The Smiley Smile Message Board

Forgive me if this specific question has been discussed, but I don't recall it coming up. It might be such a small point or question that nobody (even here) cares.

I understand that "You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone" evolved out of "Beatrice From Baltimore." My question is, does anyone know whether the "she don't / she don't / she don't know" vocal part is a remnant of that earlier song? It seems entirely irrelevant to the final "Mess of Help" song, lyrically speaking; I wonder whether it just remained in the new song / new lyrics because, logical or not, it just sounded cool. (What were they going to do, sing "mess o' / mess o' help / mess o' help?") Not that nonsense lyrics can't and don't make their ways into songs all the time, but it seems like that lyric likely fit better about a song with a subject-"she" than one about community.

Unless maybe there was this one particular "she" who "don't know" the mess of help required to stand alone...  ;D

Isn't "SHE" the person the lyrics are directed too?

Don't know, but it's Brian singing the 'answering' part of it (the 'she don't know it')

I'd always assumed the lyrics were a vernacular way of saying "One Needs A Mess of Help to Stand Alone", meaning the songwriter (i.e Brian).

And the "she don't know" could be a reference to a perceived lack of understanding from his female counterpart (i.e. his wife).

Although I've always been a big fan of this song, I've also always fealt that it's 2 completely unrelated songs mashed together. I think it would have had been a potentially successful single without the "She don't know" breaks.  They come out of left field.

Or the opposite...the "She don't know" parts are the best, IMO.

Aren't they singing, "She don't know a thing" ?

I'm hearing "she don't/no she don't /no she don't know"

Would it be fair to say none of us knows the answer to the initial question, then?

My guess is that it's two separate lyrical parts.  The lead is all about "I need" and the "She don't know" part makes little sense.

We don't know  :-D

the lead vocal, is this a Carl double up?  using two different vocal techniques?  always found this
intriguing how they produced this tune.  would love to hear it accapella (which is nude, oops
I lost my head)

There's a discussion of it and other not necessarily nude matters here:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,14744.0.html

We went into this in some length on the lead vocal thread which I participated in.  I think we came up with it's three vocals, at least two of which are Carl singing, as you say, with two different vocal techiques, and a third unidentified vocalist who might be Brian but is more likely to be Carl again.

Having heard the parts isolated...the third part is Brian, one of 3 songs where he is present vocally (the other two being Marcella and He Come Down)

99.99% certain that Jack Reiley could not think of a way to change the middle-eight/tag lyrics to match his rewrite of the "Beatrice" lyrics (and, man, I would REALLY like to hear those in their entirety, they must've been a scream!!).

And so it became this weird field holler thing that takes the "unrequited" aspect of the "Beatrice" lyrics to a different level...clearly the babe that Brian and Tandyn were hot over wasn't returning their, um, "enthusiasm" when they saw her shaking' her booty at Bumbles!

Of course the ladies can reinterpret this as a sexist putdown ("She don't know a thing") but I prefer to think that the boys are merely frustrated that "Beatrice" is unaware of (and completely uninterested in) the effect she's having on our songwriters.

And therefore I suspect that Carl decided to thicken that part in the tag to sort of paper all of that over, with the byproduct of that being that he created one of the greatest rocked-out contrapuntal funkorama moments of all time--rootsy and yet still somehow Beach Boyish--aided immeasurably by that fantastic ascending bass line...and the lightning hands of Ricky Fataar, in his greatest BB moment the first time out. Headphone nirvana, boys and girls!

This aligns with what Mike said at the time regarding Brian's involvement with the album: "Brian was there with 'Marcella', and 'Mess Of Help' has his harmonies with the vocal." He didn't mention "He Come Down" in that sentence, but yes, Brian's there too. Speaking of THAT song....man, that gospel ending is fantastic, with the churchy group harmonies and Blondie wailing away on top!

Ten years after the fact, Carl made this comment regarding CATP "So Tough": "If we had done eight tunes like 'Marcella', it could have been a great rock album, almost a folk-rock album...I wish Brian had been strong enough to produce the record, because it could have been an ass-kicking, great record."

