The Smiley Smile Message Board

I assume that the boys heard Pepper for the first time at some point between the ditching of Smile and the start of Smiley Smile. Is there any evidence as to how they reacted?

iirc Carl got off his tits on PCP and pistolwhipped a nun

Myke was attempting a comb over when it came over his magic transistor radio. Lyrics to SGB? ;)

Funny! 

A great E-book would be a collection of these hilarious jokes and posts from this board "attempting a comb over".
Some very quick, brainy wits on the board!

When Bruce first saw the Pepper album cover his first thought was "Oh my GOSH I love Paul's mustache I wonder if I can grow one too..."

do we even know if the rest of the group thought Smile was viable material to rival Pepper? Apparently Dennis & Carl were huge Beatles fans, and there is that With A Little Help cover they all did...

maybe they thought Pepper reached a similar aesthetic in an aspartame way, for the common listeners more than anyone else. anyone can get into Pepper for at least a couple of listens, before they realize how boring it is as a record. and how half of it feels as soulless as a lot of radio teen sex pop music around today.

syd barrett was in the studio over reaching a similar aesthetic but for real - i think john lennon just sat around overhearing the floyd piper sessions. piper/pepper - get it?

piper was first, syd barrett was first. john lennon and paul tried to copy, and get the same tripped out cool sound in whimsical songs. but syd's are timeless, the beatles feel manufactured and slick.

matilda mother vs lucy in the sky with diamons
fight to the fucking death

matilda mother wins every day
O WO MOTHER  TELL ME MORE
TELL   MEEE   MOREE

come on, that's pure Brian Wilson songwriting.

PLANETS ARE SPINNING AROUND
planets are spinning around.

As much as I love The Beatles, I have to agree. Piper kicks Peppers butt on every listen... except for A Day in the Life.  >:D

I also have to agree. As most of you can probably tell, I'm a huge Syd Barrett fan.

It was an NPR report which referred to Brian as the "American  Syd Barrett" that opened my mind to listening to the BB.  :p

anyway, when carl first heard sgt pepper he was first hearing sgt pepper, when al first heard sgt pepper he was first hearing sgt pepper, when mike first heard sgt pepper he was first hearing sgt pepper, when dennis first heard sgt pepper he was first hearing sgt pepper, and when bruce first heard sgt pepper he was first hearing sgt pepper.

.....Brian was hearing voices. (and still is)

Al was knocked clean off his stepstool, and Brian had to finish his vocal lines for I Know There's an Answer.

Sgt Pepper was on the turntable but no one was home in Al Jardine's head. He was lost in a dental reverie, mountains of perfect teeth glistening in his mind's eye like precious jewels. God, said Al Jardine in 1967, is the Great Dentist of the Cosmos, dig it man...

Not sure if serious, but it never fails to amaze me how much Wilson/Barrett did so much of what the Beatles did, but better, and how much less anyone cares about them. How dated so much of the Beatles later material sounds and how timeless the majority of Brian and Syd's music is, especially once they got really good. But no. The Beach Boys? "Kokomo". Pink Floyd? Bloated, go-nowhere 70s rock.

That settles it dammit. I am going to listen to Piper on my way home today from work.  >:(

Really? I always found the Beatles' later music to sound more contemporary and modern than their early stuff.

The studio effects are mostly to blame. imo. Some of it's done well and maybe doesn't sound dated. The rest, o god. Especially in comparison to said folks who did it a lot better than they did and that no one cares about.

RAAAAAGE. imo.

There's some bad mojo going on with the production of Sgt. Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road. That's when they gave stodgy old George Martin too much shine in a bid to sound orchestral/important. He's just a silly, twee British man (albeit talented in his own way), and it sometimes shows in his arrangements and production choices. He did the best he could, but he even knew it wasn't always a good idea to add all his wonkiness. He even tried to convince John to stay closer to the folksy, original version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", over the bloated masterpiece version. Then again, he also refused to produce the Get Back sessions after he learned there were no overdubs for him to do (yeah, he says it's because the band was disorganized... but how were they worse than they were for the White Album?)/

"Strawberry Fields Forever" and "God Only Knows" show the huge difference between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. John, after writing and recording "Strawberry Fields Forever" with the band, tells Martin to add some strings because it would be groovy and stuff. And to make it sound like an orange. Meanwhile, Brian artfully and painstaking designed all of his own arrangements to carry out his original, spiritual vision. 

