The Smiley Smile Message Board

Of all of Brian's compositions, Fire is the one he's had the most interesting relationship with: going from wanting to "scare a whole lot of people" to scaring himself so much he told others he'd burned the tapes. Despite this elements of it have popped up in quite a few Beach Boys songs, as well as in Rio Grande. I recently had a rather terrifying listening experience hearing the compiled rough mixes for Rio Grande for the first time; for some reason Brian got the studio musicians to completely replicate Fire as it was performed in '66, right down to the drumbeats, and hearing it come out of nowhere is really uncomfortable if you don't expect it.

Has Brian ever expounded on why he used Fire elements so often? And especially in Rio Grande, considering he seemed to be scared of the song when rehearsing it for the Smile live shows. I've looked all over the internet and can't seem to find any quotes from Brian on his borderline Shortnin' Bread level of continued fascination with the track. It'd be really interesting to understand his views towards it.

Apologies if this is easy to find and I've just not looked hard enough, but even still, Fire is quite an anomaly in the Wilson catalogue; it's genuinely scary, definitely one of his most impressionistic works. Any hypotheses are welcome, I realise there is a thread for the Smile Sessions version of the track although the discussion there is more about the mixing and quality of that version. I feel that Brian's relationship with the track in all of its forms is something that deserves to be looked at on its own.

As pictorial music Mrs. O'Leary's Cow is nearly unmatched. Everything about the dark feeling in the Smile music oozes from  that track.

The "compiled rough mixes for Rio Grande" you mention... are you referring to the bonus tracks on the BW 1988 solo album reissue?  I don't recall hearing anything that replicated the Fire music on there.

Wouldn't it be that the 'wedge' from the FIRE-intro and Rio Grande's Campifire-part(?) are similar ...

Oh jeez, how embarrassing, my Spotify threw in the BWPS version right after the Rio Grande eough mixes and it flowed perfectly. Man, I was hoping this was real because that would have been fascinating, sorry about the mix-up, the Fire elements that are present in Rio Grande are still very unusual though.

Maybe Pitter Patter was an attempt to wipe out any remnant of Fire?