Wait, so we are confirming that Brian is the 3rd lead on Mess of Help ? The one that goes up the octave sometimes? If so, that's a pretty huge revelation! My ears always heard Blondie's tone -- but what the heck do I know?

is there anywhere online we can hear or find the isolated vocals?  lots of different thoughts on
those background lead vocals.  Interesting still, we have heard lots of the Capitol material
dissected and available in various forms now, but hardly anything of the great early 70's albums.

Yes, isolated vocals would be great to hear!

That discussion starts around here (skipping posts along the way): 

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,4120.msg71961.html#msg71961

Mike's comment confirms it in MY mind.

I don't know the answer to the initial question, but whenever I don't understand lyrics, I always assume it means the same thing:
"She don't know..." Is referring to Linda McCartney not knowing that she married Faul and not Paul who died in a car accident in 1966. Faul needs a mess of help (please please help me!) to stand as Paul.

This explanation is fully documented in my weed!

If you have a receiver/tuner that isolates left-right channels and puts out a signal into both speakers/headphones, you could get a lot of clarity on the (intermittent) three leads in the verses. That's what we used to do back in the day with "Mess of Help" because it was clear that the track had a lot of panning.

When you do that, you get a gruff Carl who's in play throughout all of the verses, a smoother Carl who is in play during the second half of each verse, where the melody changes as it flows into "...a mess of help to stand alone", and an intermittent Brian adding accents on words in various places.

Sounds to me like Carl might have doubled parts of the gruff vocal, particularly in the third and final verse.

Hard to tell who's singing the "she don't know/she don't know it" lines that followi Carl's "She don't know a thing" in the tag. There are clearly more voices in the tag, which enhances and "thickens" the earlier middle-eight.

I went back and read Adam's 2007 post on this, and I don't think we're too far off in terms of what's going on, but all of that track listing material from Alan is fascinating and I sure wish he would spend some more time trying to figure out what's really where. This is definitely one of a handful of tunes that would have been amazing to watch through the full course of its creation, right down to the mixing, where some of the final mysteries may still be lurking...

Just tried that! Aside from the obvious clean Carl lead, I hear:

1. The "gruff" voice. Maybe Brian? (as it does resemble his 15BO voice). But I'm just not sure. Some of the stylings sound more like Carl to me.
2. A higher pitched, nasal "clean" but shouty voice, which DOES sound a lot like 72-era Brian to me. This voice goes into harmony at points.
3. Maybe yet ANOTHER voice, which goes into a falsetto octave at points, and sounds more like Blondie than anyone else to me.

So maybe as many as 4 vocals on that left channel? And sometimes as little as 2? It does have a kind  of loose group feel....

I have also always identified Brian as the "answer" vocal in the "She Don't know" tag-

EG - She don't-she don't-----------she don't know
         Brian:    SHE DON'T KNOW IT

thoughts?

I liked Mess of Help greatly when I first heard it but was literally astonished it was chosen as lead single over Marcella.

Though I have to admit nowadays, if forced to choose between the two, I would take Mess over Marcie mainly because its idiosyncratic instrumental track wears better that the more formulaic Marcie's does.

And I've always found the "sandals dance at my feet" lyric and the irritating "feet/sweet" rhyme  to be more annoying than "she don't know a thing".  I thought that the "she don't know a thing" was a comment about the singer bitching about his girlfriend not understanding the supposed verities contained within the song's other lyrical assertions.

Not at the time of the song's release knowing of the Beatrix origin.

But never ever did I think back in the day at the time of their releases that either song would be a hit single.  Just as I knew Surfs Up would not be a hit single.

Strange time for the Boys...they were connecting with a small select audience, but certainly not top forty radio.

Beatrix? You're not Dutch by any chance, are you?  :smokin

That interp of the tag lyrics is probably right about where Reiley left off with it, but I sure would have loved to have heard the back-and-forth about it when the song was being made. It "works," you could call it "archetypal irony" or some such in the sense that what's needed clearly doesn't seem to be forthcoming, a so-called "universal condition of man."

It's also possible that Jack was thinking about what he and Carl had been through without "a mess of help" from Brian in piecing together the SMILE puzzle, which had been ongoing in this timeframe, and commemorated it with this: "I need the warmth of your smile/To heat (the) (my) frostbitten sorrow."

