The Smiley Smile Message Board

Between The Beatles and The Beach Boys who do you think made better sounding psychadelic music?  I always believed Smile was by far a bigger trip than Pepper.

And SMiLEY is a far bigger trip than SMiLE or Pepper, or for that matter, Are You Experienced. I think the Monkees made trippier music than the Beatles.

The Beatles just made interesting pop songs. Brian was always doing way more than that. All the things that lead people to assume the Beatles as the God's of inventive pop music are just little tricks they craftily conjured with the help of others in the studio.

Best Beach Boy psychedelia: (This will include some choices that others will not agree with)

Our Prayer
The Warmth Of The Sun
Bridge (Mahala lu lay) to Do You Like Worms
Be Here In the Mornin'
Wake The World
Cabinessence
Child Is Father Of The Man

........
I'm not sure how everybody technically defines psychedelia, but from how I interpret it the Beach Boys made a very spiritual kind of psych music. They didn't have flanged solo's going around for 20 minutes, and they didn't have long drawn out jam sessions on stage. What they did was beautiful and it will take a person to a much higher plane than a guitar solo and a colorful light show.

I'd say:

She's Goin' Bald
Good Vibrations
Diamond Head
Celebrate The News
Wind Chimes
Fall Breaks And Back To Winter
Cool Cool Water

I forgot Wind Chimes! That song is absolutely amazing. One of the greatest lyrics I've heard, it's so simple and some find it to be terrible, but I find it to be perfect for the song and the subject. "Now and then, a tear rolls off my cheek." PERFECT. Imagine a visual of that, with a single tear slowly dripping off from the eye, down the face, and off to the ground. Drooping down as if time were going slower than usually perceived.

http://guilds.outpost10f.com/~poetry/contest/july04/images/tear.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Beach_Boys_-_Wild_Honey_%28single%29.jpg

The Beatles defined psychedelia forever with Tomorrow Never Knows...which was recorded in 1965!! There is nothing trippier or earlier in mainstream LSD rock. Brian took a more organic approach and found something beyond psychedelic...I have no words that do Smile justice...but its farther out in a way than anything the Beatles did...but I think Tomorrow Never Knows and I Am The Walrus are bookends of some of the best LSD music ever made. The other great LSD LP is the Piper At The Gates of Dawn by Syd Barret's Pink Floyd. I don't think its fair to Brian or the Beatles to say one is better...they were completely different in their approach and they both found new ground to break.

What exactly is psychedelic music, Mr. F? My perception of the differences between American psychedelic, British psychedelic, and certain brands of sunshine pop is beginning to blur around the edges a bit. Or maybe it's something I ate.

I will say this: the Beach Boys were a big influence on British psych. I hear in SPLHCB and especially Penny Lane emulation of Pet Sounds (though I understand that most will not agree with me on that point.) Andrew Oldham loved PS, and that somehow must have helped push the Stones and Small Faces in that direction.

As far as Diamond Head goes, as I. Spaceman mentioned below - Martin Denny all the way, if that's your idea of psychedelia. For that matter, I'd classify much of the SMiLE music as quirky and idiosyncratic (like Zappa's music of that time), not psychedelic.


Yes.

I believe there is a big difference between British and American Psychedelia circa 1966-67, and as we are keeping this to the Beatles and Beach boys, I won't mention the Jefferson Airplane and Warlocks(later Grateful Dead) from 1965 San Fran. But I will correct that "Tomorrow never Knows" was actually recorded in 1966, as was Good Vibrations, Surf's Up, and Cabinessence, when you think about it. 1966 was when psychedelia hit the mainstream, being a watershed year. Although history will record 1967 as the 'summer of love' ...Surrealistic Pillow in March, Sgt Pepper in June of that year, defining the mood of the summer, and raising the bar for future releases...Why? Because Smile was never released..!!! It's sad, and a pity, and a waste of unbelievable music, but the Truth is...SMILE WASN'T THERE. It will never be included in the mix of albums that really define the year, although my imagination likes to put the release date as March 17th, 1967..By God, if I had a say, I would have pushed hard for that release date and knocked everybody's socks off, a full 3 months before Pepper, Smile would have defined the years mood and direction. The Beatles won the race of 1967...as much as I love Brian and the Boys, one cannot compete with Pepper with dead air, or a quickly thrown together giggle like Smiley Smile fer Gawd sakes. To get closer to responding to the qustion posed in this thread, Psychedelia is a lot like love-making. The best is very subjective, and is in direct proportion to one's mood and preference at the time of impact......

is sail plane song psychadelic?

