The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just dug up some more notes from the August 2003 Beach Boys fan gathering, where Al Jardine was a guest speaker (via conference call). Here it is, unedited, as transcribed directly from my Maxell C90:

Stephen Desper: What do you remember of the Smile period? A lot of people ask questions, and it seems to be a mystery, and maybe we can get some clues from the source here. You were around during that time, right? [laughter]

Alan Jardine: You mean – you’re not talking about Smiley Smile?

SD: No, not Smiley Smile, the stuff over at Columbia, and Capitol…

AJ: For that stuff, the band never really participated in that, because it never got to a level of vocalizing. Because we had just finished Pet Sounds. Well, no, what am I saying? We were really working Pet Sounds and Smile at the same time. We were doing both of those projects. And, you know, they were like, intermingled together, and I don’t think we really knew what was going where at the time. And then Brian turned the chauffeur’s quarter into an echo chamber! [Al laughs] I remember. And that’s when you [referring to Mr. Desper] came in. Yeah, but the mystery of those tracks [indecipherable] is still interesting, I mean, to me even, because at that time Brian was pretty heavily sedated, and doing a lot of experimental stuff, and I wasn’t part of that, I never really went in for that stuff. The taking drugs and stuff. So I think probably a question like that would be better put to Hal Blaine, or some of the musicians who took part. Now we did vocalize – I should correct myself – we did vocalize on fragments, as we call them. And that was pretty traumatic stuff, because it didn’t really have any continuity. It was more – fragments. Fragmentary, I guess, is a better, the best term. Some of which, however, did make it on an album called 20/20, which was the last project on Capitol.

LATER…

Unidentified audience member: Have you had the opportunity to see Brian and his current touring band?

AJ: No.

UAM: OK, part 2. Um, were you aware that he’s planning on touring Smile next year? And what were your thoughts on that?

AJ: I heard about it, I think it’s crazy. [laughter]

Susan Lang: Well, good crazy or bad crazy, Al?

AJ: Well, not for good, I mean, why, [incredulously] how? I mean, I guess you could play snippets of it. Because it was never assembled, so, I mean, it’s an interesting idea but I think people are pushing Brian too hard. I mean, why in the world would he want to go back and do that, you know? Why not do something a little more progressive? I mean, if he wanted to do that he’d need the band to create… But his handlers, the people that make those decisions, they’ve forgotten origins I think of from whence that stuff came, you know? And it would require a great deal of imagination, I think, to call it a quote “SMiLE Tour” – I mean, that’s ridiculous, and who would relate to that? I mean, in this generation? What does that mean? I don’t know. I guess we would enjoy seeing it, but-

Dan Lega: I think there’s a lot of young people who do know about the SMiLE myth and are waiting to see it.

SD: He’s playing on the myth, though.

Alan Boyd: The legend looms large.

AJ: Does it really?

Peter Beyer (aka Catbirdman): I think a lot of people consider it Brian Wilson’s finest music – legitimately. Not for the myth, but for the music.

AJ: Well, yeah, but it’s not there.

DL: Well, there’s more there than we thought there was for so many years.

SD: No, there’s not. [laughter] There really isn’t – you mean to make up a whole concert? No.

SL: I don’t think he intended to make it the whole concert.

UAM: Probably about 30 minutes.

AB: No, I think it would be, my guess is it would be a segment within a larger show.

PB: Just like Pet Sounds.

UAM: It would be Vega-Tables and Wonderful and Cabin Essence…

AJ: Well, there you go.

AB: Probably like a half hour set within the show.

SD: It’s a clever name because it brings in the customers.

DL: They’re selling out like crazy over in the UK.

AJ: Uh, is Vegetables part of that album?

UAMs: Yeah, oh yeah. Mm-hm.

PB: Vega-Tables, Wonderful, Cabin Essence, Surf’s Up, Heroes & Villains.

