The Smiley Smile Message Board

I am curious of what die hard BB fans were thinking around 68-69 of Smile. Did they still think it was coming out? Did they think that Wind Chimes, Vegatables, Wonderful and Heroes and Villains from Smiley Smile were the same as the Smile version? Was it well known that Cabinessence and Surfs Up were from Smile?

When did the fans become aware of Smile and its brilliance? I assume by 72, since there were rumors of it coming out with 'So Tough'.

Come on you old geezers!   :old  Help a young fan out :)

For my part, I wish I could!  But I don't remember. While I know I was buying their albums when I saw them, I can't remember being avidly curious what was coming next, or even being that involved . 

I am sure a lot of people don't remember what they were doing in the 60s  :hat

Magic Tran-sis-tor ra-di-o........glowing Magic Tran-sis-tor ra-di-o.  Oh, sorry!

I think I first heard about SMiLE around 1976 or 1977. Then I picked up Leaf's book in 1978 and learned a lot more about it. Then right around 1980 there were copies of a cassette tape floating amongst collectors. By around 1983 there were three or four different tapes of various SMiLE material making the rounds. I remember it was to be a secret if you had it - not for distribution! Then soon after that there were vinyl album bootlegs of SMiLE. I played the heck out of those bootlegs. There's been a TON of stuff that has trickled out slowly through the years since then. Waaaaayyyyy more stuff (maybe 30 years worth) than what was known about at the time and existed in those first tape copies.

You have to remember that unless you were really an insider in the music biz or were reading the trades in the US or perhaps Melody Maker or NME in the UK, there was very little general news about all of this that found its way to at least this 13 year old in 1967. Rolling Stone, where folks like me would eventually get their industry gossip from (the Random Notes page in particular) started long after this was already old news, November of '67 - which is really the dawn of what we think of as a serious rock press (at least in the U.S.) as opposed to teen fan magazines (I never read these at the time, but wonder now if Derek Taylor posted any tidbits leading up to the SMiLE release). Like many of us, I first became aware of the SMiLE tale (even though I actually owned Smiley Smile by that point) from Jules Siegel's Goodbye Surfing, Hello God (originally came out in Cheetah in October '67, but I wasn't hip enough at that point to be reading that one), which was reprinted in a rare 1972 book called Gulcher: Post-Rock Cultural Pluralism in America by Richard Meltzer (I loved his first book, Aesthetics of Rock), which I found by chance, browsing in my college bookstore. BTW, the Siegel article was also re-printed in a very rare sheet music book for Sunflower/Surf's Up that I still have. Later came the Tom Nolan articles in Rolling Stone, etc., but Siegel was first really put the SMiLE mythos into my life, the whole GLIMPSES fantasy, etc. When I went on to read another article published in PLAYBOY by Siegel about his friendship with Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow had kinda blown my head off in 1973), I flipped out when he talks about bringing Pynchon to meet Brian in the Big Tent at Laurel Way (which takes us back to the airport picture in another thread here). Pynchon and Brian in the same room??? It was too much for me to handle (and apparently for them as well). Pynchon couldn't understand why Siegel was interested in the Beach Boys until Jules passed him a joint, put his head between the speakers and played him PET SOUNDS..."Ohhhh, " he said, or something to that effect...

I never saw or even heard of the Bernstein/Oppenheim show, BTW. That must have reached many kids and planted a mythic seed. But i missed it.

I WAS aware that something special was up when 20/20 made its way into my house and I first encountered cuts like Our Prayer and Cabinessence, but I'm not sure if I was really aware of the Smile origins. There was really no where to go at that point, a world without GOOGLE, to, as we say, find out more...So you would discover these great things, but there was simply no way to connect the dots.

The world was SO different.