I don't think so, but some people would probably disagree. Is 'Yellow Submarine' psychadelic?

no, to me, it's a kids song

HELL yes. Good pick.

Yellow Sub is psych if yo watch the film while chemically enhanced.

I will probably get attacked for this, but to me, the difference is that the Beatles' psychadelic music always seems a little bit "forced" or "acted", while Brian actually WAS a weird, druggy, psychadelic person.

I prefer the poppier psych music like Strawberry Alarm Clock, or The Hollie's "On A Carousel", or "Wedding Bell Blues" by the 5th Dimension, etc.

That's why I quoted some early songs. Brian's melodies were always these amazing things that were psychedelic in their own way. "I'll dream of her arms..." If that isn't the best psychedelia then I don't know what to say.

I understand your 'forced' thing about the Beatles. When I listen to John's most popular Beatles psych songs, they often seem like they're just John trying to be cool. Stylistic things rather than a genuine feel for it, I'd say.

But John wasn't "trying" to be cool...he was creating a genre that didn't exist...and don't give me Grateful Dead or Charlatans...they didn't sound psychedelic at all...they took psychedelics...but their music wasn't lysergic like Lennon's Revolver tunes. The Airplane and Big Brother had definite psych-ish sounds in some of their stuff...as did lesser knows like Count Five, Choc. Watch band, Love...but looking at the Beatles now... they have become too mainstream to appreciate them in the context of the time. I remember what it was like to listen to Tomorrow Never Knows in 1966...it was shocking. It came to us in a world that didn't have music like that...there wasn't anything even close...and it changed everything.

No one has mentioned Strawberry Fields Forever.

Strawberry Fields Forever is pretty clever, lyrically.. some of the weirdest lines in that were achieved through simple means:

One of the stanzas or whatever was, "No one I think is in my wavelength, I mean it must be high or low, that is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad." Makes perfect sense, right? Oh, but wavelength isn't commercial enough, let's change it to tree! No one in a tree? Not being able to tune into a tree? That's crazy drug music right there!

Well I don't think wavelength could've been sung sounding as pretty as 'tree'.

Uhhh, you never heard tree as a euphemism for scene and-or headspace????

"Wavelength" is too many sylables.  Plus, "tree" is one of the coolest words ever.  Just look at it.  T-R-E-E.  Telling us John Lennon was a creative writer isn't much of a revelation, btw. 

Aegir was talking about something which was either in a book or posted somewhere on the internet. It was a theory about the lyric in that song being John questioning others and their closeness (or distance) from what he perceived to be his level of genius.

"No one I think is on my level" could be a way of seeing it from that theory.

And for a guy who thought for at least a day that he was Jesus Christ -- I wouldn't put it past his ego to assume that theory correct.

There is the phrase "out of his tree" meaning "he's gone mad" or "he's taken some drugs and has become unhinged"...................

Well said my friend, you and I both are champions of Smiley Smile, it is by far a more trippier, freakier listening experiance than Pepper and even SMiLE.

My view of psychadelic music is any music that assaults the listener's senses with colorful soundscapes of experimental noise.  It's often been said that the British do pyschadelic muisc better but I feel many American bands made more appealing pyschadelic music, at least to me, ie The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix etc.

Released in 1962, but still one of the trippiest songs I've ever heard.

I don't see the "no one I think is in my tree" line as any different than the general mood of "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times". Just another depiction of loneliness. By the way, Lennon's quote about Christ was in the context of the Beatles' extraordinary popularity; he was astonished that his band was perceived as being "bigger than Jesus" which really wasn't much of an exaggeration in 1966. Again, there's a difference between commenting on being more popular than Jesus Christ to the masses and claiming to be better than Jesus Christ, although a number of folks in the U.S. couldn't differentiate between those two ideas at the time.

As for psychedelia: Brian did some wonderful mind-expanding music during the "Smile" era and after, but the Beatles really ruled this genre. In other words, "Good Vibrations" is a better song than "Strawberry Fields Forever" but the latter blows the former away in terms of psychedelia. And yes, George Martin should be properly credited for first utilizing effects that would become standard in psychedelic productions.

I can't believe that no one has mentioned the first big psych hit, "Eight Miles High" or discussed YtY or Notorious as great pyschedelic music that blew at least the Beatles' pysch music away.

You're entirely right, of course. Renaissance Fair and Tribal Gathering are prime examples.

