The Smiley Smile Message Board

Seems that there are clues to some of the missing pieces of SMiLE to be discovered in these pictures...

For instance for DYLW- On a sidewalk there are 3 people standing behind sheets beads on the end of fishing poles. What is this all about? For Vega-Tables the word Vega is on a 4 signs...makes me think Fishmonk was right in his idea of Vega-Tables referring to Star Tables...

In the book that came with the Box Set there are drawings by Frank dated '96. One of them seems to represent Holidays. There is a surfer riding next to a Milky Way bar, a sign saying Ukelele Lady Lili, an anchor, a bottle of wine (port perhaps?)...If this drawing is 8 years prior to BWPS, could it be revealing clues to an authenticity of those 2004 lyrics?

I am curious as to what others see in this images.

I am very pleased with the inclusion of these images, in fact I wish there was more.

Those four 'signs' are actually tables - "Vega-Tables" ? Geddit ?

No.

Holmes: "The blankets and fishing hooks are a reference to my childhood. I used to go to church socials, where they had a game called 'fish' where you'd put a little fishing pole over a blanket, and there'd be someone on the other side that would hang a little toy or gift onto that. Then you'd pull back and you'd have this little treat. So I had this as Indians selling Manhattan Island for $28 worth of beads."

All of this and a lot more is from an interview with Holmes in Priore's Lost Masterpiece book from 2005. There's a whole section on it. One thing that struck me is that he refered to "The lyric 'Do you like worms'". Of course it could have been a slip of the tongue and he meant to say 'title' though.

Also, the H&V image, I believe it has a 1996 copyright on it and I've read people saying that it was newly commisioned artwork from that year for a possible Smile release that never happened but in the Interview Holmes states that Van Dyke Park told him that after Brian saw the image he got the other Beach Boys to change the way they sang "Dude'll doo" to reflect the drawing. So apparently it is a 1966 drawing after all? Or I might have become confused about the accepted date of this image having spent so long lurking on here but not posting.

Thanx dude...any ideas about the Milky way bar?

.

No, no mention of that.

Try considering this - the "dude'll doo" sketch is included in the original booklet. Ergo a copyright of 1996 is utterly impossible.

Yes, that is why I said I may have become confused. I've been reading this forum for the past few weeks and I had thought that I'd read that somewhere. Unfortunately the search fuction on here is not much help so I could not doublecheck.

AGD, are you able to ask VDP or Frank Holmes about the Hawaiian themed artwork that seems to contain references to the BWPS lyrics? I'm eager to find out if some of the Holidays lyrics are actually vintage, as I'm sure many people are!

Still waiting on a reply.

My guess is that the "Holidays" illustration is actually from 2004 (the '96 copyright being an error) and was possibly completed by Holmes in anticipation of his work being used for the BWPS packaging.

Or...

Van Dyke Parks wrote his lyrics based the Holmes illustration and not the other way around.

Then again, maybe some of those lyrics were vintage, but I tend to think all the talk about pirates is a specific reference to SMiLE bootleggers and "man with a mystery" is a reference to Brian himself. Holmes' illustration has the "mystery man", but no pirates.