The Smiley Smile Message Board

In the American Band doc, during the Smile section you can hear what sounds like a piano demo of the Hawaiian chant section of worms. Is this an authentic Brian demo or was it just fabricated for the documentary? If it's real, is it available on any boots?

Thanks

I've always wondered about that segment, to me it looks as though Brian is playing it "live" and not dubbed over the top. Cant' see anyone to a special effort to recreate a a "demo" version of Worms?

Was this footage from the Leonard Bernstein special? I bet some one with the full show could let you know if this is the case... :-\

I thought I heard that for this section of the doc, they synched the worms music over footage of his playing but that it's not the actual soundtrack to the visuals (which presumbaly are from the Bernstein thing) I'm sure somebody can clarify. I agree that it seems odd somebody would go to the trouble of faking a demo of the hawaiian bit of worms for the doc. Maybe they guessed what he was playing from the footage of his hands and it happens to be that bit!!

To me, it always did seem like a sync instead of a soundtrack.  And MAYBE the footage is from the stuff Dennis shot (where the footage of Dennis and Carl is from)?  Just a guess.

On one side, the dark room piano shots fit to the "Inside Pop" transcripts, on the other side we have a pic of Dennis filming it in the SS/WH Twofer booklet. So, it's probably Dennis footage. I guess Ed Roach would know...
I tend to believe that the piano demo comes from Brian, because this overdub would be the only non-BB insert in the complete film...beside perhaps the "Summer Means New Love" backing vocals, which I also think is original BB.

Alas -- this is 100% true, as it is true for the vast majority of that film. Sadly. I'm not even sure its Brian playing -- wasn't the story that they found someone who kind of pieced together what he might be playing, and they recorded them playing it on top?

That's how I remember it, Jon.  Someone figured out what he was playing from watching his hands, and they played it on top of the video.

That sounds kind of far fetched. And his hands don’t even match the music anyway. Why would they go that far for something so trivial? They could have used anything from the vault there. Heck, there’s tons of solo piano pieces in the can (Vegetables, CIFOTM). But if we have confirmation of this, I guess there’s nothing to argue. Just seems like a crazy thing to do.

Even if this is footage shot by Dennis, I still believe it’s the same night as the CBS shoot.  It totally fits the description. Can one of our more musical people here on the board tell for sure what he’s playing? I’d figure it would be Surf’s Up. His left hand might be doing the bass riff from the end of the song (Child section).

It does seem a lot of effort for a few seconds of footage. As you say they could have used other demo material - would anyone notice or care that it didn't  correspond to what he was playing? Why go to such effort - that's real perfectionism on the doc maker's part! Is there definite confirmation that this piano demo is not authentic then?

I don't believe we know for certain if it is a 66 Brian piano demo or something later, but it seems strange that for the entire documentary they would "fake" only this one bit of music - would make more sense to just not have any music there, or cut the scene entirely.  But it's weird that this piece of music never showed up on the SOT series, which used dubs of the tapes reviewed by the American Band music staff.

I personally wouldn't be surprised if a LOT of the music in the film were faked, INCLUDING the piano-plus-vocal version of "Summer Means New Love."

Dig -- all the piano pieces...."Friends," "Girl, Don't Tell Me"....a few others, perhaps, that I'm not recalling off the top of my head...so why not the pseudo-Hawaiian thing? (If it ISN'T fake, how come it hasn't come out on any bootlegs in the past twenty years?)

where's girl dont tell me piano on the docu?

I agree with Ho-Tep. I think the footage perfectly depicts what Jules Siegel wrote, so I think Dennis could be filming the CBS session.


If the person playing the Hawaiian theme was trying to play what was seen on the video, then it'd be very interesting. That footage is either separate from the CBS session, or the Hawaiian theme was a part of another song, as Worms is not mentioned on the transcripts. Or a third possibility could be that Brian was playing this without CBS cameras rolling.

Maybe I'll go home tonight and figure out what Brian is playing.

Yeah work it out, please?! That would be cool.

 
Well, if we can confirm what he is playing…or at least confirm what he isn’t playing, that would be a big help. The video is running fast, so an attempt to create a piano piece to go with it would be unsuccessful anyway. Unless he is playing the Worms riff, in which case it would probably be at a less hyper speed.

Of note is the fact that they head from the Worms riff to the Bicycle Rider music, either a nice coincidence or they knew the two went together. How educated were the filmmakers on Beach Boys music? I am not familiar with the filmmakers’ background.

