The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've brought this up before, but I wanted to make a topic about it just to get more people's views. One of the biggest flaws I find in Brian's early '70s music is the fades. As we all know, Brian was the master of the fade in the '60s. He made the fade an event, rather than just another way to end a song. You'd want to play the song again just to hear the ending.

On Sunflower, Brian still used his classic approach to fades. "Add Some Music" has a unique tag that disappears pretty quickly, and "This Whole World" has a brilliant finish to it. I even have to give a shout-out to "At My Window".

Surf's Up is where we start to see a change. He's more indulgent with the fades, but the brilliance of those segments almost begs for it. How do you cut "Til I Die" sooner? "A Day In The Life of a Tree" could've faded out earlier, but then he brings out Van Dyke Parks followed by Al. It almost seems justifiable. "Surf's Up" has the special aura of being a Smile track, but I'm convinced that song should've been fading out as Al finished the verse. Y'all might crucify me, but the song is 20 seconds too long IMO.

After that, Brian loses control of the fades. The fades or tags on C&TP and Holland are atrociously long by his standards. On "Mess Of Help" we're hearing the same section we'd already heard earlier from 2:50 to 3:31. It's a completely opposed to Brian's earlier practices. Don't even get me started on "Funky Pretty".  That song is almost a minute too long. "Marcella" is closer to the Surf's Up tracks in that the genius in which  the way he gradually builds up the tag almost merits the length of it.

It's interesting that with Love You, the fades are closer to Brian's classic approach, though still he doesn't get to the point quite as quickly. "Airplane" is more reminiscent of the early '70s songs in that regard.

IMO, Brian's reluctance to sing (until 15 Big Ones) on songs, the longer fades, and Brian's increasing reliance on his piano in his productions (which would've been fine if he played like Randy Newman more often, but he just played the chords about as basically as possible) had a lot to do with the group's commercial struggles.

   AHHH, if only your examples of negativity were done by Brian, you'd be on much more solid ground 

Compelling post, Mr. Cohen. I agree wholeheartedly. Must add, though, and not that you said otherwise, that Brian's piano playing seems perfectly appropiate for his ends (which is natural, considering that his songs were born at his piano). I think he has a producer's non-virtuosic approach to piano playing: his knack for voicing, rhythm, bass, feel are outstanding. A Randy Newman type of playing would not favor his music. Besides, I don't think his playing on the records became any different than, say, Fun Fun Fun. It just became more prominent. I know I'm not contradicting you, but I just wanted to mention it.

These were Brian's songs, man. If in reality he let Carl or Dennis or WHOEVER run the fade forever, it's still on Brian IMO. If Brian wanted the fade of "Funky Pretty" shorter, do you think anyone would've stopped him? "NO BRIAN, FP MUST BE OVER 4 MINUTEZ IN LENGTH PLZ K!"

Besides, if none of this was done by Brian, I want a full account of the sessions and group discussions for these songs. Tell me what really happened with the fade on "Funky Pretty", since you seem to be in the know.

I also want to clarify that I love all of these songs. As a BBs fan, I love hearing the tags go on longer. I'm just speculating on reasons why the songs weren't big commercial successes.

Interesting topic. I'd like to just add that the fade of "Hey Little Tomboy" is one of my favorite Brian fades from the 70's. And I'm talking about the MIU version, not the Adult/Child version. The little percussion instrument he adds to the MIU version for the fade (I'm not sure what instrument it is, exactly... vibraphone?) is just perfect, rather groovy.

Overall, I do agree that Brian's 70's fades were unspectacular more often than they weren't.

Exactly! Imagine "Fun, Fun, Fun" without any prominent Brian parts, and it's just the piano, a spacey minimalist bass part, and sparse drums. Would that have been a hit?

Brian's stuff around the time sounded less energetic than what had come before and I really love that. I find the long early-70s fades very charming and if they're the reason the stuff didn't sell I'm pretty sure everyone involved got over it eventually.

Carl was interviewed about "tags" or "fades" in the 70s. It's in one of the "Beach Boys Quotes" books. Longer song lengths had been coming into vogue as FM supplanted AM, and even AM hits were longer. That permitted differing styles and approaches to songwriting (and song structure) for everyone. The Beach Boys explored that direction for awhile in the early 70s. It's possible that the lengthier fades come from Carl, as he was more responsible for hands-on production during the time frame.

I think it's a mistake to overgeneralize about the concluding sections of these songs, because they are not all alike--some are "tags", which introduce completely new material into the song as it fades out, while others are extending the chorus; there are even a few that revert to the middle-8. All of these produce different effects and they should be analyzed before they are "opinionated."

