The Smiley Smile Message Board

I was never sure whether the whole thing about Brian listening to this obsessively was a playful myth or a fact. I recall seeing Brian's daughters talk about waking up each day in the 70s to the song. Then there's various writings which mention Brian really going in depth about the song and how everything in it is symbolic. Etc.

One one of those 80s interviews someone posted in the recent interviews thread, the day time television one, the host asks Brian what he listens to or some similar question. He says "Be My Baby". The group laughs and Mike (I think) says "... the legend lives on" which to me suggests that it might be something of a joke Brian puts on. The manner that he said it - straight forward, dead serious - could suggest that too.

So what's the deal? I don't think it's even a great song. It's a good production and all, a great pop song, but hardly seems the sort of thing one would choose to obsess over. Or is it?

Can we get some discussion going on this please? I find it very interesting.

Brian loved Spector's work. It isn't a put on, it's just a song that he loved at an early age, and it stuck with him. We all have those kinds of  songs. Not everyone is as obsessive about it as Brian is. I believe part of it is that it takes him back to a happier time in his life. The other reason is that he just thinks it's a cracking good song. Simple as that, not really anything to read into, IMHO.

But the general myth, as recognized by Mike or Al in that interview ("... the legend lives on") is one of Brian not just enjoying the song but seeing in it something of some cosmic significance that escapes mere mortals. An image of Brian walking around his fun house with a children's tape recorder playing only the beginning drum beats again and again and again ...

When I was a child, I listened to one main song for about nine years : the Happy Days theme. I had it on a white cassette tape which had a bright orange label. A children's tape with stories and such on. I would listen to the song over and over again in a shed in the back garden of my childhood home.

Ah, that explains what happened to your brain cells.  :-\

Anyway, I don't think it's a myth — the song clearly clobbered BW in a creative zone — so much so that he 'stole' the Wrecking Crew & emulated PS's production/recording techniques.

My brain cells are in great condition, I just don't have them running on the normal configuration. If meditation is simply brain activity then my brain goes right to the center of the mandala every time.

"Happy Days" is a great song for a child to be interested in, anyway. From what I remember the lyrics are uplifting and the tune is filled with joy. I used to dance around so happily to it, so full of zest for life. The orange and white cassette was special to me too, every other cassette around the place was the usual black or those clear grayish colors and this was seemed special.

I agree about "Be My Baby". No doubt it clobbered him. I hear most of Brian's pre-Smile productions as being in direct competition with Spector, or at least trying to beat him at his own game as an incredible joke. I think with Good Vibrations he felt that he'd done it, he'd gone beyond Spector's sound and also made something of more quality than most of the other hits at its time. After that it's like he's free and can do anything

I was the perfect age to fall for the Fonzie phenom, & I did; I even had the action figure, & t-shirt.  By association, I guess I dug the theme song too.  But for the first season, they used Bill Hailey's ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK.
 
 

Christ I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but I agree with you!

You gonna pass that joint or what?

special K tonight

weed sucks, i smoked when i got up

have you read that santa claus look-alike Andrew Weil's theory about marijuana? he thinks it's an active placebo due to the physiological changes in the body like the eyes getting puffy or reddened, the breathing and circulation changing, etc., and that these bodily changes set in motion a psychological reaction which is particular to the individual. i don't know if i buy into that entirely - i find weed to be an intoxicant like alcohol in that the more of it i use in one session the less sober i become, when sober is understood as lucid, clear, with a still, potently energized mind. unless it's just the physiological effects amping up with dosage ...

point is, i feel like a weed high is a deviation from my usual state which is a very sober (in the sense of lucid and meditative, not in a party pooper way) and i have to either go through the grueling days to weeks sober to have my normal state return (weeks, that is, if i've been smoking a lot and regularly ; days if it's just here and there) in which case with the disappearance of all the thc from my body it returns to its natural functioning - or take another drug which i consider to bring something closer to my natural state, or to paint over the bad job the weed did on my system. hence the special k, just what john harvey kellog would've wanted inbetween forbidding sex and masturbation and doing yogurt enemas, oh and locking children's genitals in cages, ...