Again, it seems fruitless for the film crew to record their own music when they had infinite resources before them, although the odd mix of “Here Today” shows that they weren’t afraid to meddle with history.

The “Summer Means…” point is a strong one, although Alan has said he has spent time searching for it in the vaults. Seems like he wouldn’t be chasing after it if he knew it was a fake. It does sound a bit suspicious to me as well. But are we to say that the filmmakers dragged a 5 part-harmony group into a studio for such an unimportant piece of background music?

I’ll have to review the film again tonight. I haven’t watched it in a while.

What this all comes down to again is the fact that we must…MUST...be allowed to review the contents of the CBS film cans. I don’t care who sees it, just as long as someone, anyone, sees the tapes and can report to us what they saw IN DETAIL. Just the notes along are a treasure trove of valuable information. Imagine what else is on those tapes…..

It is the key to the Smile mystery. I have no doubt.

Can’t Alan Boyd kick the door in and flash a badge? “I’ve got a warrant. Hand over the tapes!”

I believe Alan mentioned that, at least after the film's debut, the producers of "An American Band" were not allowed to use any of the Beach Boys masters, so by necessity the soundtrack is made up of outtakes, unreleased mixes and live material. Obviously there were no "SMiLE" masters at this point (apart from the tracks finished for subsequent albums) so I don't know how that would explain the appearance of the "Hawaiian" piano melody.

This is what I've heard as well regarding the AAB documentary. The theory I've heard is that they went out of their way to make the mixes sound different to the final masters to demonstrate that they weren't using the original masters/mixes. If the rule was simply that they couldn't use the final masters/mixes, then they presumably could have done remixes of the songs, but still made them conventional mixes that sounded nearly identical to the original mixes. But they apparently wanted to demonstrate that they were using new/different mixes (or, in a few cases, later-era live recordings) to avoid any suggestion that they were using the original mixes/masters.

Apparently, a short theatrical run of the documentary (which also included at least one additional scene using the studio recording of "Friends" as a back drop that was cut from the video version) utlilized the original mixes/masters.

One other comment: You can't really use the fact that a given piece hasn't been bootlegged as evidence of that piece not being a legitimate Brian/BB recording. The SOT stuff is certainly not anywhere near the entirety of what is in the vaults, even concerning only material from the era that the SOT stuff covers. And what has been booted beyond the SOT stuff is certainly relatively little compared to what exists in the vaults. Heck, the material currently in the vault is apparently not even 100% representative of everything that was recorded, considering there are apparently tapes here and there that are missing!

And I'll say one thing regarding the AAB documentary. It certainly seems to be a strange black hole for audio and video material, as apparently some of the video stuff used in the documentary has turned up missing as well (hence the use of an inferior video dub of the Central Park 1971 footage in "Endless Harmony"; compare this footage in EH to AAB and you'll see show much cleaner it looks on AAB; Alan Boyd might be able to explain this better).

I really don't understand the intrigue. It's plain to my ears that all these "demos" are just 80s background filler. That "Summer Means New Love" cut is blatantly Jeff Fosket singing.

Well....to be honest with you, I don't recall, but I THINK it's in the background when Carl talks about how much Murry loved their harmonies....one of those outtakes from the 1976 TV special (which, btw, was NOT titled It's OK, as I just learned recently!)...

 The fact that the Oppenheim footage is sans narration adds to the idea that the filmmakers may have had access to the master tapes, and thus, possibly, the dark footage of Brian at the piano is genuine Inside Pop footage and not just a Denny Wilson home movie (a multi-angle, artistically lit home movie to boot).

In fact, the reel descriptions as listed on this site speak of shots of hands and face in the dark. We're dimissing the idea of the footage being from the shoot based on a single photograph on Denny with a camera.

I agree these audio oddities sound phony. I just don't understand why they would bother to use them though.

I'm more interested in figuring out what Brian is playing. I watched last night and using the DVD player put the video at it's correct speed. It could be CIFOTM or the end of SU. I don't have a keyboard in front of me to mimic him. Anyone check it yet?

There were some photographs posted of the boys in the studio during vocal sessions (I think Al was wrapped up in mic cables). Does anyone know where I can see them as well as the shot with Denny holding the camera and Brian in the background?