To really discuss this issue, it seems to me that a much more thorough classification of the structural aspects of the concluding sections (from all portions of Brian's writing career) is what's needed. Absent that, this all reduces very quickly into total subjectivity. Some of that is always going to come into play--people respond differently and become attached to what they've come to embrace--but the discussion needs to be grounded in a much more complete context before a set of conclusions can be approached, much less arrived at.

So, was Carl was in fact responsible for the longer fades or what? Is "Marcella" Brian's song or not? We also need to make those distinctions, then. Because I'm tired of trying to discuss Brian's '70s music and people are like "it's not Brian, tho". Did Brian write the tag to "Marcella" or not?

Couldn't agree less re the opening post. The problem is that BB fades too often fade out far too soon.

Thank God that Brian decided to allow the fades to stick around a bit longer by the time it came to recording Til I Die, Funky Pretty, etc.

As for cutting short Surf's Up? No offence but... are you mad???!!!

I'm not mad, lol. Sure, if the fans had there way, "Good Vibrations" would have the "hum-dee-dum" part and an extended version of the bit Brian used to fade out the song with an edit at the end so we could transition to the chorus again fading out forever. And it wouldn't have been a hit. The shortness of the sections in Brian's hits are make them so relistenable. Long after I'm tired of the Beatles hits, I'm still loving Brian's music. I once timed it out, and the average length of a section of music in "Fun, Fun, Fun" was like 15 seconds or something, and there are tons of variations.

That was Brian's genius. That's why he was next level.

Completely agree about the fade to Surf's Up. Never liked it. I think it'd be better to just fade out after the verse parts are sung as well. The "Na Na" lyrics are pretty bad to my ears and I hate how they and the recycled Child vocals are all you hear for a good couple seconds. Really leaves that song on a sour note, imo.

Cant agree re Surf's Up. The fade is what the entire song builds towards!

And i'm glad Brian chopped out the 'hum-de-um' part of GV, but yeah, i wish that fade had stuck around for another 5 seconds or so at least...

Wah.  I generally have a lot of time for you and your madcap obsessions and theories, Mujan, but the playout of "Surf's Up" is possibly my favourite thing in the whole of musical history, and so, for all that you'll care, I'm afraid that you are now dead to me.

Love the Airplane fade - that song becomes almost like a medley of 2 songs! That's a long fade.

BTW, to me Dennis was paying a lot of attention to these, some his late 70s fades are amazing too.

I'd post a pic of Mr. Wonderful if it weren't so hard to upload images.

Glad you dig my other theories though.

Great topic. Did a similar one a couple years ago:

Brian's Codas (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php?topic=15268.0)

This.

Y'all love that "na na na" bit that much?

And one that contains a solid start at listing all the "tags/codas" and thus could form the basis for a more detailed discussion/analysis.

As for "Marcella" etal, I'd love to see Billy chime in with what he found out about who did what on the CATP sessions. BW and Reiley have the credit for "Marcella" and "Mess of Help," but who laid out the final song sequence, arranged the instrumentation/vocals is still a bit unclear. We do know that Carl liked tags, and earlier he'd used one of his own on "Feel Flows."

That whole coda usually brings tears to my eyes. It's that good.

"Surf's Up" works both ways, but Brian's decision to add a lyrics-based tag personifying the "children's song" is a complete vindication of the problematic "mosaic composition" approach. And, yes, the release from the complex, increasingly dark emotions stirred up as the song progresses is a moment that rarely fails to produce "tears of joy"--that contradictory emotional state that no one, but no one, captures better than Brian Wilson.

I'll be one of the few to sorta kinda agree with you. Way back in the early days of my BB fandom, I was really, really into the fade of Surf's Up ('71 version)... but perhaps later learning that it was grafted/shoehorned on there years after the fact (even with Brian's half-involvement), it didn't quite sit right with me anymore. It felt like someone doctored with the original intention for the ending. Drew a mustache on the Mona Lisa, so to speak. Even if there are some very pretty vocal parts on there nonetheless. Maybe that's in my own mind, I don't know. But I don't quite like the fade as much as I used to.

I guess that part of Surf's Up ('71 version) is a bit how I've grown to feel about much of the "additions" to BWPS as a whole, does anyone else see it that way too? They've both grown off me some.

However, I love love love the wordless vocal fade that Brian sings on the '66 demo version. It's very She Knows Me Too Well-ending-esque. I think that relatively stripped down way is closer to what it would have been released as SU (song) it had come out in '66/'67.

I completely agree with everything you said. I won't go into detail because it's irrelevant to this topic and I've done so in-depth in the past, but that was my experience with the SU fade and with BWPS exactly.

