the H&V verse backing vocals of that one are from the overdubs done 6/13, so it couldn't have been from January, if that's what you are suggesting. 

There's a "test" edit (assuming it was a test and not for some other reason, like overdubbing onto a previous edit):

Verse instrumental/Verse with backing vocals/after the verse someone (Al?) sings "dit a dit do" i.e going into the a capella bit, but that ends/pause/Bicycle Rider (Worms) with backing vocals from Worms but without the lead from Jan 5th/clean edit into verse instrumental which cuts off into the second time around.

It's unclear if the pause means these are two different edits copied onto the same tape.  My point is the edit BR/verses likely predates the Jan 5th vocal/overdub session - otherwise why not include the vocals - and the Feb 27th remake of the BR theme had already been made and vocal overdubs were done 6/12-6/14, so why not use that edited into the verses, rather than BR?

So we have the edits from the verses into BR (from the vocal sessions on the Brian lead/Mike echo last three words tapes) AND we have an edit of BR into the verses (probably for the 3rd verse and/or a capella section). 

Yep we're talking about the same "test edit".  I guess I interpret it as a June 67 edit since it featured all those recut backing vocals from then.  But I see your point: "Why use BR is they already had the chorus remade?"  And that's true.  Might have been an experiment to see if Brian felt the tone of the two segments matched. 

It is of interest that you can always hear a scrap of Bicycle Rider at the end of the June vocal tracking on the Verse.  But I've always felt that was just a tape remnant on the master (as in Brian was simply taping over that mix/master of Bicycle Rider) since there is a 'tape wow' and Bicycle Rider cuts in abruptly.  If that's the case, maybe that 'tape wow' and fragment of Bicycle Rider that followed on the masters inspired Brian to see what it sounded like if the two segments followed each other? 

But you also hear the BR fragment on the Jan/Feb Brian lead/Mike "echo" vocal as well, don't you?  maybe they reused the 4 or 8 track tape with the BR edit on it, wiped the original vocals and overdubbed them in June.

Ah-ha!  There it is too!  Must have been the case.  We have no mixes or anything past that point.  Why?  Because there was nothing past that point.  But MAYBE that was what gave Brian the idea for the modulation to the Bicycle Rider chorus? 

Well the chorus just a minor key rewrite of the Bicycle Rider theme from Worms.  I figure that Brian realized the Worms section didn't work in that key, and rewrote it, intending it as a bridge between sections.

It's interesting how many times Brian recorded the BR theme for Heroes.  After the Jan 5th section didn't work, he records "Hold On" - a fast solo piano version, unknown date.

Feb 15 he records "piano theme" (so named in TSS) slated as "piano bit" - starting in a high register and then switching to a lower.

Feb 20 he remakes the piano theme slated "Part Two" with an endbit that was supposed to be sung a capella and which the Boys sing a snippet of - and which sounds to me suspiciously like the backing vocals to "Barbershop"/sunny down snuff - which ultimately follows the BR theme in the single.  Then he does a "Part 2 revised" solo piano with further piano explorations of the Bicycle Rider theme – one take includes an ominous piano roll (“is that villainous enough for you Brian” asks Mike) and the final take which has a second piano overdub providing bass counterpoint at the end.

Feb 27 - the harpsichord version that became the single chorus

the fact that Brian is working on two different "Part 2"'s and two different "Part 2 revised"'s on Feb 20th suggests to me that he was working on revising the A side (cantina - perhaps cantina was out as early as Feb 20th) at the same time as he was working on the Bside.  All with the 020 master number.

Yeah I read the above conversation but didn't chime in.  imo the Master numbers are, as previously stated, a red herring.  The Gee/Hold On/P2 revised sections--which seem to be the B-side of this single--were the same master #s as the previous H&V proper.  it wasn't till Brian thought to scrap the thing and try again from scratch that it changed.  It was a good idea though. 

I believe that the reason the by all accounts final Cantina mix was rejected was because Brian thought "This song has no real chorus!" and took it and transposed it from DYLW. 

.

Oh, I didnt mean to imply that Humble Harv wasnt important. It totally is--its the only GS and Barnyard vocals we have, and as you say, its an invaluable insight into how H&V developed. My argument was that Barnyard as in that snippet of music itself wasnt particularly important. Personally, I dont know the chronology of which lyrics were written when and whatever, but the song to me is about a man living in a rough and tumble town where he met the love of his life in a seedy cantina and lost her in a gunfight. He's got mixed feelings on the town and himself, but the silver lining is his children going from "often wise" to "wise." Similar to Surfs Up in a lot of ways, actually. GS and Barnyard just kinda dont fit. GS in place of Cantina seems more of a distraction than a relevant plot twist to me, as does Barnyard. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the guys on a farm when he was in a bustling dangerous Western town? I think Brian made the smart move reworking Heroes...he just didnt know when to stop!

