The Smiley Smile Message Board

Got a reply from Frank to my question re: the 1996 sketch featuring lyrical references to the 2004 track, thus:

"It all came from the lyrics of Holiday and my own bat as you say. The Milkyway candy bar was an easy way of not dealing with the actual Milky Way (too many stars)."

So... seems that most if not all of those lyrics are vintage.  :)

whoa...

Erm... how do you say, holy sh*t???

So... Brian Wilson invented rap?

How can it be that this information has never come out? Why did he do the illustrations in the first place? For an aborted 90s box? It seems really weird to me that we haven't really been privy to this before.

Nah, people were setting beat poetry to pop tunes before that.

Still... I wonder who would've sung that part in a finished '67 Holidays. Dennis?

Wow! Very cool to find that out. Thanks AGD.

Makes you wonder just how much of the original lyrics are vintage, and also how much the original melody may have been the same as the BWPS one. After all, is there anything else you can do with a line like "Juxtapose a man with a mystery" without just following the existing instrumental melody?

Thanks for the detective work Mr. Doe.  Quite a revelation!

Let's not jump to the conclusion, though, that all of the 2004 'Holidays' lyrics were vintage.  It's quite possible that some of it (or even most of it) was new.

Nonetheless, that at least some of it ('lazy mr moon, milky way, man with a mystery, etc.) was vintage is truly blockbuster news.

For decades, 'Holidays' was considered sort of a 2nd or 3rd tier Smile track (i.e., pleasant enough instrumental but absent from the Dec. 1966 track list, no known vocals, no known lyrics, minimal session history, etc.).   But if lyrics existed in 1966, and those lyrics were supplied to Frank for purposes of doing an illustration for possible inclusion in the Smile booklet, that would seems to suggest that 'Holidays' was considered a 'core' track at some point. 

Does this news not also open up the possibility that there were other vintage lyrics given to Frank Holmes when he did his original artwork besides the ones we know of?

Also don't jump to the conclusion that the vintage lyrics were set to the BWPS melodies.  The "Rap" setting for instance, could be vintage or not: set to a different melody, or not.

I tend to think the "pirate" references are 2003 creations since they seem to allude to bootleggers who trafficked in SMiLE session tapes for years.

What's odd is that the 1996 illustrations were all done as a way to represent the remaining SMiLE songs that Holmes had not done illustrations for in '66 (potentially for a proposed box set). All of them, apart from "Holidays", seem to be based on officially released lyrics and/or imagery (all of us would have understood the meaning behind "Mrs. O' Leary's Cow" or the "Truck-Driving Man" back in '96). However, "Holidays" is almost completely based on an unreleased lyric. Are we certain that this illustration was done in '96? Did anyone see this illustration prior to 2004? Did Mr. Holmes specifically state that he did the illustration in '96?

I know I'll be scouring the other '96 illustrations tonight to try and see if there are references to previously-unknown lyrics!

Holmes dated his illustrations as such.  The 96' Holmes drawing are clearly indicated as such on the artwork itself.

Another Holmes question: Next to the "Barnyard" illustration in the booklet there is an illustration including among other things what looks like brick wall tile.  What song does this illustration represent?

Please excuse my ignorance as the artwork is something i've actually never really researched in any detail before, yet clearly holds some of the biggest clues as to themes and lyrics we've never heard, possibly still even to this day after TSS has been released. I've been aware of it's existence regarding the extra lines for cabinessence and DYLW but nothing more in depth really.

My point, and question is if Frank Holmes was given lyrics in 96 to finish off the artwork, who gave him the lyrics then? Or were they ones he'd kept? And then I guess most of all, who possibly has them now? Was VDP involved at any stage in 96?

Sorry, so many questions. I love this because even from songs we considered to be near complete, there were additional lyrics floating about. Maybe already discarded by Brian? But when they wrote together in 66 though, wasn't it VDP putting lyrics to Brian's melodies? Which if that was the case, would that then mean that any lyric was written for a definite proposed segment of a song. Not just throw away pre-written lyrics that Brian didn't use...if you know what I mean?