AJ: Well, we re-recorded that stuff, and re-recorded it so much that [Al laughs] in a sense, you know, so many different projects, I suppose it could be assimilated into one CD, even. That might be something Capitol ought to do. And then he could go out and tour on that I guess. I guess you’re right. I keep thinking of all the stuff we didn’t finish but I guess you’re right. There is a lot of stuff there. I like Vegetables. I think Brian did a version of Vegetables which I prefer, the one with the tack piano and some of the more cutting edge stuff that we had been working on, as opposed to our version on Smiley Smile. And, for some reason, it just - You know, Steve, we had a great little medium, a little opportunity there to record, but it wasn’t edgy enough for me. I mean, we didn’t have that tack piano, and the Baldwin just seemed to, I don’t know, it just fills up too much space. Takes up too much space on tape, I think.

SD: You mean, it’s over-produced?

AJ: No, I don’t know, it just changed. Things changed. Under-produced, I would say. I liked that tack piano sound we had for a while. With Heroes & Villains in particular, Don Randi and some of those great players, and Leon Russell – people like that – were playing on ten or twelve versions of Heroes & Villains that we had on the box set. That particular sound to me was more alive, more progressive. When we moved to the house we didn’t have the dynamics of those instruments anymore, or the players.

SD: Well, that’s because they were all over there at Studio 3, I guess, at Western, and all playing together.

AJ: Yeah, that’s why we had them come up to the house.

SD: Yeah – well, no, it was because the Beach Boys themselves played a lot of the instruments.

AJ: [indecipherable, but from what I can make out, he’s asking if Heroes & Villains was recorded at the house]

SD: Parts of it, we did parts of it there, bits and pieces of it.

AJ: And it was probably Jim Lockert’s studio, right -

SD: Yes, well that was still the house. Or do you mean Wally Heider?

AJ: Oh, Heider’s, yeah. Anyway, it had kind of a muffled, there’s something about it I didn’t like, the EQ, the whole track was not right, it didn’t have the brightness, and I think we needed that tack piano a lot. It didn’t bite. It didn’t have a bite on it. And when we took it down to KHJ, and Brian was so excited about it, and the guy on duty whoever it was, like around midnight, we all jumped into the - [the next few sentences are difficult to make out on my tape, but we all know the story about Brian taking the group to the radio station to premiere the new Beach Boys single, and the DJ refused to play it because it wasn’t on the playlist, until the manager made him do it. Anyway, I’m only missing about 10 seconds here. Then Al asks Steve if he remembers making the journey with them.]

SD: It was an acetate.

AJ: Oh, yeah!! Right! Right. I’ll be, that’s right.

SD: And I also remember having to take the lawn mower out of the back of the Phantom 5 limo.

AJ: [huge, hearty laugh]

SD: To make room for everybody. [more laughter]

AJ: That’s a great story! [still laughing] What the hell was the lawn mower doing in there? [new wave of laughter]

SD: Brian didn’t have a truck so he used his Rolls Royce to haul his yard equipment around, and we had it fixed.

AJ: Oh, God, I didn’t even know that. That is so funny…

Funny how 'the fans' know who/when/where more often than the people who participated in the same activity that we study the life of.

A few reflections:

1. It really frustrated me, during this time, how the "official" word on Smile, as repeated in various interviews, trade mags, and made-for-TV movies, was that the music was essentially a bunch of meaningless fragments that didn't add up to crap. It really hurt to hear someone like Stephen Desper, who had trawled through the tapes back in 1972, denigrate this body of music and pretty much reinforce the (incorrect) myth that it was all nothing more than a drug-fuelled mistaken excursion into an overblown dead end. I found it interesting that Al had a knee-jerk reaction - that there was nothing substantial in the Smile musical vision - which gradually gave way to an admission that perhaps there was some meat there.

2. Funny how Al's memory blended the Pet Sounds sessions into the Smile sessions, as though they overlapped. But according to the timeline we know, thanks to Andrew, they really didn't overlap much. I guess from his perspective it was all part of a singular era when Brian dove head-first into his more ambitious (and perhaps alienating in Al's view) music. However I shouldn't put words in his mouth.

