The Smiley Smile Message Board

1. What (percussive?) instrument is used to make the "railroad spike" sound in the Iron Horse section, and who played it?

2. Similarly, in the Grand Coulee section there is some kind of an (wind?) instrument that sounds a bit like an owl ("who who, who who"), what is it and who played it?

3. How did Brian get that insane speaker-shattering, whale-fart-in-an-echo-chamber bass sound at the end of the verses?

The "railroad spike" on Cabin Essence I believe was Frank Capp playing a hubcap. You'll note that Nelson Bragg played the same thing live during BWPS.

The wind instrument in the Grand Coulee segment, I believe is a flute. No idea who played it.

The "whale-far-in-an-echo-chamber" bass sound at the end of the verse is actually a cello or upright bass, I believe. Unless you mean the fuzzy sound during the chorus, which is Carol Kaye on a Fender bass with fuzztone.

What make/model of car did they take that hubcap from? ;D

No, I mean the cello/upright, the last thing played before the chorus. What makes it so..."heavy"?

The hubcap? No idea...:) I know Foskett mentioned live that it was from the late 50s, but I forget what exactly. I'd have to check my boots.

And yeah, that's the cello/upright. More leaning towards an upright bass. If it was upright bass it was most likely played by Lyle Ritz. If cello, I don't know. The tone's really thick for a cello, but it could also be reverbed slightly. Reverb makes anything sound heavy. For some reason, I think Brian used different levels of reverb on the three sections of Cabin Essence. The verse seems light on it, the chorus is loaded with it, and the tag is somewhere between.

I thought the railroad spike sound was made by playing guitar strings behind the nut on the headstock.
The "owl" sound would be a Cuica: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBfddHxQ9YU&eurl
The "whale fart" sounds like a cello or two combined with fuzz bass.

Maybe bass harmonica, too?

Agree that the 'spike' sound is guitar played behind the bridge. You can hear it on the sessions. 8)

Nelson's hubcap was from a '67 VW.

The Danelectro 6-string fuzz bass on "Cabinessence" is played by Bill Pitman...Carole was on the Fender bass.

The chorus section (recorded at Western on October 11th) had, in addtion to Pitman & Kaye, Jimmy Bond (the bowed upright bass), Ollie Mitchell (apparently the wind instrumnet mentioned above), Brian and Carl (who apparently played the spikey sounds from the bridge of a guitar).  These names are all from the AFM contract, but I admit to not having listened to the session in awhile.   

The earlier session, at Gold Star on October 3rd (for "Home On The Range", apparently the verses and "Grand Coulee" tag section), had Jim Gordon on drums/tambourine, Jesse Erlich on cello, Carl Fortina on accordion, Armond Kaproff on cello, Carol Kaye, Jay Migliori on flute, Tommy Morgan on standard & bass harmonica, Van Dyke Parks on piano, Bill Pitman, Lyle Ritz on upright bass, Tommy Tedesco on guitar & bouzouki, James Burton probably on banjo, and Carl Wilson on guitar.

It's Carol on Banjo and Burton on Dobro.  And the owl sound is just a low flute.

Some of my favourite moments in the Smile sessions are the Cabinessence Tag sessions.

Those piano chords are just gorgeous, and the way it builds up, and then there's the take with the beat-party drums that blaze in for about 4 bars and then stop. The BBs didn't really "jam" but I would have love to have the cabinessence tag with those drums go on for about 3 or 4 more minutes.

I might be wrong here, but wasn't the whole of the Cabinessence backing track cut at the one session. Listening to the sessions, it seems strange to me that the Who Ran the Iron Horse section was called out as "chorus", not as the title that we associate with it. Kind of suggests that they were working on the whole track in that one session.

I kind of assumed that the Oct 11th session was for the verse sections of Child Is Father Of the Man, which at the time may not have been intended for that song. Maybe they were the missing Cabinessence sections for those other lyrics about "telephone reconnecting" or whatever they were!

i'd say with almost 100% certainty that the bass sound at the end of the verses is a bowed double bass, not a cello.  the tone is quite distinctively different.