Quite the revelation, thanks AGD  ;D

As with most things Smile, one question answered leads to several new ones.  It's almost maddening, but a new piece of info like this is what makes Smile great.  My biggest curiosity is something we probably won't ever know - was the vocal melody vintage on BWPS as well, since we know that Van Dyke wrote lyrics to music that Brian simultaneously composed?  Adam alluded to this in the post above.  Obviously the melody used on BWPS just followed an instrumental melody that was already existing, but as with "Worms" perhaps there was another melody that has been lost to time.

I believe Frank had kept some to work with in 1966, but obviously not everything, and they came back into possession of BRI or Brian in 1996 - I think the lyrics for RPR that Brian and Darian were working with came from him?

Thanks for that.

So are many people of the belief that there are still possible lyrics written down in someones possession that we still haven't been made aware of? Or that's it?

It just that something that seems to be such a huge revelation in the smile legacy, and massively relevant and important, only came out today.... via a fan message board.... AFTER the fact BWPS came out 7 years ago, and AFTER the now definitive beach boys TSS release. Surely all this stuff should have been covered and explained away by now, knowing how this topic has been obsessed about for sooo long. It just further fuels the fire that they'll be forever information kept out of the public domain regarding smile. Intentional or not.

Thanks again AGD.

The key question. AGD?

Does the "96" on the illustration not answer this?

I can write 1886 on an illustration. Doesn't mean I made it then.

A pre-dated illustration is actually easier to believe, at least right now, than unheard or unread vintage Smile lyrics.

I don't think the boxset designers would have been so dishonest as to ask Frank for another drawing, telling him to just date it 1996. Or that he would have done it, had they asked him. But then, I'm an eternal optimist  ::)

I think 'Holidays' having vintage lyrics is more believable than Frank Holmes falsifying the dates on his work.

You're joking.

I can write that you're an idiot. Doesn't mean it isn't true.

Seriously, it's dumbass responses like yours that make me give serious thought to saying "f*** it, the next time I do a bit of asking around and unearth some new info, I'm not telling anyone because some shitweasel is going to say it's nonsense". Frank did illustrations in 1966, 1996 and 2000, not in 2003. He gave back all the lyric sheets he had in 2003. Which part of this keeps bouncing off your thick skull ?

Aside from anything else, he didn't have time to suddenly rustle up a brand new sketch for the box booklet.

Great info, thanks for the find!

OK, here is my question, exactly as sent to Frank:

"I have a question about the 1996 illustration you did that has "ukulele lady Lili" and the Milky Way bar in it - did you do that from any of your old lyric sheets, or did Van Dyke clue you in, or did you just do it off your own bat ? Reason I'm asking is that when Brian did his 2004 version of Smile, there are some lyrics in it that seem to relate very precisely to that illustration."

Note, I expressly specified "old lyric sheets".

None of it, given that I didn't know that information before.

And I wouldn't have known it unless I asked about it. So there you go.

Everything I stated above regarding Frank's illustrations has been mentioned on this forum more than once and very recently. It's not classified info: you didn't need to ask, all you had to do was read, and retain.

Specifically, I hadn't heard about the 2000 Holmes work. I don't think there have been any references to it here -- I did a quick search of the archives and didn't see any. Also, I hadn't heard that he "gave back" the lyric sheets in 2003. I had always assumed he provided BW and Darian with copies of some sort.

Anyway, in retrospect the backdating thing does sound silly. But at least two other posters within the last month or so have suggested the possibility, so it wasn't an original thought or question.

Thank you for the clarification AGD...and I'm sorry for stirring up the hornet's nest.

I was taken aback when I spied the "Holidays" illustration in the TSS book with the "1996" copyright. I thought perhaps that Mr. Holmes had done one more illustration in 2004 to make his SMiLE collection complete (perhaps with the intent of the artwork being used for BWPS?) and that the "1996" copyright was put on by mistake - just a way to denote all the non-1966 illustrations. I certainly wasn't suggesting that anything nefarious was going on here, just a potential oversight.

Now we have confirmation that the drawing is based on (presumably) vintage 1966 lyrics. This certainly goes a long way to establish that "Holidays" was indeed closely related to "Do You Like Worms?" with its use of Hawaiian imagery.

I'm curious - what SMiLE-oriented illustrations did Mr. Holmes do in 2000?