Hmmm. Fair point on Wonderful. I will counter that that only happened with Smiley which was 6 months after all the reshuffling during SMiLE, when the Americana suite, many of the songs, and any structure the old album wouldve had was definitely long dead. But at the same time, I acknowledge Im being somewhat hypocritical saying that, because I also consider Smiley a more simplified SMiLE but still true to its spirit in a lot of ways. IDK. Theres no clear answer.

Thats definitely how they wrote, but its clear things developed and got more complex and entwined after the first few nights in the sandbox. I just hear the identical pianos/harpsichords and horns in WC/CIFOTM/SU/Wonderful and it just sounds right to me. Plus theres the interviews from Brian saying the original was a two movement cantata and when asked what he changed he replied "a third movement" implying there were already movements, just they added a new one to make up for the hole that is the dead "The Elements." The quote from Darian is that the second suite was his favorite part and "vintage Brian Wilson" or perhaps it was "pure Brian Wilson" something to that effect. By itself not very good evidence, but with everything else I consider it corroborating testimony that there existed 2 clear groupings of songs (and again, the obvious thematic similarities, the reshuffling of Americana and identical instrumentation in Life bears this out)

Hmm...well, that seems to settle it, to me. The master numbers are a red herring. Thats a shame, because it wouldve been great to have a clear distinction of what to use for what. Personally, when mixing Heroes I usually tend to use: all the verses, obviously, including threescore and five and the slower reprise verse. Cantina overlaid with Swedish Frog. Western theme (i believe its called prelude to fade), that flutter horn, usually the tape explosion, sometimes mission pak if I feel like it, some kind of fade--either False Barnyard, the Intro as a fade, or something else from the sessions if Im feeling creative.

I did a second Heroes track for Aquarian and some of my older mixes (that I havent saved and dont really listen to anymore) and I always ended up using the three or four remaining chants (because they sound so repetitive and unnecessary if you use them in the "real" track) and sometimes the bicycle rider chorus (as a reprise of Worms at the end of the suite). Honestly, its nothing but speculation but I think Side Two would just be a dumping ground for what didnt make the cut for the single. I think early on Brian realized he was recording a LOT for this song and itd be a waste and a shame for so much to never see the light of day. That, and Im sure he thought it'd be "arty" and cool to do a two sided single (was such a thing even done before then?) hence a two-sided Heroes. I think it would've been structured something like: one of the chants/a tangential section (like All Day or something)/different chant/another tangent(like Gee or something)/different chant/one of the scrapped fades or instrumental sections to end it. Again, this is pure speculation. And then IIGS the track would be some mashup of GS, Do A Lot and Barnyard, similar to how Cabin Essence was created.

Stevie Wonder had Fingertips Part 1 and Part 2 as a single in 1963. That actually went to #1 on the charts. I'm sure there must be others.

I appreciate the answer.

While Im on that, anybody got scans or a link to Part 2 of the Anderle crawdaddy piece? Or if not, can you at least tell me if it actually talks about SMiLE or is just more general musings on Brian, Wild Honey and music in general?

Besides Fingertips, we have other R & B singles - Ray Charles' What'd I Say (1959) - covered live by the Beach Boys!, Isley Brothers Shout (1959), James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (1965) and many subsequent Brown singles, and Like a Rollling Stone (1965) - dj promo copies only.

I must be doing something wrong because I still can't get it to play.  Would you mind telling me exactly what I need to do?   

Some were logged as "Inspiration", strangely enough in the middle of the recording process. Yes there never was doubt that with GV, Brian worked on one title only; he just changed the structure of middle-to-finish half of the song, tinkered with instrumentation and tried out fancy ideas.

It's hard to answer that because I could just download it no problem. Your browser settings or pc/antivirus settings may be a bit too strict so possibly look into those and tweak them as needed. You have a smartphone? Preferably Droid? Try downloading it off that. I did that just now to make sure it works and had no issue

I should have been clearer. I was able to download it from Firefox, but it won't play on anything.  I guess because it's a .rar file?  Do I need to convert it and if so, how? 

Download winrar or 7zip to "unlock" the files.

Bunch of stray thoughts, probably too many:

1) It's very odd to me that no vintage edits/mixes exist of Heroes & Villains that incorporate anything from the 1/03 session. I feel like there has to be an acetate out there somewhere that is a version of HV assembled after that date but before 1/27, one which is unsatisfactory to Brian and pushes him to hold the 1/27 session from which the Cantina version seems to stem. I'm interested if anyone has a suggested assembly for what this would be? Great Shape is probably out for this version as it appears as it's own track on the December track list.

maybe something like: Verse/Bridge To Indians/Bicycle Rider(1/05)/Mission Pak/Verse(Some early version of children Were Raised?)/Do A Lot/Pickup To Third Verse/Verse/Tag to Part 1? I'm at loss for this version.

