The Smiley Smile Message Board

Has anyone ever heard if there were definitely vocals laid down for this track? I tried looking on the Smile Shop page but it keeps coming up that it can't be displayed, for some reason today. I believe that there was a vocal session, but does anyone know if anything was actually recorded? I think that this is actually a pretty catchy tune....

by Mr. Carl Wilson? I'm not denying that Carl composed/produced it, just questioning it. Where are people (many in the past) getting this information? I've asked the question numerous times....

Well, for the most part you can hear him running the session...

Because Carl can be heard producing from the booth on the tape of the session.  And because the first of four sessions devoted to the tune is documented as a "Carl Wilson" session (as opposed to a "Beach Boys" session) for Brother (instead for Capitol) on the AFM contract.  

As far as vocals being recorded for it, there is documentation to that effect, in the form of a Capitol Records Popular Session Worksheet.  Here is the history based on the documentation I have:

Mar. 3, 1967 - Sound Recorders: TONES (artist: Carl Wilson, Brother Records)
Mar. 13, 1967 - Sound Recorders: TONES (vocals)
Mar. 15, 1967 - Western Recorders: TONES
Mar. 31, 1967 - Sound Recorders: TUNE X (Tones)

Thank you! Printed, saved.

Edit: I just officially deleted "Tones" from my SMiLE mix CD. :police: BTW, I think I've heard Carl
"count down" a song or two from the SMiLE sessions; at least it sounds like him.

There was also an April 11th session (listed as Tones Part 3) at Western with 5 musicians.

The vocal session had 5 vocalists - I would guess Carl, Mike, Al, Bruce and Brian.

Oops...yeah, I forgot that April 11th one. 
Vocally, I think it might have been Carl, Mike, Al, DENNIS and Brian, simply b/c the Capitol worksheet says "5 artists", wheareas a lot of the other sheets will say "5 artists + Bruce Johnston", implying he was still on salary and not royalties.  But I guess we'll never know, since we'll probably never hear it...    :(

Woah! There's vocals for "Tones"?

I swear, I learn something new about SMiLE everyday.

Yeah, me too. Now, if I could just find out the source of that "Spanish Guitar" snippet....

Knowing that "Tones" was definitely Carl's session makes me re-evaluate my own personal theory that, in SMiLE's final days (Spring 1967), Brian (and the group?) were devoting all of their time to assembling/finishing//piecing together a finished SMiLE album. Here, they spent 5 days/sessions - experimenting on a Carl Wilson track! Now, I have to ask myself - why?

One theory is, that the BBs themselves re-evaluated their OWN vision of what SMiLE would be in early '67, and to that end both Dennis and Carl produced tracks for possible inclusion on a revised SMiLE lineup.  Brian was, according to this theory, either opening up the project to greater group involvement, or being forced to. 

Is that your theory? Do you think it was possible that had the SMiLE sessions continued another couple of months, through the summer, that the final product could've eventually ended up - the bulk of the songs by B. Wilson/V.D. Parks with additional songs by "other" Beach Boys?

Sheriff, the sessions for what became Smiley Smile were considered Smile sessions at the time. The title Smiley Smile came after.

No, I didn't come up with the theory, but it's an interesting one.  Especially when you consider that the famous handwritten songlist given to Capitol in late '66 was actually written by Carl, not Brian, as has been recently determined by those who have compared it to known handwriting samples by the two Wilson brothers.  This leads one to the possibility that Brian's brothers began to take a more active role in "assisting" him in shepherding the album to completion...and perhaps his inability to retain complete control over it was one reason he "scrapped" the album the following spring (as Derek Taylor put it).  Like I say, it's just a theory, but it is an interesting one. 

The album was due Jan 15th, and when it wasn't delivered, there was concern both at Capitol and in the Beach boys about Brian's state of mind and his ability to finish it.  Brian was focusing exclusively on the single (first Heroes, then Vegetables in April) - my theory is that Carl, who was closest to the project and participated on the most sessions of any of the group (other than Brian of course), felt Brian needed help and this is when he stepped in to work on Tones - maybe with a track from Dennis and a track from Carl Brian would be able to finish enough of what he had started to get an album out.  This would mark an abandonment of the strict "track list" submitted in December, but it's now three months later.

Others however feel tones was an experiment in production for Carl and it was not intended for Smile at all - although the project number listed for the session was the same as Smile's project number, wasn't it? (which doesn't necessarily mean anything other than that they wanted to bill Capitol for the session).