How about the Small faces doing "Itchycoo Park",was that psychadelic?
Big Bri

Eight Miles High - I know it's psychedelic, but I just can't hear it that way anymore. Just great Byrds music with the Coltrane-inspired guitar overlay. Transcends the 'psych' label.

Regarding the original question, songs like Strawberry Fields and Walrus define a certain type of psych in a way no Beach Boy music ever did, or could.

Even GV, though?  Certainly psychedelic, and certainly monumental. 

Good question, and a point well taken. GV is another one I don't hear as psych anymore - but that's just me.

Andrew Oldham's comments on Good Vibrations pretty much solidify the fact that the song is a great psychedelic piece in its own way. GV is odder than Strawberry Fields Forever to my ears. Stripped of its production, SFF could be a nice folky tune. Whereas stripped of its production, GV is still a very odd piece.

I Am the Walrus, to me, isn't psychedelic, it's just weird and purposely confusing. The Shakespeare play on the radio accidently mixed in makes for some pysch, but it was unintentional and therefore I can't attribute it to the song itself.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, even ignoring the lyrics, was very psychedelic, though. The vocals, especially. The first time hearing, those backing vocals in the chorus (the "aahhhhh"s) were just, wow. Blue Jay Way is psychedelic even though it's just about George's friends getting lost on on their way to his house, just because of the way it was played and recorded.

But the weirdest thing was seeing Strawberry Fields Forever on the old Beatles cartoon, what a crazy episode.

The Shakespeare play was not accidentally mixed in, it was purely intentional. What happened to be on the radio was by chance, but the radio feed was by design.

Just what IS psychedelic?  I thought Blows Against the Empire was psychedelic.  But toward the end of the night I would listen to the Byrds Unntitled or Pink Floyds Atom Heart Mother.........if I were a swan I'd be gone....marmalade..I like marmalade....


I was never big on Beatles as music to accompany astral plane travel...same with the Beachboys....

I did enjoy Abbey Road as pleasant smoking ambience and Holland was also good for that sort of thing.

Did any of you ever get into Lost Chord, Threshold or Childrens x3 by the moodys?  Nice traveling music if ever there was.   A soft magic carpet.

What I like are the Beatles' psychedelic lyrics, especially Strawberry Fields Forever, Baby You're A Rich Man, and It's All Too Much.  For me, those songs describe it well

The best psych music really is by the 13th Floor Elevators. Nearly every song they wrote is about the psychedelic acid experience.

13th Floor Elevators 
Slip Inside This House 

Bedoin tribes ascending
From the egg into the flower,
Alpha information sending
State within the heaven shower
From disciples the unending
Subtleties of river power
They slip inside this house as they pass by

If your limbs begin dissolving
In the water that you tread
All surroundings are evolving
In the stream that clears your head
Find yourself a caravan
Like Noah must have led
And slip inside this house as you pass by.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

True conception, knowing why
Brings even more than meets the eye
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

In this dark we call creation
We can be and feel and know
From an effort, comfort station
That's surviving on the go
There's infinite survival in
The high baptismal glow.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

There is no season when you are grown
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown
There is no reason to rise alone
Other stories given have sages of their own.

Live where your heart can be given
And your life starts to unfold
In the forms you envision
In this dream that's ages old
On the river layer is the only sayer
You receive all you can hold
Like you've been told.

Every day's another dawning
Give the morning winds a chance
Always catch your thunder yawning
Lift your mind into the dance
Sweep the shadows from your awning
Shrink the fourfold circumstance
That lies outside this house don't pass it by.

Higher worlds that you uncover
Light the path you want to roam
You compare there and discover
You won't need a shell of foam
Twice born gypsies care and keep
The nowhere of their former home
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

You think you can't, you wish you could
I know you can, I wish you would
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

Four and twenty birds of Maya
Baked into an atom you
Polarized into existence
Magnet heart from red to blue
To such extent the realm of dark
Within the picture it seems true
But slip inside this house and then decide.

All your lightning waits inside you
Travel it along your spine
Seven stars receive your visit
Seven seals remain divine
Seven churches filled with spirit,
Treasure from the angels' mine
Slip inside this house as you pass by.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

The space you make has your own laws
No longer human gods are cause
The center of this house will never die.

There is no season when you are grown
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown
There is no reason to rise alone
Other stories given have sages of their own.

Draw from the well of unchanging
Its union nourishes on
In the right re-arranging
Till the last confusion is gone
Water-brothers trust in the ultimust
Of the always singing song they pass along.

