The Smiley Smile Message Board

Seriously, let's say "Heroes & Villains" goes on to be as big "Good Vibrations", and people are saying Brian is mixing opera, classical music, and pop into 3 1/2 minute singles. Would Brian have eventually released the original Smile material by the end of '67? I think so.

If you ask me, Smiley Smile was Brian being self-conscious. By purposefully underachieving, Brian could put a wall between himself and the criticisms of the Smile material. Sure, few praised "Wonderful" on Smiley Smile, but then again, that wasn't the real version.

Smiley Smile was finished in mid-July (right before "Heroes & Villains" was released), but it wasn't in stores for another 2 months. Yes, I understand that it takes time to press records, but I personally believe Brian was in part waiting to see how "Heroes & Villains" performed. If it's a big hit, people are ready for Smile. If no one likes it, then roll out Smiley Smile.

Jack Rieley said Brian took the failure of "Heroes & Villains" really badly. Yes, obviously, the criticisms from within the group did a lot to hinder Brian's confidence. But I think it was the public's failure to latch onto "Heroes & Villains" that ultimately killed Smile for good. It was our fault, not Mike's. It led Brian to believe that Smile was too far out ahead of it's time, and that the public wasn't ready for it.

And can you say that assessment was inaccurate? If they didn't like "Heroes and Villains", was "Child is Father of the Man" really going to blow their minds?

I'm not saying that Brian deliberately set out to record Smiley Smile as a replacement album. It's just that he had a home studio now, and he got into a groove playing around musically with the group. After a few weeks, he saw he had enough for an album, and at that point, decided it was a viable replacement for Smile if "Heroes & Villains" failed. Smiley Smile wasn't go to be a hit, but it also wasn't something Brian would be embarrassed to have associated with his name.

thats exactly what jack said

True, bakabaka. I'm just trying to illustrate his point.

Which version of H&V have you got? I'm sure Mark and Alan would have been very interested in a version with opera and classical in it >:D

Well, that's complicated -- Jack Rieley has both a spotty record and, by that point in his interview, was recalling a conversation that happened probably 25 years ago. But for the sake of debate, let's assume that Jack Rieley is correct in his statement, that Brian told him the poor performance of H&V was the reason for scrapping Smile.

I still don't think that's true, and I don't believe the success of the single would have made much of a difference.

Obviously, we'll never really know, but just because Brian says H&V was the problem does not make it so. I think that, from Brian's perspective, blaming chart performance was the most convenient -- and qualitative -- way to see the problem. Issues like this are immensely complicated enough to explain, let alone understand in your head. Even the people at the heart of them can have clouded memories.

And just look at the sessions. They are numerous, immensely complex, and still incomplete. If the single did really well, it still took months to finish it, and very little of the rest of the album could be considered truly done. Even if he was granted the time, do you think Brian -- in the midst of drug abuse and still struggling to piece together one single -- could pull off an entire album without losing his sanity?

Given the rest of the issues in his life at the time, I think Brian knew he was in over his head, put out Smiley Smile because it would be easy, and decided to recede and play the rest by ear. Not scrapped, but instead some gray, fuzzy middle between in progress and shelved. The fact that H&V wasn't a hit certainly didn't help, but it would not have turned the tides.

So you really think, if "Heroes & Villains" goes to #1 across the world, Brian still releases Smiley Smile? For some reason, I can't envision it. We know that there was at least a little talk of Brian completing Smile in late '67, but considering that "H&V" tanked, his continued lack of enthusiasm was understandable.

No idea. Maybe they still would've put it out, just because it would still be easier than completing Smile. I just don't think a smash hit and shelving Smiley Smile automatically means Smile would have been completed.

Heck, for a band that shifts gears that quickly, it would have been no less bewildering to just shelf both, then skip right to Wild Honey.

Didn't the smile project fall apart almost six months before the H&V single was released?

I mean if H&V went no.1 and then Smiley Smile bombed then BW would've been "crushed" anyway? Just the fact that Pet Sounds sales were underwhelming depressed him.

It's kinda redundant because H&V didn't fit the pop culture of 1967 and could never have been a smash. I just don't see how you can reconcile H&V (or Smile) with Monterrey, Hendrix, Sgt Pepper, etc.

What Brian would have needed commercially was another Good Vibrations, i.e. a single that had the Smile method but connected with pop culture.

Definitely agree with the latter but there was one band that could pretty much release anything and it would go no.1 and that was the Beatles. So you can reconcile H&V with Sgt Pepper.

H&V owes more of its overall feel to River Deep, Mountain High, more of a Spector thing. Its more diverse than anything on Pepper, compositionally, and that's where its strength resides. Melodically, it's not as strong as good vibrations, and there's nothing as immediately 'hooky' in it that competes on similar terms with GV. H&V is fab - incredibly clever, bumps along just fine, lyrically is kind of sauve (if a little self-consciously hokey here & there) and is modular in the extreme, but it's not the cohesive masterpiece that GV is.