3. Funny how Al singled in on the tack piano as the element in the "edgy" sound that stood apart from the more "under-produced" Baldwin organ-driven Smiley Smile material. It makes me think that Al was actually a huge Smile supporter but he didn't really know it.

4. Real funny anecdote about the lawn mower in the Rolls Royce.

Not really that odd when you think about.  In all likelihood these guys don't obsess over the details of this stuff to the extent that some of us hardcore fans do.  Let's face it.  Singing on Beach Boys records was Al Jardine's job, probably not his obsession.  Consider how well you remember the details of things you did on the job years ago.

When I think about my own work projects from just 7 or 8 years ago, I might have a rough idea of a timeline but things tend to run together.  If you gave me a list of 10 projects I worked on within the space of a year or so and asked me to put them in proper sequence, I'd probably fail.  

Now, consider that 2003 was 37 years after 1966.

I'm afraid that this interview mostly proves that neither the memories of Alan or Steve are entirely reliable - the chauffeur's room wasn't converted into the control room at 10452 until at least October 1969... and Desper couldn't have been with them on the KHJ run because he wasn't working for the band in summer 1967.

Juggler--
You're right, and also factor in the fact at how busy the life of a sixties rock star must have been. Touring, recording, doing promotions, TV shows in various countries photography shoots, radio programs. Things are going to blend together to some extent in your memory, especially when you're talking about memories that are decades old. For Al the 'Smile' experience probably really was just recording fragments. Whereas, we've heard finished mixes, many by Mark Linnett decades later. Even Cabinessence was in pieces until 1969. I know there was a vintage mix, but it seems to have been an experimental mix, probably made by Brian to see if the fragments ran together well. Also, Al was probably eager to have hits and maybe felt that the music was uncommercial which probably colors his entire perception of things. Also, discounting Smile, the Beach Boys made many recordings throughout their career that were never released, some of which are great. For them it's probably all a blur. And on and on...

So then, when did Desper start working for the band?

The following year, on Friends. IIRC, something was going on with Jim Lockert.

He met them during Smile. He was around for the early home recordings but didn't take over completely until summer of 1968. I think he very well could have been there as he recalled Smiley Smile for me quite well.

He told me about making the "water machine" for Brian during Smile back in 1985. The engineer for Smiley was Jim Lockert (he's credited on the "H&V" label), although of course SD could have been an assistant/2nd engineer.

And yes, of course it all flows into one for them, which is why later research based on documentation is usually more accurate that personal recollection.

Right that's what he says he was for the Lockert sessions.

Anyone else find this astonishing, coming from the guy who's most recent progressive offering included re-records of Help Me Rhonda, California Feelin', California Saga, Honkin' Down the Highway, Looking Down the Coast and other, erm, ground-breakin' progressive fresh numbers involving the word "California" and a bunch of apostrophes?

Much as I love Al's work, he ought to have been bearing such a factor bearing in mind, given that he was probably working on PFC in 03, at the time of that interview!

That's what struck me funny about The Beatles anthology, too. They  would say 'What album was that on?' 'What song is that called?'. Because they didn't really obsess over every detail like fans do.
It is funny how Al really does seem to not care for the 'under-produced' stuff that was done at the house. The story has always (supposedly) been that SS was this group production effort, done in the name of group harmony.

There are vocal sessions for H&V where they're talking to Steve in the booth. The Bridge to Indians and the 'Sunny Down Snuff' section, iirc. Was that Steve Desper or some other engineer?

Yeah, I remember on the EH doc when Bruce asked if I can Hear Music was on 20/20; come on Brucie, you know it was on there! first album with your real picture and first chance to do anything musically on an album...I guess Bruce has trouble remembering that stuff with all the things he was on.  ;)

Given those sessions weren't at the home studio, I'm doubting it.

Here are some observations about Jim Lockert by Stephen Desper:

Perhaps I can answer some questions as I was there assisting Jim on various songs and engineered the following songs (but did not receive album credit) when Jim got sick. He was in and out a lot due to excessive coughing and breathing problems. A great guy!

