The Smiley Smile Message Board

This seems highly tendentious to me. I don't hear much of Smile in Pepper, and in case the template for Pepper was laid down with Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane, recorded late 66. Also I doubt all 4 Beatles were traveling together in early 67. I assume that a check of Lewisohn on Beatles day by day activities could debunk this.

This was investigated shortly after the book was published (can't recall if it was here or another forum - someone will recall) and it swiftly emerged that, unless The Beatles, individually or collectively, entered the US illegally, no-one was in the right place at the right time. As I recall, the source was VDP and when later pressed he merely noted that both albums used sound effects. Except that Smile didn't, unless you count "Fire".

Plus the animal sound effects on Barnyard.

Possibly. Have to listen again, but last time I did (granted back in 2011) my impression was that they were people making animal noises as opposed to actual animal SFX

This has been a topic raised several times on the board, but it's always worth a revisit! Has some if it gone into conspiracy-theory territory, I'd say yes. But there are still some interesting points to run through the machine and see what comes out when new eyes and ears get on it.

First - There is a wild card that hasn't been mentioned yet, again one that has been raised before. Derek Taylor. He was working for both Brian and The Beatles in various capacities in 1966-67, he and his wife had moved to Los Angeles but he would still travel to the UK as part of his work. Anyone, feel free to post the exact dates and travelogues of Derek Taylor, but he was in fact doing press releases for Brian during Smile, he's in the "Sloop" pool film, and he was still involved personally with The Beatles as he had been throughout the 60's despite his relocation to the US.

Now it is known that Derek heard Brian's works in progress during Smile, and was actively writing pieces which would appear as news reports and PR releases as Smile was being made, right? And it is also known that Brian up to a point was far more open with letting people hear his studio work, whether it was inviting them into the studio for actual sessions, inviting groups to his house for listening parties or just to get their opinions on his work, and he would play either acetates or tape dubs of various music he had recorded whether it was for a neighbor like Mark Volman who would drop in and listen through headphones to Brian's recordings or through things like the acetate listening party described by Jules, or through playing these things for friends as Vosse described he and David asking him to play certain sections of Smile again and again, things like a Wind Chimes dub that blew them away.

So he played this stuff, again up to a point where some reported he felt his ideas were being nicked by some of those who heard them. There is even the case of Jules saying Brian actually gave him some of these rough acetates, so who knows who else may have received a disc or two or five from Brian as a gift.

Now factor in Derek Taylor. Was he there as often as Vosse, Anderle, Volman, Hutton, et al? Someone answer that question definitively, because at this point minus a day-by-day journal we don't know who exactly was around and how often they were around. But it could be said putting together what we do know that Derek was at least a presence, and was working in a professional capacity to write and then publish reports from the sessions working as a PR agent or even as a journalist for hire along the lines of what Vosse did for Teen Set in '66.

Now what if...Derek Taylor reported back to the Beatles, one or all four, what Brian was doing in the studio as a simple case of McCartney asking him as a fan of Brian and the Beach Boys "so what's Brian up to with this new record?" and Derek would let him know what he knew? Nothing malicious, nothing underhanded, just a mutual friend passing on the word of what two groups who mutually admired one another have been recording. What if...Derek like Jules had been given an actual recording, acetate, tape, whatever, of something Brian had done and could speak more specifically on what Brian was doing, and vice versa? Look at the Smile boots, look at the Beatles boots...they would get dubs made of what they did and take them home. The Lennon estate had stacks of these recordings of John's for one, the Beach Boys archives had copies of home tapes, test edits, and acetates of one-off Smile mixes.

Could there be a possibility that at some point at least word of or a description of something being tracked in LA circa Fall 1966 had gotten back to the UK? There may be quotes like "we never heard a note", which would stand up. But what if someone said "Paul, man, you should have heard Brian cutting this piano track, he put all kinds of tape echo and reverb on it and then deliberately made it feed back into noise, then he added another piano on top, and it was spectacular, then he put clips of a conversation among the musicians on top of those tracks and put effects on that too..."

Possible, right?

Now this has been posted here before as well, but listen to this Beatles (mostly McCartney) session tape from the second week of January 1967. It's a combination of sessions for Penny Lane, but mostly McCartney playing piano and the various woodwind overdubs being rehearsed with studio conversations left intact. keep in mind I've said numerous times before and stand by this 100% no matter what some have said:

Penny Lane's instrumental track was McCartney's attempt to do what Brian did on Wouldn't It Be Nice. Shuffle rhythm, similar "walking" bass line, steady pounding quarter notes on multiple keyboard instruments, throw in some exotic winds and sounds like Cor Anglais and piccolo trumpet...it's a UK version of Brian's WIBN.

Yet listen to this Jan '67 session especially from about 2 minutes in. That piano is being treated to multiple studio effects. Someone is "warbling" the sound via that Abbey Road ADT method, messing with the tape oscillator and speed to get the flanging, detuning, and warble. There is also tape echo sometimes being over-applied to the point of near feedback, similar to what Brian's fans know as the "tape explosion" effects from Smile. The piano tracks and the conversations are being effected at various times, sound familiar?

So the point is, January 1967 - Listen to that Penny Lane tape and consider if McCartney had been playing different chords it could have sounded like a Smile outtake minus the ADT-flanging-warbling (which Brian wasn't really doing in the studio). Yes, of course McCartney and Brian could have been listening to some of the same electronic composers who had been working with tape loops and manipulating sound via tape machines and effects, but doesn't it sound at least similar to a Smile outtake to hear McCartney at work in early '67? Where else in the Beatles history previous to this was there such a sound being attempted, and at this point Brian had already done work like this months prior.

Food for thought, that's all.  :)

Penny Lane extended session, early January 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17BmJHUECFU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17BmJHUECFU)

VDP unfortunately displays some conspiracism in the book, like it's the JFK assassination

I gotta say....I really like Dom; he's a nice guy, and I personally find his taste in music impeccable, but...man, whenever I see "priore" and "claim" in the same sentence, I get out my salt shaker.

I've not read the book for a few years, but it sticks in my mind that the "Beatles-covertly-heard-Smile-tapes" claim was very specific in that they heard them when they were being stored at Armin Steiner's Sound Recorders, the 2nd (3rd ?) studio in LA with an 8-track facility. Not down the phone... not on a pilfered acetate... they went into Sound Recorders and listened to the original session tapes. To my mind, the biggest piece of evidence against any such thing having happened is the complete and utter silence of one James Paul McCartney on this topic. Given his very nature, surely in 1993, and above all in 2011, he'd have popped up somewhere chirping "y'know I heard all this stuff back in the sixties, man, it was gear, groovy" (winks, thumbs up). That and the timeline which precludes anyone listening to anything in time for ti to inform Pepper. It may be that my recall is imperfect, but that's how I remember it.

And I'm sorry, but by saying this...


...you're just inviting general mirth, if not actual ridicule by stating that if Paulie was playing something completely different to what he was playing, it might have sounded like a Smile outtake ?  Seriously ??  That's more qualifications than a room full of astrophysicists. ;D

With all due respect, this is such a dumb topic. And really, shame on those who’ve mislead or blindly perpetrated this myth -- which is all connected to the hangup that The Beach Boys weren’t The Beatles and that Brian Wilson wasn’t Lennon/McCartney. It all stems from fan hangups. (e.g. My team was robbed of the pennant!)

Knowing what I know about Paul McCartney and The Beatles I can honestly say, that as much as McCartney loved Pet Sounds and Brian Wilson’s work, he really only had a passing interest in it. The same as Lennon had with Dylan. It was a case of “Wow, this is my peer. One of my ONLY peers. They get it, too.” But Paul McCartney had so much magic pouring out of him in 1966/1967, that he didn’t need to crib ideas -- and as we all know, he’s gone on record stating he wasn’t so hot on “Good Vibrations.”

The only artist Paul McCartney was ever chomping at the bit to hear their new works was John Lennon.
And that’s that.

That's what I love about Howie (aside from his being a damn fine journalist and writer: I loved the liners on the latest Who comp before I knew they were his): he sits back and watches the rest of us rage and dance ourselves into a state of exhaustion then, as we lay gasping and red-faced on the ground, concisely informs us as to exactly why we're wrong, or - more often - why it really doesn't matter. He's a living exponent of "less-is-more". Also a very nice guy, even when he's telling me I'm talking enhanced bollocks. Especially when he's telling me that, actually.  ;D

And, you usually both come off sounding like a couple of dicks. So you have that in common, too.