By the time Surf's Up came out in 71, the Myth re-appeared in the press (including Rolling Stone - BTW, have you ever read the great Jim Miller review for Sunflower?) in full swing, leading up to the famed Carnegie Hall Concert in fall 1971, simply one of the great concerts of my life. That night had the feeling of a great revelation, much like it would again in the UK in 2004. The Carnegie program (which I'm still looking for!) promoted the Surf's Up album like it was something very special, even legendary, etc.

At the time ('66-67), I thought Smile was being hyped more than a bit overmuch in the pop music fan mags, especially for something that seemed to go on and on with no results. By the time it got canceled, I'd already lost interest in it. Even so, I fell in love with H&V when it came out and then even more so with "Surf's Up" in '71.

I never developed the fascination with Smile that a lot folks share here, because of that early experience. But I do think that what I've heard is mighty good stuff, and I'm very pleased that a Beach Boys' version is finally seeing official release. I just wish Carl and Dennis could have been here to see it happen.

Actually, come to think of it, I have a paperback book called "Outlaw Blues" by Paul Williams that I picked up sometime in the 70's even before the Leaf book came out. Williams' interview in 1967 with David Anderle about Smile, Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey was the first time I'd ever read about the existence of Smile. The interview was first published in Crawdaddy around 1969 I think and was later included in the book "How Deep Is The Ocean" by Williams.

I think there was also a detailed story about Smile in an issue of New Musical Express that I read in the 70's. And of course I picked up a used Cheetah magazine in the 70's which had the "Goodbye Surfing - Hello God" article by Jules Siegel. And did Tom Nolan touch on Smile in the Rolling Stone article in 1971? I'll have to look. So various magazine articles made Beach Boys fans aware of Smile in the 70's. Then some of the 'underground' Smile music could finally be heard by hardcore fans around 1979-1980.   

That would be Nick Kent's 3-parter "The Last Beach Movie: A Story Of Brian Wilson 1942-" printed in summer 1975. That was the single item that turned me on to Brian, The Beach Boys and Smile. This may, or may not, have been a good thing.

I was 12 going on 13 in 1967.  I mostly remember a lot of hype about H & V, and how it was going to be this huge progression from GV.  Back then, we got info from top 40 am radio or magazines like "Song Hits" or "Tiger Beat".  There was a weekly mag you could pick up at record stores and burger joints called "Go" which had a lot of info about new releases that was a fun read.  I don't recall reading much about Smile music in general, and the hype about H & V seemed to go on for months- must have been the Derek Taylor machine.  I bought the 45 on the day of release and didn't think it was such a huge progression but I kept playing the "My children were raised" part over and over- that blew me away. As a side note- I never saw the picture sleeve for H & V prior to 1974 or even knew of its existence.  Once I did see it I saw them everywhere.  Was this something pulled out of old stock in the 1970's?  Did anyone here see the picture sleeve in the 1960's?

Didn't think about it. Thought GV was cool but Wild Honey was outta-sight and Windchimes was some of the most avant garde music I had heard. All it's avant gardeness organic and right between your mind's ears not buried under walls of sound and sound effects and engineer tricks.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot H&V, which I think was true back then too. I don't remember being impressed back then by H&V.

Before Surf's Up -

Audience member - WHERE'S BRIAN?
Dennis - He's in the song.
Carl - Yeah, that's right. Good answer, Denny.

That September 1971 Carnegie Hall concert is one of the REQUIRED bootlegs. It's just SO perfect. Just a shame there aren't any soundboard tapes in the Boys' library from the '71 tours, as these should be the holy grail of live Beach Boys recordings.

I have heard some boots of this era. They did some trippy stuff. Carl singing Surfs Up, Jack Reiley singing Life of a Tree, etc. I loved hearing it. This is the period, I would have loved to see them the most. Also the years following with Blondie and Ricky.

