The Smiley Smile Message Board

I think of it as a rather disppointing end to Pet Sounds. By this I mean that the lovely instrumental outro of the great song which is Caroline, No is forgotten when you hear the horrendous clamour of the railroad bells, the incessant barking of dogs and then the tjoo tjoo train comes along. Why? Why is it that once the track is over one recalls these noises over the lovely fade of aforementioned song? I really question Brians judgement here and wonder if he did it just to push more unorthodox sounds into the album? He was certainly trying to be unorthodox about this album but I think he impacted the aftertaste of the album to a negative extent due to the (imo) uneccessary overdubs. Can someone please tell me if there is some symbolism or whatnot which I might have missed?

I think it sounds cool.

It sounds amazing. What's a more lonesome sound than a speeding train and barking dogs?

Am I the only one who grew up in suburbia? It's just sort of the lonely sound that you'd hear growing up as you fell asleep.

Yeah, this is exactly right.

To whit,

(http://assets.amuniversal.com/362089b0acb8012d63f600163e41dd5b)

I heard trains near my neighborhood growing up as well.

+ 10

For me it has always been an integral and unmissable part of the song. Never ever doubted its expressive value.

Agreed its a wonderful coda to the song.

I think you ought to raise it with Brian… he might be willing to go back and change it.

Love it myself.

I'm in agreement with everyone's comments that can be a lonesome sound in the nightime and is an expressive and meaningful ending to the song and LP. It makes me reflect on what I just heard/experienced whenever I play the LP. And, as Brian was into different sounds etc., well these are sounds. Plus, might there be a connection to the sound of a barking dog and the LP name (probably not but nice coincidence).

Sidenote: when the dog barks at the end, my dog lifts its head and looks around like "where's that barking coming from". 

  I remember listening to the album one time with our dog in the room. He joined in barking when he heard the dogs at the end.  Pretty cool really.

Brian placed it on there to make it sound like the dogs ran on the track just as the train comes by only to get run over by the train... :lol

The flag snap hooks clanging against the flag pole on an empty school playground.

My initial response to the title question was "drugs."

Same here, I hear trains every once and a while. Very romantic imo.

I wouldn't want it without them, it's such a nostalgic sound, the end of something or more like a departing, people moving on.

Cabinessenceking, the thought has crossed my mind. I did think maybe the fade to "Caroline, No" could last a split second longer and the train could be more distant and not so in your face. Ultimately, though, I guess it is cool, it's now legendary, and I would leave it in. 

It's interesting that the train and dogs were left off the single version. Did Brian and/or the record company not think it had the same effect alone, without the rest of the album building up to it?

i definitely hear it as the end of the album, not just the song. and it ended up signaling the end of an era.

there is always the version without the sound effects if you prefer. i like it original speed as well.



good one.  :-[

he was just bein soooo randum

Oh, absolutely, Fishmonk!

Hearing those sounds at the end of Pet Sounds always makes me instantly nostalgic in a bittersweet way thinking about the mundane and routine sounds, sights etc of being a kid and in a way it makes me miss all those things, but now I'm a grown up, no longer innocent and I can't go back.....

I think this is something along the lines of what Brian intended.

It's funny but sometimes we read too much into Brian's thought processes or intentions. We're coming up with these cool - and probably accurate - theories . But I can picture somebody asking Brian about the use of the dogs and train, and Brian saying something like, " I just wanted to get my dogs' voices on a record and Chuck came up with the train idea. We thought it sounded good so we kept it in." :-D

I know where Brian recorded the sound of the train on 'Caroline No'.  Anybody else know?

I like to think the train and the dogs symbolise the passing on of another, insignificant life. The feelings the protagonist experiences is nothing compared to the grand scheme of things and thus the train means that life carries on as normal despite his journey.

Isle of Sodor?

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p0woSEytxVw/TMhvdAOgS2I/AAAAAAAACuo/JzqOSuqBqxQ/s1600/Thomas+the+tank+engine+friends+with+mother+of+Sir+Topham+Hatt+and+gremlin+the+Dalmatian+puppy+dog.jpg)

Where was it? I am really interested - In the little green book (The Making of Pet Sounds) in the PS box, Brian says - And we went down and we looked through some sound effects tapes and we found a train - so I'd assumed it was a tape library thing...

Re the OP, intentional or no, this evocative and arresting bite could easily be a metaphor for the intensity of young "Love" and in line with the general subject matter of the album - slow intense build-up, inevitable and gruelling fulfilment, then a rapid peak followed by a rattling fade.  And dogs.

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COMMENT:

On the original Pet Sounds LP, the sound of a passing train can be heard at the end of Caroline, No, accompanied by barking from Brian's two dogs, Banana and Louie. Banana was a narotic ball-chasing, pure-bread Beagle and Louie was a loving dark-chocolate Labrador who loved to swim with Brian in his pool. Brian loved both dogs. They can be seen swimming with Brian in Alan Boyd's movie "Endless Harmony."

