The Smiley Smile Message Board

I ask because the Smile structure style was continuing in fits and starts in later 1967 and 1968 at least, with Cool Cool Water, Can't Wait Too Long, Time to Get Alone (the Hawthorne BB version) and Old Man River, maybe as parts to an eventual new whole. After all, Pete Townshend's Lifehouse dream didn't end with the release of Who's Next, he continued to conceive songs for that project years later.

Someone was continuing it 10 years later...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INlryNFsm-0

Not sure that BW would have consciously been thinking of them as part of the SMiLE project as we might envisage it… we have the benefit of hindsight to clump those and other tunes into a sort of SMiLE-style grab-bag… personally I'd add Fall Breaks and Diamond Head.

Gotta bear in mind that resemblances might be down to the fact that it was the same guy putting them together – ie, it's more BW's personal touch than a SMiLE touch, as such.  That said, his resurrection of Surf's Up during the Wild Honey sessions is interesting and there is evidence to suggest a 10-track SMiLE was on the cards at some stage after the project itself was cancelled.  So who knows?  Only BW…

Firstly, I don't believe that Townshend was carrying around LIFEHOUSE ideas around post '71 -- despite his insistence and the post-mortem inclusion of the '78 tracks to the radio and performance piece.

I think that Brian's "continuance" of SMILE post "Da Da" was informed in all of his progressive (AOR) works as mentioned above.

It's interesting to note that it was speed that initially fueled that strain of work and coke that destroyed it.

I don't think so. He later used and/or recycled some SMiLE/SMiLE-era songs which was nothing unusual.

apparently Brian included titles like Diamond Head and Time To Get Alone when the initial SMiLE setlist was being drawn up in '03

Nope... but the person who drew up the list did.  ;)

… and didn't BW strike them off?

hmm... interesting.
either way, the fact that Brian recorded an altered version of Surf's Up during the Wild Honey sessions proves that he was still working on the material well after May

Yeah, he continued through that summer and called it Smiley Smile.

Brian recording "Surf's Up" during the Wild Honey sessions doesn't prove anything, other than that he wanted to record the song.  Not everything he recorded necessarily had a purpose beyond just messing around or seeing how something would sound for his own personal satisfaction.

the fact that he altered the chords proves that the song was still a work in progress

Is the Wild Honey version of Surf's Up on MIC ??

Yes, on the 6th disc, track 25.

It says it's a new mix, but I can't honestly hear anything different. Well, other than the added reverb.

I believe it was autotuned as well for some reason.

New mix ? There's two elements to that song, voice and piano. I guess you can mix the one louder that the other, but that's more balance than mix.

That's awesome that you acknowledge as Smile like, I totally agree with you!

That was Darien, right? Why did he include those songs? Wasn't Sail on Sailor included as well? Any other songs we're forgetting?

There's absolutely no auto-tune whatsoever. I've complained about a few mixes on MIC myself, but I think people are getting a little carried away when they start hearing auto-tune on a piano/vocals-only Surf's Up demo...

Well, they definitely autotuned parts of the "Be With Me" demo on MIC, so...

No "SO,S", at least on the list I saw. I recall being told (by the legendary SWWK*) that Darian listed all the titles with reputed Smile connections, then got Brian to yea or nay them... hence the absence of "DH" and "TTGA" (which was performed in the first set of the 2004 London shows... rather badly).

[* - Someone Who Would Know]

What??? Can you please pinpoint exactly where and when, with specific time(s) please?

Hm, I'm not really wholly convinced Brian was continuing work on "Smile" after May.  His "Wild Honey" recording of Surf's Up doesn't really prove anything other than he probably felt like playing it again, and even though he altered chords etc. doesn't prove much either.  I know if I'm in the studio I will often play a composition or two that I wrote a few years earlier "just because" and I often alter chords and melodies just for the heck of it!  I'm guessing that is what Brian was doing when he recorded this later version, and not because he considered "Smile" to still be a work in progress.  Just my two cents on the topic!

I can hear it at little places all over that track, but it's particularly evident at 1:55 ("a part of me") where the note shifts so much, so quickly and unnaturally that Dennis sounds like T pain.

How about Brad Elliott's theory (from LLVS) that Capitol intended to release the remainder of Smile after Smiley Smile (as catalogue no. Brother ST-9002) ?

"Among other things, the memo [from Capitol A&R director Karl Engeman] indicates that even after the recording of Smiley Smile, Plans were being made to finish and release Smile"

deleted. :-[

I take that memo (and I believe the memo is shown in LLVS) very seriously, just as I do the handwritten SMiLE tracklisting (whoever actually put the pen to paper).

Not to sound too "legal", but I view those types of things as evidence, simply because they are tangible. They aren't simply people talking, speculating, or lying to promote or defend a friend or favorite Beach Boy. Now, the way we interpret them is another thing.

I think  there was - even if it was for a short period of time - a plan for Brian to finish and submit SMiLE circa late 1967-68. Because of the speed that Brian recorded and because the material (for the most part) was already written, I believe Brian could've finally fit that project into his usual recording schedule which was, at that time, one or two albums per year. Yeah, I think that SMiLE would've resembled the sound of the "Wild Honey Surf's Up" or "Can't Wait To Long" or "Time To Get Alone" or songs like that.

Total speculation :police:....Maybe Brian put it on the back burner and did Smiley Smile, put it on the back burner and did Wild Honey, put it on the back burner and did Friends. Maybe by late 1968/early 1969, Brian was beginning to lose it, "it" meaning a lot things - focus, desire, interest in the SMiLE material, realizing he could no longer do the material justice because things - and he - had changed.

I'm sure Capitol had very serious intentions, considering they had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of studio time to recoup, not to mention roughly half a million covers and booklets in storage. I'm equally sure that whatever Brian told them was what he figured they wanted to hear, and that he had no intention whatsoever of going through with it.

Yeah Brian didn't seem like he wanted anything to do with Smile after the collapse. Even a year later in early 1968 he described how he stopped work on it because he was about ready to die and that "you spend so much time in the studio sometimes you decide to just chuck it after awhile". Sounds to me Smile was never meant to be finished. Even Brian had no clear idea what to do with the material.

I think you are mistaken about this. There is no unnatural vacillation between pitches around 1:55 where you are saying it's most evident. Of course there's no way for either one of us to prove this anyway -- we only have our ears to inform us -- but i'm just throwing in my assessment.

I dunno man, the way the note fluctuates there does not sound natural to me.  It sounds like either autotuning or severe digital processing (perhaps a lot of noise/hiss reduction was necessary to improve the quality of the demo).  Either way, without a bootleg version or confirmation from Boyd or Linett there's no way to know for sure.  There IS autotuning on other tracks sprinkled throughout MIC, so it's not exactly crazy to assume they might have used it to sweeten the vocals on a demo deemed too rough for public consumption.  That's exactly what they did on "Sherry, She Needs Me"

I know there is. I don’t know about other people, but i certainly didn’t suggest that it’s crazy to think it would show up anywhere on the box set. I just don’t think it’s on this demo is all. In terms of what sort of decisions might go into archival presentation and being mindful of not giving the public too hard a pill to swallow, there’s a world of difference between a lo-fi piano demo with Dennis singing pretty well and an attempt at presenting a completed studio version of Sherry, She Needs Me (where there certainly is pitch “correction” applied) with a rough, post-voice change Brian vocal. Night and day difference, i think. Which is not to say that i agree with their decision because i absolutely don't.