Wow.

Where's THAT coming from grown-up man with a make-believe name on a message board about his favorite singing group?

I've never even heard of you before.
(Maybe that's your beef with me. NOW I know you. But now I know you as the guy who called me a d ick.)

And AGD, thank you.
Kind words -- one might even say "mature" words.

Hey now...there was no need for that at all.

You funny little man.  :-D

Could resort to the ol' snappy comeback, "takes one to know one", but that would be unworthy of my current radiant state of being. Now wouldn't it ?   :)

Didn't Taylor tell a story about McCartney hearing a pre-release dub of GV (?) played by Brian for him at Taylor's home and Paul asked if he could keep the dub but Brian declined? How confused/wrong am I?

What Howie says makes complete sense. 

Lennon/McCartney were already on a trajectory to write what ended up as "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band".  They were sprinkling in the experimentation with stuff like "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" that was so very groundbreaking.  They may have been inspired by what Brian was doing but most definitely in an aspirational way.  Like, "let's see where we can push this".

The only thing that will always amaze me though is that, regarding Brian, he could do all of it.  Lennon/McCartney were a tag team that probably wrote a lot on their own after the early days while occasionally bouncing ideas.  But they also had George Martin producing.  That's not a knock on them at all, just more reason to be astonished by Brian's prowess.  And yes, I know Van Dyke was part of the songwriting process..

2011 was your last listen to Smile? You're kidding, right? Please tell me you are. Granted, the lyrics aren't by Mike Love, but you ought to give it another listen sometime. There are some pretty decent songs on it that I think you'll like.  :)

I immersed myself in the box for, oh, two, three months.

OH! Are there photos?

Don't get me wrong, I love and respect George Martin, and as an orchestrator to McCartney's ideas (which includes Lennon's) he was immensely valuable. But I believe that WAY too much credit has been given to him over the years. Geoff Emerick was the true star behind the boards for that LP -- but it was all due to the ears and imaginations of Lennon/McCartney. Martin and Emerick were just as much technicians for hire as the Wrecking Crew were (e.g. no sheet music, no music.)

And as far as doing it all, McCartney could, too. Given the proper technology, McCartney could've performed very inch of Pepper's basic tracks and vocals. Brian could not have done that for any of his LP's. Not a tit for tat -- just a fact. Yes, McCartney would bring in an outside orchestrator like Mike Leander or Martin, but I'd say 85 percent of all those parts were based on McCartney top lines give to them (the most glaring example "Martha My Dear.") Both Lennon and Harrison -- publicly and privately -- always took umbrage at the fact that Martin was so quick to take credit for the group's innovations. Harrison particularly had nothing but scorn for Emerick.

The Beatles' TRUE producer was McCartney.
Not that Lennon or Harrison would ever dare admit it.

Re: Brian, I DON'T believe he could do it all, which is why -- I believe -- he felt the need to morph Smile into Smiley.
Emotional and professional troubles aside, I think he realized that "bringing it all back home" and actually PLAYING the music yourself (playing and singing, just like The Beatles) was truly the way to realize music in 1967.
I've always believed that a part of Smile's demise was that having a bunch of (albeit talented) middle-aged dudes playing your music just wasn't cool.

I think that the end of Smile , rather than the beginning of it, was when Brian Wilson, a guy from the 1950's -- smashed hard into the 1960's.

Technically nobody "can listen to Smile" because the album of that name by The Beach Boys was never finished. We listen to many things that were intended for Smile, often in the running order that has become the "accepted" running order, or we listen to Brian Wilson's 2004 reconstruction of Smile.

My guess is that AGD has listened to some Smile elements since 2011.

Beatles songs from c.1967 that would be very difficult to play live are probably all John's, such as Strawberry Fields and Walrus. I think Paul always wrote with the idea that his songs could be played live in future, as I don't think he ever abandoned the ambition to do more Beatles concerts.

I'd guess that probably about half of Smile could have been played live in 1967, in some form. Maybe the songs that were reworked for Smiley Smile, plus Surf's Up.

I'll agree to disagree to be polite about it. How's that?

What I know is Geoff Emerick said there was a turntable brought in as the Beatles were working on Pepper so Pet Sounds could be played. I know and would be more than happy to do a more deep and thorough musical dissection and analysis of the musical traits that Penny Lane shares with Wouldn't It Be Nice and how elements of WIBN form the backbone of Penny Lane in more ways than I already mentioned, but leave that to your ears to hear for themselves. Or simply dismiss it altogether. No skin off my back.

We could go through and cite specific songs and sounds and production elements that were influenced between the two bands and which the two bands shared perhaps as a result of those influences, some which have been cited specifically by various band members who have said variations of "I got that from the Beach Boys" or "that was something influenced by The Beatles". Anything from a groove to a chord progression to a vocal harmony to an overall feel. It's all there in the record grooves for anyone to hear, and it's neither a grand mystery, nor some scholarly overly complex reasoning along the lines of Bach scholars poring over his manuscripts, nor is it all that hard to find on a simple A/B listening comparison.

And it is not, I repeat NOT, suggesting musicians having stolen ideas or nicked others' sounds maliciously or underhandedly, or anything except the fact that these musicians both influenced and were *influenced by* one another's work, and in some cases they wore it on their sleeves proudly and said as much, or they had enough of a similarity to pick up on with a simple listen. If we want to argue that, let's go for it, I'm all in.

And I'm not pushing any Beatles versus Beach Boys competition agenda except for me having enough of an ego to say sometimes I do know what the hell I'm talking about and can back it up, and I enjoy discussing these things and especially pointing them out to listeners who may not have noticed them before.

Andrew - Below the belt, man. Ridicule? I put that outtake up for people to hear for themselves if they never have. *I* thought it shared some similarities with a few Smile outtakes I've heard which have similar studio techniques being applied to a basic quarter note piano groove playing chords and trying ideas. As noted, the main difference is the manipulation of the pitch and the comb filtering effect to create what I call relevant to 1967 "The Abbey Road Warble", that had a tape op manually adjusting the tape speed via an oscillator in real time as the track played to generate that comb filter effect. Remember the outtake from Smile where Brian asks about vari-speeding a tape to speed up or slow down to record or play back at a different pitch? The one where the engineer explains the process to Brian after Brian suggests the vari-speed technique to record a part, and that engineer tells him how they do it with an oscillator to control the motor which affects the speed of the machine? I do.

And that in a different setup is how the Beatles via Abbey Road's staff ended up flanging so many tracks throughout 1967 and up to and including Clapton's guitar solo on "While My Guitar..." after Clapton said it wasn't "Beatle-y" enough. Messing with tape speed and oscillators and all of that goes back to Les Paul into the Goldstar studios, but here you have both Beatles sessions and Brian sessions doing similar things with tape echo, reverb, tape speed, and messing with various similar effects on piano tracks. Should we catalog the Smile session tapes that have similar sounds just so it's not ridiculed?

I put it out there for people to consider and to hear. It had little or nothing to do with whatever book was cited, or Van Dyke Parks' claims, or anything other than putting things on the table and inviting anyone who chooses to take a listen and have a read through the post and just consider a "what if?" kind of possibility. That's why I ended with saying food for thought, because it's pie in the sky speculation that's just laying out some words and audio for consideration, and offering the possibility of Derek Taylor's involvement with tongue in cheek based on the rampant theorizing of the past and also as a fun kind of exercise.

I guess the fun and informational part of it got lost in the sarcasm and bile that followed. Nope, can't say that, can't suggest that, let's totally shred someone's words for reasons other than having a discussion about actual music and musical ideas that people can check out?

And people talk about the board being f***ed up? Sure.

Exactly GF, we need more scholars and GENTlEMEN like you.

Welcome to the forum, Sir Paul. Or may we call you Paul? We're an informal bunch here, so I'm assuming that'll be okay. By the way, you almost had us fooled, referring to yourself in the third person. Very clever you are. And hacking into Howie's account? Well, that's a whole 'nother matter that I think the moderators (and Howie) are going to have to take up with you, but in the meantime, kick off your shoes, look around, and make yourself comfortable. You're among friends here... as long as you keep referring to God Only Knows as the greatest song ever.

Silly.
Do better.
Be smarter.

I don't think Brian abandoned using the Wreckin' Crew because it wasn't cool. He was simply too burned out to record using that method and he could use the home studio to work at a slower pace. Also, look at the pay rates AGD posted above. They were not affordable for a band whose new albums kept bombing commercially.