Thank You AGD!!  :afro

I am of the opinion that the "Rock Rock Roll, Plynouth Rock Roll Over" part is vintage as well as at least most of the melody. I base this opinion on the notion that Brian would not have laid down an instrumental track without a melody in mind, and also because of the way everything fits so perfectly with the track (melodically speaking).

I have thought about this often, but how much knowledge of SMiLE was retained by Brian through the years. We all know about his contribution to the end of Surf's Up in 1971, but what else did he remember, and for how long? After all, SMiLE was his magnum opus....

Once again, thanx AGD.

I'm going strictly from memory and I don't have any specific titles for you but I remember around ten years ago in the era of "The SMiLE Shop", Holmes had a website and was selling prints of all of his SMiLE artwork to fans.  Maybe he did up some new illustrations around this time for this purpose?

PS: Hate to nag but does anyone have any guesses on what the illustration next to "Barnyard" in TSS booklet represents?  I understand the illustrations are grouped in relation to the songs they are depicting but I don't see how the mystery illustration has any relation to any song in the first movement.

I'll second that. I cannot for the life of me work out what that brick thing is suposed to represent.

Now it would be interesting what was from "his own bat" and what was vintage lyric. I guess everything we find in both the picture and the BWPS lyrics must be regarded as vintage, but the only way to find out for sure is to ask Mr. Holmes if he made copies of the old lyric sheets before he gave them back...

Anyway, thank you Andrew. :)

If at all, the "ribbon of concrete" with which nature, the "church of the American Indian" is plastered - notice the adhesive plasters undeneath.

Of course I could be wrong.

As positioned in the book, it supposedly represents "I'm In Great Shape", although none of the imagery seems to relate to the lyric we're aware of (unless we consider something like "tumble out of bed" to be represented by a roller coaster). Perhaps the phrase "built like a brick house" is the metaphor here for being in great shape, but I'm thinking that maybe the illustration represents missing lyrics that Parks wrote, but were not recorded (or recorded but not found).

Another thought: if we assume the original lyric was, indeed, "open country", then the illustration would show that country being divided by fences first and by brick-and-mortar after (following the "Cabin Essence" theme of moving from agrarian to industrial). The structure at the right seems to suggest an artifical oasis built on girders. Again, given how close Mr. Holmes illustrations seem to hew to a given lyric, I suspect there were more words to "I'm In Great Shape" than we currently know about.

I think it's a "brick ****-house". Looks like a brick turd to me.

Is there any possibility that Holidays was actually a part of DYLW-  like an insert? That would at least explain why it's not on the track listing from December 66. Or, it occurs to me, if Holidays is the last section of DYLW and it ends with that whispering winds section that could have it lead right into Wind Chimes. Of course on the Dec 66 tracklist Wind Chimes follows DYLW.

"See Label For Correct Playing Order"

Also, where and why has it been theorized that "Holidays" and "Do You Like Worms?" were linked in any significant way? BWPS re-uses the "Rock, rock, roll" chant, true, but it does this several times throughout the record in ways that didn't exist at all on any original '66 and '67 versions.

Two and a half minutes would be a f*ck of a long insert. Again, I don't think the December '66 list of songs (not tracklist) should have any kind of stock put into it for a number of obvious reasons.

It has been suggested here that on the "Holidays" session track on TSS, one can faintly hear Brian singing "Do You Like Worms?" lyrics as he demonstrates how the "Holidays" melody and rhythm should go.

Oh, that. Eh, while I'm not authority on the matter and am listening to the same extremely sketchy and hard to discern recording as the rest of you, I didn't hear any "Worms" lyrics when listening to that bit over and over.

The revelation that the '04 version's lyrics are partially based upon or just outright are the '66 lyrics (I'd have to guess the former) kind of shoots this theory down even more.

Completely agree with you on this. I mentioned this on the TSS sub-board, but thought I'd throw it on here as well: re-listening to the "Holidays" session highlights yesterday, I'm thinking that the bit of lyric Brian is heard singing is "...and Liliuola Kalani will sing to me"!

So Frank and I were exchanging emails recently, and I brought up the Holidays illustration in hopes of gleaning some more info.

My question: "The book included with the box set features an illustration of yours, dated 1996, that appears to accompany the song "Holidays" (the lazy moon, the ukulele lady, the Milky Way bar, etc.).  However, I was under the impression that "Holidays" didn't have lyrics until the music was revived in 2003-04.   Did Brian and/or Van Dyke provide those lyrics to you in the 1966-67 era?  Do you still have the lyric sheet you used to create that illustration?"

