The Smiley Smile Message Board

So the past couple days I've been having this fantasy that I go through a time machine to about February 1967 and speak to a Capitol Records exec (whichever one was most directly responsible for BB oversight), convince him I'm from the future (which would be easy to do), then, aforementioned exec being sufficiently flabbergasted that I'm from the future, agrees to make me (somehow) in charge that the Smile project actually gets completed. Maybe like an "official project completion encourager," or a Project Manager, or something like that. Exec contacts Brian and the rest of the BB and orders them to let me in on the recording sessions. My mission will be to do whatever I can (without being overbearing, of course) to make sure the guys finish the thing, per their contract. After passing through the time machine I had told the Capitol Records exec how the history of the project was going to play out (it will soon be abandoned) and inform him that, for various cosmic reasons almost certainly beyond his comprehension, this cannot be allowed to happen, and a new Alternative Universal Timeline must be created wherein Smile actually gets completed.

Anyway, in this alternative timeline, one of the first things I'd do is convince Brian that the Most Important Song on the album is Surf's Up, not H&V. I then convince him and the rest of the parties involved to release a single with Surf's Up on the A side and Cabin Essence on the B side, in either March or April '67. It would also be a nice way of saying "yuck yuck" to the Beatles Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane single the month before.

The single is a best seller, both songs (especially Surf's Up) get massively positive reviews, and Macca, Lennon and even Leonard Bernstein call Brian to congratulate him on a brilliant effort. This is enough to convince Brian and the rest of the gang to finish the project, and Mike Love becomes a bit embarrassed at his recent resistance to the effort. Oh yeah, and one thing I'd do is, at some point, pull Mike into a side room somewhere and give him a little speech about not fighting progress.

So anyway the project is completed, musical history is changed, and in an extremely long chain of events, this new Alternate Universal Timeline means that the universe is saved some tens or hundreds of billions of years henceforth.  ;D

Anyone else ever have a wild musical fantasy like that?

Lewis Shiner did

Oh yeah, BTW ... that would make a great plot for a sci-fi novel. ;)

I'd never heard of him! I read a lot of sci-fi (hence the fantasy) so I should pick up one of his works someday! Thanks for the tip. :)

His novel Glimpses contains chapters which are pretty much your fantasy scenario. It can be read online here

http://www.fictionliberationfront.net/glimpses.pdf (http://www.fictionliberationfront.net/glimpses.pdf)

The Smile stuff starts chapter 3, but I'd recommend you read the whole thing.

Thanks!

I guess I'm not surprised I'm not the first one to have a fantasy like that. ;)

Glimpses made me have amazing SMiLE dreams where I could almost hear new parts haha try it out!

I finished chapter 3 and just started chapter 4. It takes a few sentences to figure out that chapter 4 suddenly sends you into a "time machine."

Alright, I finished chapter 4, too.

Good job! I wouldn't do it [the plot] the same way, but it works. I like the idea of approaching the artist (BW) through the time machine indirectly (such as via the Capitol records exec), because if you tell the artist directly that you, yourself are from the future, you're probably going to have undue influence on how the music comes out. But I suppose in a story, stuff like that doesn't matter. ;)

Also, for me, the key would be to get there not in late '66 but in Feb or March '67 because by then most of the takes were already recorded, and it was mostly a matter of piecing them together.

Finally, I *would not* want the album released before around April or May 1967 in my novel/fantasy. The reason for this is, I *would not* want the album to have any influence on what the Beatles did in Sgt. Pepper. If they released Smile as originally planned in December '66, or even in Jan or Feb '67, who knows what the Beatles might have changed on Pepper? What you would want is for the Beatles to do what they were originally going to do, and then - KAZAM! - when they've just put the finishing touches on their masterpiece and have it ready to go to the presses, out comes the BB's competing masterpiece which is just as good, if not better. In my novel/fantasy, George Martin goes out and buys a copy of Smile on the day it's released, listens to it at home, says to himself, "Holy crap," and then calls Paul and John and tells them, "We're in trouble." They assemble with the rest of the band in George's house the next day, listen to the record (about 5 times), and are blown away. But the important thing is ... it's too late for them to do anything. Would make for better drama that way. ;)

Although I never considered SU and Cabinessence single material, an avant garde release like that following the huge smash hit which was GV only months before and the recent release of their competitions avant garde double A single leaves the possibility for the single actually making it high in the charts (perhaps even top 10?) It would certainly have been noticed both by the public and most likely praised by the musicians of the time. Even though GV was very different from their early surf material it still didn't fully break with the Beach Boys fun in the sun image, a highly promoted release of SU and Cabinessence might've been the chance they had to fully break that link and make them avoid the misfortunes of 1967.