I was watching a Simon and Garfunkel doco on the beeb last night, where the producer for BOTW actively backed the title track as the big single. What if a producer or exec had pushed BW to focus on Surf's Up instead? What if it had been released as a double a-side with H&V, Cabinessence, or (as on TSS) Vega-tables?

Ultimately, I think BW backed the wrong horse. Had SU followed up GV, the BBs may have completed the leap that the press was looking for. It's got the sublime pop ethos that Day in the Life & BOTW has...it makes a statement that people (even Leonard Bernstein) were absolutely ready for, even if they didn't know it yet.

Of course, that's a pretty big If amongt an absolute forest of the critters!

Music survey Boston July 27 1967..

1    All You Need Is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man    The Beatles
8    2    Light My Fire    The Doors
2    3    Words/Pleasant Valley Sunday    The Monkees
3    4    White Rabbit    Jefferson Airplane
5    5    Society's Child    Janis Ian
10    6    Mammy    The Happenings
6    7    A Whiter Shade Of Pale    Procol Harum
8    8    To Love Somebody / Close Another Door    Bee Gees

 No song by them would have been a smash hit in the summer of 67 ..there time had come and gone

The best comparison to H&V is probably Arnold Layne or See Emily Play: great records but not likely to be US hits in 1967 (See Emily Play made number 134).

jesus christ thats some competition

Yeah, just to reiterate what people have said here: Heroes and Villains in its stages of being recorded during the Smile Sessions never really seemed to have the hook required for it to be a smash hit. It's funny because Brian could be a master at writing those melodic hooks ("I'm pickin' up good good vibrations", "I wish they all could be California Girls" "Help me Rhonda, help help me Rhonda - get her out of my heart!" etc.) but he doesn't seem to trying to do that with H&V - and, of course, he doesn't have to, it's a brilliant and great song but to me doesn't have enormous hit single potential. What would have worked in its favour would have been if it had come out soon after Good Vibrations, to capitalize on that appeal and make sure it got a wide audience, many of which could grow to appreciate it. Had that happened, it may reached rather high in the charts. I think Brian knew that, which is probably why he was obsessing over the song come January 1967.

I think that adding in the Bicycle Rider theme for the chorus on the Smiley Smile version probably helped it later on - that gave it a bit more of a hook but by then the scene had changed.

Bingo. That's always been my problem with H&V, too -- brilliant song, but not great hit material. Maybe the right fragments are in there somewhere, but I think the released version was doomed.

Didn't Mike Love write that part?

Not the melody, I don't think.

Read between the lines of this survey excerpt...I've collected and gathered quite a few of these and it adds up in several markets throughout the US. "Heroes" was a top-10 single, in Boston it showed up stronger than some other places, even Brian's home market of LA. And it's hard to suggest Brian wasn't getting airplay in later '67 because I have aircheck recordings of stations in LA playing pretty deep Pet Sounds album cuts like "Here Today" in the latter half of '67, alongside other BB's singles. Playing an album cut from Pet Sounds...they would not do that if there were not a market for it.

Back to reading between the lines, look at the song sitting at #5 for that week and the previous week in July '67:

Society's Child by Janis Ian.

This record went nowhere until Janis was featured on a show called "Inside Pop" in April '67. Leonard Bernstein lavished praise on the song and the artist, and after the song was featured on the show it caught a second wind commercially and became a "hit", which in turn put Janis Ian on the commercial landscape which she probably would not have seen had it not been for that CBS special and Bernstein's high praise for the tune.

Brian was on that same program singing "Surf's Up". Imagine the letdown of many folks who watched Brian perform a song which was again praised in a voiceover on the show, only to find they could not buy the song and would not be able to for several years. Unlike "Society's Child", which changed Janis Ian's career from being on that show, no one could buy "Surf's Up" yet many people were talking about it and wanting to grab a piece of what Brian was doing.

The timing...it's a shame it didn't work out. The Smiley Heroes was good, but I doubt it lived up to what many saw Brian doing at the piano that night on CBS. And Smiley had nothing remotely close to Surf's Up, to be blunt about it.

My understanding was that the special led to Ian's record company promoting the record more, which led to radio stations playing it more, which led to it being hit rather than all the viewers of the Inside Pop went and bought the album and turned it into a top 10 hit.

Brian came up with the bassline that Mike sings that line over, but it wasn't the hook until Mike wrote the words for it. see the Tony Asher version, for example.

In other words, what I said was perfectly true. Regardless, there is more than one hook on that song - "Good good good good vibrations", "gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations a'happenin' with her", "na na na na na na na na" and the theremin all count. Man, that song is loaded with them. It's no surprise that that would be their biggest.