I think the Na Nas are pointless and just make it sound busy, the CIFOTM lyrics are alright but almost certainly not the original intent, but I do like the "and the children know the way" lyrics and think they'd sound good with just the "aahs" and wailing horn section from Talking Horns.

Anyway...

I'm not as well-versed on the Boys' output in the 70s except Sunflower and Love You. None of the fades on either album stood out to me as particularly bad or good. I definitely agree though that Brian was the master of tags in the 60s. I think he reached his zenith with Cabin Essence, in that regard.

The Cabin Essence fade is so rad, it's ridiculous. With that fuzz bass. So. damn. good. That's the sound of the Beach Boys tipping their toe into the progressive fuzzed-out rock era. That's the sound that, if released in '66 and followed up with some fuzz bass at a BB Monterey Pop performance of that song, would have given them the cred they were lacking amongst the hipsters.  Brian knew what he was doing.

But the fade that sucks me in every single time is Til I Die. Also, simply ridiculous how good it is. On the various CD versions that I have with Til I Die on it (Sunflower/SU 2-fer, The Very Best of the BBs, Made in CA, etc), I recall some versions fading out a bit quicker (not ending quicker, but the volume fade starting sooner) and that really bugged me once I heard other versions that seemed to stretch that fade out as long as it could go, which is how I want to always listen to the song now. I've never done an A/B comparison, but I'm pretty certain there's been fade differences between various reissues. (Same with California Girls I think).
 

Mixed feelings here regarding the Surf's Up coda. The fragment itself is beautiful, musically speaking it is a smooth departure from the rest of the song; it also incorporates the "Child" Smile idea (including arrangement ideas) into a different harmonic and rhythmical context. Lyrically, however, it clashes with the rest of the song in a way that no "mosaic" construction clashes in BW's output. Musically, the coda integrates with the rest of the song, and resolves beautifully; Brian had been equally successful at combining even more musically-contrasting fragments. In this case, however, the pamphlet-like quality of the lyrics is so distinct to the style of the rest of the song, and so thematically-departed that it's hard to stomach ("the children know the way" meh).

Can't fathom the Surf's Up complaints. Seriously, is there a single Beach Boys song in existence that EVERYONE here would agree was perfection or are their people here who even dislike bits of, say, God Only Knows??

During the ultimate survivor bracket, at least one person said he wasn't a fan of the bridge.   :o

Different strokes, man.

I'm not so sure about that. The theme of the main part of the song describes a decadent society starting to decay. Then the coda tells us that the children know the way. In other words, the coda tells us the answer to the problem presented in the main part of the song.

^So here we are presented the problem of a decadent society, and then in the last verse we're given an introduction to the answer ...

^The child is the father of the man could be interpreted to mean that the children are the real leaders and we should follow them to solve the problem of the decadent and decaying society. Child-like = renewal.

Works pretty well if you ask me. :)

The two songs are definitely linked. No doubt about that. Just like Heroes and Worms are linked thematically. The question is, would entire pieces of one song be reused in another like that? While that's the way it eventually happened, in '66, I don't think that was the plan.

Now, for someone who's more familiar with Brian's solo work...how do the fades hold up there?

BTW, one other thing ... don't know how many people have figured this out, but here goes anyway:

This is obviously a reference to Frère Jacques (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXI7KEUbSxM) which in English translates (http://www.babycenter.com/0_lullaby-lyrics-are-you-sleeping-fr-egrave-re-jacques_6741.bc)
The melody of the passage in Surf's Up is obviously the same as the lullaby.

This, of course, is a lullaby (a children's song). So we are given two clues to the resolution of the problem deep within the description of the problem itself.

Surely you don't think a stoned Van Dyke Parks couldn't fail to be so clever. ;)

Naw, the lyrics on the coda should've been:

A children's aria
The aria of Arabia
Have you eared their cornfield play
The children mute the trumpeter
Na na nation
Excitation

I am soooo glad Brian did not use Mr Cohen as his lyricist.

I remember a long time ago reading an interview and Carl mentioned that they were big fans of "tags". Wish I could find the article.

The fade on Forever comes a little too quickly, in my opinion. As you hear in this extended vocals-only version of the song, the harmonizing between the three Wilsons goes on for a good 20 seconds after the released version fades out. The left out harmonies, with the exception of Brian's ear-piercing shriek at the end, are fantastic and deserve to be in the song's final cut, in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvzp3rfPL4k#t=137

Just had to revive this old thread to belatedly mention how amazing the fade is for "The Like In I Love You" from BWRG. When I first heard it, I had to replay the tag portion over and over again, and I still feel the same way.

I'm gonna say this is the second best tag/fade of Brian's solo career, bested only by Melt Away (original issue BW88 version).  Anyone else agree?