Interesting ideas, but personally, I don't see how Surf's Up/Cabinessence is a yuck yuck (as you put it) to Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields. Also, like the above poster noted, I don't think such a single would have been at all a wise commercial decision. Putting out a single is not about putting out "the Most Important Song on the album" but putting out something that will help sell the album. Brian may very well have thought that Surf's Up was the most important song on the album, but that's something altogether different than what he thought made good sense as a single. Now...a single that had Heroes and Villains as the A and Surf's Up as the B would have been something. I would say that H&V would have at least cracked the Top 10, perhaps the Top 5 after the massive sales of Good Vibes. Surf's Up as a B probably wouldn't have done quite as well as, say, God Only Knows but still good to get it out there as a single to help give the ol' one-two punch for Smile.

Remember, in my alternate history here, I'm going through a time machine and thus have perfect historical knowledge. We already know H&V did not do all that great when released as a single in the summer of '67, so I'm not sure why one would want to make the same mistake twice. Unless it was a much different version of H&V (which, frankly, would be one thing I'd try to encourage Brian to do, skip the stripped-down version and go full blast instead).

A H&V/SU single might work, but I would put SU on the A side and get Brian to do a version of H&V similar or identical to the one on TSS. That might work.

You should put this in novel form

Well, first of all Heroes and Villains made it to #12, which is not that much lower than Wouldn't It Be Nice's #8 spot. Furthermore, the single was released in late July 1967. By that point, The Beach Boys star had begun to fade. Had the single been released closer to Good Vibrations, it probably would have done better in the charts. And even furthermore, yes, the version if it were part of the Smile-era, would be entirely different from the single that was released in July 1967. But regardless, the reason why Heroes and Villains failed to chart as high as previous singles had little to do with its strength as a song. I mean, yes, to be honest, it didn't have as much commercial appeal as Vibes, Sloop John B., California Girls, Wouldn't It Be Nice, etc. So, from the get go, it would be difficult to imagine Heroes being a huge monster single. However, I'd say Darlin' had a great amount of commercial appeal but that only made it to #19 in December of that year. You could say the same with Do It Again the next year. The chart showing of Heroes in July 1967 was in part a consequence of where the band was at in terms of popular culture at the time. However, the song always had much better potential as a single than any other song from Smile (with the exception of Good Vibrations, of course). It's certainly more commercial than Surf's Up which not only didn't make it to #12 but didn't even chart at all when it was released off of a top 30 album in 1971. Yes, a lot of us love Surf's Up. It's one of my favourite songs. But it is not good single material nor would it have ever been the thing that sold Smile.

Also, H&V was still not completed by Feb/March 1967, so it's kind-of a moot point. The point would be to release something shortly after the Beatles' SFF/PL single to tell the world, "Hey, we can do that too."

Meh. The Beach Boys/Beatles rivalry has been wildly overblown in retrospect. In terms of "do that too," I'm not entirely sure what "that" would be in reference to.

But at any rate, I'm sure if Surf's Up had been released as a single, the "world" wouldn't have taken too much notice.

Surf's up would have made a better B-side to H&V.

And, also, if the problem is that Heroes and Villains was incomplete by February/March, so was Surf's Up. It was missing an entire second section.

I was going by the Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf's_Up_(song)) which says:
I interpret that to mean the whole song was there on tape, it just wasn't pieced together yet. So I'm thinking that, when I go back through my time machine, I would get Brian to piece the song together.

EDIT: As for the ending originally being part of Child is Father of the Main, those sessions were recorded (http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs66.html) in Oct-Dec '66, so that part of (what would ultimately be) the song was also done recording by Feb-March '66.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjCRUvX2D0E (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjCRUvX2D0E)

No, the whole song was not there on tape and the article you quote from doesn't suggest it was. As far as we know, there was no second section recorded for Surf's Up.


There's also not much evidence to suggest that the ending was originally "part of Child is Father of the Man." Where no sessions exist, that we know of, are for the section of the song that begins "Dove nested towers..."

Well, at least a good portion of the rest of the song was in place.
You had his lead vocal in the 2nd section, and (maybe) he already had the idea for the coda. In the event he didn't, going back in time, I could give him the idea! Don't forget - when you go back in time through a time machine, you can accomplish a lot that wouldn't otherwise have been done!

About a minute and a half. There was probably another 2 minutes or so that needed to be recorded. Plus vocals. I am not sure if I would qualify that as "a good portion."


That wasn't the lead vocal for the final song though.


What's the evidence for that?


Erm...yeah. So why not give him the ideas to complete Heroes and Villains, a song that would work as a single, rather than the idea for Surf's Up. And also, I would encourage Brian to complete Surf's Up as per his vision for the song in 1966/67 rather than the one he and the others probably came up with four years later.