Mama Says
Friends
Little Bird
Anna Lee, The Healer
Be Here in the Mornin'
Wake the World
Vegetables
Heroes and Villains
Fall Breaks and Back To Winter
(W. Woodpecker Symphony)
She's Goin' Bald
Wind Chimes
Whistle In

Jim Lockert set up a makeshift studio in Brian's house for recording vocals on Friends and Smiley-Smile. I was asked to observe the sessions. I was mixing the shows then. Jimmy was getting sicker and sicker and concerned Carl and Brian. His constant coughing was getting in the way of tracking. More and more he was late or could not show because of sickness. Since I was already mixing for the Boys, I would cover for Jim when he couldn't make the date. Finally Jim excused himself and I took over, building the house studio. To answer your question, "[what was] the first recording engineered by you for the Beach Boys after Jim Lockert left?" it would be those vocal sessions on Friends, etc. The first album I ever worked on was Stack 'O Tracks.

Jimmy was getting sick. He would get into a coughing cycle that lasted several minutes. He may have had emphysema or throat cancer, I don’t know exactly. He smoked to make it worse. Anyway, this upset Carl, just from a health point. It disrupted the creative flow at times. And everyone was becoming more concerned for Jim’s own health. As time went along, I covered Jim more and more. Sometimes he would be late, then half-a-day late, then sick for a day, then was in the hospital for a short stay. You get the picture. As it turned out, I probably recorded about half the Smiley and Wild Honey albums without credit. But that’s OK because I leaned a lot about how to handle each of the personalities of The Beach Boy group and ways to get them to give a good performance around the microphone – as much as the engineer can push, that is.

I remember Steve being walked back through concerts and sessions and occurrences and dates associated to them and his involvment was bracketed at some time in April 1967. This was on the Wheeler board as I remember but I can't find it. Anybody save that?

Very interesting Q&A, thanks for posting!
 

I think Al really liked the music/arrangements/sound of the Smile music, but had a problem with the fragmentary nature of it, that there weren't fully-developed songs.  Remember, when the BBs were doing their vocals, they were usually on short, often 2-chord fragments.  They didn't know how the fragments would go together into full songs (and in some cases Brian probably didn't either).  

It's long, but I'm posting a bit of Ken Sharp’s interview with Al Jardine, Goldmine, July 28, 2000 because I think it is a great account by Al, consistent with his Q&A comments.  Note his comment about the released H&V finally having "closure" but having lost the "sonic value":

"Actually Brian was so excited, more excited than the rest of us about the way “Heroes And Villains,” the single, had come out.  We went down to a radio station, I think it was KRLA, and burst in on the jock and played the record.  Brian wanted to be the first person to play it for L.A., for the whole city to hear it, and it just didn’t have any punch.  There was no sonic value in it.  The song was great, but the sonic value was bad.  

We were experimenting in that studio with limited equipment.  We had just finished “Good Vibrations” in Columbia Studios with the greatest equipment ever made at that time, state-of-the-art limiters and compressors and equalizers and the most exotic microphones and state-of-the–art recording machines.  And the next thing we did is we decompress and we take The Beach Boys P.A. system, take it home and break it down.  It was designed by our engineer, set that up and then used that as our playback monitors and rented a 16-track machine.  And that was our studio.  So no matter how good you are, it’s gonna be limited to the equipment that you are able to record with.  I’m trying to figure out how why we went from United-Western and  Columbia to Brian’s living room.  I’ll have to ask [Steve] Desper, our engineer about that.  It must have been a conception of his and Nick Grillo, our manager at the time.  There must have been something related to costs.  It was certainly costing an arm and a leg to record at these studios.