2) I'm surprised I don't see more about Love To Say Dada being linked with Child is Father of the Man. "All Day", "Love To Say Dada (Part 2)", and "Cool, Cool Water (Version 2)" all feature a section that sounds very similar to the CIFOTM chorus. "Cool, Cool Water (Version 2)" also moves from that into a section somewhat akin to what Chuck calls the "verse" of CIFOTM (Version 1). Plus there's the talk of Love to Say Dada being written about a baby.

3) The only piece that is at all "clearly" a side 2 piece of Heroes & Villains, is the Bicycle Rider-esque chorus from the single recorded 2/27 as it is marked that on the tape box, which makes it seem to me like the idea of a Part 1 & 2 of Heroes & Villains could have been a fun heroes part followed by a scary villains part. Totally conjecture, but it kind of makes sense. Throw in one of the versions of the Chimes "Intro"/Bag of Tricks/Organ Waltz "Intro" piece, maybe even as the verse section of Side Two (which while it might sound crazy when you listen to it as in instrumental, it's not hard to imagine Brian filling it up with a bunch of voices (think Cabin Essence chorus) and Van writing lyrics to the ascending and descending melody that would fit as a great counterpoint to Side 1's descending heroic verse.

4) Is the TSS version of Our Prayer on Disc 2 Track 2 really from the 10/04 session? Maybe I'm mishearing, but I swear I hear Mike saying "We should be doing Good Vibrations anyway" at 1:43, and yet Good Vibrations is released on 10/10 just 6 days later. Plus Brian says (in reference to the boys wanting to record Wonderful) that they don't have any studio time until "Thursday & Friday" which would be 10/6 and 10/7 if this was on 10/04. Indeed, on 10/6 there is a vocal session for Wonderful, though there's a tracking session for Windchimes (Version 2) on 10/5, but I'd guess that wasn't at Columbia, where he would have been doing vocals. I don't know how quick the turnaround was back then for releasing a single, but if they're not done working on Good Vibrations (possibly even recording the vocals) by 10/6, could they actually get it out that quickly? If anyone has the final mix date and/or the delivery date to Capitol for Good Vibrations, that would be helpful in figuring out this little bit.

5) He Gives Speeches, featuring the lyric "he fell into her friendly persuasion", is recorded the same day as the Good Vibrations "Persuasion" takes. Don't know which inspired the other, but I hadn't recognized that connection before. Very speculatory off of that, but it got me thinking about the takes under "Inspiration", which are under a new master number (the first change since recording for the single started in earnest), and it made me wonder if it was a reference to Wasn't Made For These Times, "Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around". Obviously it could also just be that he was inspired, but the connection between HGS & Persuasion got me thinking ...

6) 11/04/67 was a crazy day. Surf's Up 1st Movement is tracked, Brian plays the Heroes & Villains demo to Humble Harv, and the Psycodelic Sounds tape is recorded. Just wow. I mean that runs that gamut from one of the most sublime moments of Smile to some of its most joyous to some of its most ridiculous.

7) In regards to the Heroes & Villains chants recorded on 2/20: I think they get labelled as different sections or parts too often, when the slates during the sessions refer to them as revisions/versions.

TSS's Part 2 (Gee) is slated as "Part 2, Revised Version", but which Brian refers to simply as Part 2.
TSS's Part 2 Revised is slated as "Part 2, Heroes & Villains, Revised Version" but features the Bicycle Rider music.
TSS's Part 4 is slated (I think) as "Version 4, Part 2" as heard on the boot Archaeology [Lost Smile Sessions] Disc 1 track 28, you hear Chuck call out Version 4, Part 2, Take 2 before a clip of a rehearsal for the background dum dum dums.
I don't think we have a slate for Part 3 (Animals), though my guess is that it would be some variation on Part 2, Revision/Version 3.

It seems like Brian's recording candidates for replacing the old Part 2 (Cantina), and Chuck, knowing that they already have a Part 2 is calling it Revised Version. But in Brian's mind, he's done with Cantina, and sees this as a whole new Part 2 for the HV Side A single. He then tries various versions of that new Part 2 idea which leads to it eventually being called Part 2, Version 4.

So really, Part 2 (Gee) would be New Part 2, Version 1. Part 2 Revised would be New Part 2, Version 2, Part 3 (Animals) would be New Part 2, Version 3, and Part 4 would be New Part 2, Version 4. Unless of course it's for an actual Part 2 (Side B) of a two sided single.

We have the "Verse Edit Experiment" from 1/27/67 that concludes with Bridge To Indians, with an EQ filter that sounds like an old transistor radio. 



