The Smiley Smile Message Board

...I heard this strangest of rumours. It is said that a tape exists of some '63 sessions, where Brian is returning from the bathroom and heading for a bottle of cold Coke. He is humming to himself, and very, very clearly the main theme of 'Surf's Up' can be discerned, as well as 'Woody Woodpecker', somewhat later. Then someone (Mike?) shouts from afar something like: '...straying again Bri?'. Brian suddenly stops and audibly opens a bottle. All the while this tape has been running, which now stops.
At first I thought it was a complete and utter prank, until I realized that I would have said the same about Back Home, released in 1976, but first recorded around the same time.
My source tells me that said tape is in the hands of Japanese collectors, who would be willing to auction it off... or not. If CDRs already exist, I do not know.
Anyway, all of this would be of the greatest musicological value, I am sure.
Anyone know more?
CLF

He may have had that rolling melody in his head for a long time before he sat down and put it to music. It'd be pretty cool to hear that still.

Didn't Al Jardine say that "Heroes & Villains" was one of the first songs they sang as a group? But I think he meant it in an other way....
Anyway, if such a tape exists, it would be very interesting

I read Al's remark as saying that the barbershop style of the song was something they had been doing since the start.

Intersting comments about SU.

There are things saying that the group went to the studio excited to do a track telling of the Old West and Cowboys and stuff. Probably something to do with how they actually sung on the track together.

Ever seen the Beatles First American Visit video? There's a scene in a hotel room in 1964 where Lennon is tootling around on a melodica (a kid's toy instrument) and starts playing what would become the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever"!

Some musical ideas take a long time to gestate....

It would be a major find if it were true.  Huge ramifications with regards to how Wilson's gestation from "gifted" to "gilded" really occured.

So I guess he wrote it in 4 nights, then?


That's true, it's called "Do You Remember the Raping of the Indians?"

Sure the American Dream wiped a bunch of Indians out, but the first settlers to the land came in peace and were greeted with nothing less.

Where did you read that?

Would you know where abouts this is? I don't feel like watching through the whole thing

Genocide can't adequately be described with the term "bunch."  That's for bananas.

Any news on that tape  ?

Yes, but 'Back Home', being a rather straightforward R&B type of song, is a lot more believable as an early 60s tune than Surf's Up.  Intriguing, but sounds likely to be a story spread by those who would like people to believe this type of thing, particularly with the rather damning insinuation about Mike.  If the recording does exist, I suppose it might well be a fake.  Still, I'd love to be proved wrong!

Then again, When I'm 64 turned out to be one of McCartney's earliest songs - a different thing again perhaps but not at all the type of thing you'd have thought Paul would have been writing in very early 1960s (or even late 50s?)

Seems entirely possible to me, too.  It's not totally unprecedented for that period.  It was just several months after Smile that they reworked "Thinkin' About You Baby" into "Darlin'," right?

Yes, but Darlin' at root a generic R&B song.  Surely Surf's Up would show a musical imagination far in advance of anything you might have guessed in 1963.  Be like hearing a tape of John Lennon humming Strawberry Fields Forever in 1963.  Just sounds a bit like wishful thinking to me.

I really don't see anything like that as being out of the ordinary. I myself (not that I'm comparing myself to Brian or John) have had melodies in my head for years.. and with how amazing Surf's Up and Strawberry Fields are it's not surprising at all that they took a few years to be worked out in their heads..

And besides, this fits perfectly into Brian's habit for revisiting music that he wrote years ago; hell, didn't we prove that some of his solo albums have absolutely no new material on them?

Interesting comment about the intro to Strawberry Fields, I also read somewhere that Ringo wrote Don't Pass Me By in 1963.

A melody is a certain sequence of notes pertaining to a certain key.

How much of the tune did he actually hum?

Thanks for clarifying that.

Well when this topic first came about I thought "Whoah this is cool", now i'm just thinking it's not really a big deal because of that.

I know, just fodain' with ya.

YES!  I had about decided I was imagining it.  Also, we know part of "H & V" existed in 1964, at least- "All Dressed Up For School".

What I'd really love to see turn up is "I'm Waiting For The Day" from 1964.

HI JOE!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, they talked about it in a BBC interview in (I think) '65.  Ringo talks about a song he'd written, and one of them says "don't pass me by, don't make me cry, don't make me blue..." and that they'd never record it because it was based on an old melody that others had already done to death.

That is a melody.  So add some music to your day.

Ha, apparently all of the songs Ringo wrote for the Beatles besides the three (I think) that ended up on the albums were turned down because they subconciously robbed the melody from someone else's song.

He talked about it before that in Australia during their August tour. Paul even sings the chorus.

“In fact, ‘Heroes And Villains’ at the start, was one of the first things we ever did, really early on, even before we recorded ‘Surfin'; We were working on that song way back in '61. We all became instruments for Brian's barber shop concept. He said, ‘Let's all do this, let's sing this idea.’ Carl would be one instrument, I'd be another. Mike would be another instrument. “
-Al Jardine (Goldmine -“A Beach Boy Still Riding The Waves” July 28, 2000)

    HEROES AND VILLAINS BACK IN ’61:


“Yeah, the idea, not the song. We started singing a capella first because we didn't play instruments. With none of us really being players, we would just scat in the car going to a show or something or going to school, anywhere. “
-Al Jardine (Goldmine -“A Beach Boy Still Riding The Waves” July 28, 2000)

It should be pointed out that there is no strong evidence to suggest that what John played on that melodica in 1964 had anything to do with the mellotron intro to the song several years later.

For one, it's Paul who plays the mellotron intro on the final recording. John's demos of the song in late 1966 as well as the first studio take of the song do not have that mellotron intro at all. I'm not saying Paul neccesarily wrote that intro, but I don't see any strong connection between what John played in '64 and what either Paul added to Take 2 and on (or what John could have instructed Paul to play).

Also, what John plays on that melodica is really only three notes that match the first three notes of the intro on the finished record. The tempo and way in which the notes are played is completely different.

Anything is possible, but this seems to be quite believable as an interesting coincidence.