The Smiley Smile Message Board

I don't think the half-finished versions of "Smile" that have been circulating over the years are a fitting testament to Brian's genius.

Only ONE track was ever completed for the album and that was Good Vibrations.  You could never tell what it would have sounded like from all the fragments of music and vocals that were recorded  (which is what most people try and do with the other Smile tracks).

The tracks reconstructed by the Beach Boys in later years were not Smile-era edits. From what I have read, Brian's days as a serious producer were pretty much over by the end of 1967. What would these tracks have sounded like if they were finished by Brian during the smile recordings? No one knows. But it's safe to say that they would have been different than the released versions.

Three of the tracks printed on the album sleeve (the Old Master Painter,  I'm in Great Shape and the Elements) are so incomplete they don't even feature on the Smiley Smile Message Board's 2011 box-set discussion. As for "Holidays" and "Look" etc... it's debateable if they were even intended for the album.  

I reckon up to 50% of Smile vocals are instrumentation were never recorded, let alone assembled into album tracks. I would imagine Brian was aiming for 10 very tightly produced tracks with complex vocal arrangements, and (possibly) ways of flowing the tracks together. But it definately WAS NOT going to be the disjointed bits of music that are passed off as "smile" these days.

Eh no.

wat
SMiLE was never completed? U sure bro?

My point is that the half-baked versions of the album that being sold are not a fitting tribute to Brian. People listen to these versions of the album and think they have a good idea of  what it would have sounded like. In my opinion, the music we debate on this forum is NOT EVEN CLOSE to sounding like a finished Smile recording. It discredits Brian.

stage of completion has nothing to do with level of genius.

Brian exhibited all kinds of genius during SMiLE, from songwriting to producing to vocal arranging... all quite evident on the box set.

Wow, another come-lately who thinks he knows Brian's work more than Brian.

I see what you mean. On the other hand the "partial completion" of SMiLE in 2004 was triumph for his legacy. Up to that point BW's legacy was very much just as the songwriter behind Pet sounds.

You're stupid. Old Master Painter and I'm In Great Shape are in the "All things 'Barnyard Suite'" thread. And the Elements is Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, Wind Chimes, et cetera.

With all courtesy, you're nuts.

You're the same type of person I referred to months ago as undeserving of this beautiful music. It's a shame Smile is being wasted on the likes of you and so many others.

What's the alternative?

People get so hung up on the idea of the idea of unrealized intent that they forget that Smile, in whatever form one prefers to digest it, is just music, it's a body of actual musical sound that can be played and listened to and enjoyed just like any other piece of music, and that's been true since long before 2011, or even 2004.  If you think that music is testament to Brian's genius that's cool, if you feel otherwise feel free to make your case, but making a meta-argument based not on a reaction to the music that exists, but the music you feel is absent, seems a little silly.

Brian over the course of his life has produced lots of finished music and maybe even more unfinished music, and all of it reflects on Brian and his talents in various ways, but it would be absurd to imagine that the many people who have fallen in love with the Smile corpus over the past 25 or 45 years are reacting to something imaginary.  It's real music.

Fine. Your opinion.


Verifiably untrue. Heroes and Villains came out as a single. There are edits in the vaults marked final for several other tracks.


Also untrue. Cabinessence certainly is. Our Prayer has some extra overdubs, but is otherwise precisely what BW recorded for the Smile.


This is insanity. Have you ever heard Friends? Sunflower? What about Love You? How about the TLOS demos?


Why is it safe to say that? Who is doing the saying?


You sound so certain! That must feel nice.

While what he said wasn't technically true, it still feels like "Good Vibrations" was the sole track finished under the mindset Brian had for Smile. Yeah, he technically finished, say, "Heroes And Villains" before the proper collapse of the project, but under the mindset of, "Need to finish a single. Need to finish a single. Capitol will not get the fuck off my back. This shit isn't working out at all. Need to finish a single."

As for the other tracks marked as "final" (aren't there only two?), wasn't the cantina version of "Heroes And Villains" also marked as final? I might be wrong there.

I understand the definitions get murky. Although I would argue that Good Vibes predates Smile -- it's a single, in the true sense of the word. Smile music evolved into something a little bit ... different ... as the months passed. It got a little darker, and the sections became more scattered.

As for finished tracks -- I thought it was Wind Chimes and Wonderful were marked as finished. Cantina at one time, perhaps. I can't imagine BW had much more planned for Prayer, either.