I watched it last night. I can say, for sure, that the bass hand doesn't match the Hawaiian theme at all (rhythmically). And, on the right hand, all I could make out were a couple of notes (D). If anyone has access to coloring software and the colors of that video could be inverted it'd be a lot easier to see what's played.


-Edit-
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Now, if someone has that pic of Denny filming with Brian in the background that'd be great.

(http://membres.lycos.fr/PacificOceanBlue/Film/dfb.jpg)

(http://membres.lycos.fr/PacificOceanBlue/Film/dwf02.jpg)

(http://membres.lycos.fr/PacificOceanBlue/Film/dwf01.jpg)

Thank you so much for posting those, Jasper. I was hoping there was a very small chance that Dennis would be wearing the same outfit in those pictures, or that you could make out something in the background that would identify the location of Denny's video.

Those are great pics. Sure don't look like a group of angry people trying to undermine Brian. I blame the demise on Smile to his Seasonal Affective Disorder. Broke down same time in December '64. '66 no different.

From what I saw of the video, his right hand seems to bounce between two chords. To my eye, it rhythmically resembles the piano version of CIFOTM, like what you hear on SOT. But I can't say for sure.....

I'm pretty sure it's two chords too. You can also notice how his hand shifts for the second chord to get an idea of where he's going.


It could be the ending of Surf's Up for all I know. If I could only figure out the left hand.

You know, that pic of Dennis filming Brian makes it clear for me that the dark room film isn't CBS footage for sure. It doesn't make sense, except if it would be a still from what Oppenheim & crew filmed. Who took that photo?
The pic with Al wrapped up in mic cables can also be found in the SS/WH booklet.

Maybe having the TV crew in the studio was a big deal, so Dennis brought his camera that day.  But it just fits the description of the Oppenheimer footage so well. I don’t see why they’d go through all the trouble of perfecting the lighting like that just for a whacky home movie….although the patio footage follows it. Maybe Dennis was making a promo clip for Smile.

Would Alan Boyd be able to confirm whether it's just a different mix of "Worms", i.e. piano only etc or atleast know what masters where taken from the archives for the American Band footage?  :violin

You don't think it's possible that Dennis and CBS were both filming at the same session?

He might be able to confirm that someone was hired to play that for the American Band video. If you're asking if there's a chance it's BB, it's not.

Well I sure as hell do!

We need to find the cans of film and kick the door in an take 'em, vigilante style. Who's with me? Has  the quest to understand Smile pushed you beyond the brink of insanity? Well, don't hold it in! Get an ax and a pitchfork and let's charge the mound.

What were you doing last night? Nothing? That's what you call cool, is it?

Tomorrow, when someone asks you the same question, you can say "We didn't do nuthin'" or you can say "We helped this lunatic storm the fortress". That's not a knife....this is a knife! G'day!

So yeah, I think Hawthorne Blvd. would have been on the Hawaiian live album since it was mentioned at the overdub session. Either that, or there's a studio cut of that baby somewhere....

Personally, I think Hawthorne Blvd. was just an embryonic "Do It Again", what with a little "Surfin'" organ riff thrown on top. Yessir. That's my baby.

Is it just me or is Dennis directing the Wind Chimes tag vocal session?

And if Dennis had time to record the barely audible "Truck Drivin' Man" stuff during the Smile sessinos, how come he couldn't spend 5 minutes to record the lead? Vosse article says it was meant for Dennis to sing. I think we need to look harder.

We didn't land on Brother Records....Brother Records landed on us.

I think we are wasting our time trying to figure out Smile. Smiley Smile is the real mystery. 

Haha, whoa.

After perusing this thread there are a few quick points I should make clear...

 (I'm kind of in the middle of something else at the moment so I'll make it short for now, but I'll address details later when I have some free time!)

I've been doing some research into all of this, going through old archive files (which we've just recently obtained from the facility that handled The Beach Boys' masters at the time) and talking to Ron Furmanek and others who were involved with the AMERICAN BAND project.  Some things are becoming clear:

The raw footage from the Oppenheim film has never been found, and was not available to Malcolm Leo or used as source footage for the AMERICAN BAND film. 

The footage of Brian in the dark playing the piano was on a short silent 16mm roll obtained from Dennis' first wife. 

Footage of Brian, Mike, Alan and Carl in the studio (with fire hats) was on another 16 mm home movie roll from the collection of Ed Roach. 