One-eyed men aren't really reigning
They just march in place until
Two-eyed men with mystery training
Finally feel the power fill
Three-eyed men are not complaining.
They can yo-yo where they will
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
Don't pass it by.

 

woah there buckaroo!
Eight Miles High December 65.
Sunshine Superman December 65.
Grim Reaper Of Love - um....earlier?

all before Tomorrow Never Knows.



i just had to edit this cos i forgot to mention The Incredible String Band.
Come on! you know its freakier that anything anyone else ever managed or imagined.
no studio trickery, just two insanse scottish folkies with wierd instruments and weird ideas.
you know you want some string band magic!

Brain went "psychedelic" without the studio effects - a lot of people equate psychedelic with tape manipulation, bizarre effects, strange sounds, etc. but Brian's was more "mind music" than "psychedelic." To categorize "Smile" as psychedelic is like calling Charles Ives' music psychedelic (which is more like music to listen to while on LSD).

question, how is wedding bell blues psychadelic?  not say it isn't and i've always heard that 5th dimension was of that persuasion, but i didn't grow up then, and i have a hard time figuring these things out

let's have a good convo of how SMiLE, Smiley, and possibly parts of Wild Honey are psychadelic...i'd love to hear what people think

I agree, Wedding Bell Blues just seems like a normal pop song to me. A great normal pop song, very catchy, but I don't see any psychedelia in it.

i see it as a mama's/papa's-esq song...with that ragtime piano & all

Sorry to post a year after you mentioned this since I had mentioned it as a psychedelic song earlier in the post... yes you're right it's not very psychedelic but I always saw the 5th dimension as psychedelic, mainly because of their name and their look.

That song came out in 69 on the Aquarius album

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/18/71030261_38b6dcea40.jpg?v=0)

Beatles.

I'd say doing psychedelia better is nothing to be proud of anyway. Both made great music that spanned genres.

**let's have a good convo of how SMiLE, Smiley, and possibly parts of Wild Honey are psychadelic...i'd love to hear what people think**

In the traditional sense of the term, I think the Baby Boomers feel like they almost own the pop culture evocation of the acid experience. I disagree, and feel like acid and hallucination in general has had other valid genres in music and art. But in terms of late '60s, I don't hear much in the way of acid expression on "Wild Honey." That might sound a bit stupid. I guess I'd just define it as musically or lyrically evoking the experience of mind alteration, which might also include dropping out, Eastern philosophy, meditation and the zodiac. The organ on 'How She Boogooloo'd It" is definitely psychedelic.

I think "Smile" and "Smiley Smile" are as psychedelic as they come. I imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't think so.

1. The Beatles' LOVE mixes in surround on a great system (particularly STRAWBERRY and WALRUS and some of the collages) come closest to what I THOUGHT I was hearing in those glory days when I used to get blitzed. A 3-D glasses exploded view of their music, where every detail hangs in mid-air around the room...)

Other Beatles psych candidates besides Tomorrow in terms of feel or ambience:

I'm Only Sleeping
Blue Jay Way
Only a Northern Song
Long, Long, Long
Rain
Revolution 9
Baby You're a Rich Man
Hello, Goodbye
Magical Mystery Tour
Day in the Life
Flying

2. The ultimate psychedelic listening experience for me in college (albeit a little late, 1973) was Side 1 of Todd Rundgren's A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR, straight through. The acoustic spaces and cartoon places (and the sheer beauty of the endless layers of background vox, inseparable from the instruments in the spacious mix) was the closest approximation of the psychedelic experience for me. You would fly right off the cliff into space at the end of LE FEEL INTERNACIONALE. It was an absolute shock coming off of the brilliant pop of SOMETHING/ANYTHING...became a Friday night ritual in my dorm room. That album was truly visionary, in the SONG CYCLE sense (another great album to trip to - imagine this album re-mixed in DTS surround...).

ECHOES side 2 by Floyd was also a place to go on occasion.

3. SMILEY, for me, is much more about pot than acid.

Syd Barret is the most psychadelic songwriter there ever was, IMO.

God rest his soul.

 :rock


The Beatles and BB's wrote some incredible psychadelic songs, but EVERYTHING Syd did sounds psychadelic--

For my part, the Beatles did psychedelic music much better. Brian doesn't even approach what they were doing, because it wasn't his fight. His music, as he said himself, isn't psychedelic, it's psychedelicate. It's a whole other ballgame. He didn't write music intended to be psychedelic, he wanted to hit the heights.

