The Smiley Smile Message Board

I used to know it but have since forgotten. Please tell me, it is important. Best song on Pet Sounds, IMHO. .

I believe it's "I will be. One day I will be."

You already are?

Thanks to pixletwin for this:

"Cuando será? Un dia será" means "When will it be? One day it will be"

I hear it as "¿Cuando seré? Un día seré", which translates to "When will I be? One day, I will be". It seems to fit with the other lyrics.

Is there a story behind the inclusion of it? I'll have to listen again later but I seem to recall it being fairly buried in the mix on the mono. I wonder who the first fan was to hear it and understand it?

I think the news came out on this when Mark Linnet was remixing the album for stereo and heard those backing vocals isolated for the first time. Brian was asked about it, but had no recollection of recording those vocals and expressed astonishment that they were even in the mix (nothing too suprising there!). Given that Brian and the boys had earlier recorded a German version of "In My Room" and would later drop in a bit of French to "In My Window", Brian probably thought it would be cool at the time to have some Spanish language lyrics in there...and then promptly forgot about them.

Strange! They can definitely be heard on the mono, but they sound like distant winds. It's perfect really, isn't it? Like a long lost gem found peaking out of the ground. I find it hard to believe that Brian didn't remember or know they were in the mix since they can clearly be heard. Maybe he just didn't listen to the album much over the years.

It also helps he took Spanish in high school. Maybe he put some of that to use  :)


Anyways, the brain is always fuzzy with details on those guys these days. Too much else to think about  :ahh

So is this any other person's favorite Pet Sounds song? it has a great, rolling movement to it that I love.

several years ago i was in an automobile listening to the stereo mix of it and kept rewinding the last half minute or so for as long as the ride lasted. carol's bass line is great. i often see paul mccartney crediting brian's use of bass as an inspiration, and unaware beatle fans crediting paul for being ahead of his time, but i think some of carol's playing from those few years is great, distinctive stuff.

i love that rehearsal video of brian and his band going through the song. brian sitting on a couch reading the lines as he goes along, the rest of them singing, some of them totally enamored by the song.

Carol isn't on that track. It's Ray Pohlman on Fender bass and Chuck Berghofer on the string bass.

ahahhaa, oh well

ray pohlman ftw

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Paul thought Brian played bass on the Beach Boys albums, so Paul was actually inspired more by Al Jardine, Carol Kaye, and Ray Pohlman than Brian.

Not really, since Brian most likely gave them all directions if not the exact music sheets on what to play, no?

Paul liked the bass on God Only Knows - that's straight from Brian's work on the piano as he wrote the song. Clearly he told the musicians what to play.

Brian is like God and the musicians were his Angels who brought the message of revelation to the lowly listeners, telling of the glad tidings.

"I want it to sound like jewelry."

What does the French in "At My Window" translate to? I've been wanting to ask but haven't wanted to make a new thread.

I understand your point but that particular quote had nothing to do with bass. The musicians played what they were told/asked to play and/or what was written on their session sheets. There are instances where their collective creative inspiration rose (that part in GOK which Brian had originally written for them to play slower, etc) but I get the feeling that most of it was what Brian had organized beforehand. Otherwise countless hours would've been wasted in the studio waiting for each musician to come up with a part which fit in Brian's song. That is obviously not how it went down. I reckon that Brian wrote the song at home, came up with the arrangement, made some basic sheets up for the musicians, then further guided them in the studio as to what to play.

I think you've got it right.  Brian's work with the musicians in the studio wasn't so much to teach them their parts, it was to come up with the sounds that Brian wanted on the record.  That's mostly what you hear on the session tapes...Brian dictating tempo, volume, dynamics, etc.  If Carol or Ray were playing in a way that McCartney liked and was inspired by, it was because Brian told them to play that way.

Thanks Chris.

IMO, that's the mark of a great producer - when someone can spot the gold in a pile of session tapes of all the same track. It seems like a sort of intuitive thing - capturing the magic right as it's about to happen, once the musicians are all on the same page and are in a good groove together. Even more incredible when you consider that Brian was not only the guy writing the music, the vocal parts, conceiving the entire direction everything was going in but also being the force behind the vision he had.

Somewhat related - a while ago I saw a picture of Paul and Brian in a studio booth together behind a mixing board. There was some debate as to whether it was real or faked. Was this ever solved? It was 1966-1967ish, Paul had his Pepper mustache and Brian had his sideburns I think.

I think it was asked and answered before, but no reason not to repeat it:

French: "Le moineau est venu. Se poser ma fenetre"

English translation: "The sparrow came and sat at my window"

It was a fake, although a good-natured one (who wouldn't want to believe that a photo existed of Brian and Paul together in the studio). The evidence for fakery consisted of the fact that the mixing console shown was from Abbey Road Studios (which Brian did not visit anytime in '66 / '67) and the fact that the McCartney image is identical to another photo of McCartney in the studio with the other Beatles.