And though the vocals weren't completed until 1968, I would say that Cabinessence stands as fully realized Smile track, true to its original conception.  And a pretty phenomenal one at that.

With all due respect, the premise of this thread does not compute.  Fragmentary and frustrating though it may be, I can't think of a great testament to Brian Wilson's genius than the Smile sessions.

I don't think Smile discredits Brian's genius, but I do think that it's not what BEST illustrates his genius.  I see much more genius in his work that was not only creative and different, but also commercial.  If I was going to illustrate his genius to somebody, I'd play them something like "Don't Worry Baby"; songs everybody's familiar with and loves, but have deeper messages/stories/inspiration etc. 

Good Vibrations though of course would also fit that bill. 

Boy oh boy did the OP come to the wrong board.  :lol

I love this post. It does really illustrate one of the paradoxes of Smile and BW. For as awesome as Brian's avant garde experiments were, some of his greatest genius really is shown in tracks that were a lot more commercial. Don't Worry Baby is certainly one. California Girls is another. So are I Get Around and the single Rhonda. Even a latter-day track like Your Imagination shows he still had some singles chops.

Good Vibrations was the grand experiment to merge it all into a single. And it worked. But Smile didn't seem like it was going to. And for Brian, who always had managed to merge art (or at least stunning craft) with keen instincts on what the market wanted, this must have been a difficult thing to accept.

Kind of reminded me of a misguided John Lennon fan* who went all out crazy on me a few days after BWPS was released on cd in 2004.  He was saying stuff like "I don't understand what the big deal about this record is.  In a few months nobody is going to care about it and The Beatles are going to be number one again!" 

Got to admire his guts though.

* Misguided because I don't think he realized that I'm about as big of a Beatlemaniac as one can be so he was actually trying to sell me on The Beatles and John Lennon.  Whatever

Don't completely agree with lunarjetguy, but we are definitely going overboard here by accusing him of being "undeserving" of the album simply because his opinion differs from yours.  Let's get over ourselves, please.  I'm enjoying SMiLE, and there are certainly some genius moments to be had.  But this album is unfinished; thus making it equally as frustrating a listening experience as it is a beautiful one.  In fact, I've actually been listening to the 2004 BW version of this album a lot more since the Beach Boys' release came out.  At least that version of the album was a complete thought!   :afro

I find it very hard to listen to BWPS after getting the boxset. BWPS sounds so... artificial.

Well, we can flag the play right there. As any fule kno, "GV" wasn't 'completed for the album', but was a stand-alone single. However, this -


- may very well be the dumbest thing anyone's said here for a long time.

At first i was Considering never to listen to BWPS again but what i like about BWPS is there are lyrics/singing on "On a Holiday(Holiday)","Song for Children(Look)","Child is the Father of the Man","In Bue Hawaii(Love to Say Dada)"
The smile sessions is missing the lyrics/ singing on all the songs i just mentioned :/

Those are pretty much the only BWPS tracks I listen to (albeit rarely), solely for the "completeness" factor. 

Ditto.

And about the OP's statement, I'd turn it around and say TSS confirms Brian's genius.

and the vocals......but I still listen more to BWPS. A couple of the songs on BWPS are so well done.

Both versions have their pros and cons. Now let us never speak of it again.

Nope- although I haven't gone under this username since the days of the Smile Shop ! Of course I don't know Brian better than Brian, but I would say that his memories of the Smile era  have diminished somewhat since 1967. He's clearly been unwell for many years as well. So I don't put much faith in the 2004 BWPS release being a "completed" version of the album. More like a new arrangement based around the unfinished sessions.

Just to clarify my original posting.... I love Smile material and have been listening and re-listening to it since I purchased my first bootleg in 1991. My point is that the finished article would (probably) have been SO MUCH better and it (probably) bears little comparison to the versions of Smile that have circulated since 1967. Most of it is missing for goodness sake !

This is not to say that the existing recordings do not display the work of a genius. They clearly do. But I think that Smile would have showed Brian to have been EVEN BETTER than the general public actually think. I also think that Smile fans are fooling themselves if they think they know what the finished thing would have sounded like. If it was anywhere near completion then the Beach Boys would have released the thing in back in 1967 (down to commercial pressures apart from anything). There was clearly much work still left to do.

PS- To the user who called me stupid... Are you stating that the Elements definatly consisted of Vegetables, Wind-Chimes etc ? On what basis ? Is this not speculation mostly invented since 1967 ? The  original album sleve listed the Elements as a separate track, which would make Smile 13 tracks long (the same as Pet Sounds) which was the normal length for LP records.