I will tell my story, even though I was born in 1977. The first I heard of Smile was on the Endless Harmony doc. Up to that point I was a typical Endless Summer type BB fan. Soon after that, I discovered Napster.com and did something naughty so I could have some of these songs. Later I bought the GV box set and heard some more Smile songs. So starting in 1998 I started making my own mixes on tape. Shortly there after, discovered gold wave, and was able to make even better mixes for cd. Then I smoked hashish.

The end

I think I became aware of Smile with the release of Surf's Up and there was a bit of talk at that time.  I think Tom Nolan's multipart piece in Rolling Stone sort of  tweaked my interest.  The Leaf book blew the doors wide open in terms of interest. 

Yeah, I remember seeing the picture sleeve on the original H&V release, probably because I thought it looked rather bizarre, plus I considered buying the single at the time, but didn't.

I was only 9 when Smile was scrapped, but I had older teenage sisters to observe (and their teen friends). They truly anticipated new Beach Boys releases from Surfer Girl through Today! '63- '65. Those were the years the Beach Boys new releases were gobbled up on a mass level in the U.S. By the time of Smile the Beach Boys had lost much of their mass popularity, and even though they were progressive in their work, and GV's was a big hit, in general they were perceived as something from yesterday. The Stones, and Beatles remained huge and the Byrds, Airplane, Doors, Dylan were the new wave, while the Monkees were the most popular "teenpop" band of all in early '67. This era was the beginning of the Beach Boys image problems, they'd lost whatever foothold on being top stars that they'd had a couple of years before. In my world Smile wasn't anticipated at all because the Beach Boys were no longer very popular. Nobody bought Smiley Smile. By '68 they were totally off the radar. I got back into them in the early '70's, before Endless Summer. people thought I was crazy for a couple of years until they became the biggest band in the U.S. again in '75.

Born in '72. I remember as a child we had the "Good Vibrations" single which got played a fair bit.

1998 (or maybe early 1999) discovered Anne Wallace's website after being turned on to Pet Sounds. Then there was the SMiLE Research Laboratory (anybody remember that place?) and so on and so on. More importantly, I bought all of the two-fers from 1967-1979 and discovered some incredible music along the way!

Don't really recall when I first heard that the next BB album was going to be called Smile, but a Capitol Records ad in the program for the first Beach Boys concert I saw, in Dec 1966, said "Watch for the release of the Beach Boy new album Smile including 'Good Vibrations' coming in January", so at that time for sure I knew a new album was coming out.  Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations were very avant-garde, so my expectation would probably have been for more cutting edge stuff.

January came and went and no new Beach Boys album appeared.  Watched BW perform 'Surf's Up' on the Bernstein/Oppenheim Inside Pop tv special in April 67, so at that time I was also expecting 'Surf's Up' on the Smile album.  And, hearing Surf's Up was a confirmation in my mind that Smile was going to be a cutting edge album. H & V was released in July, so I figured a new BB album release had to be imminent, since this now made two hit singles (Good Vibes and Heroes) that were not yet available on an album.  While my preferred method of listening to my favorite songs at that time was to select eight 45 rpm singles in the order I wanted and stack them on my Garrard record changer, I decided not to buy the Heroes single at that time since I'd have the song on the Smile album.

At some point, but I don't recall when, I heard that the Smile album had been scrapped and that Brian Wilson was starting over.  For sure I would have heard this from my friend Ross, who was a huge BB fan and seemed to know the latest info, but I don't recall if I also read that info somewhere.  And at some point I read that Brian Wilson said he had burned the Smile tapes, but I think that may have been a year or more later.

As PS posted earlier in this thread, the mainstream press paid a lot less attention to 'rock' music at this time than they did in later years, and a lot of the reporting in the US would have been in 'teen' mags or Hit Parader, since Rolling Stone did not appear until the fall of 67.  GO magazine, which was a weekly newspaper-like freebee sponsored by a local radio station in each market in which it was available, also had really good coverage of the music scene, including lots of record company ads.  Dominic Priore's book "Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!" contains photo copies of a lot of articles which appeared back then, but unfortunately they aren't in good chronological order and the source and/or date of the article is often missing.