but seriously, it's true.

marijuana is a horrible drug and it's a very alluring one, which makes it all the worse. the plant to look at is strange, mysterious, beautiful. its smell is like a fine, earthy perfume. the initial high is enjoyable and pure. but it quickly turns into a sedative on both body and mind, or at least for me, and destroys the meditative lucidity of the natural mind.

padmasambhava says that the buddha-mind is just ordinary awareness, really. i agree. the sober mind, not intoxicated, is very very close to the meditative mind. and a meditative mind is a mind that conquers illusions.

a heroic yogi becomes master of his senses, the player, not the played.

drugs play a person, but can be used sparingly for correctional purposes. drugs can also be of tremendous aid to meditators in showing how deep their meditation had been going in comparison to a mere chemical change - a circus in the nervous system compared to the penetrative, inescapable state of yogic trance.

It's so common for Brian to get obsessed with a song and do it over and over again (either play it, listen to it or record it): "Be My Baby," "Old Man River," "Shortenin' Bread," "Shortenin' Bread," "Shortenin' Bread," "That Lucky Old Sun."

I don't know if you realize it, but you come off as needlessly obsessive about drugs. I've done plenty of drugs, and eventually you have to realize that using drugs on a regular basis is an addiction. That's why you're so fixated on it, especially on the act of glorifying it, all to justify your usage of it. Trust me, I use to do it. If you're OK with that, then there's not much else I can say, but that I think it's not necessary and that it is (temporarily) damaging. Think about it. Why do you need drugs? For enlightenment?  Does the Dalai Lama need drugs? No. For creativity? Did Bach need drugs? No. Sure, a lot of very creative people, 'geniuses' as we like to call them, used drugs. But it was not the source of their creativity. It's a form of self-medicating, a way to deal with the mental instability that typically accompanies intensely creative states of mind. Abusing drugs actually tends to dull the mind, you get burned out. Ask Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett. Hell, Paul McCartney just smoked a lot of pot, and by the 80s he was making "We All Stand Together/The Frog Song". This, the man that wrote "Yesterday" and "Hey Jude. Do you want that to be you?

The reason drugs had such a major effect on society in the 60s was because, by proxy, it introduced people to more esoteric and radical philosophies, eastern and anarchist philosophies in particular. It was not LSD or marijuana that led to there being backwards sounds on the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping", but McCartney's fascination with Karlheinz Stockhausen and other experimental classical composers, which was just a byproduct of the experimental atmosphere. John Lennon and McCartney's attitudes by the late 70s showed, in a microcosm, that the whole hippie culture and their beliefs in drug-induced enlightenment were a farce, and that they learned little from it. Tellingly, they were all back to their old selves as soon as the initial high wore off. We called it going back to our roots [as suburban affluent Westerners], or maturation, or other similar phrases in our attempt to polish that turd. Those who still believed in the more esoteric aspects of the remnant hippie culture would have believed in it anyway without the drugs had they just been exposed to it properly (such as is the case with Eastern religion). Brian, for example, only took LSD a few times. Yet most people think he must have been out of his mind constantly to record SMiLE. That's patently not true. SMiLE was already within Brian, he only needed to use LSD a few times to realize it. He very well could have potentially done it without ever using LSD, although he would have needed to be exposed to the right situations. Smiley Smile is the sound of Brian actually out of his mind constantly. While it's not without merits, in fact I like it as an album, it only displays a fraction of his overall talent. Even Animal Collective, who a lot of people unknowingly assume must be constantly on LSD, do not take it often. That sound is within them, whatever it is.

Keep in my mind, I'm not against drug use, but drug abuse.  There are some things that should be done regularly and some things that shouldn't. Drugs fall into the latter category, in my opinion. I believe everybody should try hallucinatory drugs at least a few times in their lives. But it should be held sacred, not reduced to just another mass produced good that the affluent can buy and use as wantonly as a dollar store good. Nobody appreciates it that way.

The "Old Man River" obsession possibly predates his "Be My Baby" obsession. It's at least probably stems from the same time period. In the early 60s he wrote "Surfin' Down the Swanee River" for The Honeys, which uses some variations on some of the melodies from "Old Man River".