Very interesting....with the typical SMiLE contradictions. :-D

It would've been interesting if Brian, did, in fact, consider tracks from Carl and/or Dennis to fill out the album, when, there were an abundance of other Brian-composed tracks available. There were enough Brian songs to fill almost an entire double album. But, we know Brian, like Dennis, liked to move on. So, he might've considered his other SMiLE songs (like "Look", "Holidays") ancient history by Spring 1967.

What I find amazing is that communication within the band at this point seems to be non-existent. I know all the stories about how there was this division between the Boys and Brian, and he was into 'communication on a non-verbal level', but still, it seems pretty weird.  In virtually every interview the other Boys have given about SMiLE, they really seem to be in the dark about the whole thing. I know Brian was the mastermind of these tracks, but wouldn't you at some point- since you ARE a member of the band-ask Brian questions about the tracks? Everyone just says 'he seemed out of it, he was spaced out, etc.'. They appear to have no clue whatsoever about any of it.

That was actually the 2nd deadline - the initial date that Brian gave Capitol was late November/early December, and as I recall the wording on the memo - dated 12/12/66 - was "the album... will in all probability deliver some time prior to January 15th". Or in other words, there was no cast-iron guarantee.

Personally, I think this theorising that the rest of the band might have contributed material is an interesting notion... but nothing else.

Yeah, I never heard/read anything about this "theory" until this thread.

Good post, A Million Units In Jan!....There are so many issues that defy logic or common sense - which defines SMiLE, I guess. Melinda has talked about the dysfunctional Wilson family, and I think that carried over into the relationships and communication within the band also.

There is always something that bothers me about the SMiLE Era, which is kind of along the same lines that A Million Units In Jan! was getting at. And that is the fact that one can't just ask a direct question about a SMiLE issue and get an accurate answer. Using this thread, "Tones", as an example. The Beach Boys devoted five sessions to this tune, and it was unique because Carl was supposedly in charge. Five sessions! But, if you asked any of the Beach Boys who were present at these sessions about the tune, what kind of answer(s) do you think you'd get?

'I don't know, I mean, there was so much stuff recorded....you'd have to ask (insert name here) about it-I mean, that was 40 years ago, that stuff is all in fragments'.

And the one thing I never understood was Al's comment about how 'we did as much work on SMiLE as we did on Pet Sounds'. I know that there are some vocals missing that we will probably never hear, but still , it  seems a stretch to say that they did more work on SMiLE than on Pet Sounds, IMO.

I don't know. How many vocal sessions were there just for H&V? It probably seemed like a million sessions for the guys, even if it was just for one song. I'm sure there's plenty more vocal experiments that we'll never hear from those days, unlike PS where Brian seemed to have exact ideas for the vocals. I can see how Al might feel like SMiLE was more work than PS.

I think grillo is right. It isn't a matter of how much material was finished, but how much work went into what was recorded. They did a lot of work, it's just that all that work didn't result in a finished album or as many finished songs.

That's true-I don't think that Brian had as clear a vision for vocals on SMiLE as he did on Pet Sounds. Or, his mind was changing so rapidly that by the time one set of vocals was done he was unhappy with them and wanted to do them again. I imagine that for Heroes and probably Vegetables there was a lot of vocal work done, not so much on the other tracks.

After my last post, I started thinking about something. I made a comment about how the guys always seemed to take the stance that the album was in all of these fragments. While the songs are fragments edited together, there still seems to be, for the most part, cohesive mixes of quite a few of the songs (not necessarily final final mixes, just a rough mix to give someone an idea of how the song would go) . Is it possible that back then, Brian never played them entire tracks? That all they heard was actually a 20 second snip here, a 40 second part there? And that still, even after everything we know, blows my mind. That he worked on this material for months, and they never heard full tracks of material (if it indeed is the case that all they heard were snippets). You can  see where they would think the album wasn't going anywhere.

That's a great question. I don't know if I have ever considered it. We've heard people like Vosse talk about getting rough mixes of songs pieced together, but what about the band? Without knowing otherwise, it would seem logical that he'd give them possible mixes of the album, or at least songs and groups of songs. But ... did he? I have no idea.

