The Smiley Smile Message Board

Specifically I mean doing small pieces at a time that obviously belong to a bigger thing. Seems like they were more used to going in the studio and cutting full tracks, start to finish, no? I mean, what was the studio atmosphere like (it's hard to tell just from listening to the sessions since no one can be seen)? Since I've never seen a video of those musicians recording with Brian, I only have a mental image of it that's probably so far from the truth. I don't know ... I don't really think of faces being behind the music. Like I can't imagine some guy with his own personality and individuality playing, say, the banjo on Cabinessence. I just hear it being played and that's that.

Anyone got any quotes from any of those musicians on anything like Good Vibes? that was the first track Brian did in that recording style, right? so they must've heard the final product and been well impressed knowing that parts were from various sessions and it all came together so flawlessly.

Did they only actually record 30 second bits? I was under the impression they recorded endless iterations of two or three minute tracks, and then Brian cut them up and mixed and matched.

They did it piece by piece.

Take Cabinessence for example ... they would do the verse sections, that would be one session. Then another session for chorus, etc.

This was part of the difficulty of assembling SMiLE ... a lot of work involved in piecing all those together, splicing all that tape

Hal Blaine has said that sometimes they'd go in for 5 minutes, then another time for 5 hours. While I don't think that they ever really went in for only 5 minutes, the jist of it is you never knew if it would be a quick session or a long, drawn out one. And even a thirty second piece of music could take hours to record, if you want it to be perfect. Anyway you cut it, I believe most of them used to really like Brian's sessions, because they all got along so well-they all thought Brian was a great kid.

One of the books on the Beach Boys says that there were 90 hours of tape used and about 70 hours actual music recorded for Good Vibratioms.  Estimtes I've read go from $38 to $50 thousand dollars in 1966.  Considered the most expemsive 3:36 minute song of all time.

Or any length song.

But what do I know?

Nobody,
  There's a Pet Sound booklet as part of the Pet Sounds box set that has very detailed accounts from members of the Wrecking Crew on what they played and how Brian approached recording.
  Especially interesting is Carol Kaye's song by song description of who played what and each part that was played.
  The booklet inside the box set is a must read for those interested in how it all came together.

Bri

Look at how many times Bicycle Rider theme was recorded..My favorite ones are the music box one...Jewelery sounds..When Bw was recording SMILE i think he got lost in the puzzle..

I can't speak for the Wrecking Crew musicians, but as a musician myself, I'd feel worse for the engineer who would have to assemble all of the different sections!

If you play an instrument, and someone hands you a part to play, you generally would just play it and not worry about much else.

If the producer is happy, the musician is likely happy to just take the check. Obviously, it would pretty sweet to hear the final product of how all of these little parts made sense together though.  :)

Keep in mind that the much-vaunted "modular recording" method wasn't by any means the only way Brian recorded. We're talking about a couple of years, here, not his whole career. So much of the time, the musicians were recording entire songs, or larger segments of songs, just like anyone else.

As far as what the session musicians thought of it, they were being paid. I doubt they cared all that much. The general impression from the countless interviews you can find on the subject in various documentaries and promotional materials is that they thought he was increasingly goofy but respected Brian's talent and were happy to be there. But mostly that a gig is a gig is a gig. (As long as you don't have Phil Spector pointing a gun at you, I'd guess it's all good.)

OK... if you really cannot divine from the session tapes the atmosphere in the studio, then I have to conclude that you are indeed a troll. Listen to what they guys (and gal) are saying... listen to their interactions with Brian. The quotes you crave are in those session tapes. And try doing some research of your own before asking here.

The only sessions where Brian pieced a final master out of separate sections were Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations" and Smile. All the other albums, the tracks were played right through.

Oh get lost, you're the troll.

First of all - you can't see anything! I hear people playing but I don't see them. Are they frowning? Are they smiling? Are they scratching their nuts? Are they giving Brian a long face each time he says let's take it again? Etc etc etc. On the tapes you hear a few people talking and practicing their parts and then the take of the song. f*** you - trolling, what a load of horse sh*t Was a perfectly legitimate thread and questions.

As others have said, there is a lot out there to read about the Wrecking Crew and their thoughts on Brian.  Big Bri had the best advice regarding the Pet Sounds box set...it's worth owning for many reasons, but the booklet with interviews is golden.

