The Smiley Smile Message Board

i've been chewing on the 'cabinessence' lead sheet in LLVS.  (not literally, you understand - i can afford food.)  can any of the resident brains help with the following?

(1) where's it from?  it looks to be an official publisher's lead sheet, filed for copyright, which suggests it's from the publisher's (rondor?) archive.  how did priore get it for the book?

(2) can it be dated?  my guess it that it was filed for the release of 'friends', because of the one-word rendering of the title. 

(3) are there any more of these in circulation?

i ask because i used to work in the sheet music end of music publishing, and, although the practice had all but died out by the time i was involved (the 1990s), it was, for many years, common protocol for publishers to have their artists' songs transcribed as lead sheets and filed for copyright.  this was approached in one of two ways: either the finished album/single was sent to the transcriber, who scratched all the dots out; or the transcriber did things song-by-song, as they came to the publisher's office - i.e. as they were written or finished.  in some circumstances (it happened to me only once in eight years*) the transcriber was sent to the studio to write things out before even any reference mixes had been done.

you can probably guess where this is going.  (and, please, let me wonder...)

it's feasible (my evidence in support of this: NOTHING) that, back in '66, brian's publisher would have had lead sheets prepared of songs he was working on...  which means it's possible that, buried in some dusty archive somewhere, are transcriptions of acetates or demos that haven't seen the light of day...  which means there's a dizzyheadedly fantastic and ludicrously slim chance that there's a 'do you like worms' lead sheet with the 'doo bee doo or not doo bee' lyrics and tune written on it, or a 'look' lead sheet with the original tune on it, or etc. etc. etc.

(you knew where this was going, didn't you?)

answers and speculation welcome.

*in that case, i spent a day with page and plant at abbey road writing out the lead sheets to 'walking into clarksdale' - they were super concerned about bootleggers and copyright infringement, so they did things the old way.

Something doesn't sit right with me: surely a studio lead sheet wouldn't have the lyric - typewritten, no less - included (including the misspelling of "evan" for "ebb and"). The notation is evidently by hand... no, something not right here.

lyrical mistakes are commonplace, agd.  in this case, no lyric sheet may have been supplied to the transcriber (again, very common), so they would have worked from best guesses (again, very common).  remember, these weren't lead sheets for studio use, but for the publisher's files.

handwritten dots (and even lyrics) were the norm, by the way.  until the advent of computer-based notation programs, music engraving was a lengthy and very expensive process.  (even with computers, it remains time-consuming.)

Says it's a studio lead sheet in the book... which is what doesn't sit right with me.

yes, fair dos - it certainly isn't a studio lead sheet.  publisher's copy.  no diggety.