Sorry, Howie, no offense intended. I was just trying to insert a little levity into a thread that was becoming a bit heavy. I don't happen to agree with your opinions about Paul and Brian, but that's okay, we can agree to disagree. I should have just made my point straight up. My apologies.

I'll never understand some fans (Priore) of... whatever band (in this case the BB's) insistence on belittling the accomplishments the Beatles achieved. 

The Beatles were a great band, and Sgt. Pepper's was a great album, they were very talented and extremely creative.  None of that diminishes the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson in any way. 

What you actually said was, and I quote exactly, was "...if McCartney had been playing different chords it could have sounded like a Smile outtake minus the ADT-flanging-warbling (which Brian wasn't really doing in the studio)." Or in other words, if he'd been playing something entirely different and it didn't have some processing that Brian wasn't using anyway, it might have sounded like a Smile outtake. That just cracked me up. Bit like saying if I wasn't a fat old Englishman and was the star of Gravity, my name could be Sandra Bullock. Exactly the same reasoning: change all the elements to achieve desired result.  ;D

To return to the original point of this thread: the covert listening to the tapes at Sound Recorders as claimed in Dom's book cannot possibly have happened. I remember someone did a timeline, and the only possible window of opportunity, as I recall, was during the mixing of Pepper. Which was, I'm, sure you'll agree, a tad late for any influence to take place.

Now... let's all sing from our hearts, treble up and most of all, surrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggge. Then we'll have world peace.  :angel:

Coda: this isn't f***** up at all. Compared to some of the more recent events and threads, it's a mildly amusing diversion.

Capitol were footing the immediate studio costs, and the revenue stream was of necessity a good few months behind (so the bucks from, say, Party ! would be funding "GV" (poor example but you get the idea), but yes, eventually it would have been extracted from the band one way or another.

Hm...

Interesting thought: did the fear that Capitol might, at any moment, pull the funding from Smile affect Brian's decision making during the later sessions ? Probably utter tosh, but, who knows ? Thoughts ?

For those that actually are interested in comparisons and analyses of the Beach Boys vis-à-vis the Beatles, then you probably can’t do better than to listen to Howie Edelson. I myself wasn’t even aware way back that, while he’s an authority on the BB’s, he may just know more about the Beatles. I believe Jon Stebbins posted about this some time back.

I love both bands, follow both bands intensely myself (my name and Beatles fascination though have nothing to do with each other believe it or not), but I’m also pretty firmly in the “why do we need to rate anything about them against each other?” camp. But Howie’s right; I think wherever this Smile/Beatles thing came from, it probably comes from the weird “which band did more progressive, weird stuff first?” debate, which again doesn’t really accomplish a great deal.

Having seen COUNTLESS McCartney interviews, and interviews with all of the Beatles throughout the years, I’ve often noted how little they really ever discussed Brian or the BB’s. McCartney goes on about “Pet Sounds”, and that’s mostly it (and even then, remember the “track by track” Leaf did with McCartney in the PS booklet? It petered out after like three or four songs.)

Even McCartney, the one BB-fanboy of the Beatles, rarely discusses much outside of “Pet Sounds.” I’ve never heard him talk about hearing “Today” or “Summer Days” or “Surf’s Up.” The rest of the guys in the band have rarely even uttered the name “Brian Wilson” or “The Beach Boys.” Ringo mentioned the BB”s in his “Postcards from the Boys” book, but only to point out that he was so wasted at the ’84 Washington DC gig that he literally doesn’t remember doing it and only believes he was there because there are pictures of it. (Which is hilarious, though, especially knowing that Ringo is now sober of course.)

This isn’t to denigrate the BB’s. If the Beatles never cared one iota about “Please Let Me Wonder” or “Kiss Me Baby” or whatever, then they were missing out in my opinion. But Howie’s right; the Beatles, and mostly McCartney, recognized the weight of what Brian was doing and accorded him a pretty rare “true peer” status, but didn’t then fixate or obsess over what Brian was doing.

You're wrong, factually, on several points. For one, to start, who is saying any of the Beatles were 'fixating' on what Brian or anyone was doing? I don't recall that coming up at all. I don't recall anyone suggesting a fixation on much of anything by the Beatles except maybe Lennon as a kid hearing skiffle and Elvis, maybe George as a kid with Carl Perkins to the point where he called himself Carl for a time, maybe McCartney with Little Richard...who has ever suggested a fixation on Brian and The Beach Boys? No one. That's a non-issue, why bring it up...they were musical peers who liked each others music AND were influenced by each other back and forth. FACT.

Also, "rarely even uttered the name Brian Wilson or The Beach Boys"...how the heck do you or anyone know? Based on published interviews that make up perhaps less than 1% of a person's life? Ringo being drunk in 84 was the only time Ringo mentioned the BB's, eh? Then explain reports from those traveling with them in 1964-65 who said the band members would talk about the Beach Boys, and the music, on the planes as they toured. Larry Kane, the reporter from Philly, has his book about touring with them. He said ***Ringo*** was the "ultimate Beach Boys fan among the Beatles" who told Larry it was "a thrill" to meet some of the BB's in Portland when they were touring the US and had a chance to meet up on the road. Early Beach Boys, 1964...well, make that twice ol' Ritchie mentioned them based on the standard applied to suggest they rarely mentioned the group. Or search for the reality of this stuff beyond the surface everyone points to conveniently.

But is Larry Kane wrong? He was only on tour with them for months and had conversations with them that no one recorded or reported, in other words the real day-to-day life of people that doesn't get posted into timelines or books. The people who were on those early tours like Kane, amidst the cutthroat Monopoly game marathons headed by Lennon and the near constant flow of booze and cigarettes, reported hearing the Beatles talking about...wait for it...Brian and The Beach Boys! Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle...how bout that! Oh, but don't take their word, they were only there. (Cue someone asking "who is they?". Right.).

McCartney is on the record time and time again with what he thought of the Beach Boys and Brian. Lennon soaked everything in, musically, that caught his ear. Ever see that PBS show "John Lennon's Jukebox"? Well golly gee, Lennon never talked about certain artists in interviews either but you can't logically conclude he wasn't a fan because he never talked about them.

Brian was just on one of those "Breakfast With The Beatles" shows where he again cited "Rubber Soul" as a favorite, and as an influence, as he's done before. He's often cited "Long And Winding Road" as a favorite to this day. "Girl Don't Tell Me" was an overt and obvious attempt to write and record a song that sounded like a Beatles single. When the Beatles owned the US charts, Brian recorded a handful of acoustic covers of their songs for Beach Boys Party...so tell me there was no influence or admiration on that side. Dennis in 66 would feature a Beatles cover as one of his vocal spotlight songs during the tours. Then there's the attempt to cover "With A Little Help...", was he a fan? Yes, he was. It goes on and on.

Seriously, this is almost off the charts ridiculous. Talking about the influence between bands is NOT saying what some are trying to argue and debate here as a competition between the two groups. It's like other issues, let's push aside the topic on the table and start arguing what's not even being suggested. And take a few subliminal shots in the process. Yep, I said that.

If you take a tape of that Penny Lane session, and play it next to more than a few Smile sessions with Brian playing piano where effects were added, they're similar, they sound similar, whether one of them is playing a Cmajor7th and the other an F#major7th. Should I go through musically, production-wise, etc all of the similarities?

Hell, I remember someone suggested a song from No Pier Pressure sounded like Kokomo! Despite the chords being different, despite the melody not following the same arc or phrasing, despite there being not much actual similarity except in someone's opinion which was THEN argued they had every right to express and it should be respected...then it got into an "anti-Kokomo bias" kind of thing and got ridiculous as usual.

Did that one crack you up too? I know I had a good laugh myself over that one, but don't remember if you had any thoughts on that case of similarity.  :lol

As far as the book, and Sound Recorders, that was never in my mind, never once thought of in my post, nor mentioned. I had no thought of that theory of that book, and still do not because I've neither read nor even seen the book. What I *did* say is here you have a guy in Derek Taylor who knew music, whose life was hanging around and writing for and about musicians, and who was working for both the BB's and The Beatles at a crucial time. He was there for Smile, he was writing about it weekly in the music mags and 'zines, he was also still maintaining personal relationships with The Beatles throughout '67.

Do you think, in the course of a normal day at some point in 1966 into 67 as all of this was going on, that a possibility would have existed for someone to ask Derek Taylor what Brian Wilson was up to with the new music? Someone, perhaps, connected to The Beatles? And Derek might say "oh, you should hear this new track he's been doing, it's piano with tape echo and chanting on top! I'm gobsmacked!" Or whatever, you get the point.