Luther makes a good point too, in that the musicians probably didn't care how they were being recorded or if what they were being asked to play was weird.  They were hired guns, and they played whatever they were asked to play.  They all admired Brian, so I doubt they were too bothered by the way Brian was recording during "Good Vibrations" and Smile.  I'm sure some sessions exhausted them, but that's true when recording just about anything. 

At the end of the day, what matters is that they did their work brilliantly and gave Brian what he wanted.

My point is proven.  ;D

Your real name wouldn't be Andreas Gossweiler, by any chance ?

AGD, I know you probably know but Brian also routinely cut "insert" sections for songs...meaning he'd do one large chunk of a song in one take with or without the crew, but the rest would be done seperately. Example: The beginning intro and end to "I'm So Young" were cut on their own, also the end of "I'm Waiting for the Day."

No problem, nobody. Nothing wrong with doing research on a message board. What better or more convenient place to learn about a group. You'll probably get more info than in many of the books or documentaries anyway. If I don't want to read or respond to your post or question(s), all I have to do is scroll down. Takes about two seconds.

One interesting thing I read was that the musicians would be not exactly questioning Brian but wondering if what they playing would "work"; it was so out there. Then when all the parts would come together, they would go, "Oh, NOW I see why he (Brian) wanted that part played...".

I remember reading that too.  It really speaks to Brian's foresight and skills as an arranger to be able to see the final picture like that.  He was most certainly a master at intertwining instruments and vocal parts to great effect.

i doubt this record still holds true. in this day and age of paid guest vocal spots, producers, songwriters et al, i imagine lots of pop hip-hop tracks have astronomical pricetags nowadays. i know there's inflation at play and all, but lil wayne charges a minimum of $75,000 just for guest spotting a verse on a track. more often than not, he charges upwards of $100,000 for the appearance of his voice on a song.

what is your problem, guy?  go get some fresh air.. maybe take a break from the beach boys for a while?

I'm with AGD on this one. Maybe Nobody could start a new message board dedicated to people who don't actually care enough about something to research it themselves. Obviously we all welcome newbies and their questions but this guy is fuckin' ridiculous man!

if you wanna answer the guy's questions, do it. if you don't, shut up already.

There are a lot of annoying/unpleasant things about nobody (that picture of dog poop he posted, for one), but I think people are using that as an excuse to attack him when he does perfectly legitimate things. I don't see anything wrong with him starting this thread.

I think it's the multiple threads per day...many on subjects that have been covered ad nauseam here, that's pissing people off.

This thing that we're all on here is called a messageboard. We all exchange messages to different people. Quite a few of these messages have this thing called "information". Part of a messageboard's function is to exchange said information. AGD, I respect you probably more than any other Beach Boys fan/expert out there. But there comes a time when you must occasionally come down from your high horse. Not everybody knows as much as you do at any particular part of the day at a mere drop of the hat.

You're right, I can get sniffy real quick (bad habit of mine)... but my point here is that actually listening to the session tapes - which requires minimal effort - tells you everything you need to know about what the session cats thought of Brian. Everyone's having fun, Brian's taking onboard their ideas and suggestions, he's joking, the vibes are loose and good. But that's not enough for the poster in question - they want more. It's a very subtle form of trolling, like a seven year old having something explained to them yet continually asking "but why ?"... and just as irritating. "Not good enough... want videos... can't see anything...".

Someone else in this thread suggested I took a break from things BB-ish for a while. The idea has merit right now.

Not everybody has session tapes. I, for one, don't have many.

I'm talking about what's on the Pet Sounds Sessions box.  :)

That and some of the things he said to other members.

With that in mind, the personal attacks on each other need to stop.  Now. Doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. This is not kindergarten.

 I agree that this is a valid post. I've read a lot of Beach Boy books, watched documentaries, and generally obsessed over Smile for 25 years.  Even when the same questions pop up from time to time, there is always some new revelation brought to light, and that's what keeps me coming here, because of the knowledge and passion that guys like AGD, Luther, C-Man, etc., bring to the board.

Those studio musicians would rather play jazz than most of the bubblegum rock of the 60s they played on, but some of Brian's songs were sophisticated enough to earn the respect of those schooled musicians.

Nobody, when the Wrecking Crew movie is released on DVD, watch it, and you may find some answers. The Pet Sounds DVD has some interviews with some of the session guys that is interesting.