I don't know anything about genius really.  Everyone is a genius and an imbecile - all of us belive it or not, or at the very least I believe we all have the potential there inside.  Everyone is, if you will, a dumb angel.   I see flashes of "genius" all the time in people (and yes, even sometimes in myself), but it rarely is something that lasts.   How many geniuses remain geniuses?  Does a moment of genius make someone a genius for the rest of their life?  Really all depends on who's looking at it and from what perspective I suppose.
Undoubtedly Brian Wilson was operating on a level  (for many years, not just 66/67) that one could call genius-like, brilliant, or any number of other labels.   How much of his position, timing, being in the moment had a hand in eliciting his genius/brilliance/et al?   I think one of the biggest things about this whole genius thing is that, essentially, the people who seem to have/have had true "genius"  are those that take a step way out of the box and create something new - whether they do so in music, film, science, or whatever.  They reach for something completely different.  Through history there have been many of these people in all fields and endeavors.  During the sixties Brian was one of them.   
That's simply a fact with or without Smile.  Had they been able to comlete the album back then this fact might be clearer to more people is all.

Again, what's the alternative? You want this sh*t to just remain rotting in the vaults as it has for the last 45 years?

I'm also tired of the bogus handwritten list being used as evidence. Well, not "bogus", but clearly not Brian's doing, and actually listening to the thing as a tracklist reveals it to be a total clusterfuck. There's no way that was a legit tracklist, ever. Merely a list of songs.

exactly :) thats the only reason i listen tho bwps still. i wish he would've completed those tracks in 67 that album could've been on the same level as pet sounds. (one can only wish)

Smile is better than Pet Sounds.

why you say that?

I don't listen to BWPS because of the woman with the vibrato in her voice.

No one used vibrato on Beach Boys records, not Love, Jardine, Johnston, the Rovells or the Wilsons. Vibrato does belong on a Beach Boys related record. Dennis (I know, we're not talking about him...), for one said he hated vibrato.

I don't think the half-finished versions of "Smile" that have been circulating over the years are a fitting testament to Brian's genius. Not entirely but what they put together now is.

Only ONE track was ever completed for the album and that was Good Vibrations.  You could never tell what it would have sounded like from all the fragments of music and vocals that were recorded (which is what most people try and do with the other Smile tracks).
Our Prayer, Cabinessence, so much was basically complete. Yes some vocals were missing but given that the Smiley and 20/20 overdubs were done so soon after it really makes no difference. How he wanted it to come out, it came out.  

The tracks reconstructed by the Beach Boys in later years were not Smile-era edits. From what I have read, Brian's days as a serious producer were pretty much over by the end of 1967.

Very untrue as Friends, Sunflower and choice moments from 20/20, Spring, and Surf's Up attest to.

What would these tracks have sounded like if they were finished by Brian during the smile recordings? No one knows. But it's safe to say that they would have been different than the released versions.

You have a good argument for Wonderful, and Wind Chimes, perhaps even Vega-tables, but Surf's Up (except for the ending and Carl taking part of the lead), Our Prayer, and Cabinessence all stayed more or less the same. Heroes is a hard one, but the version that came out was quite a production and had many Smile elements to it.  

Three of the tracks printed on the album sleeve (the Old Master Painter,  I'm in Great Shape and the Elements) are so incomplete they don't even feature on the Smiley Smile Message Board's 2011 box-set discussion. As for "Holidays" and "Look" etc... it's debateable if they were even intended for the album.

I don't miss anything from these. Perhaps they would have stayed instrumental. Clunky is the word I would use for the 2003 lyrics and only a small bit that was writen in 1966 aired for the first time then. Being that Brian recorded instrumentals for seven previous albums, plus two to come after I would say it's a fair bet that a fair amount of the songs may never have had lyrics.

I reckon up to 50% of Smile vocals are instrumentation were never recorded, let alone assembled into album tracks. I would imagine Brian was aiming for 10 very tightly produced tracks with complex vocal arrangements, and (possibly) ways of flowing the tracks together. But it definately WAS NOT going to be the disjointed bits of music that are passed off as "smile" these days.

There were 13 songs on Pet Sounds and honestly I think Smile could very well have been a 2 LP set like it is now. Remember LP's before the late sixties (US ones anyway) were often only a half hour long. As far as final assembly I doubt much was done but I can't picture any more music needing to be done and the words feel 75 percent there to me.

