The Smiley Smile Message Board

Does anyone think all of the vocals for Smile were actually recorded, and perhaps lost? Like good vibrations? (Imagine if we didn't have a completed version of gv, and without any vocal tracks had only the backing tracks to try and guess what the finished track would be like?

Columbia vault clearance.

This anyone doesn't.

Next question!

For Those Lei'd In Hawaii, We Salute You!    :hat

I wonder why many vocals were never recorded?  It seems like there was disagreement about lyrics, but they stil were sung.  However, many were not... This couldn't have been too difficult to do, unlike editing backing tracks.  Did Brian have second thoughts about the lyrics, and decide not to record some of them? Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, just always been curious about the lack of vocals in the SMILE music at we do have.

I agree. With all the work done on background vocals and even rather minor lead parts (truck driving man), how is it that nobody could spend five goshdarn minutes laying down a lead for "Do You Like Worms"? That's the one that really ticks me off. It's like 99% finished. Damn. Same with "Cabin Essence". Not even a rough guide vocal? C'mon.

Some say Brian was waiting until the last minute in case he wanted to move some fragments around. But were fragments ever really moved around aside from when he pillaged them for Heroes and Villains in January when the album was already kinda screwed? Not really.

The extra vocals that turn up in places like the Barnshine OMP grand finale thing and the Child chorus acetate (still waiting to hear the circumstances related to it's discovery) fuels the fire that some things could have been there at one point in time but for whatever reason they aren't there now.

I'd still love to know what Brian is singing while pounding on the piano during the "Holidays" session. You audio geniuses should have cracked that nut by now.

Why is "Child is Father of the Man" on the album when it seems to need so much more work? Why fart around with trivialities like "Great Shape" and "OMP" when much more fully realized tracks like "Look" and "Holidays" stand by waiting to be finished?

WHEN YOU'VE GONE OVER SOMETHING AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN CERTAIN QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED....OTHERS SPRING UP! YOUR MIND PLAYS TRICK ON YOU....YOU PLAY TRICKS BACK!!!! ITS LIKE YOUR UNRAVELING A GIANT REEL OF TAPE THAT SOMEONE KEEPS RECORDING!!! AND RECORDING!! AND RECORDING!!! AND RECORDING!!! AND RECORDING!!!!!!!!!

It's a good question that needs to be answered. Maybe it's BW never got the band to do them before the spat near Christmas 1966 and resulting focus on H&V.

What "spat near Christmas"?

I remember reading that band had a meeting around that time and voted down smile to finish H&V. http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,5222.msg83882.html#msg83882

So scrap an entire album for the sake of a single? Why would they do that exactly? So they could spend 3 months recording H&V chorus variations? Is this part of the "band fight with Brian during Bernstein special filming" legend that was shot down and exposed as imaginary years ago?

The link from my last post has a lot of information on the subject. I think the band wanted BW to follow up GV as quick as possible with H&V to keep the momentum going. BW then went on his manic recording spree to finish it.

There was a major blow-up between Murry and Brian too around the end of 1966, and other disputes which were bubbling under in the band and family also related to the things Murry was doing and saying reached the boiling point in the 2nd half of December 1966. It was beyond the Inside Pop thing you're talking about, but nobody has really pinpointed exactly what was behind the dispute, other than it was a major falling-out. Among the only things described were Murry going around bad-mouthing "Good Vibrations" and telling people (and family) what a mistake it had been for Brian to release it, this being said as it was sitting at or near #1 on the singles charts. And Brian for one assumed or had heard that Murry hired private investigators to watch both he and possibly Carl too over their drug use and activities. And there supposedly was finger-pointing within the band and family over who had been a snitch to even keep Murry informed to any level, leading to believing Murry somehow had them under surveillance.

I'm also intrigued by how so much time was spent on background vocals, and yet we have no evidence that lead vocals were ever recorded... Do we have all the session tapes for these background vocal sessions? For Cabinessence and surf!so up? If not, could it possibly mean lead vocals were recorded too?

Brian seemed to be having a hard enough time deciding what tracks to use for each song, let alone lay lead vocals down on them. I'll be honest, when you listen to how many segments he recorded, re-recorded, pulled out of this song, put into that song, etc., it's hard to keep it all straight. If only pro-tools had been invented in 1965; Brian could've used it to finish SMiLE by Christmas '66, and then hopefully Pro-tools would've gone the way of the dinosaur, because it's ruined music. Next!