Find some people who were working in top 40 radio at that time and they'll point to "Inside Pop" as the primary reason why that record even made a dent in the top 10. The power of TV. The record company can't force people to buy a record or like a record, no matter the promotions behind it. Bottom line - if there were no appearance on Inside Pop, Janis Ian and her record would most likely have sunk like a stone. And Brian Wilson had and could have had a similar "push" for his music at the time, but it unfortunately came at perhaps the worst time in the Smile saga, and there was simply nothing to capitalize (pun intended...) on after the Inside Pop show.

David Leaf also makes the argument that at some point progressive radio (Jefferson airplane, Janis Joplin) became more influential tha top 40 radio. Progressive radio wouldn't play Beach boys.

OK, I'll fit that in sometime today.  ::)


Which is why I didn't say that the record company's promotions led to it becoming a hit. In fact, since you so glaringly misread what I wrote, I suggest you read my post again. If you'll do, you'll see that I said that the record company's promotion was connected to a spike in radio airplay and that is what led to the song being a hit. Are you seriously going to suggest that television was so powerful that a one-off special hosted by Leonard Bernstein would make millions of people buy a single, rather than a spike in radio airplay, which is where most of the youth accessed pop music for the first time during that period?


Quite possible - but this is altogether a different thing.


Except that the push for Janis Ian was that no one knew her name and her record company wasn't promoting her material. Her appearance changed that as the company began promoting and that allowed for her name to be known. Conversely, The Beach Boys were widely known in pop culture and Smile was being quite heavily promoted with the Beach Boys having one of the key promotors of the 60s rock scene. I am not certain that the appearance on Inside Pop would have inspired Capitol to put even more promotion in an album they were already promoting. But who knows?



True.

This is a scan of the exact ad mentioned by Janis Ian in her book. This appeared in Billboard May 13 1967, just a few weeks after Janis' appearance on Inside Pop:

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

The record had been released several times before, and flopped, and was produced by "Shadow" Morton, of all people to associate with a folk record. There was controversy about the song, but ultimately it was a flop of a record.

Now weeks after Inside Pop, and people seeing and hearing the song in far greater numbers than when it was originally released, a major-market radio station issues a public apology in Billboard for not playing it and thanks Leonard Bernstein for "leading the way" with Janis and the song via his television commentary.

This has to be a first, or else a very rare event. I can't think of a station ever apologizing for not playing a record. And if the demand were not intensified by the Bernstein program, I doubt they would have ever played it. Inside Pop was the catalyst, the people watching it drove the demand and led them to ask for the record, and then radio stations jumped on the bandwagon. It wasn't the other way around.

The record company and radio stations would not have bothered if there were not a demand from the public and "the fans" of any given radio station to play it. As much as they crunched numbers and ratings and listened to record-label pitchmen pushing singles every week for them to play and promote, if there were a public demand from listeners and fans to play a certain record, in the numbers that there apparently were after Inside Pop, that station would add it to their playlist. If, however, a larger percentage had called to request that specific song, as the numbers apparently did after Inside Pop, the station, label, managers, etc. would see the benefits of doing so and would absolutely add it to their rotation.

That was the power of Inside Pop, in the spring of 1967. The promotions were jumping on the bandwagon which CBS had already started rolling. I am indeed suggesting this "one off" CBS special had that kind of power in regards to Janis Ian and her song. It did make the record a hit, the people who saw Janis on the show made it a hit, and radio airplay had to catch up with a demand which already existed. The spike in radio airplay was a response to the public asking their stations to play it, and asking their local record shops where they could find it. It was "hitbound", in a way, before stations caught up with that demand.

After rolling the eyes, look up a guy named Ron Jacobs. And someone named "Uncle Ricky" and his website. I think you'll find the information given on the ins-and-out of 60's top 40 radio offered at just those venues well worth the visits. :) Very, very informative and entertaining reading, I think it's worth a few searches.

This all prompts us to raise another question: if the Beach Boys had released "Surf's Up" by January 1967, does that song go to the top of the charts? All Brian had to do was combine the first movement with something similar to what became the second and third movements in '71 (maybe with a few string or horn overdubs this time around). It's a very feasible possibility.

I think the better question here is: what would have happened had PET SOUNDS been a smash!

I'm also thinking there was a bit of a masterplan at work with Inside Pop. Recognizing it as a great way to promote a new single or album (Smile), don't you think that aspect was in their minds when they signed on to the project and did the filming in late 1966? The timeline for Smile was still, at the time they were being filmed around Dec. 1966, on track for a release sometime in early 1967. You'd have Brian (or the full band if they had used the Columbia studio footage) appearing on the show around the same time their music would have been in the stores. As it happened, Brian was on the show but there was nothing to buy or request afterward.