Agreed. I do feel Smile is now done and is what it is meant to be.

Really those are my least favorite. The ones on Worms are OK and I think they were vintage. It's not a bad album because those are great songs, but Brian was not a great singer past 1974 and his band have the feel down but you can't recreate the magical family blend the Beach Boys had. Agree about Taylor's voice being in the wrong pitch. She's good on TLOS though.

Listen for one very prominent exception, and one of the most perfect single records (and lead vocals) Brian or anyone ever released..."Don't Worry Baby". At the end of every vocal phrase Brian does a nice vibrato, it actually makes his lead more compelling, IMO, than if he had done it without.

But as far as group and harmony vocals, what makes them what they are if we're talking classic 60's groups was the lack of vibrato. Vibrato is WAY overused in certain styles, opera excluded of course. ;)

Uh, u legit? Brian used vibrato pretty often after the mid-60s, even more so after the voice change in '74. I want to say other members did, too.

Legit? Sure. Vibrato is not one of the characteristics of the Beach Boys vocal sound. I'm not saying they didn't ever use it at all, but no instances of it come to mind. I'd be interested to know where you hear it being used.

LMFAOOOOOOOO  :lol

Because Dennis Wilson said so.

I think an important distinction needs to be made in this little vibrato discussion between lead vocals and backing vocals - Brian and Carl especially used vibrato quite frequently on their leads, as did the others (albeit less frequently - listen to "The Girl From New York City" to hear Mike very effectively using his). 

In contrast, they rarely, if ever, used vibrato when singing backing vocals, which was smart because every singer's vibrato is different, and when you have four or five guys singing together with slightly different vibrato sounds, the blend will suffer.  Naturally Brian wanted to avoid that.

Thanks for reading my post. :-D

When Taylor Mills was with Brian's band, she tended not to sing the top harmonies, but parts in the middle.  She could turn off the vibrato for that.  Good singers can.  My evidence, among other things: the BWPS Our Prayer, and on side four of the vinyl, the stack-o-tracks version of H&V, you can hear she is singing the flatted seventh note in the chord.  No vibrato.  She did do her lounge singer on I Wanna Be Around, yes, and sings out a bit more on TLOS.

I  always thought adding her was a canny move.  For one thing, no one could accuse Brian of trying to market himself as a version of the Beach Boys.  The Surfside Sentient Beings, maybe.

First of all, we all know Brian didn't finish SMiLE in 1967. However, I say all these:

Good Vibrations
Heroes and Villains
Vegatables
Surfs Up (71)
Cabinessence
Wind Chimes
Wonderful

Have very amazing sounds and sound very completed. No, they weren't all completely edited and recorded by Brian by 67. Surfs Up 71 is good enough to be a part of master piece. Brian added the tag of Surfs Up in 71, but it is legit because Brian did it. Van Dyke added lyrics in 2004, and it is legit because Van Dyke did it! The original artist completed the song! Who cares when and where? Why should we put a time limit on art?

The SMiLE sessions disc 1 sound like a master piece to my ears as is! I love it! I also respect the additions made by the original artists in 2004.

in your own opinion what do you prefer?

No- I want all of the material released because it's great.
But I don't want the unfinished stuff to be considered the "real" Smile album. I'm conviced that it would have been so much more than we have now.

I think that Mike Eder and Magic Transistor Radio have done a good job of debunking the idea that we have no idea what a finished Smile would have sounded like.  In fact, several tracks were quite near completion and while others are missing lead vocals/lyrics (Worms and Child, for example), we at least have some idea how they might have turned out.  Take a case like Surf’s Up:  We’ve been treated to several different versions over the years from more stripped down ‘demo’ takes (like the ’66 version we all know and love, still my personal favorite) on up to the fuller versions from Surf’s Up and BWPS.  While we can speculate a bit about how the additional instrumentation from Part 2 might have sounded back in the day, that likely would have just been icing on the cake.  We know the core of this song and it stands as a masterpiece.

And this gets to a broader point:  This material has already thrived throughout a wide range of different presentations, from Smiley Smile on up through subsequent releases like 20/20 and the GV Box, BWPS and now TSS.  I think this speaks to the fundamental strength of this material, its modular versatility.  It holds up through stripped down approaches and more elaborate arrangements.  Knocking it for not being completed on schedule almost seems beside the point.  In a way, Smile is more about the journey, even with all the unfinished experiments and blind alleys, than it is about a final product.