How I (and others) interpret it, Brian felt he had the whole song in the can on 2/10/67 as The Cantina Mix, so the rest of February was devoted to the b-side of the single-- Part 2 (not to be confused with the second part of Part 1).  That is until March 1st, where he scraps everything and starts a new Verse. 

So thus here we are differentiating between Heroes and Villains Part 2 (the second segment of Heroes and Villains, side A, which is Cantina) and Hereos and Villains Part 2 (the b-side of the single, which is Gee, P2 Revised, Animals, Anvil, Hold On, etc). 

But as to what you are saying with Gee, the very first take Brian labels "Heroes and Villains part 2", and proceeds to play the Gee piano part that keeps dissolving into a Gershwin-esque breakdown.  Then tracking Gee proper, it's slated as "Heroes and Villains Part 2, Revised Version"...  What was revised was the piano figure and eliminated the Gershwin breakdown.  Not the entirety of the Cantina section.

...In theory.   But how do we "know"? 

1) We have NO test edits of Verses -> Gee/P2 Revised, that would suggest that they are segments intended to replace Cantina, rather than a set of new recordings for a b-side.  (note we do have a handful of H&V test edits or demos already, so there is precedent)
2) In contrast we DO have a test edit of the Gee and it's variations (the one with the hard edit out of the diminished chord), unconnected to prior versions of H&V
3) For the claim that there is a six minute Heroes and Villains, we'd need to retain both the Cantina AND the Gee Variations and connect them together.

All circumstantial evidence of course, which is why this had been dismissed as myth a decade ago. 

Really nice post. Has your sequence/mix changed since March 2015? That was an interesting one.

No comment about your first point since I dont have TSS and the sessionography with me.

Regarding #2--Ive been saying it here and there. Im not sure what Dada was. I had always thought it started as All Day, but now it seems it started even earlier which throws a wrench in that idea. It MAY be possible that the Undersea Chant would have some music overlaid on top, and thats what it was. Theres that third section thats said to sound like CIFOTM, and I personally think the title, anecdote about the bottle, and wah-wah vocals are pretty solid evidence for a Life/Child song. So it could also be a last minute replacement for The Elements if that was definitely scrapped by late Dec--and therefore itd be on the Life side. But the problem is the instrumentation it eventually got wasnt fitting with those other songs. As Ive harped on oh so many times, WC/Wonderful/CIFOTM and SU all have pianos and horns which make up most of the arrangement of the song. Dada doesnt, and it ruins that connection if it was a late addition to that suite/side. Even when it was returned to later, it had FLUTES, not horns. And personally, I think when it was returned to in April it was so it could be a B-side for the new Veggies single.

3-You're not the first one to suggest a Heroes A side/Villains B side structure. I like the idea a lot, Im just not sure if its provable. I recall there is one session--Part Two Revised--where someone asks "is this villainous enough, Brian?" But that could mean there was supposed to be "villainous" parts in the A-side too. Its interesting to think there couldve been a whole other half of the song we'll never know of. And explain why Van leaving even so late in the game was such a critical blow. I never understood why it mattered after Dec since all the songs had lyrics--except possibly CIFOTM and IIGS. Elements didnt need them...so who cares if the lyricist quits, when his work is already 95% done? But with an all-important single still hanging in the balance it makes a bit more sense. It also makes sense then, to try another song with the same tone/feel as Heroes, but completed lyrics and an easier chorus to co-opt.

4-Mike said that? What a jerk >:( I really cant answer. They mostly kept just the cheerier bits of the studio chatter, but in a heroes session (Do A Lot) too you hear Brian audibly annoyed saying "If theres no cooperation after this, Im splitting. We've gotta get back into the groove" definitely shows some of the snide remarks and overall frustration going on at the time. Sorry to go off topic, but I cant really answer this question.

5-Not sure about the Inspiration/Wasnt Made for These Times connection. I do think its interesting how hed take little pieces from seemingly complete songs to use in GV and then junked those songs. Look too. And how he did that with Heroes and all other songs. Again, its like he just didnt know when to stop in that case tho.

6-Haha, you're not a big fan of PS either I take it?  ;D Eh, to each his own. A lot of it is pretty expendable but there are some real gems in there too, I think. Definitely a valuable piece of the puzzle if nothing else--even tho many wont admit it and look for excuses to ignore it. Anyway, I agree. A Big day, and further proof November was when the album was most complete in a sense. Sure, there was a lot more to do, but I agree with Vosse that around this time is where the album existed as a cohesive, conceptually finished entity before doubt, the singles, and VDP quitting ruined it and got everything all confused.