Thank you for your post and your thoughts, Dada, but I think you have misunderstood my posts and my thoughts. I have not glorified drug use whatsoever, in fact in every post I've made about drugs I've always included something pointing out that they are spiritually dangerous and misleading.

In truth, I dislike any state which is not my lucid sober state. My state of sobriety is not the ordinary state which people seek to escape through intoxication. I have in a sense re-configured my sober state to my liking. I consider the sober state (i.e., not on drugs, not intoxicated on anything whether alcohol or psychedelics used for the supposed purpose of spiritual things) to be a requirement for real meditation. Drug users think they attain to the same states effortlessly due to the drug but they're mistaken. This is what I have been pointing out again and again and it's a very important distinction.

I am not interested in 1960s pop culture, neither the drug culture or fascination with eastern religion that all came about at the time - i AM interested in meditation/"yoga" and such things but in a very, very grave and serious manner. i laugh inwardly at those who profess an interest in such things but it's either all talk or experience they have on drugs. they have no idea.

besides, most of my posts here are just me joking around with you guys. you have a strange community here like all online communities centered around bands typically are. i won't be staying long because there's not much to stay for and i have no friends here to stay for either.

also i am quite aware that in the case of "the drug user" anything they say in terms of defending their case could be written off as denial and all that good stuff. i cannot really explain the nature of my work but all i will say is that it is quite important and in a roundabout way is helping a few people who are close to me. the usual arguments against drugs are flawed and they don't touch on the deeper side of the whole issue which is where i am going with it. i have an argument against drugs, or a perspective on the issue, that would make timothy leary regret his whole career. it may be best for you to understand my use of drugs, as spoken about in my posts, as carefully orchestrated experiments on the test subject i know best. and it is all in support of my perspective against drugs.

i've always thought of Brian as in the same sort of league as old american song writers like stephen foster and such

certainly brian wrote many songs which are timeless in that sense - "country air", "time to get alone", etc.

Well, I apologize for misunderstanding, but you do seem to make a point about name dropping the drugs you're using and how you view other drugs users as naive and inferior. This might not be your intention, but that's how it comes across to most people, I should think. Honestly, I hope you keep posting here, your posts are very interesting, a fact which I naturally react to by being a petulant loud-mouthed freak. I feel like, at least in terms of our viewpoint of meditation, we're kindred souls. And trust me, I joke around a lot too. A decent portion of that last post was me joking, believe it or not.

This is the first of your posts with which I agree. I'll remove my g-string in celebration.

Thing is - wherever I've spoken of other drug users it has been in the context of rightfully correcting a misunderstanding that is still heavily present within the drug culture : the notion that the psychedelic experience, or the various states one experiences through drugs, is one and the same as the states which meditators reach and have reached through yogic disciplines.

It's simply not true and one only comes to know this when both have been experienced. This is not a new misunderstanding, it has been around as long as we have and more. Generally I think that humans got into psychoactive plants long before they ever thought of anything that even remotely resembled the advanced and refined systems of yoga. Due of this, the same outward-moving or outward-seeking tendency, the very knot which meditation unties as part of an overall deconditioning, crept in to those systems or was absorbed as the teachings traveled or simply as time passed. Hence one of the arguments that the drug philosophers love to push : the (supposed) holy men of [wherever] use [whatever drug they are defending] ! The errors of the past are being repeated needlessly in this manner. The defense for drugs as a means to spiritual states shows incredible weakness and an incapacity of the person pushing the argument to perfect his meditation. Through meditation one finds that one only needs to develop and sustain unbroken  one-pointed awareness to attain to the self. From this perspective, the taking of drugs is seen as nothing but pure recreation and deviation from the goal. This is not easily understood as that very goal is often mistaken to be something else.

My point is that the sooner this misunderstanding is corrected and proved in a way which is understandable to all, the sooner all those people caught up in it will be freed or offered their freedom in such a way that it is irresistible. It may seem absurd for me to talk about it on this website but there's always the chance that someone needs to read it. I have friends who I am working with for whom this issue is of much importance in their practical lives.