In September 67 I walked in to a local record store and saw Smiley Smile.  I thought, wow, Brian Wilson has changed his mind.  Smile has come out, but they just changed the title.  Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains were there, although I did notice that Surf's Up was missing.  But my friend Ross told me that Smiley Smile was not Smile, although he was unable to articulate why, other than to repeat that Smile had been junked.  I was skeptical, asking him, "If Smile was junked, why is this new album called Smiley Smile, with a title super close to the original one of Smile?  Plus, it contains Good Vibes and Heroes, both of which we knew would be on Smile."  

I didn't get around to buying Smiley Smile until a few months after it was released.  I can't say exactly why other than my funds were limited, both the front and back cover looked sorta weird, and I already had the Good Vibrations single.  My next BB album purchase was to be Wild Honey in December, which I played incessantly at the time.  And, it was starting with the Wild Honey album that fell into the category of a superfan and bought every BB album and single as soon as it was released.

When I bought 20/20 in January '69 I had absolutely no idea that Our Prayer and Cabinessence had originally been slated for Smile.  When I saw Van Dyke Parks listed as co-writer on Cabinessence I remember thinking, "Cool, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks got together again and wrote a new song." Don't recall how long it was until I found out that both songs had originally been intended for Smile.

Prior to the release of the Surf's Up album there was a huge amount of hype concerning the appearance of the legendary Smile track on the forthcoming BB album. As we all know, the legend of Smile continued to grow over the years, especially with the appearance of Smile bootlegs.  When I first heard the Brian solo version of 'Wonderful' I couldn't believe how much better it was than the Smiley Smile version, even though the multi-generation cassette recording I had sounded like hell from a sound quality standpoint.  So, as time went on I gained a much fuller appreciation of what Smile could have been, especially with the appearance of pristine sounding recordings on CD (both the box set and boots) and LPs.

Hah, I just went back and looked at Magic Transistor Radio's original question starting this thread, to see if I'd left anything out, and discovered he asked what long time fans thought in '68-'69.  I had somehow remembered his question being what we had thought about the album coming out in 1967.  So, sorry about the length and details from '67 contained in my response, but I spent too much time writing them to junk 'em!

I think you did perfect! as have all the others with their reminiscing.  It's cool stuff to read.
 I like knowing that I put up a pic of that first concert booklet you saw.

Yeah that would be interesting to see.  There are so few SMiLE-era artifacts out there and this is the first that I've at least heard of a genuine promo piece in print by Capitol records for the album.  I really wonder if they ever got around to putting together those "happy in store display pieces" they promised?  

Never seen any promo pieces, so I can't say.
 For this promo piece, again I recommend the Media section( in Smiley Smile Stuff). This one is under concert posters; which has both posters and programmes. There are also current on-going sections for promotional posters, scans from magazines, and songbooks. Surfing down the list you'll find lots of other neat stuff

Yeah, the media section has a lot of cool scans.  I was thinking I needed to scan and post the cover and third page of the program (the only ones the BBs are on out of 8 pages, as there were 6 bands total, with the Beach Boys closing the show), but bgas beat me to it, on the forth page in posters thread in the media section, where he also posted tons of other cool scans.  And while part of the the Capitol Records half page ad does tell people to watch for Smile, the other 2/3rds of the ad is a big photo of the cover of Best of the Beach Boys.  

While I thoroughly enjoyed the Beach Boys that night, the music scene was changing, with bands like The Seeds, The Music Machine, and Jefferson Airplane also appearing on the bill, but the BBs were still dressed in striped shirts.  I was dismayed, shopping in a record store the day of the concert, when a teenage girl came in with her mom looking for a birthday present for the girl's friend, to see the mom pick up a Beach Boys album and enthusiastically say, "How about the Beach Boys?" to which the girl responded dismissively, "Oh Mom, the Beach Boys are out!"  Then, after the concert, the dj on the promoting radio station, KYA in San Francisco, reported that some callers were saying the Beach Boys weren't the best part of the show, and that other bands had been better.