If we take what has only been recorded or written in books or historical accounts or timelines as the be-all and end-all of what got discussed, we'll miss perhaps 99% of what someone's daily life consisted of, including a random phone call to have a 10 minute chat where one musician might ask what another is up to, asked of someone who had a foot in both camps at that time.

So you can't write things off, even the most casual throwaway conversation might have inspired one of the two to try a new sound or to add a new effect to a track, or something else. Lennon could get a song idea from hearing an advertisement for cereal on TV or a line a news presenter delivered on the radio, things most people might dismiss as background noise.

I'm just saying, it's not about that book and Sunset Sound, it's about entertaining the 'what if?' possibilities that may have existed.

GF,

Just to clarify, though I wasn't the one who made the comment, it was pointed out that Kokomo and On the Island were somewhat similar in regards to lyrics and content (ie.  "Tropical drink melting in my hand" vs "On the island with a drink in my hand" or "We'll get there fast then we'll take it slow" vs "We'll be taking it slow").   

Musically, the songs aren't very similar since Kokomo has an 80s Jimmy Buffett feel to it, and On the Island is a bossa nova style number.  But, in terms of content, there are some similarities. 

This is also why I pointed out a few times that had Mike Love written On the Island, I think people would've trashed it. 

Personally, I like both Kokomo and On the Island. 

McCartney said he was trying to get a "Beach Boys-y" sound on that song. If you listen to just the backing track, it just SCREAMS "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

Of course, but the point you made that the songs aren't very similar is the issue. If you played Kokomo and Island back to back for people who have no interest in the Beach Boys, they'd most likely say they sound not much like each other. "Sound" being one of the key factors to form that impression. You can get deeper into the chords, phrasing, groove, etc, but on the surface impression I'd say many hearing them back to back wouldn't hear a similarity in the musical elements. If you took a clip of that Penny Lane outtake with McCartney playing piano washed in tape echo and reverb, then played a few Smile outtakes I'm thinking of which have Brian playing piano washed in tape echo and reverb, then let the tapes play further where there are conversations being treated with the effects and other experiments with sonic/production touches like effects, the listeners might say they sound similar. That was the point. It's not an absurd concept to suggest if Brian were playing the Penny Lane chord changes and McCartney were playing the "Child Is Father" or "Worms" or "All Day"  chord changes that they wouldn't sound almost identical because the grooves/rhythms are the same, and the effects on these tapes create a similar texture and sound. Nothing beyond that, and as simple as that.  :)

YES! Exactly! Anyone can hear it, and anyone who cannot feel free to ask and some of us would be more than happy (thrilled, perhaps) to point out some specifics to listen for. But it's all there in the grooves, as I already laid out and as is laid out above confirmed by Paul's own thoughts on the topic. Penny Lane is the influence McCartney got from Wouldn't It Be Nice being worn on its sleeve, end of story. As that pasta sauce commercial used to say, "It's In There", just listen for it.

My post is “off the charts ridiculous?” Not sure what you’re reading. Just offered some commentary, mostly in relation to the original post’s theory and what Howie Edelson had discussed.

I don’t think either of us are really speaking to each others’ thoughts/posts. You’re talking about a bunch of stuff that I wasn’t speaking to. Difference is, I didn’t respond to or quote any of your posts (truth be told, and I apologize for this, I honestly haven’t read your posts in this thread up until now).

I’ve followed both of these bands quite intently. I have no reason to doubt that the Beach Boys came up in conversations with radio DJs in the 1964-66 timeframe, when both bands were in the charts. But I’ve seen no evidence that any of the Beatles gave Brian or the BB’s a HUGE amount of thought outside of “Pet Sounds.”

And yes, of course we can only go off of what they’ve said publicly. If the standard of evidence is what they liked “in life”, then for all we know Paul and Ringo’s true musical inspiration was The Archies. The evidence from HOURS and HOURS of interviews from the 60s up to the present with all of the Beatles, and especially from any post-1970 interviews, where they were all often asked about musical influences and their contemporaries, doesn’t even suggest a strong *interest* in Brian or the BB’s outside of Paul.

I’m sure Paul talked the other guys’ ears off about PS and Brian back in the mid-60’s. Unless John was totally close-minded musically (and of course we know all of the guys were exactly the opposite of that), I have no reason to doubt he would have or did respect Brian and the BB’s. How much Brian or the BB’s directly influenced or informed the work of the Beatles is obviously HUGELY subjective. I don’t recall Lennon going on and on in Playboy in 1980 about how much “Pet Sounds” influenced him, but I could be wrong. Doesn’t mean it didn’t. But my sense is he gave PS and the BB’s far less thought than McCartney did. And frankly, with some specific exceptions in later Beatles and solo material (“Dear Boy”, “Vintage Clothes” off of “Memory Almost Full”, etc.), I don’t think even McCartney actually used the BB’s as a huge influence after about 1970 or so (and how much he used them as an influence even then is debatable). Even McCartney has often struck me much more as a *fan* of Brian and the BB’s and “Pet Sounds” as opposed to having an overt musical influence, with the exceptions of specific things he has spoken to mostly relating to the “Pepper” era (as explained in the “Making of Sgt. Pepper” documentary, etc.)

I’m factually wrong about what I *think* are the motivations of fans looking for a Beach Boys-Beatles connection? Yes, my comments did assume a motive or thought process behind looking for a connection. But I was talking about fans trying to invent some scenario where the Beatles were tucked away somewhere listening to unreleased “Smile” tapes and having their minds blown. There are no doubt some fans of both bands that just dig wondering about who influenced whom and in what ways. I just get the feeling that some folks (and I truly don’t even necessarily mean anybody on this board) may have hyped up this “Beatles listened to the Smile tapes” story with some weird motives.

As far as influence going the *other* way, I never even spoke to that in my post! The BB’s and Brian not only obviously covered the Beatles on “Party”, but closely aped a specific Beatles song in at least once case (“Girl Don’t Tell Me”), and Brian has spoken at length about “Rubber Soul” and its influence. He has also mentioned other songs from McCartney’s catalog. While I think the Beatles influenced Brian more than the other way around (and the Beatles directly and indirectly influenced most bands at that time), I’d also say Brian has often fallen much more in “fan” territory than being hugely, overtly influenced by the Beatles.

And thank f**k for that to be honest, that these two amazing bands didn’t spend the mid 60’s ripping each other off.  I’m glad that “Surf’s Up” sounds nothing like anything the Beatles would have cut. Same thing with “Heroes and Villains”, and so on.

1. Yes -- McCartney is a Brian fan. Pet Sounds and Sunflower made a definite mark on him.

2. The Beatles never heard/stole Smile.

There's no doubt that Pet Sounds was, at least, Paul's big Beach Boys infatuation. As someone else here noted, he preferred that album to the Good Vibrations single. That being said, on The Beatles Anthology, when the three were talking about Paperback Writer, George said that they were emulating a Beach Boys sound and then did a little Beach Boys vocal which sounds quite a lot like the background vocals on You're So Good To Me. And according to this list, The Beatles did cover You're So Good To Me during the Get Back sessions:

http://www.beatlesbible.com/features/get-back-let-it-be-sessions-complete-song-list/ (http://www.beatlesbible.com/features/get-back-let-it-be-sessions-complete-song-list/)

Now my thoughts on this is that The Beatles were big on the 45s and probably had the Sloop John B./You're So Good To Me single.

Another thing: This past year I have been very much investing in researching and tracking down the music that The Beatles were listening to from Heartbreak Hotel to the official breakup in 1970. One of the things I found was an audio interview in 1968 with McCartney during the White Album sessions. When asked for his favourite artists he names three: Nilsson, Beach Boys, and Lovin' Spoonful. One would think that if McCartney is still counting The Beach Boys amongst his favourite contemporary artists in 1968 that he must have at least heard Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and depending on when exactly the interview was, Friends.

That being said, I think there is also often too much made of the Beatles/Beach Boys connection. Yes, The Beatles liked The Beach Boys. But even at the height of the Pet Sounds-era, they were also very big on The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas and Papas, Bob Dylan, Donovan, and singles like Rescue Me and 123, etc.