So “Heroes And Villains” had no sonic energy, I can’t explain.  If you listen to the record it’s kind of flat.  The mastering maybe could have helped.  I don’t know if it was mastered properly.  All I know is it took a while for it to kick into gear.  Anyway, I think that really deflated Brian.  I think he just completely went into a tailspin., because he thought that was his masterpiece.  And I did too.  I really thought it was great, but I could hear the difference.  I could hear the edge was gone.  There was no edge on the vocals, there was no edge on the track, there was no edge on the piano.  In fact we didn’t even have the piano that we started with which we used.  That tack piano is the key to the whole song.  

If you listen to our first box set, it had a bunch of permutations of “Heroes And Villains.”  And sonically you hear where it’s going, and we just never get any closure.  It’s a lot of loose ends.  So finally we got closure, but we lost the sonics part of it.   We lost the value of the musicianship.  Then I think we had these crummy instruments too.  I think we had this Baldwin organ, a beautiful organ, I shouldn’t say crummy.  The Baldwin organ company decided to give Brian his organ, very nice.  But Brian became so obsessed with this organ that everything became focused around this organ.  The “Woody Woodpecker Symphony,” I don’t know whether you’ve heard that one.  [laughs]  That was brilliant actually.  I loved that.  There, that one fit the organ.  But every darn song on the album we had to have the organ on it.  It was one of those very strange things, Brian got very quirky.  And “Heroes And Villains” was played on that damn organ, and I didn’t like that sound.  It was just a bit much.  I think that’s where the musicianship became strange."

Thanks for posting this CatBirdMan....That story about the lawnmower...:lol priceless.

"We had just finished “Good Vibrations” in Columbia Studios with the greatest equipment ever made at that time, state-of-the-art limiters and compressors and equalizers and the most exotic microphones and state-of-the–art recording machines.  And the next thing we did is we decompress and we take The Beach Boys P.A. system, take it home and break it down.  It was designed by our engineer, set that up and then used that as our playback monitors and rented a 16-track machine.  And that was our studio."

Alan's skipping at least three years here, or more likely conflating memories - the Bellagio 16-track studio wasn't up and working until October 1969, so until then they rented 3M 8-track machines from Wally Heider and used a Gates Dualux radio console as a board, at least up to Friends.

I've always agreed with Al's perception of the final "Heroes" single - compared to the "cantina" mix from just a few short months before, it's like night and day.  A lot of the energy and excitement is lost, and I've never thought that the chorus fit very well.

Those were still enjoyable interviews though, it's always good to get the perspective of someone who was in the thick of everything, even if his recollections aren't always the most accurate.

well, Al WAS there, he's just not really certain when.

The one constant in these guys' memories is that what they heard of SMiLE was just fragments. I had always assumed that Brian would play them rough mixes of stuff. For awhile now I've been thinking the exact opposite, that all the guys heard were sections. They didn't need to hear the music to do their parts because Brian was just telling them what to do and how to do it. So that sort of kills the whole 'The Boys Didn't Dig It' deal right there, because there wasn't anything to dig.

I think what the  Beach Boys didn't dig was being sessions musicians to music that was going to be very difficult to reproduce on stage written by the guy who wouldn't be on stage with them. That's always been my impressions anyway.

I think they didn't dig the fact that there wasn't anything to dig.  ;D

More difficult than Good Vibrations or God Only Knows or Wouldn't it Be Nice or Sloop John B or.....?

I am sure you have heard the early live version of those songs though, right? They sound so heavy and encumbered. Almost like they exhausted themselves to the core just to get through them.

I agree. Sometimes when I read interviews I think it's just amazing how little The Beach Boys seem to know about their own career. Of course it would be weird if they would study their own career as obsessively as some of us fans do, but come on... The Beach Boys have been a HUGE part of Al's life for half a century. It was his job, his creative outlet, his career, his hobby and his social circle for decades, it's the reason why he's been rich and famous for most of his life, it's what he will be remembered for long after he's gone... And yet he hardly seems to even know what was and what wasn’t released by the band.

It's just a job, man

That may or may not be, but point is they chose to do them and continue to do them so to me the idea that SMiLE songs would have been different seems like a straw man agrument. I've been wrong before however.