I think Marcella should have been the first single, with Mess of Help in reserve. The Reprise goonies could have plugged it like so:

THE BEACH BOYS ARE BACK. And they can't wait for June.
Their classic sound grows up with "Marcella."

In May-June '72 there was a lot of turning back the clock and "return to the past" in the air. It was their best shot at the time, to come out swinging. Particularly since they weren't able to make "Surf's Up" to SMILE a 1-2 "artistic punch."

Much as I love "Mess"--and I try not to be too obnoxious about just how much I do--it couldn't possibly have worked as the first single since it sounded nothing at all like the Beach Boys. Maybe as a second single, with an ad that said: "And now for something COMPLETELY different!"

But then again the band should also have put out an LP called HINDSIGHT to balance out 20/20...  :3d

That theory wouldn't be unheard of.  Reminds me of the Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling".  McCartney wrote the Genesis of the song, then Lennon comes in with a bit he was writing for a separate song, and it just worked.

Yeah, that album is hit or miss, but it had the potential to be great.  Way too short too. 

This is an old thread, but  hey, this became one of my most listened to beach boys LP's.   Anywho,  I was in High School,  maybe a freshman and  as a kid  my babysitter had Shutdown vol 2.  I wore it out and she gave it to me...so that was my introduction to the beach boys.  So to make short story very long, I got the other albums,  Pet sounds  and generally what was in the record rack and that was all i knew of the beach boys, so early 70's I kinda moved on to progressive rock like King Crimson, the Who, and of course Beatles when my friends brother brought home Revolver and Sgt. Pepper and my jaws were dropping. :).  So at that point I had left the BB's behind.  So one day,  I see a Pet Sounds LP at the brothers house, thought nothing of it, but hold on,
its a double LP set with SOME OTHER BAND! :)  I didn't recognize anyone from the picture (long hair ect, not observant then),  and so we put it on and Mess of Help is on and its like what the hell its this???????  Really liked it.  Especially the drumming and "gritty" aspect of it.   So good or bad, it holds a place in my nostalgia.  Now, now that i do my own recording and mixing I want to know who the heck mixed "here she comes!".  Mr Desper said he didn't like the monitor systems at Brother (IF i remember right -- Wall Heilders old equipment).  Prob JBL's.  dunno.  Sounds like they wanted to be "earthy" or whatever it is and (like the exile on main street LP) not have the vocals up front.  But man, love those drums, in your face.  I think the drums are the "lead".  :)    Gated drums, and prob compression, which i could make drums sound like that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would imagine "Here She Comes" was mixed by Ricky and Blondie at the Village Recorders, probably with engineer Rob Fraboni. That's who the band worked with later that year at the Village for the Holland post-production sessions. It's been said that the So Tough album was the result of the Boys working in three studios simultaneously, in order to beat the deadline before they went back out on the road:  "Dennis Wilson and Daryl Dragon in one, Carl, Mike, and Al at another studio, and Blondie and Ricky at a third" (quoted from David Leaf's book). The BBC Radio series on The Beach Boys was the source for Leaf's info on this, and IIRC, whoever made that statement in the series also said that DW and DD were at Sunset Sound, Blondie and Ricky were at the Village, and the other guys were at the studio in Brian's house. Now, the AFM contracts for these sessions (which cover only the basic tracking sessions and instrumental overdubs) indicate the house studio was used for all of this except for the strings on Dennis' two numbers (Sound City in Sepulveda) and the horns on "Make It Good" (Sunset Sound). Keyboardist Alex Del Zoppo has recalled playing piano on the two Blondie and Ricky tracks at Brian's, so all of this leads me to the conclusion that at least the mixdowns (and possibly vocals) on those two tunes were done at the Village, while Dennis and Daryl mixed down his two tracks at Sunset, and the other guys finished up the remainder of the album at Brian's. EDIT: if info on the specific studios wasn't given in that BBC Radio series, then I think it was mentioned in MOJO's article on the Holland album (circa 2002), for which both Blondie and Ricky provided their recollections.