The Smiley Smile Message Board

I'm almost all the way through the box set now, and it seems like the Wrecking Crew gets more and more scarce as we get into the later stuff.
I'm wondering what we know about Brian's recording budget as Smile got canceled and/or as Brother came into being.
When Brother became official, was Capitol's big studio tab closed? Do we know if Brian had to make due with much less money once Smile fizzled/Brother began? Did the BBs take over financing?
Was there a day when suddenly Brian's deep-pocket studio financing went away? If so, when would that have been, I wonder? And would the reason have been the Smile cancellation or the switch to Brother? Could the move to Brother and the BBs own wallet be the real, unstated reason for Smile's demise, moreso than anything else? If so, whoops.
Hope someone has some info on the $$ aspect of all this.

This is a really interesting question and I hope somebody knowledgeable can weigh in.

I definitely have long thought that the home studio was all about money.. However, I am not sure if he increasingly used the Wrecking Crew all that much less, did he? I mean Da-Da has them on it, right? I think most of it was already recorded and he got stuck on Heroes and Villains and Vegetables, but the rest was recorded. He just recorded less. There were those remakes of Wonderful and the final stab at Child... but other than a lot of vocals I think that most of it had already been done.

By the way, I listened to the Smile sessions chronologically last weekend and it really does present quite an intereting narrative.

I'm looking forward to that. I've wanted to do that for a long time but have been too lazy since I thought of it. Should have done it back in my "driven" years.

Yeah, I am in the middle of making a playlist of TSS chronologically including other sessions from the boots. Getting excited about it.

Have fun! It's a pretty complicated task!

Good point. Spending so much time and money on recording an album that didn't come out would've surely been a major factor on the budget sound of Smiley Smile. However, I'm glad it worked out like that. I just wish the "big budget" H&V and GV were left off Smiley so it would've been more cohesive as an album. Just needed a few more trippy, laidback organ numbers.