The Smiley Smile Message Board

I was listening the Pet Sounds box and found it interesting that during an early take of "Hang On to Your Ego", Brian refers to it as "Let Go Of Your Ego", which is a completely opposite sentiment. Did the nature of this song change even before it turned into "I Know There's An Answer"? What the heck does Brian really want us to do with our egos??

Paging Bill Tobelman...

It was also called "Let Go Of Your Libido" for about 2 seconds.  :smokin

My theory:  originally Brian and Asher were describing "hung up" people who needed to let go of their ego to get rid of their "hangups."  Then they changed the chorus to :

Hang on to your ego
Hang on because I know that youre gonna lose the fight

Which is saying - go ahead, try and hang on to your ego if you want, but ultimately you're going to lose the fight - you're going to drown in your hangups or you're going to have to let go of your ego.

The album How To Speak Hip has a routine about "hang-ups" and talks about the Zen Buddhists having these riddles that you meditate on and the idea is to "hang you up." As Zen riddles are (in some people's opinion) supposed to destroy one's ego then I guess you could say that hang-ups, or being hung up, may eventually help one to lose one's ego.

In the sixties there was literature that suggested that life is improved if one transcends one's ego. And I think that this is where "Hang On's" - "the way they live can be better" stuff comes from.

So often when I see world leaders bombing countries I think that this mentality is due to ego, and in the sixties it was often thought that the whole militaristic mentality was ego based.

Alan Watts' book The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (from 1966!) has lots of good ego material.

Also, the Johns Hopkins' "mystical mushrooms" study I posted about on another thread is a good indicator of the kind of positives that can come out of losing one's ego.