Don't get me wrong, "Strawberry Fields Forever" is a good tune, especially from a pure songwriting (chords, melody, and lyrics) perspective. But as art it's a bit slapdash.  "Lucy" was cool, though.

That's the Beatles thing, though. They were still writing "swimming pools" and "cars" in 20 minutes while Brian was writing "California Girls". Yeah, he wrote out the initial sketch of the song in an hour or two, but the arrangement and intro took a lot longer. In fact, Brian says he spent days or a week or two or something crazy like that on the intro.

But back to that Beatles sound on Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. Who can really get into the arrangement and production choices for songs like "Octopus Garden" or "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"? Maybe they're catchy, but the arrangements are so freaking goofy. You can't get emotionally invested in music like that. It's just a bunch of rich guys high out their minds (Silly Rich Rastafarian Paul, who has taking over normal Paul by that time, was a big part of the production/arrangement problem, too). They couldn't give a sh*t. Maybe John could at times, but by the end he needed the rest of the band to really push him away from just doing vanilla rock arrangements or piano ballads. Don't get me wrong, "Imagine" was great, but you can't do a whole album with that sparse of a sound.

P.S. Does anyone else think that Ringo's drum fill before the chorus on "Lucy" is almost embarrassing?  Good song, but bad drum fill.

I think most of Ringo's drum fills were quite embarrassing. I mean, Dennis was no Ginger Baker but you knew when the snare had been hit. What did Jon or Ed once say? Dennis was more a thumper than a drummer?
You can see the kit in The Lost Concert almost wincing during Surfin' USA

I think Pepper was their first album to be self indulgent ie Within You (which isn't half as cool as Love You To kind of a rehash) and When I'm 64 which is way too cute. As flawed as a few of the 1962-66 songs are, they can't be faulted for not trying their best as a group. Can you really picutre the whole band being in to those two tracks I mentioned? Pepper is cool, but I never thought it or Abbey Road come close to the more honest Rubber Soul and Revolver. 

would that be "clubber" ?

I've always thought rubber soul and revolver were their best albums too. Not saying pepper's not good but some tracks don't seem to fit in with each other, "Within you without you" has nice lyrics but the song itself is a drag.

Within You, Without You is another lame attempt by the Beatles to appropriate India's entire culture musically & thoughtally. When did we appoint George Harrison as world saint here to teach us about how to live amongst one another? Oh, he smokes pot, he plays sitar. Got it. Later came to find out the man screamed Hare Krsna at an intruder in his house before his wife took care of the situation practically and hit the dude with a lamp. Who yells religious mantras at intruders? Silly man, you get a knife and stalk downstairs behind the guy and slit his throat, not try and liberate his thieving soul into Krsna-Consciousness. We were talking.... about how much The Beatles suck... and all the people who think they're great... they're behind a wall... of illusion... never glimpse the truth...the Beach Boys rule...

Reading the Steve Hoffman board...

The ending drone cycle of Cabinessence - "Over and over..." has an Indian sort of feel with the droning note and banjos sounding like sarods. Timeless. But it's all so tastefully done - no badly played sitars up front in the mix ready to go out of style as soon as it began, just eerie sounds buried in the mix by sound master Wilson.

Not sure why I am feeling defensive reading all this stuff slagging off the Beatles.  :lol

I don't know what's wrong with respecting both groups without having to put the other down to make the other seem superior.  :shrug

It's all a put on man, just run with it. Leonard Bernstein should've hosted a competitive music program with an episode featuring Brian Wilson & Paul McCartney. Brian, Wonderful. Paul, She's Leaving Home. The crowd cheer response is measured by machines and a panel of judges judge the merits of the music and performances of each. Brian destroys Paul. Paul is left whimpering on the stage as Brian soars into the sky on etheric rainbow eyed sound beams. The Beatles break up that night realizing they can never reach Brian's level of abstract musical genius. Brian then takes the Beach Boys deep into his white spiritual sound and they revolutionize music forever, psychedelicizing the face of the earth within a few decades. Brian was quoted in 1990 as saying, "Remember that group The Beatles? That tried to compete with us? Hahaha! What were they smokin!"

(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6596/mykd.jpg)

let'sssssdo it againnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Aw come on now guys

The Beatles really did tell us how to live our lives.