If the producers had HAD any of that raw CBS footage of Brian and The Beach Boys in the studio working on Smile, I'm told that they most certainly would have used it.  Chances are the original outtake footage from INSIDE POP was disposed of years ago... studios and networks are notoriously bad about storing anything that's not "current." 

Sad to say, The INSIDE POP outtakes are probably on a shelf in that great vault in the sky, next to the camera negatives of Orson Welles' original edit of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, the complete version of Erich Von Stroheim's epic GREED, and the original uncensored release of The Marx Brothers' HORSE FEATHERS.  Either that or in a landfill in Jersey.

I'm told that the music in question, including the piano vocal version of "Summer Means New Love," was created especially for the film.  An associate of Malcolm's, whose name I don't know, was hired to create some original music for the film to cover gaps and create ambient backgrounds for segments where the cost of licensing original masters might have been prohibitive.  I have to say that whoever it was did a very good job.

And again, I'll reiterate another point - I can verify that there's virtually no way in which all of those tracks that were eventually booted as part of the SOT series were dubbed or created during the making of AN AMERICAN BAND.  At the time the boys' masters were stored in a very secure facility, and there's paperwork for every single tape that was requested and pulled on behalf of the film.   Again, I say that it's time to put that particular theory to rest.

I will say this, however:  the producers of AMERICAN BAND found a great deal of incredible material and made it available for the first time.  One of my challenges while making ENDLESS HARMONY was to find enough unseen footage so that, for BB fans (like myself), the two films might complement each other. 

Thanks,

Alan

Wow, thanks Alan! I'd wondered who the sources for the SMiLE footage were.

Thank you very much, Alan!
That only leaves one question open: How were they able to remove David Oppenheim's commentary from "Surf's Up"?

Jasper,

Good question - I forgot to address that... Malcolm had access to the original M&E (Music and Effects) tracks for the finished version of INSIDE POP.  Studios keep those separate elements on hand in order to facilitate dubbing of foreign language dialogue and narration tracks. 

Thanks Alan,

A very informative post - I think it puts a few queries to rest!

I know it's cheeky but, whilst you're on the subject of Smile artefacts, do you have any further information on the Durrie Parks acetates, Alan - i.e. has someone listened to them yet, are they being archived, preserved etc? I know this is a subject that quite a few on this board are curious about.

Many thanks,

Ben

Well, that puts a lot of things to rest. Thanks Alan.

 I’m still interested if anyone can figure out what he’s playing, though… :hat

Alan is right about that Ambersons analogy…it's just as depressing to think this footage is gone forever. At least the reel descriptions survived, to give us a couple more clues (Open Country Song)…

So….if the American Band people didn’t copy the master tapes, where did they come from? Since the boxes appeared in the 90’s, does that mean it may have happened more recently? Or were there copies made at the time of recording that someone sat on all this time? Al Jardine said that there were another secret tape machine taping all their studio work without there knowledge. How does that happen? What was the purpose? What does it all mean?

I will say, though, that I am so thankful this material has been available for us fans to hear. Listening to take after take of this material is such a facinating experience. The 'Boys should "bootleg the bootleggers" so to speak and release official CDs of the session work through their site.  Heck, I just saw the unofficial Pet Sounds session boxes sell on eBay for $140 a shot. There's a demand. A BRI regulated release would put the money in the Beach Boy's pocket, where it belongs. And we'll certainly line up and throw the money down.....even if it's material we already have.

And yes....we need to know what became of Durrie Parks' acetates.

I agree I'd be intrested if anyone could identify the tune he's playing.

And yes, Beach Boys bootleg material is fascinating but I am praying the Smile sessions especially become available in some commercial form. Just to hear all of this stuff in remastered clarity would be glorious. I guess that raises another question - Could the Smile sessions be remastered to the same quality as the Pet Sounds Box? I'm thinking specifically of tracks like Child/Father of the Man.

REmastered????

37!ws is correct, everything would need to be "mastered" first. Regarding "Child Is Father Of The Man": I recall asking Mark approx. 6 years ago about sync-ing up the existing backing vocals to the then newly discovered edited backing track. He replied that it could be done if one wanted to by isolating the vocals from the multitracks and overdubbing them onto the mono backing track mix. Ultimately, this would be a "fake" mix and not necessarily desirable for a historical accurate "SMiLE" sessions set, but it does confirm that vocal elements and at least a safety copy (2nd generation?) of the edited backing track to this song exist in good quality. Perhaps Alan can clarify the quality issue regarding "Child" and other tracks.