Yes, I mentioned some time back in another “Beatles/Beach Boys” thread that George makes that mention of the Beach Boys in the “Beatles Anthology” (I think in that old thread we were wondering whether that’s the only recorded time in an interview that George actually named the Beach Boys specifically). Now, this is just my reading of it and nothing else, he says “we were trying to compete with the Beach Boys” almost as if he’s repeating what *others* have said about it. I’m not trying to negate the possibility that George himself felt that influence. But it came across to me more like “we layered a lot of vocals, and Paul was into the Beach Boys and Pet Sounds, so we must have been going for that.” I don’t sense that George himself felt they needed to “compete” with the Beach Boys. 

There is something to be said about the fact though that The Beatles were not adverse to incorporating elements of the music that inspired them into their own music. And Your Bird Can Sing on the Beatles Anthology sounds like it might as well be on one of the first two Byrds albums. And indeed, George's If I Needed Someone is merely a re-casting of The Belles of Rhymney. Michelle, meanwhile, incorporates elements of Nina Simone, Drive My Car takes the bass line from Otis Redding's Respect. And while I have no evidence like I do with the others, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Stevie Wonder's Uptight wasn't the central influence on Got To Get You Into My Life. The truth is, The Beatles did quite often try very much to sound like other music, often cribbing from music from 1956-1962, but also from their contemporaries.

I don't see the possibility of some bits of Smile era recordings being played for one or more of the Beatles as completely ridiculous an idea.  An acetate played over a transatlantic phone call or some such perhaps even.   That doesn't go to say though that "Smile was stolen by the Beatles".   That I think, is obviously not so - as the Beatles never did anything actually like Smile.  Sgt Pepper/Penny Lane has some obvious inspirations via the Beach Boys recent (at that time) recorded work, but they aren't Smile, they're definite Beatles stuff.   The medley on Abbey Road might be the closest approximation of a Smile type idea. 
They inspired/challenged one another perhaps, but they responded with their own things - never direct steals/cops.  
As a side note:  I see a fair amount of Beach Boy/Brian influence in The Beatles (The White Album).   Many of the tunes were written in Rishikesh, where they spent time with Love, who may have relayed to them some of the goings on surrounding recent Beach Boys activities (Smile, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, etc).   Back In The USSR is an obvious, but then there's Wild Honey Pie, and Honey Pie itself - which in my mind is a message to Brian (though in reality it probably isn't, but who knows?), and Martha My Dear seems like a McCartney take on a Brian type thing, but again, this is probably just my interpretation.   Rocky Raccoon perhaps was a bit inspired by the whole Heroes and Villains western shootout thing?  

Not that it matters much, but wasn't Tell Me Why being compared to Kokomo by someone here?  They said that the chords and the melody in the verses were similar.  I can kind of hear the chord changes being similar but the melody is not similar at all.

Kokomo and Tell Me Why have ONE chord change in common at the start of each songs verse

And that was what I was hinting at earlier - Based on that previous discussion, there were responses and debates that suggested all manner of respecting opinions, pointing out the differences turned into having an anti-Kokomo bias, or whatever that was...yet putting that McCartney piano tape I posted above next to similar sounding experiments Brian had recorded at the piano during Smile sessions was somehow that much of a stretch in comparing the similarities of the two to be inviting ridicule? That's what doesn't jive.

Did anyone mention Here There and Everywhere and Paul saying they were trying to sound like/rip off the Beach Boys on the Intro or how they would 'rip off' the Shirelles and others but singing it in a Liverpudlian accent no-one noticed?

If I could add something to the discussion, just consider this interview, this excerpt from the full transcript which can be found here:
http://ugly-things.com/kim-fowley-sins-secrets-of-the-silver-sixties/ (http://ugly-things.com/kim-fowley-sins-secrets-of-the-silver-sixties/)

Again, just food for thought and something to add to the discourse...it's not making a definitive statement, or finding the Rosetta Stone or the Dead Sea Scrolls to answer the great mysteries, but it does put perspective on this thing about musical influences, "borrowing" ideas for songs, etc. and it's coming from John Lennon. And a few other guys, too.  :)

Q: One thing you mentioned, if I could backtrack to Toronto for a second, is that you had a conversation backstage with Lennon about the Beatles?


Fowley: It was the next day in the rent-a-house of the owner of Eaton’s department stores and who financed the whole thing. Eric Clapton said, “John, Yoko, Kim’s here!”

And Lennon said, “Fowley” — not Kim Carnes, not Novak, but Fowley. So in the world of Kims there was only one in John Lennon’s life and it was Kim Fowley. Well, I’d met him two other times anyway, once with Pet Sounds (see earlier in story) and I also met him in ’64 with the rest of the Beatles and PJ Proby and I were hanging out at the Adlib Club. So this was the third time I’d ran into him.

“Hey John.”

“Hey Kim. Thank you very much for introducing me last night. I was very…” — not mortified but uncomfortable up there — a word between mortified and uncomfortable that explained the first time he ever been in any other band but the Beatles or a derivative of the Beatles – Johnny & the Moondogs or whatever – and suddenly to go on stage without ‘those guys’ must have been really something. We talked about how that worked, and the matches and cigarette lighters and light illuminating darkness and that took us into religious pageantry and blah-blah-blah.

And then I said, “Let me ask you a question.” Because I had to ask the question. I had asked the same question to Bob Dylan: “What is your secret?” In the ’60s I would ask everybody I met what their gimmick was, because I wanted to know. And I was a guy who had enough records by then that I could ask the question, as opposed to a version of you asking the question. “So, John, what was the secret of the Beatles?”

He said, “Very easy. May I illustrate it with a song? You ever hear ‘Why Don’t We Do It In the Road’ by the Beatles?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it.”

“That was our message to Canned Heat, because we didn’t think they had enough humor, so it was basically taking the idea of a Canned Heat song and doing it with more humor.” And he said, “The Beatles stopped being a group when we stopped trying to upgrade and rewrite and reinterpret and reinvent our favorite records of the moment.”

What a great answer! That answer was never given in any of all the books I’ve heard about. The wives are blamed, the death of Brian Epstein is blamed, but no one ever says, “All we were ever doing was listening to records and taking them to the next level, and when we stopped listening to music and making it better we stopped being a group.” In so many words, that is what he said. And that was his answer and there was no more discussion, because John Lennon in the three times I met him was as quiet a person as John Entwistle is on stage and in public. This is a quiet guy. Lyrically he was a wild, impassioned guy, but in public he was a John Entwistle non-personality guy. Very quietly spoken.

And the other quiet guy was Bob Dylan, and when I met Bob Dylan and asked, “So what’s the story here?” He said, “I ask questions and tell stories and that’s it.” OK. So the thing about Lennon and Dylan is they had one sentence answers.

I asked Brian Wilson. Back in ’63 he was using Gold Star and I was doing the Murmaids there, and one day he came in the studio. I said, “Hi. Let me ask you a question. What’s your gimmick?”

He said, “Very easy. Twelve months a year. I write about the calendar.”

“What about it?”

“Nine months of school and three months of the beach. (laughs) So you got kids in school nine months and then the rest of the time they’re having fun. That’s it!”

So I said, “OK!” So that’s Brian’s answer.

You got Dylan’s answer, you got Lennon’s answer, and all those other assholes who read your magazine, they bleed for pages and pages and pages and wonder and ponder and do it all wrong. And the guys that they all worship, these guys tell you in one sentence what they were doing. One guy was updating his record collection. One guy was asking questions and telling stories. And one guy was writing about school and the beach. Wow. How come all the idiots who make those horrible seven-inch revival singles no one’s gonna play on record players they don’t own anymore, why don’t they know this answer? Because… none of them were at the beginning when all this was created. It had to be a simple idea. As Danny Hutton said to me when we first heard the Beatles “From Me to You” or “Please Please Me” — one of those Vee Jay singles — in ’63 on the way to the beach: “That’s the Everly Brothers with a third harmony part.” Well said.

To me it's interesting to see how both artists, growing up in very different cultures and pushing the envelope of modern music, were each working towards something similar to the other, however different the final results were. The point is the similar, unique musical feelings that each of them were able to bring out through simple chords, and not all the fact that the chords themselves were similar to the others music, because that's not the case.

found the clip very cool, and I'm glad you posted it.

Howie just blew my mind in a way by describing how un "hip" it would have been to be using The Wrecking Crew in the late 60s. We never think in those terms. Kind of puts the Smile saga in perspective.

Also Macca is way more obsessed with Little Richard than anything else.