When we, or any other 'Smile Historian' talk about how the Boys really did a number on Brian by not letting him complete the album, I think we all think of the tracks as we hear them now-as full, complete songs. It would seem logical that Bri would play them full tracks, but we know that during this time, Brian wasn't always 'logical'. Imagine for a second, though, that all the guys were hearing were these small snippets, and then they were being asked to do vocals that weren't really 'vocals' per se, but chants, or animal noises, or water noises. And you had the record company breathing down your neck for the album, which is already not going to be ready by the original release date. I used to be of the opinion that SMiLE was this real black and white issue: Brian was a genius, and The Boys were idiots for not liking the music and pretty much forcing Brian to quit the album. While I still think the music is amazing, and I think that at one time Brian was a musical genius, as time goes on I start to see things from the Boys perspective a little bit more.

Great point Million Units and a great question posed in the previous post... as Luther said, I had NEVER considered that, but it might just be true and if that's the case then I agree with everything you say.

Bruce, Mike and Alan all had mixes of complete SMiLE tracks that they either talked about or shared with Byron Preiss, Brad Elliott, or other writers in the late '70s and early '80s.  But were they given to them by Brian in '66-'67, or did they get them from Carl & Desper in '72? 

In 1980, Alan had - and for all I know, still has - a goodly number of Smile-era acetates.

Might they be from when it was being revisited in the early 70s, though? It may be impossible to know, but Andrew, do you think he and/or the others had heard as much as there was reasonably available to hear at the time in '66/'67, or do you think they were blindly touching the snake, the tree trunk, etc. as opposed to the elephant?

The Beach Boys considering Smile to be fragments was because the songs were recorded, and often rerecorded, in sections or "fragments."  When Brian asked the boys to do vocals, they would work on backing vocals for one section of one song, and then might jump to a section of a different song, and then go on to a third.  Then Brian would write a new section to a song and bring them back to record vocals for that (Heroes and Vegetables in particular).  So you could certainly see how they would get the impression that all there was was fragments that Brian hadn't decided how to put together.  And the fact he would change his mind and take sections from one song and put them in another (Child into Vegetables, OMP fade into Heroes, Worms' Bicycle Rider into Heroes, Great Shape out of Heroes, etc.) couldn't have helped.

Carl attended many of the sessions and of all the Boys he would have had the best understanding of what Brian's intentions for the songs were.  If you look at the 12 track list, how many of the songs had "completed" backing tracks edited together that the Boys could have heard?  Heroes briefly had a completed track with vocals (cantina) but it was immediately rejected and more "fragments" recorded.  Wind Chimes had a complete track but then Brian rerecorded the verse and the coda - they may never have heard the "completed" track as we have on the GV box set and as Mike Vosse did on the acetate (of course we've never heard the acetate mix either).  Surf's Up - first section only, the Boys weren't there for the December solo version, probably only heard it in 70-71 (they would have heard the TV doc version though).  Elements, Great Shape, Cabinessence (only mixes at the time were partial verse/chorus/fade mixes with varying degrees of vocals on each), Vegetables, Child (I doubt many of them heard the completed instrumental mix, since the vocals are all on sections, not on a completed track), Old Master Painter - none had completed backing tracks edited together at the time, at least that we've heard.  So excluding GV, I would say Worms and Wonderful were the two songs that they most likely heard complete tracks for back in 66-April 67.

We need to hear those Alan/Bruce/Parks acetates!

My understanding of acetates is that they are for listening to at home a few times-they deteriorate on repeated plays-so many acetates from the 60s would be in poor shape-depending on how many times they were listened to

Depending on the condition of the stylus, an acetate is good for 10, maybe 15 plays, after which, all you get is surface noise.

With this in mind, what is the likelyhood that anybody who has some of these precious acetates could have them copied for posterity?

Absolutely brilliant discussion, here. It really does cast the BB's opinions of SMiLE in a whole new light.

I've just thought about something. Desper worked to the band till and including the recording of C&tP, that should be spring '72 tops. Mike was still talking about a Smile release in November '72 (Wonderbilly). We have Desper's account of what happened while he was onboard - not much - but after that, did Carl work more on the tapes, while Rieley was still around? Jack wrote some weird stuff about the 60s / 70s nature of the Smile tapes.

One more thing: in 71/72 I don't believe they would use acetates. I think cassette was already king.

Steve didn't work on CATP per se - that was engineered by Steve Moffitt - but he did engineer the two tracks Dennis offered for the project.