I’ve long gotten past the old “things would have been so different if only Smile had been released” trap, the album that might have been.  Things happened the way that they did for a range of complicated reasons, but there’s really no point in beating one’s head against that wall anymore.  While other conceptual masterpieces from the era got a normal release, Smile has experienced this extraordinary subterranean existence, a protracted release that’s taken different forms over the years, including the vital ‘do it yourself’ interactive component which still carries on today.  Sgt Peppers’ is done, iconic and dead in a way, while Smile maintains so much more of its mysterious power and intrigue.  It’s unfinished, yes, impossible to pin down and it refuses to die—I continue to learn new things about it after all these years.  It’s an unprecedented arc for this one of a kind piece of pop art and at this point, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thus why it's called The Smile Sessions.

But they still attempted to recreate a mono "complete Smile" on CD 1.

While the BWPS sequence worked brilliantly with the addition of the link sections and the pauses between movements, the BWPS model doesn't work as well for me for presenting the original sessions.  For one, I don't get the "happy happy" Mission Pak sound that Brian was after on what would be "side 1" - the Americana songs are "heavy" and not light or amusing the way Brian apparently wanted the album to come across.  I have to think that the Americana songs would have been mixed in with the lighter songs like Veggies, Wind Chimes, Wonderful, Child.  Of course I don't have a sequence that's perfect but some of the track sequences posted in another thread I suspect would work better as a total listening experience and be closer to what might have come out in 67.  All speculation of course.

i guess another thing i liked about "bwps" is all how all the songs flow 2gether. it's like the album is one song.
(idk if any of u understand what i'm saying.)

a swing and a miss.......

I would put BWPS in the same category as his PS live tour. Maybe a step ahead because more vocals were added to it. It was GREAT to see live, ok on cd. Despite Brian's vocals, the shows his group have put on in the last decade are the best BB related shows since the mid 70s IMO.

[/quote]
While the BWPS sequence worked brilliantly with the addition of the link sections and the pauses between movements, the BWPS model doesn't work as well for me for presenting the original sessions.  For one, I don't get the "happy happy" Mission Pak sound that Brian was after on what would be "side 1" - the Americana songs are "heavy" and not light or amusing the way Brian apparently wanted the album to come across.  I have to think that the Americana songs would have been mixed in with the lighter songs like Veggies, Wind Chimes, Wonderful, Child.  Of course I don't have a sequence that's perfect but some of the track sequences posted in another thread I suspect would work better as a total listening experience and be closer to what might have come out in 67.  All speculation of course.
[/quote]

Well just look at the December 66 tracklist (I always go back to it)- Side 1 would have been Worms, Wind Chimes, H&V, Surf's Up, Good Vibrations and Cabinessence (Good Lord! That would be the greatest side of music ever). Like you say, you mix the Americana theme with something lighter to keep things loose. Side 1 begins and ends with the Americana theme- it's nice symmetry. I  also put bits from George Fell Into His French Horn after H&V as a breather.

As for the original poster's point, I think the body of music that has come to be known as Smile or The Smile Sessions, however incomplete a project it was, can stand toe-to toe with any completed album. In the 60s BW was a musical genius and, far from discrediting that statement, this music is an enduring expression of that genius. It's his great Unfinished Symphony.

In general I don't think the 12-song list is considered safe to regard as an actual sequence.  Hence "see label for correct running order."

It's not...if it was, Brian would have considered using it in 2004.

Pet Sounds is the musical equivalent of someone handing you a million dollars. SMiLE is the musical equivalent of someone handing you a million dollars but some of the bills are torn. Either way it's still a million dollars. SMiLE all the way

Well Said :) I Completely Agree With You.

Really what sequence is "safe" other than BWPS? I'm just saying that IF one makes a fan version of the album, I have found that the Capitol track list works perfectly fine as a listening experience. In fact there's a lot to recommend it. I know Mr. Reum is in the know about this stuff and far be it from me to argue with him, but fan mixes survived BWPS (which I love) and they'll most likely continue well into the future. I could spend my time shuffling the order of the songs on Pet Sounds but it's not as much fun because Pet Sounds was actually finished back in 1966.

Why do people continue to take stock in what was merely a list of songs and not a real tracklist? One that Brian didn't even write himself? Why do they continue to ignore "See label for correct playing order"?


The supposed "tracklist" is a total clusterf*ck if actually listened to in this order. Somehow, I can't see Brian following up the basically flawlessly flowing Pet Sounds with what would've been the worst tracklist sequence in the history of the band's career before or after.