It's a really interesting perspective that I'd never put any thought into. It could explain why Brian wanted to give all of his gold records to Hal Blaine - he felt that he didn't deserve them because he wasn't the one actually playing the music.

Some of the younger Wrecking Crew guys (Leon Russell, Jim Gordon, Mac Rebennack etc) grew their hair long and became in-demand sidemen for the rock royalty of era (Clapton, Stones, etc), so that's only partly true.

No, it's actually fully true.

Locate photos of Russell and Gordon from the Smile era and you'll see as much.
Big difference from what people looked like and who (and why) they were playing for in late-'66 and, say, July 1970.

But guys like Gordon and Russell ALSO got hip to the the "homespun" movement.

Interesting quote and like a lot of Lennon's quotes, I take it with a bit of grain of salt. Intriguingly, the example he gives is WDWDIITR which was only a year earlier.

As far as The Beatles having stopped upgrading, rewriting, reinterpreting, and reinventing their favourite records of the moment in 1969, I think this is somewhat true. I think that it was probably around mid to late 1968 when The Beatles, John especially, began to romanticize or feel nostalgic about the 1956-1962 era. There's a Rolling Stone article during the White Album era when John is going through his old 45s - he picks out Angel Baby by Rosie & The Originals especially (a great song by the way). I think by '68, Lennon was seeing 1956-62 as a real artistic movement - raw, unadorned, simple and thus authentic. John, quite literally in 1968, was now into the stripped down and so he returned to the old rock and roll. The music played during the Get Back session reflected this renewed interest. A lot of the songs they did during those sessions were old Cavern/Hamburg songs.

That being said, The Beatles were still inspired by contemporaries. I think George especially was keeping that flame alive - listening to Bob Dylan, The Band, Delaney and Bonnie, etc. But John also name checked Neil Young and CCR in a 1970 interview, and I think that CCR had some influence on the band, in particular on Oh! Darling (though that bears a striking resemblance to Fats Domino songs like Coquette). Sun King, meanwhile, borrow the style of Fleetwood Mac's Albatross. So there were still songs that emulated the contemporary music but definitely by the late 60s, The Beatles had turned back to the early years.

 Interesting comments. I can buy Paul as the group's true producer post-Epstein but not before. Maybe beginning with the SGT PEPPER sessions. Paul was always into that trite musical hall stuff, right?  :lol

I don't think I can buy Paul as their producer at all, although I imagine he influenced the production process, kind of like a passenger sometimes telling the driver when to turn, etc. It reminds me of that zinger that Mark Zuckerberg (the character playing him) flings at the Winklevoss twins in the film The Social Network: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook." If Paul was the producer of the Beatles, wouldn't he be listed as the producer? Wouldn't he have insisted upon that credit?

Let's not forget the words of one George Martin, honoring Brian at the Radio City Music Hall tribute: "you could compare it (what Brian did) to the combined song-writing talents of John and Paul, the performing talents of George and Ringo, along with my work in the control room. Quite simply, he did it all." Enough said.

No. George Martin was kept on as a stabilizing force.

He was absent for half of the "White Album" -- nearly never there for the Saville Row sessions in January/February '69, and essentially always followed McCartney's direction. How do people STILL not know how it went down with the Beatles' sessions by now? McCartney arranged all the stuff, whether it was his, or "Sexy Sadie," or "Old Brown Shoe," -- or any of it. He brought the flesh and color that brought the sonic pictures to life. He made all the songs RECORDS. Listen to Lennon's solo stuff -- it's all bare. Listen to me, it's not all bare ALWAYS because his mother was dead -- it was bare because the dude who filled all that space was gone.

There had to be a fifth "impartial" person in the studio for the work to get done. Martin was that person.
I love George Martin, but if it wasn't for Paul McCartney, you wouldn't know George Martin from George Maharis.

(http://i62.tinypic.com/21kmkjd.jpg)

"Of course, George Martin was a great help in translating our music technically when we needed it, but for the cameraman to take credit from the director is a bit too much." - John Lennon

I have trouble believing anything Kim Fowley says. He screwed over many people, including a few I knew personally. Yeah, he formed The Runaways. He was the poster child for the excesses of the 70s. And a liar.

Did I step into the wrong board?

He also liked to drug, beat and rape underage girls.

Ummm... first you say "Penny Lane" might sound like a Smile outtake, now you're saying it was influenced by a track from another album entirely. Which kinda  - well, totally, actually - invalidates your original comment. One or the other, please: can't be both.

Going back to the original topic of this thread (if anyone cares any more - not sure even I do, but since when has that ever stopped me  :deadhorse ), but here are the relevant passages from Dom's book:

"The master tapes, for the time being, were oddly enough being stored catercorner from the Capitol Records parking lot (and across from KFWB) at Armen Steiner's Sound Labs [actually Sound Recorders - Sound Labs was 1971-80] studio on the northeast corner of Yucca and Argyle, near Hollywood and Vine." (p. 112, UK Sanctuary paperback)

""Derek Taylor was planted over here as a scout for The Beatles, to see what was going on on the West Coast..." noted Van Dyke Parks. "... I think Derek Taylor facilitated The Beatles listening to Smile before the advent of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Before that started, they heard Smile in part - the first eight-track - up at Armen Steiner's studio on Yucca and Argyle... We walked into the place and heard The Beatles had been there. We knew the nest had been found and Brian was very sad. So we didn't go back there: we took the tapes and Brian got an eight-track." (p. 116)

""There was enough smoke to think there was a fire," Van Dyke clarified. "But the only conspicuous offense Brian and I recall was that The Beatles had heard the tapes of Smile at Armen Steiners'." (p. 117)

No transatlantic phone calls... no smuggled acetates - Taylor got The Beatles (note, not a Beatle, or some Beatles but The Beatles: the four Fabs) into Sound Recorders to hear the actual session tapes.

Except... it never happened as claimed here. Couldn't have. No-one was in the right place at the right time. This old thread -

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,7209.100.html (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,7209.100.html)

- outlines why.

And let's not forget the influence of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan...

Neither John Lennon nor Ringo Starr were in the U.S. during 1967.

Excuse me? Are you suggesting that a song cannot be influenced by more than one source?

Nope, just suggesting that I'm listening to the sound of someone changing horses in mid-stream.  ;D

But that's exactly what you say in your above reply.


Part of this conversation from Reply #8 in this thread has been the point that McCartney didn't take from Smile because he "had so much magic pouring out of him in 1966/1967, that he didn’t need to crib ideas." In other words, McCartney could not have taken anything from Smile because he didn't take anything from anyone by this time, not even Pet Sounds which was his passing interest. Very, very early on this thread, this conversation switched from Paul was not influenced by Smile to Paul was not influenced by anything.

With that point being made as a counter-argument, a quotation from Paul saying that Penny Lane was influenced by the Beach Boys sound is pretty significant, no?

My point is that Craig started out by saying the "PL" outtakes sounded like Smile outtakes (if you stripped off the studio trickery and assumed Macca was playing something else entirely) then changed his mind to agree delightedly with Dauber that the track was inspired by "WIBN". Now, as his original point was that Paulie was possibly cribbing something from "Smile" in general, having heard the tapes (which was comprehensively debunked over six years ago), agreeing the "WIBN" is all over "PL" is... well, shall we say somewhat self-defeating ?

Let's get the correct quotes and info on the table first. I said that apart from the similar sound and groove of the actual piano part, musically, the Penny Lane tape shared the same studio effects (heavy tape delay, reverb, etc) except one, and that was the warble via ADT which was a Beatles sonic trademark at the time.

Use the listening test - Play that Penny Lane excerpt for an unbiased observer then play the similar Smile tapes with Brian at the piano and see if they think the two sound similar: Effects, feel, sound, groove, rhythm, etc. Then while you have a willing listener to take part in the test, play them Kokomo next to the No Pier Pressure songs that some claimed hearing a similarity. See which holds up. If any at all.

I've been saying for years on this board especially that Penny Lane was McCartney's take on Wouldn't It Be Nice. I was the first to bring it up again in this discussion, with some examples to listen for, and if you search this board you'll find similar things I've said for years with more examples to listen for. I'm agreeing further with someone agreeing with me, and ultimately we're agreeing with what Paul himself has said. Read the thread, Andrew.

And do not misstate my words or attribute something to me which I didn't say. Where for f***'s sake did I say Paul had "cribbed", stolen, or in any way ripped off Smile material? I went out of my way to explain in depth the things, only to have someone misquote it and misstate it...for the purpose of what, Andrew? What's the point?