I know it's a solo song, but what about Imagine. What a message! A song for the ages

Multi millionaire tells us to give up our possessions.

Trouble is, I don't have to imagine a life with no money

I'm already living the dream

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 :P.

if he was a clubber wouldn't they have a techno or rap beat?.(the kind of music they play at clubs.) ;D ;D

Never thought of this before... but you are so right!  :smokin

Why not add Shakespeare to the Academy of the Overrated while we're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM)

I'll take your criticism once you listen to the song again and figure out what he's really saying rather than the thing you just made up.

Imagine there's no Lennon
It isn't hard to do

No lame songs or Yoko
No Beatles too...

Imagine all the people
Listening to Love You
Oooh oooh Oooh.

Hate to break it to yah, no Beatles = no SMiLE

Eh, Ghost > Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8oFlXnnwKI

Shakespeare is, if my experience in trying to get uncultured arsespelunkers to turn up to theatre is an indicator, anything but.

Of course Shakespeare isn't overrated. That's my point. It's ridiculous to make such a case for both Shakespeare and The Beatles. Did you watch the link?

I did, so I get ya.

But i've heard that before, and I'm pretty drunk, so it rankled  ;D

Fair enough.

u legit, bro?

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

I know what he's saying, but all lyrics are open to interpretation, and my interpretation is quite simple

When I was young we were very poor (boo hoo) and I really didn't have to imagine having no possessions. So being preached to by some out of touch multi millionaire has always really bothered me.

Don't like the song

And I also believe comparing the Beatles to Shakespeare is ridiculous. What on earth do the Beatles tell us about the fundamental truths of humanity in a way that transcends the ages? Again though, of course lyrics and sonnets are open to interpretation.

I love a lot of your posts R&R, very funny especially when sky-diving. And I'm sorry about the Oasis comments, felt a bit bad about that personal attack >:D

But on the Beatles we'll have to disagee I fear

Imagine being filthy rich
I wonder if you can
No need for want or hunger
A singularity of me
Imagine all the people
Living poorly
except me e e

you may say ay ay ay ay i'm a monkey
but i'm not the only one

Absolutely - all lyrics are open to interpretation but some interpretations are more convincing than others and I think you're leaving out a fairly crucial aspect of the song (which I will demonstrate below) that does not quite make your overall assessment convincing.


Okay - but Lennon isn't talking about giving up possessions and being poor. He's not saying live life the way people in poverty do - that's simply not what's implied by imagining a world with no possessions. Rather, (and this is at the risk of opening up another can of worms but here we go) he is drawing a connection to the kind of world envisioned by people like Marx who see private ownership as ultimately problematic. In fact, private ownership is what  helps maintain and bolster the kind of class structure that leads to a poor working class dependent on an inherently exploitative system. Lennon is not in anyway saying, give up your house, give up your car, etc. Rather, he is asking us to imagine the possibilities of a society where you can still have a house and a car but it's part of a system of free association ("a brotherhood of man"). So I do think you're missing the point when you say, "I had no possessions because I was poor" because that's simply not what Lennon is suggesting.

More over, I think "out of touch" is precisely the wrong phrase to apply to Lennon. After all, I don't think there has been a single artist in the last 50 years who has tapped into the zeitgeist more than Lennon. Clearly there was something about him that allowed him more than any other artist to appeal to such an enormous amount of people that continues well past his death. Again, it simply doesn't make sense to call someone out of touch when they connected so successfully to popular society.


Well, first of all, I don't think any contemporary scholar of literature or drama would ever say that Shakespeare told us "about the fundamental truths of humanity in a way that transcends the ages." In fact, the common consensus on why Shakespeare is important is that he articulated so stridently the common concerns of his time and essentially shaped the mainstream literary world that followed him. In other words, writers like Milton, Alexander Pope, etc. were responding to Shakespeare. Even if they never read him (which is improbable) they would still be responding to him, so vast was Shakespeare's literary influence. Now, you could probably find many people who can say that there were playwrights during the Early Modern period who dealt with more serious issues than Shakespeare did, or presented issues in a more startlingly realistic way (which is true enough). You can find people who say that there were poets who had a finer understanding of poetics and a better command of the poetic form, like say Philip Sidney. Nevertheless, no one can argue with the overall impact that Shakespeare had on literature in general. And to be honest, the exact same thing can be said about The Beatles. You can like them, you can dislike them, you can say that there were other bands with more complex music but absolutely no one has had the kind of impact that The Beatles had in popular music in the 20th Century.