It's a funny question anyway; and I'm surprised in six pages, no-one has mentioned the theory in Revolution In The Head: that LSD affected the English and the Americans differently. That something in our (British) genetics or upbringing / experiences made the music the Brits made go one way, and the American mind go another.

The Brits take acid and revert to childhood - look at Piper, or Traffic's "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" or The Beatles' stuff: "When I was a boy, everything was right" / "All the world is birthday cake" plus the Northern childhood semi-concept that is Peppers - all floral clocks, Lewis Carroll, circuses and other off-kilter Victoriana. Everyone's in toytown.

The American musicians largely went revolutionary or in some other way future oriented - "Up Against the Wall" or "Change Is Now".

Not even close to a perfect theory, but I just thought I should throw it in.

That's an interesting theory. As an American, I prefer the British's "Everyone's In Toytown" take on psychedelia. If we are to judge SMiLE as Brian's psychedelic album, it seems he is more taken with the British approach as well. But instead of Victoriana, SMiLE embraces the wild west and the pioneers which I guess would be the American equivalent.

I think psychedelia in general was best in 1966.  By the time of Sgt. Pepper in mid 67, it had gone over the top.

The intro to Cal Girls is way psychedelic...very mystical, a sense of bright sun, aural candy....and then you come back to earth as the verses kick in.

Revolver is the best psychedelic album with Piper at the Gates of Dawn a close second.

Smiley Smile is a weed album.

The mono versions of both.

No contest, the Beatles.  Brian made music inspired by drug experiences, but the music was not itself "psychedelic"  (i.e. trying to replicate in sound the psychedelic experience or making the subject matter of the song drugs). 

**If we are to judge SMiLE as Brian's psychedelic album, it seems he is more taken with the British approach as well. But instead of Victoriana, SMiLE embraces the wild west and the pioneers which I guess would be the American equivalent.**

Musically, maybe. There are some definite campy elements to the "Smile" productions. But lyrically, it'd be hard for me to label songs like "Bicycle Rider," "Wonderful," "Child Is the Father of the Man" or "Surf's Up" as toytown.

I don't do that kinda stuff, but Dark Side of the Moon makes me feel like I should. The spacey chords, tons of phasers and watery guitars. So good.
Also, Wizard a True Star is mindblowing as well. So much packed on those songs.

Well, of course John's use of the term "toytown" was a catchall. The point being that American psychedelia was more on the order of "Let's start a revolution" and "these are the shapes of things to come in the 21st dimension" whereas SMiLE's more childlike interest in cowboys and indians, vegetables and barnyards is closer to the nostalgic British version of psychedelia. To compare the Beatles and Beach Boys: "Wonderful" = "She's Leaving Home", "Surf's Up" = "A Day In The Life", "Child Is Father Of The Man" = "Tomorrow Never Knows", etc.

I see. Makes sense.

"Smile" is very playful, although there seems to be some slight revolution lyrics.

Yeah, but the revolution had already passed, because surely they were singing about the colonization of the United States. Singing about a golden future that had already happened centuries ago. That's pretty cool. Driving the golden spike and moving on to civilization and utopia, as if it hadn't already happened.

Although the main Worms theme is very music-boxy.

"Come about hard and join the young."

I think they used some of those colonial subjects as way of interpreting for then-present relevance. Plus, Van Dyke seems to be obsessed with America as flawed, improvisational subject. I said it somewhere else, but VDP approached America in an almost post-modern way.

Maybe the concept was they were mapping the new young America, and it paralleled the mapping of the old America.

Pretty simple reason for this - as Robyn Hitchcock recently noted - you guys were getting killed in Vietnam, had civil rights traumas, Watergate break-ins and a lot to protest about. We (Brits) were happily drinking tea, listening to Bookends and the Incredible String Band, and pretending to be really radical at the Isle of Wight festival by, er, not paying to get in.

Big parallel with that song to 'Busy Doin' Nothin'?
Both songs take on an eerie aftertaste in light of the Manson events of a year or so later. Did he get lost in Beverley Hills too?

What do you mean "you guys"? I'm in Manchester, England. :D

Hitchcock may be right, but I don't think that accounts for the childlike music-hally nature of things in 1967 British music.

I think the first pysch-rock song released is "See My Friends" by the Kinks, certainly the earliest to use raga-inspired riffs as well.  released july 30 65, which predates the release of "sunshine superman" and "eight miles high" by at least a few months.

Surely it was all in the mind of the bee holder.

Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa, CSN, and Jefferson Airplane all were equally interesting during those times of introspection and heightend perception.  I found George Harrison Electronic Sounds positively mind zappling one day.