:] i wish vege-tables was a huge hit

edit

Right!   By July 67 with nothing new on  the radio for almost 8 months the general public wasn't that interested and moved on to new things

Is it a safe bet to say the shelf life of Good Vibrations was over in January 1967? Meaning it had run its course, and the fans who made that a #1 record were waiting for the follow up.

Comparing the length of time between Good Vibrations' run on the charts and July 1967 when the "follow up" was released to the Beatles timeline close to this same period, there was nothing new in the form of a Beatles single or new album from early August '66 to February '67, when Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields was released. Estimate that around 7 months without a new Beatles product or significant musical appearance as a group. At least Brian, almost four months or so after GV ran its course, showed up on Inside Pop singing something new and getting people excited about a follow up to the #1 smash hit everyone was loving at the end of 66. It's unfortunate the only other major publicity around the BB's was the lawsuit, however I don't recall anything close to the rumors of a breakup which dogged the Beatles during their hiatus. So in reality it's not that long between GV and Heroes, in context with other bands.

Good point..But we're talking two different animals here.. in the summer of 67 the Beatles were very in and hip..unfortunately the BB were not

They're not two different animals if you measure them side by side: Beatles Late August 66 through February 1967, and Beach Boys January through July 1967. How about Fall 1966 in the middle of the Beatle hiatus? John's "bigger than Jesus" comments were still causing a backlash and turning fans against them in the US, plus the rumors of a breakup were intensified every time word got put of individual members working on a project without the other three. And there were no signs of a tour in sight. I agree with the hip element relating to BB's in July 67, but at the same time I wouldn't say the Beatles were at the top of their popularity between August 66 and February 67. And to make matters worse, they were beaten in the popularity polls in their home country by an American band at the end of 66!

I think this is where The Beatles benefited from having two geniuses instead of one: it meant that Lennon's left-field ventures on SFF and A Day In The Life could be balanced commercially by Paul's Penny Lane, She's Leaving Home, and basslines on tracks like All You Need Is Love. There was nobody balancing Brian's introverted experimentation.

But then you look at Wild Honey..which only came a few months later.. it was full of great radio friendly songs..but the general audience just wasn't that interested in it...they had their run and now except for a few top 20 singles they weren't in the same game anymore..and the listening audience moved on..

I think Darlin was a bigger radio hit than assumed, it had a decent chart showing across the US, but overall the Wild Honey album had a less punchy sound than that one single. Darlin was a natural for AM radio, the horns just blasted through the speakers as did Carl's voice, but what other songs, if we could pretend to be a program director in December 1967, would have been good singles off Wild Honey to put on the airwaves?

I'd say the only one that stands out to me as a fantastic would-be single is "Aren't You Glad". It had the Beach Boys new brass-flavored sound, touches or R&B as well as a great melody and hook, and it "could've been" a bigger hit. Where were the other singles on the album? I Was Made To Love Her perhaps was too close to the original Stevie Wonder record, actually apart from Carl's vocal and the detuned piano it's pretty much the same arrangement.

But look how mixed up things were at that time: They put "Here Today" on the flip side of "Darlin'", December 1967, and that makes as much sense as the "Brian and Mike" experiment that failed a few months earlier. Just not a good time for the band, no matter how good the music may have been.

"Here Comes the Night" would have sounded pretty good coming out of my speakers in my 57 chevy

Good point. There wasn't a follow-up single on Wild honey. But listen the fact that H&V charted higher than Darlin IMO speaks volumes. A) the culture had changed and San Francisco rock was suddenly cool and B) there was a big backlash after Smiley Smile.

In Los Angeles, 93 KHJ (Brian's 'home' station), Darlin' spent the month of January 1968, 4 weeks total, in the top 10, peaking at #2. Heroes spent two weeks in the top 10, August '67, peaking at #9.

In the rest of the country, Heroes barely cracked the top 10 in any region except Boston, where it was top 10 throughout August '67, peaking at #3. Elsewhere it spent at the most 4-5 weeks in the top 30, then disappeared.

Darlin fared worse, cracking the top ten on WRKO in Boston in February 1968, peaking at #9. Elsewhere it barely made a dent in the charts, going into top 30, sometimes top 20 for a handful of weeks, then disappearing.

I don't have sales numbers, only chart positions from various regions of the US.

Heroes did slightly better than Darlin, but neither was the hit I'm sure they thought it would have been. Interesting that KHJ in Los Angeles had a much bigger hit with Darlin than Heroes, and Darlin had much greater popularity in Los Angeles than anywhere else save Boston.

Darlin wasn't as much of a trend-setting "new sound" considering the charts were populated at that time with a lot of horn bands and brass-enhanced singles, owing a debt to groups like the Buckinghams who owned the charts in 1967 with that very same brass fueled sound. As good a record as Darlin was and is, it sounds weaker sonically than some of the similar records surrounding it on the charts.