RF has been desgnated as the culprit for the SOT tapes for so long, I'd assumed this was a fact - if not him, then who or how?  Could someone else associated with American Band have run a second line to a tape recorder as tapes were auditioned for use in the movie?  If not AB, then it surely was a BB insider with access to the tapes who did not necessarily have to fill out the paperwork with checking out tapes in order to copy them.

It had to have been someone with complete unrestricted access - AND an awful lot of time on their hands! 

According to the archive tape logs from 1984-85, it's clear that the producers of AB weren't auditioning lots of tapes, and certainly not session tapes for projects like the Christmas album...

 
No more fake than the mixes of "Worms" and "Vegetables," for example, on the box set -- done by Mark with an ear for historical accuracy, but still done by Mark and not Brian!

(which doesn't matter a whit to me)

Oops I've betrayed myself as a complete audiophile ignoramus!! By remastered I meant 'clean up', 'make sound pretty' etc. I'll get my coat ...

Regarding Old Rake's post: Please don't tell me Worms on the boxset is not a Brian mix!! That's another one I'll feel uneasy about in my Smile comp, along with boxset vegetables. So whilst we're on the subject, are there any other Smile tracks from the boxset that were reconstructed, apart from Heroes sessions? Also, was the boxset Worms formed by evidence of what Brian wanted for the track, or is there a certain amount of guesswork involved on Mark Linett's part?

The GV box set "Worms" was edited together to feature the fullest possible version (at that time), meaning that the backing vocals heard on the second verse came from a different tape than the lead "rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock" vocals. I'm pretty sure the basic structure survived from '66/'67, but there were two different Hawaiian chant vocals found, right (one sung by Mike and the other by Brian)?

As far as original mixes go, I think only the alt. "Heroes & Villains" and maybe "Wind Chimes" were mixed in '67; "Cabin Essence" is from '68 of course and everything else was newly mixed for the box set. "Our Prayer", "Surf's Up", "I Love To Say Dada" and "Wonderful" were mixed from the multitracks I believe; "Do You Like Worms", "Vegetables" and "Heroes & Villains (sections)" were edited specifically for the box set as well as being mixed for it.

Feel free to correct me if I got this wrong.

The timeframe would have to be before early summer 1993, because that's when the Columbia multitracks (notably absent from the Summer Days SOT box) were rediscovered. Whoever it was, they had access to the original multitracks and 3-, 4- and 8-track consoles to play them on. That some of the albums are patchily represented and others exhaustively chronicled might mean something to someone. It still means that someone sat on the tapes for at least four, five years (the first SOT set was in 1997, I believe)... and if you can do that, then why not ten or twelve ? Just thinking out loud.

Alan might be misremembering that Chuck Britz, for example, made a habit of running a two-track slave off the board during sessions to give himself a reference tape for the next day's work.

Call this a strong opinion: the tapes were copied to DAT and shared by several people on the fringes of the business during a period centering around 1989.  They were not real bootleggers, but certainly not ordinary fans.  They had focused plans (such as the 3 LP SMiLE vinyl set) and didn't think of anything nearly as ambitious as the SOT sets for quite a while, if that was even their work.  These guys are on top of a lot of rare material, including original tapes in some cases, but I don't have any idea if they ever had any original Beach Boys tapes- just DAT copies made in the still of the night some time long ago...

Interesting thing I've just remembered - the Smiley Smile SOT could have been better. There was stuff doing the (limited) rounds that should have logically been on there.

One thing that needs to be squashed before it raises its ugly head again -  Mark Linett was not connected in any miniscule way with the SOT releases. Fingers were iinitially pointed his way, but the fact that the Summer Days set lacks material that was included on the 1993 box proves the inaccuracy of this (not forgetting that Mark wouldn't do such a thing anyway). Remember, the people who copied the tapes had access to the original multitracks (most of the time), the appropriate consoles on which to play and mix them and the digital equipment with which to copy them. And the considerable time needed to effect the transfers.

Right- they were skilled people in the business, but no one nearly as high-profile as Mark or Alan, etc.

I see we patronise the same hatter.  :)

 :lol Noticed the same thing.  Quite a dignity gap, though!

Anybody know a good Mason Reese message board?