I said simply, Derek Taylor was a common thread between the two bands. That's it. Is there a possibility he was asked at any time from either band what the other was working on? Is that so ridiculous as I already laid it out as to suggest at some point these questions were asked and answers were given? Yeah, The Beatles have this new thing called a Mellotron, Brian, it's like an orchestra in a keyboard! And Paul,  Brian was in the studio doing these sounds where he'd tape the piano strings, lay a blanket on top, and have the guy put this echo effect on it! Outta site, man!"....or things like that. These people TALKED to each other, musicians traded notes and ideas and soaked up influences from those around them. Basic info there, rock history 101.

The stuff about Taylor and acetates and tape dubs was tongue in cheek...but WAIT! I already explained that too. I even put a "smiley face" thing next to it. I guess that was lost too.

Read the thread, Andrew, and get things right before calling them out. Especially someone's words words when they're archived and available and sitting here right above what we're reading now. Sloppy, man, sloppy. I'll talk and debate, but not if I'm asked to debate things I never said, as in McCartney stealing Smile ideas. Never said that.

You two ought to host a Crossfire type rock and roll podcast show!   :lol  
It would be entertaining as hell  :-D

As Howie succinctly observed, there is no point, because the original premise of this thread has been debunked, not that it was ever valid in the first place: Smile didn't inform Pepper. The/a/some Beatles never listened to the tapes. The rest is frippery, tail-chasing and ego-buffing, in which I have played my full part. As for being misquoted and the like, I've had that for something like thirty years: you get used to it.

I'd do it. I love to talk about this stuff, and plan to do more of it on this thread. It's fascinating to me how songs come together, especially ones which are rightfully considered classics. It's threads like this that can be launched into some good, informational discussions and debates to share and learn things that maybe some readers have not heard before. Getting into the process of making a classic record, how and why they made certain choices or did certain things, and where they may have gotten the ideas from is one of the best parts of music history, at least for me. I live for it. I listen constantly. I teach it. What's been fun, just to give one example, has been introducing some of my students through the years who have been into Green Day to The Kinks. It's cool to see younger musicians hear "Picture Book" or "Do It Again" for the first time after playing "Warning" or "Walking Contradiction" from the Green Day albums, and open up a whole new world of listening and discovering different artists and albums through the influences.

The only thing I'd expect here is that the debates center on things that were actually said and not something other than that. I'd rather talk about the actual topics and not have to defend against things that were never said. That's not much to ask.  :)

I can see the "coolness" factor coming into it post-Monterey and the rise to national prominence of Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and the Doors. But before that, I don't see why it should have been a big deal either. It wasn't with Pet Sounds and GV. I know pop music was changing in '67 but for the first half of it when SMiLE was supposed to come out I don't think it would have mattered that much.

I think there's a legitimate conversation to be had about whether the Beatles were really *quite* as amazing as everyone states. If you let the same talking points run rampant for decades without question it runs the risk of obscuring history. I also think there are strong arguments against Pepper as the "greatest" album.

That being said, I agree that the people spreading this myth are unfairly trying to discredit the band. It's ironic too, that such an accusation "It's a copy of SMiLE" only serves to insult SMiLE itself and prop up Pepper.  ;D

There's many Beatle related podcasts out there, but my favorite is Something About The Beatles,  hosted by (author) Robert Rodriguez and some other Brit guy whom I can't remember the name of just now.  It is really fun, interesting, thought provoking etc.  (though it has sort of a stupid theme song  :lol)
I would love to see/hear such a podcast devoted to the Beach Boys, and thus far I haven't been able to locate one that exists - so the window of opportunity to be the first is there. 

I actually thought about doing this and even approached some folks into cohosting it with me, but we could never coordinate schedules to get it off the ground. :(   (So I had to settle for a classic video game podcast instead.)

It may serve to explain why he never came back to it post-Smiley as originally intended. I actually think he gave it up more because he was stuck in the past rather than trying to keep up with the future. He was still concerned about being mainstream/commercial, with the idea of a killer single, instead of keeping focused on the avant-garde album he had in front of him. It was this conflict between crazy album that broke a lot of rules and had a lot of uncommercial pieces (Workshop, comedy, high concept subject matter) and who he had been up to that point (one man hit machine singing about things everyone could relate to) that he couldn't overcome. He made his choice in 1967 by focusing on the singles instead.

Have you featured the Vectrex in the podcast yet?  ;D

Seriously?

Dude was hanging in Laurel Canyon with The Turtles, The Mothers, probably The Croz and all those guys who were all about jamming and being great "players." Using hired guns was very looked down upon by this time. Peter Tork was probably at Brian's house trying to wash the stink of The Monkees off in Brian's pool.

Yes, seriously. No, I was making a joke comment. I mean it's possible I'm mistaken in my analysis, but I'm serious when I put the idea out there. To answer your question.

Would it have been possible in late 66/early 67 for Brian and VDP to sit down and work out an itinery to get the album finished by a particular date? The open-ended nature of the process seems odd in an age where deadlines were so tight.

This in turn leads to a flaw in Priore's book: IIRC at no point does he criticize the working method as being a cause of the album's non-completion. It seems to be everyone else's fault except Brian (& VDP).

Here you go!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blhdrj7zlr9nt2q/CCF10092012_00011.jpg?dl=0

It´s pretty clear when PM was in LA with BW! I think we can trust Derek Taylor!

What am I looking at?

So Sir Paul probably heard something like the version of GV on TSS disc 5 track 24 in late August 1966 I guess?

Trust Derek Taylor ? After he arranged for The Beatles, all four, to listen to the Smile tapes in April 1967 behind Brian's back ??  I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time with a sundial in the Sahara.  :angel:

First meeting, circa 8/26 or 27/66, Taylor's house (Dodger Stadium show was 8/28, Candlestick Park was the next day).

Second meeting, 4/10/67, Sound Recorders studio ("Vega-Tables" session)

There is a less than 1% chance of the Beach Boys being mentioned in any article about the Beatles for the last fifty years. Pet Sounds is barely a footnote in books about Sgt. Pepper. I seriously doubt George was parroting anybody, and I didn't get that impression in his tone.

I thought the same, but all of the Beatles podcasts (and there are many) tend to judge the guys pretty fairly. My trepidation with starting a Beach Boys podcast is that I wouldn't be able to find partners or a crew (like the "Fab 4 Free 4 All" podcast) who would treat the individual Beach Boys the same way.

I once read a claim by somebody from the industry -- don't remember who, don't remember where, but I think it was in a book -- that all four Beatles would spend weekends dropping acid and listening to Pet Sounds over and over again. Maybe somebody can find where that story originates... I've been unsuccessful.

I have posted this elsewhere but it bears repeating here:

McCartney has said this:


And on Pet Sounds influence in general:


And from George Martin:

It should be noted that in Pete Shotton's book "John Lennon In My Life" ("The Beatles: Lennon and Me" in paperback) Pete said that John told him he didn't share Paul and George's love of the Beach Boys. While it's possible that Pet Sounds rubbed off on him via Paul's enthusiasm for it (which Paul claims in the quote cited above) I don't think John was as knocked out by it, although we do have him on record enthusing about "The Little Girl I Once Knew".

Do we!? I'd love to see/hear that quotation. Where can I find it?

Citations for Lennon quote:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/beach-boys-song-the-little-girl-i-once-knew.208567/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Girl_I_Once_Knew

Lambert, Philip. Inside the Music of Brian Wilson. p. 218.

Seems to be a Beatles Xmas fan club event (single was released 11.22.65)

This was from a Melody Maker interview (and evidently reprinted in the Beatles Monthly fan magazine) - regarding The Little Girl I Once Knew - "This is the greatest! Turn it up, turn it right up. It's got to be a hit. It's the greatest record I've heard for weeks. It's fantastic. I hope it will be a hit. It's all Brian Wilson. He just uses the voices as instruments. He never tours or anything. He just sits at home thinking up fantastic arrangements out of his head. Doesn't even read music. You keep waiting for the fabulous breaks. Great arrangement. It goes on and on with all different things. I hope it's a hit so I can hear it all the time."  

Lennon may have been like Keith Moon, who didn't really "get" Pet Sounds like his peers did, but nonetheless was a fan. 

Thanks to both of you for those quotes! That's great.  I have been doing my best to research the music the Beatles were listening to throughout the 60s but Melody Maker seems like a treasure trove that I don't have access to.