This is turning into a great discussion!
I can't remember right off the top of my head exactly when Carl tried to put SMiLE together, but I remember a comment from him like 'Something keeps stopping us from finishing the album, but I don't know what  it is'. Interesting.

One thing I've wondered is this: When Carl started trying to put a SMiLE album together, was that during the WB years, when they were pretty much signed to Warners with the intention that at some point the album would be delivered? Now if memory serves me correctly, those were some lean times. I find it hard to believe that if there was quite a few finished tracks, then they couldn't have finished up the couple that weren't done yet and got the album out. We know at this point that the BB's got to a point where they were pretty much about 'finished product' and 'money'. If there was any money to be had by releasing the album, they would have done it, Brian's dissaproval be damned. That leads me to believe even more that by that point, everything that had been completed ( or near completion) had already been released. There must have just been a ton of pieces on tape, so much so that they wouldn't even know where to start.

Yeah, I've wondered about that also, the "finishing" of SMiLE in the early 1970's. I specifically wondered if they were going to re-record all of the songs (like Brian did with BWPS) or incorporate the old with the new - like 1971's "Surf's Up".

I recall a quote from Carl that they transfered all of the 66 + 67 stuff to safety tape; so that might imply that they wer incorporating old with new...

Yeah, I think the idea was to take what Brian had done, record whatever was needed (mostly lead vocals) and put it out.  Without Brian's cooperation, though, it was pretty much an impossible task from the start. 

Isn't there a quote from Stephen Desper about how some of the tape had actually been thrown away, some of it cut up? And he and Carl had to 'tape' the tapes back together?

And we wonder where some of the missing pieces are!!

"The Old Master Painter" 4-track had been "accidentally" thrown out and was repaired in this manner. 

Ok. I couldn't remember if it was just one track, or a bunch of tracks.

I've heard it was just a small section of "Fire", like maybe an inch or two.

Has anyone heard the Tones vocals? And what was Dennis working on at the time of Tones? I wonder if the 72 smile would've included Tones, Cool Water, Can't Wait Too Long, etc... Also, I can see the project seeming to be a big challenge if the fragments were spread across tape, etc...

Well, I don't know why a '72 SMiLE would have included Can't Wait Too Long or Cool Cool Water, as those aren't really songs that were even originally included. Tones maybe, but that's probably even a stretch. Most likley it would be the same songs as the original, as there was a ton of covers and booklets waiting to be used-unless they were destroyed by that point.

Does anyone know when Capitol finally scrapped all those booklets and LP covers?

I don't know when they were scrapped, but they couldn't have been used in '72...because they had "Capitol Records" printed on them, and the '72 SMiLE would've been a Warner release.  :)

Dennis recorded a track (with Carl, Bruce, and Billy Hinsche) under the working title "I Don't Know".  That was in January, a couple of months before Carl did "Tones".

Is it booted??

I have two versions of the song 'I Don't Know' I found on the web, not on bootlegs, just as a single mp3.

one is labeled:  "Dennis Wilson - I Don't Know (piano demo acetate)" (1mn 08s)
Dennis plays piano alone,  with poor sound quality.
In my opinion, it can be a fragment of the real 'I don't know' from Smile era;

and the other:  "I Don't Know (dennis wilson) mono 1-12-67" (2mn 28s)
full orchestration (guitars, drums, bass...), with better sound;
My opinion, it's the other song titled "I don't know" recorded in 1977 by Dennis; it doesn't sounds like a Smile era song.

Mystery, always mystery around SMiLE!

The "other song" titled "I Don't Know" recorded in 1977 by Dennis is, in fact, "Love Remember Me" as included in the new "Bambu: The Caribou Sessions", Disc Two of "Pacific Ocean Blue:  Legacy Edition".  So if the "mono 1-12-67" (2mn 28s) track isn't THAT...it could be the SMiLE-era "I Don't Know".

Ho, sounds interesting, i didn't know that;
so let me take a listen to "Love Remember Me" and I will be able to give you an answer without doubt;
maybe a new step to the thruth about SMiLE !

My understanding is that the slicks & booklets were pulped in late 1969 - coincidentally when the band's contract with Capitol expired.  :)

Ok, here's the news; I took a listen to "Love remember me" and that's nothing to do with "I don't know";
so maybe it's the Smile era song, I just thought it was the 1977's version because it sounds more like 70's than 60's and the note 'mono 1-12-67' was a mistake.
But once again the 2 versions I have are totally different
It still a mystery...  :(