My personal opinion, is that it depended on the song. Three chord car songs probably bored them. Pet Sounds and Smile were classical in some ways - much like a complex painting, with shades of light and darkness that gave it its depth. Just being in the same recording room as Brian had to be awe inspiring. Who wouldn't want to watch Dali or Picasso paint?

Good points.

One thing that I am interested in is any possible info that can be found regarding what they thought of it THEN rather than several years after the fact when Brian became a genius rather than a new young producer they were working with ... know what I mean? everyone gushes over Brian now but did they then? that's what I mean.

That's going to be tough, unless you can find some old interview with those session guys, and even then because Brian was an employer, they wouldn't say anything negative in public. I have read that some of the string players didn't like wearing the fire helmets. But hey, some of the classical musicians didn't like working on Sgt Pepper either. Good luck with your search.

You simply aren't going to find interviews from the wrecking crew during that period.

Listening to sessions, it's hard to really gauge what their opinion of Brian was.  I think some of the jazz oriented guys saw him as another goofy rock & roll kid and couldn't care less about what they were playing, and others knew the music was different and more sophisticated.  You have to realize most of these people played for Phil Spector, so working for someone like Brian must have been like a breath of fresh air.  I don't think they had many complaints.

As for Brian's modular recording technique, I don't think they minded or really cared what he did when it came to things like that.  A lot these musicians did 30 to 15 second commercial jingles.  It was a job.  When it came to things like Good Vibrations, to them it was more work, and in many cases it was to avoid the frustrating night-long sessions like California Girls and others during the '65 period that were extremely difficult to cut in a single take.  In the case of Cabin Essense for instance, all of the sectioning off wasn't to be avant garde like Good Vibrations, but to make it easier to cut all of the parts of the track in the shortest time possible.

I agree and disagree here. Oh boy. I think he cut the SMiLE pieces like that for both reasons: to make all the pieces available to him like paints that he could blend together at a later time AND to get it all done quickly rather than spending hours smoothing out the transitions between the different parts of the songs (which he didn't even have planned out fully, anyway).

Ease of editing was certainly one reason, but I think it was a very small part of why Brian worked that way.  He had just seen his first truly modular composition (GV) become a huge worldwide smash, with the industry praising him for finding the "new sound."  You can bet that the success of "Good Vibrations" led him to use the technique on even more of his songs, like "Cabinessence," because he wanted to see how far he could take it.  I really don't think that he did it because it would be easier or quicker to edit together; that was merely a bonus.

Hey AGD..Is Andreas the guy that got booted off the BBB board about year + a half ago for starting lots of arguments + disagreeing with insiders about just about anything..?

Better known as Walfisch, then Bobby California. Renowned for knowing precisely nothing about anything.  ;D

well it's not me, although he sounds like a fun gy

I don't think all the Smile songs are exactly created equal in this way.  Certainly stuff like Heroes and Villains was cut in sections, and likely never had any sort of concrete master plan for how the thing would be on the final record.  But I don't think the structure of something like Cabin Essence was ever really up in the air in the same way.

was the Grand  Coolie  Damn section of cabinessence ALLWAYS a part of that song..??,,Not sure

AFAIK, yes, as I'm pretty certain that all of the pieces of the track to Cabin Essence were recorded at one session on October 3rd, 1966.  A test acetate from December '66 is floating around with the same structure as the 20/20 version.

Of course "Good Vibrations" was a more experimental type of recording, and Brian didn't have a clear idea of how he wanted it to turn out until near the end.  But I think after he did that record, Brian felt more confident about working that way, to the point where he could go in and record exactly the pieces he wanted, all the while knowing how the end product would sound.  So while "Cabinessence" didn't come about exactly like "Good Vibrations" experimentation wise, I think Brian wanted the freedom that cutting in sections allowed him.  I just can't imagine the reason being that he wanted to make editing the track easier.

Eh, it's not really worth arguing about, since it's pretty subjective anyway.  I just think it's pretty clear by the time Brian started recording in sections in 1966 (Starting with the outro for I'm Waiting For The Day and the instrumental break/ending of Here Today) that he was more interested in cutting the track in the quickest and most convenient way possible.  Listening to the session for California Girls, 44 takes which are spent mostly hacking through the difficult intro, you can sense the frustration in the air from not only Brian, but from the WC as well.  Cutting the tracks in sections potentially gave him freedom later on, but it also avoided frustrating sessions like that one.

That's a great session to listen to.

 Where canI find/buy that? I love listening to my Pet Sounds' box set, with all those studio banter tracks.