Yes, in fact, I have...  way back in the mid-1980s when I was about 16, I read 2 of Weil's books.  (Although I didn't know anything about Weil, nor what he looked like — his photo was not in the books.)  I think the title of one was The Natural Mind.  The other was The Marriage of the Sun and Moon.  And I distinctly remember his 'active placebo' theory.  One bit of 'evidence' was about how some peeps would get all blissed-out from eating MANGOS!  He makes some interesting points, & I understand what he's getting at, but I don't buy it either — not in the case of weed anyway.  Maybe some of the effects of pot can be attributed to a 'placebo' effect, but in my experience (which has been extensive) there are definitely some real, physiological effects of weed on my body/mind.

And I generally agree with what you say about pot; I spent many years as a weed-head, but don't usually like it now.

But my early experimentation with weed & LSD (which started when I was 15) quickly led me to explore other altered states of consciousness, like lucid dreaming, TM, etc.

I've often wondered over the years if, or how, my world-view would be different if I had never tripped...

Weil's theory is coming from a meditators perspective, I think. He quotes several important texts on the yogic process which suggests familiarity with the territory. To this perspective, as I understand it myself, one discovers a tremendous power of mind. If we are normally played by mind, i.e., having experiences which have their basis in consciousness AND effected by them, i.e., our own creations or something we are witnessing but separate of ; then the meditator, in attaining a superconscious state characterized by a fullness of consciousness in its unitive state, completely beyond or detached from all things which formerly seemed to bind it such as activity of mind or sensations of the body-world, then he becomes the player, i.e., the creator or master of his own mind. Who can be a master of a conditioned mind? Meditation is a deep de-conditioning. Some is one religion, someone is another, some one has no religion. Someone thinks this, someone thinks that ; all these things are just a conditioned mind playing the experient of those states. De-conditioning the mind does not mean whitewashing it clean, in fact nothing is lost and much more is gained. One suddenly has access to old memories and can understand them and their significance without egoic attachment, i.e., true subjectivity, mastery of mind and senses. Weil's theory recognizes the tremendous power of thought to such a one who has harnessed or at least tasted that state of consciousness beyond mind. Now the higher states truly are known and all experiences in life start seem like nothing. His theory is that, by causing several fairly insignificant but noticeable to the experient physiological changes like a feeling of difference in the eyes (reddiness, but I experience more of a puffiness and a sense that the clarity and depth that I usually see in my eyes has been made shallower, if that makes sense to you) and breath. I can "turn off" a marijuana high when I remember that all of the more excitable or paranoiac aspects of a high are always related to the changes in the body after taking it. For example, I find that my mind centers somewhere in my heart region due to feeling an excitability of breath there, a sort of pulsating center that is demanding the attention, but as soon as I direct my breath in a more harmonious flow the "high" symptoms experienced before fade as if nothing but an error in thought - wrongly interpreting a signal from the body-world. And yet at the same time there is an extremely obvious change in me from the moment before I smoke and the moment I exhale again. In the former, my mind is very stilled. There is a deep lucidity, like clear deep water. After the initial exhale, there's a sort of 'loosening' of mind noticed, perhaps like pleasant ripples on that deep lucid clear deep water. With the more I smoke, the more the pleasant ripples turn into powerful waves of thought moving with great power over the ocean of mind , and these belong to no category , it is very much like an energy that is taken into the body and given to the most desirous or needing part of the body. This would explain why some people have body highs which increase their sexuality but not their intellectuality and the opposite, or a blending of both. This 'loosening' or 'waving' in mind is never much more that a subtle sedatedness until attention is diverted to the insignificant yet noticeable body affects of it, like dry mouth and so on. Many times I've felt that I'm choking due to having a dry throat and, due to the attention being diverted there, it causes a sense of increase in the high, in the sense of going 'further in' to that space which the drug opens up. This would leave me to believe that the 'space' inside the mind that a drug high is perceived is perhaps at least not entirely dependent on a fixed dosage of the drug but an already-present natural capacity of mind to experience those inner experiences, perhaps needing only the initial jolt or encouragement from the nervous system's recognition of a drug. This, you may have noticed by now, also sheds a lot of light on meditation. If the mind has a natural capacity to experience those states, and they can be expanded on or limited depending on the interests and current goals of the trained experient (trained to distinguish states of mind and their relation to each other and their relation to the witnessing subjective consciousness that serves as the canvas upon which the mind images are painted) then what are the limits of mind? What are the deepest experiences of mind? What states do we already experience before getting interested in 'altered states' through drugs or other occult practices. This is where the mystics who started the movements of yoga and tantra, jainism and buddhism, the off-sects of all groups and particularly the mahamudra sect of Buddhism and taoism and zen began. Andrew Weil's theory touches on this aspect - that those drug states are mental creations triggered by a physical stimulus which one interprets, i.e., there's no fixed, ingrained interpretation, it is created and the experiences had are born from that interpretation. Post deliberately long to ward off the uninterested.