7-Well, that "a-Heroes, a-Heroes, a-Heroes and'a-Villains" part is listed as Part 2 Revised Master Take. But another chant (doot doot doot-Heroes and Villains!) is Part 3. The slower ("dooot dooot dooot Heeeroooes and Villaaaaaaains") chant is Part 4. Thats partly why I assumed Part 2 of the Single would be a series of chants, perhaps including Gee and accompanied by some of the more tangential pieces which dont really work in Part 1--Intro, All Day, etc.

Seriously tho, reading Point 7 of your post gave me a headache, lol. This is partly why I really dont care about creating the most accurate Heroes mix, or worrying how the single wouldve turned out, because its impossible. At least with the album, we have a period (Nov~Dec) we can point to where the album seems to have been more or less conceptually finalized. We have primary evidence we can look to, and the tracklist, to give us ideas how to put it together. Listening with our ears, its obvious a lot of songs share lyrics and musical similarities which seems to suggest they go together. Heroes itself? Nothing. Its a total crapshot. And if youre right and Side Two was gonna be a fully fleshed out "Villains Side" with new sections and lyrics, its a waste because that was never worked on then.

Ah, I misunderstood about which date. The Feb 27 H&V Part 2 #57045 is marked as "Heroes and Villains Side Two". The #57045 master is still the designated side 2 master. 

Also I believe the H&V Part 2 #57045 Side 2 master recordings from January 5 through March 2 all share a session number of 14247 and 14247-A through D, which means something that Brad Elliot once explained but I've forgotten.

I'd also point out the tracks shown for #57045 H&V Part 2 Side 2 master collectively include a beginning (Intro) and an end (fade) with the rest of the master #57045 tracks presumably a middle.  That side 2 middle could  have also included tracks previously designated for #57020 or other H&V master #s ala GV, or other album track bits, and miscellany, I suppose. 

I understand there is a lot of confusion on our part about Brian's intentions and methods and what-not but this still seems like a rare organizing principle regarding Side 2 of the H&V single whether we get it or not.  I just think there is too much evidence to dismiss #57045 as for the Side 2 master.

Some day, when they recover Bruce's acetate from the cornerstone of that building in Hawaii, all will be revealed to our Great Grand children SMiLE obsessives.

The verse remake for H&V Part 2 ("Side 2") #57045, what key is Brian wanting to end up?  Has anyone made a file with the key/speed correction Brian is describing?

E major.  Which is bizarre because it's in Db. 

Brian's ways are often bizarre to we earthlings aren't they?  Has anyone done the correction Brian describes to the master take on TSS?

I really wanna know why that wasn't on TSS now. That's just completely inexcusable

Now that I think about it the known sessions for H&V Part 2 ("Side 2") master #57045 consist of an "intro", chorus and new arrangement of the chorus, verses, and "fade out".  Interesting.

Somebody should ask Carol Kaye or Hal Blaine what they have noted for March 2 1967 in their personal session logs (if they haven't been already).

That's the way I see it too. Successive versions for H&V #57020's 2nd part, just as they are slated, not concurrent versions. At least at the time of their recording.  

#57020 was the catch-all of bits and pieces for H&V #57020 and #57045 was the catch-all for bits and pieces of new arrangements for H&V Part 2 ("Side 2") #57045. If I remember right the common session number #14247 shared by all of the H&V Part 2 ("Side 2") #57045 tracks shows they were all intended for a single master track. Something like that, is Brad Elliott here?  

Nothing is a 100% but this seems pretty straight forward to me. The idea that the master numbers in this case are a red herring seems like a red herring imo (according to the documentation and slates etc.).

PS. Is it just me or does the verse remake for H&V Part 2 ("Side 2") #57045 run awfully long?  I wonder if he intended something over that?

Just talking to myself now.  (whistling, rocking forwards and back with hands in pockets)

Sooooo.... Something that sounds like this?
http://www48.zippyshare.com/v/GsEfh80Z/file.html

Something like that with those bits probably/possibly. The January chorus might have been replaced by the February chorus maybe?

Plus some sort of insert from March 2 1967 would have been the intended bones it seems by the documentation and slates.

Well it's very strange that January Chorus is even included in that master number. 

But idk,. listening to those Master numbers assembled in logical order, doesn't sound like a Part 2 to me, it sounds like a complete rewrite of Part 1... 

I understand but the #57045 master is identified as Side 2 master and the master takes were intended for that master identified as for Side 2 which to me would rule it out as a side 1 restart. We don't really know if what would be a chorus in #57020 was still a chorus in #57045 or the #57020 verse was still a verse in #57045 Side 2, as far as I know only the intro and fade out are identified as to placement or even function within the #57045 master. We don't know how it was, we only have the indications of what was for what at the time of recording.

Anyway that's the way I see it.

 

I wanna bump this thread with a few random questions.

1-Was With Me Tonight worked on pre January or is it a random later addition in 67?

2-any theories on He Gives Speeches? Where it might've fit before it was junked?