In the late 1990s, it was "rediscovered" that the train sound effect came from a sound effects LP titled Mister D's Machine, recorded in 1963 by Brad Miller. The album featured then-current recordings of various trains around the Southern Pacific system. The sounds that were lifted for the end of the Pet Sounds album were that of Train #58, "The Owl", speeding at 70 mph through Edison, California. The sound effects (minus Banana and Louie) are in true stereo on the original effects album. They appeared in mono on Pet Sounds, but were not remixed into stereo with the rest of the album in 1996.

As to "why" he put them there, I don't know. As an animal lover, like Brian is, if I could immortalize my dogs by including them barking in a song of mine, I would want to do it. The train sounds may reflect back to Brian's chiildhood in Hawthorn, CA, where I know he heard the sounds of trains while growing up, and has a history with them, but again, as to "why," only Brian knows.     ~swd

Amazing. I love this forum more each day. Thank you!

I always thought Brian put it there to bring me out of the "awesome coma" that his perfect album put me in. It lets me know that all the beautiful, and perfect stuff, can't last forever. It also lets me know to start the album over again.

Exactly!  But I knew about it when I first heard Pet Sounds and "Caroline No" around 1972. My Mom bought me the "Mr. D's Machine" album around 1963 or 1964. I loved trains when I was a kid growing up (and still do). I played that album a lot back then. Then when I heard the same sound effects on "Caroline No"in the early 70's, I was real surprised to hear a part of it again! The effects of the diesel engine sound at the end made me love the song even more!  :)

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Ds-Machine-Railroad-Whistle/dp/B000RF2P5G

Thanks, Stephen  ;D

...and from me too, Stephen.

I hear a wonderful coda to a wonderful song in 1973 or thereabouts for the first time.

I hear what its source is in 2012.

Only 39 years in between.

Funny old world.

I can't believe I just read that.

Same here! I wonder if Brian still likes animals with melinda's horde of pets. ;D

Yes!

Great information, thanks heaps Steve and Mikie - and great story about the album, Mikie!

Thanks, Alholio!  :)

COMMENT:

I Love it!  Your Avatar, that is.  That's Banana.  I've thrown more tennis balls for that dog then stars in the sky. She never tires! And never misses!  ~swd

ps  I think "Bananas" is the real name of the dog. So I would say, "Your Avatar looks like Bananas." 

As the man said, it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry.

Thanks Stephen.  I like to think he put it in because he loved his dogs too :)   It's suits the song very well.  It makes me wonder what other song would have suited it also....

I read somewhere that Brian put the train sound there because it represented his emotional issues at the time (remember, this was around the time his mental illness first started creeping up on him). The onrushing train was how he felt - a huge amount of pressure, both internally and externally-generated, all kinds of forces pushing him this way and that, etc. He felt like these forces were rushing at him like a freight train.

Don't know about the dogs, they might be there just for amusement value. Or maybe contrast to the train (huge life pressures coming at you vs. faithful friends).

If I recall correctly, Marilyn mentions in one of the documentaries that after listening to the finished mix at home, Brian commented that he imagined himself on that train waving goodbye. The theme that is repeated throughout PET SOUNDS is of moving from adolescence into young adulthood and leaving the past behind; the ending sound effects perfectly evoke that theme.

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Good call. Completely agree.

I always thought that the train representing the fast movement of time, and things being left behind: childhood, caroline, innocence, etc.

You mean Caroline suddenly had her hair cut very short, put on dungarees and Dr Martens, and became an aggressive man-hating punk lesbian feminist?

Could be. Puts a new perspective on Brian's life.

I got to know Pet Sounds on cassette (with bonus tracks), and didn't realise at the time the noises were part of Caroline, No or the album proper. I assumed (if I thought about it at all) that they were either part of the first bonus track or an unlisted bonus track in their own right "unused sound effects") I was surprised when I first heard them on the end of Caroline, No on a hits compilation.

Yeah, it's brilliant. Can't imagine the album without it.

trains in the distance, dogs barking;  these are the sounds one hears on a night alone standing out in the back yard, alone with one's thoughts........perhaps pondering a lost love.....

that is how I feel it, always took it that way, semed obvious to me.  never occured to me it was anything else, or just random sounds tacked on

these ar good sounds.....as Paul Simon said, "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance"

Consider the significance of the train in folk and blues music. Now, once you've done that, realise that Brian Wilson used the sound of a train for the same reason; to impart those same emotions.

indeed.   an iconic image

These theories presented are thoughtful, insightful, and maybe even accurate. But, I still think if you asked Brian about it, he'd probably say something like, "I just thought it'd be cool to hear my dogs voices on a record, so we did it..."

Yes, just as John Ford denied any use of symbology in his work, yet he was one of the directors who made the most use of it, in film after film. Some creative folks simply think it is uncool to discuss those type of things.