I know he doesn't have many fans around these parts, but Keith Badman's "The Beatles Off The Record" books are exactly what you're looking for. There are two volumes. One covering the 60's and one covering the solo years. The 60's volume is great, because it's a collection of interviews and quotes just from the 60's, rather than things the Beatles said after the fact through rose-colored glasses and faulty memories. A terrible book title though, because all of the quotes were actually on the record and printed in newspapers and magazines at the time.

Thanks for that! I will look into it.

Thanks for the quotes and sources! Cool read.

But I have to question something that's bugging me with this thread. Even though it's already been said the topic has moved and basically isn't even giving a damn about the conspiracy theories, is it just me or are some posting here trying to argue for or against an influence back-and-forth between The BB's and Beatles? I mean, seriously, it's been so often mentioned and quoted and recorded and everything else, what's the point of saying who was ***really*** influenced or even challenging the presence of such influence entirely? I don't get it.

So now we have McCartney obviously having been saying it for decades, we have some Lennon quotes, we have Ringo being described as the "ultimate" BB's fan in the group who was thrilled to meet a few members back in '64, and George...well, fill in the gaps wherever they are. But what more in the way of either examples, proof, or anything else are people looking for at this point?

Look up any editorial about Pet Sounds, "the critically-acclaimed pop album, inspired by the Beatles' Rubber Soul, which later influenced Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Do the same for Sgt. Pepper, "the unprecedented forerunner to art rock and experimental pop music."

I wanted to revisit the points made about George Martin as producer. I'd have to say pretty emphatically there would be no Beatles, or they'd be perhaps playing golden oldies package shows with members of the Searchers or The Pacemakers or The Dakotas if it weren't for George Martin. Did his direct influence on *the music itself* diminish over time leading up obviously to the White Album where he basically took a powder and put a young guy who was basically his intern in his place? Yes. However:

When the Beatles in various degrees of enthusiasm wanted to regroup after the Get Back filming debacles, for a project which Geoff Emerick revealed they basically knew or approached it like they knew it would be their last hurrah, their goodbye to the whole thing...didn't they ask George Martin to come back and with at least what McCartney was reported to have said to Martin a request to "produce us like you used to do in the old days"? So that right there might suggest the band or maybe McCartney alone must have felt there was something George Martin brought to the recordings that they wanted to capture again.

And also, again pretty obvious point, the role and definition of "producer" was vastly different in the 50's and 60's than it would soon become as a job description. Brian Wilson was one of those kids in the business who helped write the dictionary definition of the job, as a self-contained producer playing and writing and calling the shots in his own band. But consider Chet Atkins "produced" Elvis on the early RCA dastes and basically sat and watched Elvis and the boys rip it up in the studio. Elvis produced *those* sessions for the most part, you can hear it on the sessions. Tom Wilson - Bob Dylan 1965...what exactly did Wilson "produce" to be blunt about it? Did he assemble the band or did Dylan or Grossman? Or was he just there as the point man for Columbia, lending an ear to the music?

But I'd say especially in the system that was EMI in the 1960's, they also needed George Martin as the buffer whenever they got told "no" by the brass. Then, obviously, George Martin had to put the producer's polish on the tracks. He got The Beatles as raw material as far as studio musicianship. They were a raucous live band, one of the absolute best if not *the* best by 1962 working the clubs. Their sets, full of covers and rockers and ballads and comedy and...

Then listen to the "Decca Audition" tapes, pre-George Martin, pre-EMI. They're flat. They're not only flat, they're depressing in a way because the group had not yet learned to play the studio. The choice of lead vocalists...George Harrison, what the hell did they give him so many leads on their audition when it was crucial to them getting ahead in the business? They had two of the finest singers in the land who could both rock out and harmonize like blood brothers...and you get Harrison singing Coasters covers?

That's the decision that a producer makes...who is best to sing this material, and what material. The original songs, they were raw, lot of promise though. They need a producer to whip them into shape, make them pop, trim the fat and leave the prime cuts. Take out George's guitar noodling on Please Please Me. Tell them the truth that Pete Best may have been the Casanova of the band and may have kicked ass on stage...but in the studio, he didn't cut it. The hard truth. Their road-beaten amps won't cut it, they're noisy and erratic and held together by tape and baling wire. Nope, can't have that in the studio.

It was about taking it to the next level, the music and the band and their sound. What worked live needed to be honed to a fine, sharp point to carry that energy in the studio and onto a record. The original songs needed to be tweaked, needed to be polished, maybe needed some strong hooks. They got that in spades.

So I'd say that original studio process education that the band got through George Martin (and his various teammates like Norman Hurricane Smith, Emerick, etc) was what made them better and better with each album. They could not have done that without having someone who at least knew how to give them what they may have wanted, or get them to try something as simple as reversing the order of a chorus and verse for maximum impact as a single.

Is there over-crediting? Find me anyone in the music biz who doesn't over-credit themselves every so often if not hourly, it's our version of padding the resume. Find me those who don't heap lavish praise on various musicians based more on affection than actual credit due. It's all perspective.

I think George Martin's contributions hold up and are worthy of the praise he gets. It's one of those Catch-22 deals where we could argue if even one minute piece of the puzzle had been changed, they wouldn't have been the band they were. I think without Martin, Emerick, Smith, etc in place and working when and where they did, i.e. the studio cats who brought the ideas to life, it would be radically different. And it may have been cool, it may have been successful, but I don't know if McCartney working as a solo producer would have been able to make the magic happen. In fact when he tried to become more of a producer and skipper the Get Back ordeal, the others pretty much balked.

Indeed. George Martin's role should never be diminished. I think some of the recent dismissal of George Martin's work may stem from people reading Geoff Emerick's book and thinking of it as gospel. I would take that book with a grain of salt (or two).

And good call on mentioning Elvis basically producing his own sessions. Some would relish the idea of Elvis as some kind of musical simpleton who just did what he was told in the studio, but the session tapes prove otherwise.

Hearing some of those Elvis sessions through the years was a revelation for me. The guy was in full control, he was calling the shots, he knew when a vocal take everyone else might have approved wasn't quite right and he also could feel it when the band's performance wasn't exactly where it had to be. The guy was something else, as early as whatever RCA sessions from the 50's have leaked. Really cool stuff. I think that may have been what kept the Beatles on their game, not just that but getting better at every outing from 63-67. They had someone who might hear something that could be done better who was outside the group's inner circle and psychology. He had a damn good ear, obviously.

I wouldn't have even thought of Elvis had it not been for watching TCM late night last night. They featured lesser-screened films that had been preserved by the UCLA film archive, one of them was a disturbing film called Wanda from 1971 written by, directed by, and starring Barbara Loden. I'll be seeking that one out again! And a pretty cool film noir I hadn't seen with more of a domestic/family bent instead of the usual shadowy alleys and underworld.

So they did this quick featurette in between with Ann Doran, who played Mrs. Stark in the film Rebel Without A Cause. I've read numerous books about Dean and others involved, but she surprised me by saying James Dean more or less directed the film as he was acting the scenes. Maybe there was an axe to grind there, decades-old, but Ann said the director Nicholas Ray was there to say "roll, cut, print it" behind the camera while James Dean was the one who was actually the de facto director! The one scene where Dean comes home, wearing the red jacket, and eventually argues with his parents then storms out kicking a hole into the family portrait of "Mother"...that was all Dean improvising and Doran playing off of him. No script, no direction, they just let the film roll as they improvised and that was the only take they shot. Powerful scene. Apparently Dean's role was like that in alot of the scenes.

So I thought about Elvis - He did the same thing on those landmark 50's sessions at RCA. Chet admits he basically sat there in awe and even called his wife to come down and watch this kid put on a revue in the recording studio. Elvis and James Dean, right? In terms of pop culture, what is more iconic from the 50's than Dean and Elvis? They called the shots while others got the credits, creative powerhouses as well as performers. It was different system for sure.

If this were Facebook I'd give that a "like".  :-D

So if there were some kind of spy business back then this were the dates.. well done AGD! Personally don´t think that there was this kind of stuff going on.. Dates in August were to early (well maybe PM could have heard I ran, Wonderful and..well that´s it :-D) and April date is far to late because Pepper was already in the can!
I rest my case 8)

No-one here is denying influence in both directions: that's been going on in music for millennia and only a complete idiot would deny it. No art form exists in a complete vacuum: did Paul & John keep an ear on what Brian was doing and vice versa ? Of course, established fact. But the title of this thread concerns a very specific incident, which was proven some years ago to have been entirely impossible.