3-Tones and IDK. Thoughts? Random experiments coincidentally happening during SMiLE or purposeful last minute additions to fill some of the gaps?

I'm not the first one to posit this, but the spot it makes the most sense to me is as an insert, tag, or followup for Wonderful based on:
1) it's similar style of lyrics (she belongs there, he gives speeches)
2) it's recording date coming after Wonderful
3) it's eventual repurposing in She's Going Bald, which also features a part that's somewhat similar to the Wonderful Version 2 tag (this one's a stretch)

I could also see it as a part of Old Master Painter based on:
1) The re-use of the backing vocal melody for the False Barnyard/Barnshine fade.

And maybe even as an alternate to Who Ran The Iron Horse in an early version of Cabin Essence based on:
1) Lyrical connections: "stepped across the golden fields"/"you'll find a meadow filled with grain there" (very tenuous, but possible)

I could actually imagine a version of Old Master Painter that goes Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine/Home On The Range/He Gives Speeches/Home On The Range/Barnshine. But then again, I can imagine a lot of versions of a lot of SMiLE tracks ....

Great thread!

Really enjoying the discussion, even amidst some of the unnecessary bickering

A few comments:

The Elements?
- Vega-Tables was referenced as a seperate track and that the Elements was a "four-part suite"
- Both Anderle and Vosse discuss the Elements as a different song from Vega-Tables.  If they thought VT was part of the Elements, i find it odd they would talk about the songs in separate contexts.

- SMiLE artwork: My Vega-Tables/the Elements. This seems as much evidence for as against imo, as didn't Frank Holmes mention that some elements were referenced in the image (there is water spickets/rain/pong/wave, vegetables of course, but there is a huge crack like from an earthquake (which could be earth?). Also lightning.
- Brown's McCartney/Vega-Tables/Elements ("four-part suite") comment is quite an insight!

- Wind Chimes? - like VT, WC is also mentioned separately from the Elements, but the end fade, which sounds suspiciously like the "piano overlay section" described as being part of the Elements


IIGS/The Old Master Painter/Barnyard Suite Connection
- Regarding YWMS' inclusion in HV in May '66..  what's the primary source behind this myth?????
- Also, i find it hard to believe VDP wasn't aware/didn't help with YWMS.. he kinda did something very similar with "public domain/nearer my god to thee" on Song Cycle, plus Vosse says point blank VDP worked on it.
- My thoughts are "IIGS" would have included IIGS, Barnyard, I Wanna Be Around and Friday Night

- Michael Vosse (Fusion): "One night we were over at his house and he started playing You Are My Sunshine slowly, almost like an R&B thing, just slowing down the tempo, really mournful. And we were all a little high, I guess, and he started singing "you were my sunshine": he put the song in the past tense, and he was trying to find his bass rhythm for it, and in doing that he found this weird little riff that just sort of developed and it hit him, man, right then, that he wanted a barnyard, he wanted Old MacDonald's famr, he wanted all that stuff. So he immediately got Van Dyke over and they did a chart for "You Were My Sunshine". It's so hard to remember exactly what he wound up doing, because he changed things so much, but he wound up writing a clarinet part for it which is impossible to describe: a whole different sound that he found in the middle of all this, and it developed into an instrumental thing with barnyard sounds, people sawing (he had people in the studio sawing on wood) and Van Dyke being a duck - and it was marvelous. It made you smile and at the same time touched you."

Good Vibrations
- Bottom line, the song would have been on the SMiLE. From interviews, it is clear GV was not part of BW's original/desired vision of SMiLE, but if there was a SMiLE album released in 67 it would have included GV. I don't understand why this is even debated. I also agree it would have opened/closed an album side.

Well there is the info from AGD that he was told The Elements would have featured a cross-fade at some point. Could make sense as a transition from the rest of the Elements to Vega-Tables. Granted he said it was an internal crossfade, but still.

While I agree with you, I just want to clarify that Brian had said Air was an "unfinished piano piece", not specifically the "piano overlay section"; Vosse was the one that was talking about a piano overlay section, in regards to Wind Chimes.  I made the connection earlier in the thread (not the first, I'm sure) but based on a hunch/assumption, not direct quotes or evidence. 


Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was Al Kooper who said this. 

I actually feel the same way. Wasnt aware it was done just after Wonderful, so thats good to know--lends credence to the theory.

There's contradictory evidence for Veggies in the Elements. Its to the point where my personal solution is to merge the two ideas: it was in there at one point, but quickly phased out. Then Fire was abandoned, but Brian still wanted to return to it at some point or else do something elements-related for that song. Personally, I dont think it works aesthetically as part of that suite and prefer it as a standalone track. I think Im just gonna stick with Workshop as the follow-up to Fire and Earth element for now.