His (terse but direct) answer: "No lyrics from Brian or VDP. Holidays date mistake."

Humph.

Eh?

Perfect illustration of the perils and pitfalls of researching not only BB but also plain rock history. Not only do different folk remember the same event in sometimes diametrically opposed ways, but worse, the same person can remember an event differently as time passes. Question being, which is the more accurate recall ?

Curiouser and curiouser...

The one I want to believe of course!

... is the correct answer !  8)

Interesting that this thread has been resuscitated and shows AGD behaving like a cantankerous curmudgeonly codger 18 months ago in exactly the same way as he does now. Even when other posters suggested things that were then backed up by the people in question...

Interesting that you're concentrating on that and not the actual topic in question. Fact is, Frank said one thing to me in response to a specific question, then said exactly the opposite to someone else asking an equally specific question on the same subject more recently. Either answer is equally plausible. Welcome to the wonderful world of BB research.  :)

As either answer is easily plausible, probably would have been best if you hadn't used the terms 'idiot', 'dumbass' and 'shitweasel' when someone made the point 18 months ago.

The reason I don't debate this topic now is because it's pointless debating what Frank now says really isn't it unless further info comes up.

I had asked a question of a prime participant and received a reply, which I then posted on this board, only for someone who I considered not only well-versed in BB lore but also well-educated to question this new info based on his flimsy notion that the 1996 copyright on the image was in fact a red herring and that Frank might have done it for the box set (which I can state conclusively is not the case: aside from anything else, he simply didn't have the time). I found that pretty annoying. Still do.

This is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and I'm trying to imagine circumstances which serve as some sort of semi-plausible explanation of what happened.

The first issue is the 1996 date on the drawing.  It's accurate or it's not. 

If someone in 2010-11 simply back-dated a drawing to 1996, then the logical inference is that FH heard/read the new lyrics for the first time in 2003 or 2004 or later and did a new illustration inspired by those lyrics.   The problem is, why back-date it?  Just a mistake?  Perhaps FH did the drawing in 2004, shoved it in a drawer, forgot about it and then misremembered it as part of an earlier set of Smile drawings that he had done for a proposed Smile set in the mid-1990s?  Possible, I guess.

If the drawing was truly done in 1996, there are a number of possibilities...
-Original Holidays lyrics were supplied at a some point between 1966 and 1996, inclusive.
-VDP's 2003/04 lyrics are inspired by the 1996 drawing of 'Holidays' rather than the other way around.
-Some supernatural phenomenon is at work (time travel? clairvoyance?), and the 'Holidays' drawing is a bit like the 1920s photo at the end of 'The Shining' featuring a young Jack Nicholson.
  ;)

Do you still believe these dates to be accurate?  Even if the date on the illustration is wrong, it being done in 2000 would be no less significant.

Woah! Where can we see this fabled On A Holiday illustration???

TSS box set booklet, in the lyrics section. Forget which page exactly but it's bottom right.

Actually, I don't believe he did any illustrations in 1966: the existence of booklets from that time, of course, proves nothing as they could so easily have been faked up later. As for 1996 and 2000, it's a long-accepted principle for someone seeking to establish copyright to put the wrong date on their works, just to confuse researchers such as we are. Everything dates from 2011. Even the ones printed in ESQ a good decade previously. Not many folk know this, but Frank drives a highly modified DeLorean...

I am, of course, being utterly ridiculous for the sake of making a point.  >:D

What we wont find in the lyrics section is the lyrics. I'm still freaked out from your comment a while back that one reason the lyrics for Worms and Holidays weren't included in TSS (when they are clearly significant) is that the lyric sheets were now lost.

Here's another dumb theory for you all: Frank did the drawing in 2006 and was mistaken about the decade because he's old now. I know I was a few times! :old

I tend to believe the recent email exchange was based on a misunderstanding of some sort. Or, but this guess is also based on nothing, Mr Holmes was bugged by all those people who ask him about those lyrics that he just wrote whatever out of annoyance - something I would totally understand.

Having met Frank, I can't imagine him being bugged or annoyed at anyone - lovely man.

Well, I didn't present my idea as fact, did I?