In that case (and this isn't directed at you but at people who use the term "overrated"), as my video shows, to call ANYONE overrated is, at best, an exercise of pseudo-intellectual masturbation. But to call Shakespeare and The Beatles overrated is simply an abuse and misuse of term and it shows a very poor understanding of historical movements and how they develop.

So rockandroll, since you have Lennon's Imagine figured out, how about explaining to me what Parks' "Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield" means? ;)

Haha. I'm stumped!

Actually, I do have my own ideas about Parks's lyrics but I'll save it at the risk being long-winded (or more long-winded?).

Great reply, and in respect to what you say about Shakespeare in particular I concede to you for shining a torch on my GCSE understanding of the Bard,

However my reaction to Imagine is deeply ingrained, and is influenced by my opinions about Lennon. Lennon was never working class, he was comfortably middle class as a child.  He never knew what it is like to be poor. Would he have given up his possessions and money? I think not.  John Lennon was not the person people think he was. I know he's dead and can't defend himself, but the evidence that Lennon was a conservative politically, had nothing to do with charities and using his power and money to help people is rather overwhelming. This is the guy who used to laugh at the crippled kids bought in to meet the Beatles. He never changed.
Imagine was a product of its time, and maybe reflected a brief period of Lennon's political beliefs that suited him at the time.  Does this detract from the message of the song? This is subjective. I personally think yes it does. If I'm going to be sold a utopia, I like to know who is selling it to me.

Thanks for the reply -- I agree with a lot of it but I do want to put pressure on a few things. First, I realize it has been fairly common to re-assess Lennon's working class roots but these claims have been fairly problematic. It's true that Lennon lived in a more middle class neighbourhood - but where you live isn't really what cements your place in the class system. As the term implies, it's what you do. Now, the Stanley family from which came John's mother and Aunt Mimi were wealthier but ultimately in the 50s, this really only mattered if you were a man. If you were a woman who got married, you basically took on the class of your husband, who was the worker of the household. So Mimi did have a more middle-class profession as a nurse before marriage but gave that up after her marriage to George Smith who was basically a farmer. In that sense, the household was working class. Even after Smith died, Mimi was forced to resort to renting out rooms in her house to students to make ends meet. This is simply not in keeping with 1950s middle class lifestyle. John may have been more suburban than Paul, George, and Ringo but he was pretty much in the same class system, maybe a bit above but not really middle class.

I'm not really sure what you mean by Lennon being a conservative politically. The traditional use of the term conservative is in fact, very much associated with the opposition to things like wage slavery which a song like Imagine also evokes in opposition. If you mean he supported English Toryism or American Republicanism, than I'd have to say that the evidence for this is paltry.

As for the comments about his character, I mostly agree. Lennon was a complex individual and the reason most people know that is because he freely talked about it, both in his art and in interviews. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that "John Lennon was not the person people think he was." If you mean that he was not always a loving, peaceful hippie, then I'd say that's true but I would find it hard to believe that anyone who has listened to his music or heard the things he has had to say, would be under such a misapprehension. The fact is that while he did do some problematic things, he was nevertheless a person who was uncontroversially capable of being loving, helpful, honest, and peaceful. There are a lot of people he engaged with over the years, and not too many have a lot of bad things to say about him.

And finally, it is important to note what is at heart with the song. He is not saying, "Accept the world that I'm going to give you." Rather, he is asking the listener to imagine that such a world is possible.  And to be perfectly honest, if a man that had so many personal demons as Lennon could imagine that such a world is possible than that gives a tremendous amount of hope for the rest of us. And that's really the legacy of that song, no matter what anyone can dig up about Lennon's character.

I also have a lot of issues with the connection of socialism with the term utopia, but that's not your fault. "Imagine" sometimes works to cement that connection which, in my opinion, is unfavorable. Anyhow, the song isn't just about a socialist world.

I can't argue with you, as you're obviously a lot more knowledgeable and articulate than I.

But nothing can make me like the song.

I like You Can't Do That though, as unacceptable as Spector's He Hit Me. Great stuff.

Haha. Fair enough - my girlfriend also despises it. I think it has less to do with the message than it has to do with the fact that it is played so much and it is not a song that always holds up well to repeated listening for everyone


What I always found strange about the latter is Carol King's role in writing the music for it!