If you've read the thread/bickering you know my arguments against Wind Chimes as Air. Unless I see some actual evidence to the contrary, Im 100% certain it was not and never was (pre-BWPS of course) an element. Just my take on it.


Im actually not sure off-hand. Its something Ive read before I know, I just cant recall the source. Hopefully someone else can answer cuz now Im curious.

I agree. OMP sounds more like his influence with Brian. Im pretty sure the whole Americana thing in general was his idea--and notice both that song and the whole Americana movement was dropped for Smiley? (sans Heroes which was the single, and Veggies which is now removed from that context--notice the new spelling on Smiley, and how in its rerecorded state it loses all musical connection to Heroes?)

Fair enough. I still lean towards it being more of a traditional song, like CE and Worms and how they were supposedly constructed of various fragments themselves. But that's just my own hunch--I have no evidence. IIGS may be the most mysterious song on the album--at least we have plausible candidates for all the parts of The Elements.


I used to argue against its inclusion, but that was more of a personal preference. I dont think it totally fits since it wasnt written by VDP and the instrumentation/tone doesnt match either of the two suites. But Brian actually is on record saying the new album would have 10 or 12 songs including GV and Heroes. So it WAS part of his vision back then. And yeah, in any case Capitol wouldve insisted. Anyway, it does kinda fit with the Life side too and Ive warmed up to it.

Anybody have the Chuck Britz quote about a two sided H&V?  I can't find my copy of the book.  Thanks.

With Me Tonught - no known sessions until June, so it's really a Smiley Smile song.  Three versions in 2 or 3 days while they were working on Smiley's Vegetables, then later rerecorded with the final Smiley version with organ.

Tones and IDK - it's a shame Carl and Dennis were never asked about these songs.  With Brian struggling to finish tracks for Smile and the single, perhaps his brothers were trying to step in and contribute tracks to help finish the album.  Alternatively they were inspired by Brian's creativity and, with Carl in particular attending and participating in many of the sessions, they felt they could produce music with the wrecking crew in a similar fashion and wanted to try it.  It wouldn't be until 1968 that they attempted to produce session musicians again.

He Gives Speeches  - don't see how this would fit into the Wonderful recorded in August, doesn't lend itself to this as a tag or as an insert, I just see this as an early Brian Van Dyke song that was abandoned but later salvaged for its parts.  Backing vocals recycled for the Sunshine tag that was later used for the Heroes cantina tag, the rest recycled in She's Going Bald.  Like how the verse of Look became the middle 8 of Child and the chorus was used for the last break (the vocal arrangement) in Good Vibrations.  Brian rarely wasted musical ideas!

Thanks so much for answering!

Good to know about WMT. My impression was it was like HGS--something that came up in the beginning, got shelved, came back for Smiley. I figured thats why it was on bootlegs and the boxset. So it was really a pure Smiley song huh? That definitely changes my opinion on it and how it fits in. Namely, that it doesnt.

Thats my interpretation too, that they were taking some initiative and finishing some songs to add since they could tell the album wasnt really progressing and some songs like the Elements seemed to be dead for all intents and purposes. I think Tones couldve been a good song if it were finished, I really wanna know what the lyrics were, but it doesnt fit on SMiLE by virtue of the fact that its not from the mind of Brian. SMiLE is Brian's baby, with VDP focusing his thoughts to words, featuring the Beach Boys as vocalists in my interpretation.

I could be wrong (im not musically trained) but the melodies for HGS and Wonderful sound similar to my ears. The lyrics for HGS seem to be about a guy and his relationship with a woman. I know a lot of people here say they always put those two tracks together. I may be stretching it, but I see the "hawaiian sounds" in the later insert kinda mimicking the HGS backing vocals too, and I can see both fitting with additional "pretty baby wont you rock with me henry" dubs. Its almost total speculation, but I think if Wonderful was always supposed to have an insert or tag, HGS was a working version of it. It doesnt work with what we have because they both sound so disjointed, but if you rerecorded HGS on the Harpsichord or a gentler piano like Wonderful I think it might've sounded nice. It wouldve given the song more depth, as the male and female perspectives of a relationship that ultimately didnt pan out, and the baby imagery in HGS (little hands shadowed on the ceiling) couldve possibly tied it into that Life/Childhood suite. Wonderful just seems so short and so not-modular compared to everything else, plus we can tell from the sessions and Smiley he wanted an insert from early on if not the very beginning. I think the lyrics for HGS were meant to be a counterpoint to the main lyrics in Wonderful but were never rerecorded in such a way that they fit nicely and by Smiley they became their own thing. This change wasnt rectified in BWPS because nothing was--BWPS is more "lets take the fragments we have and put them in such a way that they make sense" rather than "what EXACTLY was the plan in '66, and lets painstakingly work to make that happen" as evidenced by the prior discussions about Fire's new intro, the new third suite, etc.