 

This perfectly matches what I was seeing and hearing regarding the Beach Boys in '66/'67, as I stated in my post above.

I gotcher "Promo piece" right here.  The March 1967 issue of Teen Set Magazine.

I think there was an ad placed in Billboard too, back in '67. 

YES, the ads were visible, but we're talking more about the "happy in-store display pieces"; Unless they're referring to the few cover stand-ups that supposedly hit some stores, nothing else ever showed. Then of course, neither did the LP, so.... 

You mean like that guy in the ad that says "Sure to sell a million units in January?" That reference to happy in-store displays for the Smile album?  I've never even seen a picture of one of those before.  Did any exist?

Now THAT"S what I'm talking about... 
I'm guessing: Not. Which doesn't mean, of course, Capitol didn't order some to be made, which are stored, even now, next to the booklets and covers in Scranton

Someone please refresh my memory; when did that Capitol promo album for the salespeople appear? Late '66? Had to have been because when was it that Brian told them it wouldn't be ready until January? If they were going to make an in-store display, they would have had to rush them. I think that's the ONLY reference to the displays. I've never heard of anyone ever seeing one.

Capitol superior's jumped the gun, Capitol superiors jumped the gun!

This is awesome! Exactly what I was looking for. I am sure this is similar to a lot of people. So when did these boots start circulating?

"So when did these boots start circulating?"

Magic Transistor Radio, you haven't read the entire thread, have you?

"Let's Go Back To Your Childhood"

A decade or so ago, on one or another of the messageboards, I read someone's claim that the in-store display was a cardboard stand with mock Smile covers (standard Frank Holmes version).  It's was a long time ago, but if I recall correctly, the poster claimed that he had actually seen one of these displays in his local record store in Southern California (for some reason, I want to say it was around Riverside, CA)... and then he described how disappointed he had been when the real thing never materialized.

Sorry. By the time I read the whole thread, I forgot about this. But I wasn't totally sure this was just your discovery, or when they actually started circulating.

Me too

I seem also to remember a big album by album spread in Sounds (it may have been NME though) around the same time - it was around the time of 20 Golden Greats and before Love You came out I think - they were the first two BB albums I bought - was hooked on the story there and then

The best information for these in-store Smile promotional items came from LLVS, where Bill Earl's diaries are reprinted with some commentary. According to those pages, there was an in-store display but it didn't seem to be exclusive to Smile...it was the Smile album cover shown among other covers for the new Capitol releases. He says in a diary entry on the next page that a record store gave him a Capitol promotional poster which also contained the Smile cover among other albums.

Unless I'm wrong neither of those items have ever been reproduced, unless we saw it and didn't realize it. If anyone has copies or even a photo of either item it would be awesome to see if they still exist.

Short of ever finding or seeing these items mentioned by Bill Earl, I wonder if any in-store items promoting Smile are still out there somewhere, or in a collection but being kept top-secret.

Here's another one from 1963:

(http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n295/guitarfool2002/instore.jpg)

And there is a small photo in the 2-fer booklets showing Brian in front of a store display with the "Party!" album bags of chips. Capitol apparently had 1 million of those chip bags made up to give away with the album, and correct me if I'm wrong but have none ever surfaced through the years? Or does someone have one of those bags stashed away somewhere?

Any in-store display items are very rare...anything with Smile would be over the moon, rocket-to-Mars rare. I hope some of this stuff surfaces in the wake of the box set if it exists.

YES!  It would be very cool for some display pieces to surface.  I, sadly, probably had a chance top buy the display piece you show, about 35 years ago, in Memphis TN. But I was pressed for time, and thought I'd ask on my next visit. When next I returned, not only was the store gone, but the building with it. ( A dreary day for me)