I have this insane idea for a movie where some people in a back alley will run this underground "ROCK N ROLL TIME TRAVEL" business where for like, millions of dollars, some guy gets to go back in time to like see Hendrix at Woodstock or Elvis at the Louisiana Hayride, or The Dead in Golden Gate Park, ETC ETC. They'd be really exact and make you dress in period clothes and go through weeks of time-period training and they'd have time-chaperones follow your every move so that you could not alter the course of history in any way.... Most of these trips would be bummers and people would want their money back because they'd like, get beat up by Hells Angels at Altamont, or slipped bad acid at Woodstock and would spend the whole time naked and puking..... So, anyway: this main character, Beach Boys nerd, pays millions to see The Who at Monterrey Pop. He'd land in 1967 a day or two before the festival and would escape his chaperones and make for LA in order to convince The Beach Boys to finish Smile and play Monterrey Pop!!!!

It's good enough.

Not quite sure I understood you there. They used a 1966 demo Brian made for the lead vocal in the 2nd section for the 1971 release. If I'm going back in time, I could encourage him to use that for the final 2nd section, or if he wanted to, he could record a better one.

There is no evidence. The Wiki suggests it *might* be a possibility, but no one knows. If I go back in time and discover Brian did not have that idea yet, I would *give* him the idea. Or maybe, for all we know, he had a different idea for the coda at the time, which maybe might have been even better. I would find out all this after I go through the time machine, and go from there.

Because, in my opinion, a Surf's Up/Cabin Essence single would be better. If you think a H&V single would do better, you can always go back in time in your own alternate timeline!

Also hang out with Youngsurferdude  ;D

YES!

OSD will make an appearance :)

You mean just end the song with the "brother John" line?


Hold on. Rather than actually encourage Brian to finish the song you would encourage him to take the "we're stuck there's nothing else we can do but use the demo" approach? Isn't the whole tragedy of Surf's Up the fact that instead of an actual 2nd section you have a demo that is completely out of sync with the entire stylistic approach Brian was using at the time?


Anything is a possibility if no one knows.


But why? As far as I'm concerned that Child is Father of the Man business is pure 1971 to me.


Better how? It couldn't have possibly sold better. So in what way do you mean better?

I probably wouldn't do that because I'm in my early 30s and have a child.

I'm not sure why I have to repeat this.

You're taking this thread far too seriously.

Wait a minute. You DON'T have a time machine!!??!?

Anyway, sorry for derailing this thread with a possible discussion about what would have made for a more commercial single - Heroes and Villains or Surf's Up, and the discussion of the possibilities of an H&V/SU single, and the information about the status of Surf's Up as a recording by 1967. Since that's clearly not what we should be doing here, how would you like me to engage with your post? Congratulate you on your time travel narrative? Well, I started with that, so I guess I should have stopped there. It was a mistake to try and actually engage with you.

Last sentence of post #1.

I want to show 1967 Mike Love "SIP"

yo, regarding Smile turning out to be the Beach Boys' Who's Next....it could've so easily have happened. Smile was completed enough and then there was a huge derp and then blabla.........





.....how sad.

Okay I read parts of Chapter 2 and all of Ch3 (Smile) and Ch4 (Brian) and found no reference to a time "machine" at all.

So how does this Ray Shackford guy travel thru time?  Or is he just losing his freaking mind?  :brian

And how does he bring the music back with him?? (there are holes in the plot)

I really don't have the desire to read the whole tome, if you have read it all and know the "secret" please enlighten me.

I did rather like the "trip" back to 1966 with Brian and the author did a nice job and must have
done his homework on the geography and stuff. Cool.

‍

OK, I just listened to the Surf's Up vocal demo on TSS again and it is OBVIOUS he was thinking of doing at least a semi-dramatic coda of some sort. He doubles the tempo of the piano and is singing the "Ahhhhh ..." for a long while till it fades out. That's a quarter of the bloody coda right there!

Alright, I think we should get a rank the tracks thread going to see which song would have been better as a single.
You think that's a good idea, Stephen Newcombe?
 ;D

^
Good idea!

No, don't do that!
You'll feel the fire, Friend!

^
I'll let someone else start it if they want. ;)

Good call!
 ;D

I don't think he changes the tempo, but I agree, of course, that something was going to happen for the coda. It's pretty difficult to say at this point what it was, but I'm guessing it would have been lyric-less or else he probably would have sung the lyrics there at some point.

"Tempo" wasn't the right word, but on the piano he suddenly goes from quarter notes to eighth notes, or whatever (without knowing offhand what the time signature is).

Given that he had recently written dramatic codas for God Only Knows, Wouldn't It Be Nice, California Girls and several other songs, it's pretty clear to me he's signalling he wants to do *something* dramatic there coda-wise. It might not have been the "A children's song ..." thing with the "Child is father of the man" in the background, but it would have been ... something. So it seems the 1971 song probably wasn't far from what would have resulted had they finished it in 1967.

Anyway this is off-topic. Should probably be carried on in the thread about Surf's Up in The Smile Sessions section.

Personally, I think Cabin Essence could have made a hot follow up to Good Vibrations, paired maybe with H&V, Vega-Tables, or Wonderful, Wind Chimes, or, anything really.
Surf's Up I'd rather see  remain the grand album track.