Post of the decade goes to ...

since when did this board become a message board about the effects of various drugs??

About 57 posts ago. There's a big ol' Sandbox where it would fit better, but alas, it's not to be.

When nobody was around ...

I suppose you could make the case that the effects of various drugs is profoundly tied to the BBoys history: from Murry's drinking, to BW writing "California Girls" on acid, Dennis's death, etc., etc.

Understatement of the century! :police:

Actually, "Surfin' Down the Swanee River" (and "South Bay Surfer") is not "Old Man River", it's "Swanee River".

... not to mention the meds Landy prescribed that apparently f*cked-up Brian forever.

Plus: Nobody seems to be talking just as much about other altered-states like those achieved through meditation, & again, TM is a heavy element in BBoys history.  (How, for example, could ML have managed his anger over the decades without it?)

Exactly, TM is a huge thing in the Beach Boys story and it's often something swept under the rug or unnecessarily dismissed. I don't personally practice TM, it's just a very basic meditation technique mass-marketed (genuinely so, I really do think) for the benefit of mankind. And if the TM business makes tons of money from it ... alright, fine, everyone has their trip. But it's undoubtedly a huge part of their history.

It's not that huge, tbh. Two band members were into it, Dennis moved on to more raucous pleasures and Mike has been flying the flag for all this time, but there are definitely a lot more important things in the history of our favourite band.

True but ... I consider the BBoys' involvement with Maharishi and all that as of the same significance as the Beatles' involvement with him. Not on a cultural level - I don't think anyone cared much that Mike went to India too (maybe I'm wrong?) or that the BBoys were generally into it, but in the private life of the group it had its impact. Didn't Dennis and Carl and some of the others attend some of those early conferences Maharishi was present at in England?

Maybe if you're talking about an influence on Mike, and thus regarding Mike's power in the group -  but I'm not sure. I hardly think the influence on the Wilson's is significant, as Brian's definition of mediation appears to be sitting down for a few minutes, but admittedly I don't know about Carl. I think you might as well inscirbe a similar influence to striped shirts - something they did for a while that is of a minor influence on their music.
With the Beatles, it was very important for a time, but they weren't half fickle. and because their career is compact, nearly everything has a big significance - The BB's have been going for nearly 4 times as long. Obvious, but true.

I see it lurking behind a lot of the lyrics and themes. Maybe it was just the spirit of the times.

Besides ... All This Is That ... 'nuff said.

Carl, Al, Bruce and Mike should've split from Brian and Dennis and formed a New Age group.

Did the original question ever get asked, dudes? :lol

I think TM has been a pretty massive influence on the group. If you include the Hallmark CD then you could say that it`s influenced the band`s music for almost 40 years. Obviously Mike but also the other band members as evidenced on several albums.

Plus so many other things that the band have done have been influenced by TM including Mike`s trip to India, the tour with the Maharishi, the recording of M.I.U., the links with The Natural Law Party etc.

Plus while Brian may not practice TM that much anymore, it was probably that that turned him onto meditation of any kind in the first place. Melinda has said that Brian had to meditate before performing Smile so I guess that we have Mike to thank for Smile finally being released.  ;D