Where else could HGS fit in? Had it been an early Heroes piece, I think we wouldve seen it revisited in '67. You could be right about it just being an early scrapped song, but is there any other instance of this? Thats part of why I asked about WMT. If that was bona fide Smiley, and theres no other scrapped pieces of SMiLE from the early sessions that didnt come back until Smiley, Im reluctant to dismiss HGS as just a one-off that didnt go anywhere. All the other fragmentary pieces came back in January/February if nothing else, as a potential section of Heroes. All the other one-offs like Look and Holidays seem to have a verse/chorus structure and the former had other sessions with vocals recorded. It just seems odd.

on what real was HGS found? iirc it was unlabeled, but what else was it with? did it ever appear on a comp real?

also, does anyone know the track listing of any known comp reals? im curious as to whether they contained fragments or complete songs and whether they were mono bounces or multitracks. my understanding is bw mixes like wind chimes, wonderful,  dylw, cifotm, and the feb h&v were on some of those reals. if they contained complete songs and if wonderful is on them, but hgs is not (only a multitrack exists of hgs, whereas only the mono comp version of wonderful exists, right?), then wouldnt that be an argument that they were not linked in song form, since those sessions occured during the same time?

I cant answer, but of course Id love to know too. I reiterate my theory is all speculation here, but it just seems weird that there exists this completely un-modular main track and an abandoned song. You can mention Holidays and Look being abandoned too, but again those have verse/chorus/fade structures while HGS seems like a fragment. Maybe it couldve been part of IIGS/Barnyard suite? Either way, why is Barnyard, IIGS, Look and Holidays on BWPS and the TSS tracklist but not HGS? Why is this one particular piece of '66 SMiLE so marginalized?

To be honest, IMO the reason it's been marginalized is it's not very good.  I think She's Goin' Bald was a big improvement on the song, as heretical as that may seem to Smilephiles.

The obvious answer to why it remained a fragment is that Brian may have intended more for the song but abandoned it.  So it probably was intended as a section of a complete song, but he never got around to finishing it.  Like he never finished The Elements, or Barnyard Suite. 

I guess. I personally dont think its all that great either, but neither is WMT or IWBA really. I mean, they are, just not in comparison to the other stuff being recorded at that time. I do agree SGB is better.

In any case, I wish we had isolated main vocals from HGS to be able to at least try them as part of a hypothetical Wonderful insert. I recall asking this board if anyone had them to share but got no bites. Im aware of the Smile Mixer's toolkit, but as wonderful as that resource is, it doesnt have usable HGS vocals either

I think He Gives Speeches is a worthy inclusion in any Smile album mix based on the strength of the lyrics alone. Sure, it doesn't have much of a melody (intentionally, I think) but Parks' cryptic lyrics always draw me in. "Little hands shadowed on the ceiling". Too weird! How do you not love that?

Out of curiousity, whats your stance on the whole HGS v SGB preference?

And while I agree with you those vocals are undoubetedly Parks', it should still be noted he claims no authorship of them.

He may not remember writing them, or referring to SGB, which may have bastardized his original lyrics (what's the quote??)... btw, he also claims he had nothing to do with Old Master Painter (which contradicts other accounts) and said Surf's Up was the first song he wrote with Brian (which it was not..H&Vs was)... time passes, memories fade

Indeed. I dont believe him when it comes to HGS either. Those lyrics couldnt have come from Brian or Mike--they have VDP's hallmarks all over them

Well, even though I'm 100% certain that Brian never intended HGS to sit at this spot, I've put it here (http://www.michael-fredrich.de/CIFOTMicha.mp3) and I like it. HGS starts at 1:39.

Maybe V-T was intended as the "I'm Bugged At My Old Man" of SMiLE. Since I like the cornucopia lyric and prefer Mike's silly vocal rendition to Al's tired sounding lead on the "single version", I have constructed a little Frankenstein Vega-Tables (http://www.michael-fredrich.de/Vega-Michas.mp3) mix from the TSS stuff.

Works very well for me. :wink

I've been thinking whether this lyric is a reference to the novel (and movie) "Friendly Persuasion" much of which is set on a farm in the old west.

I think the "HV intro" that later got tacked in front of Fire was meant to symbolize the Hero arriving in the town by train from the city. I just had a little bit of fun by combining two things that I didn't even have to pitch shift to fit - notice the vocals and the piano change chords at the same time, while the organ does not:

HV intro with vocals (http://www.michael-fredrich.de/HVIntroIronHorse.mp3)

Nice train whistle at the end! :)

Probably it's just confusion due to the lack of a completed concept prior to recording. As guitarfool stated, SMiLE was in a constant state of flux.

Enough posts from me for now! :wink

HGS could have come from Paul Robbins or someone.