The Smiley Smile Message Board

I came upon this 200-page (or so), ugly pink-covered book the other day at the used book store, and picked it up for $7. Amusingly, the pages covering the period from Smiley Smile through 20/20 are missing entirely, replaced with a repeat of the 30 or so previous pages.

The most interesting thing I saw in the book (apart from the insight into the way Leaf and others may have looked into some of the things we've since learned more about, such as the quality of certain unreleased songs, Smile, etc.) was the mention of a certain allegedly-completed track--I believe called "Lazy Lizzie," which Leaf said is the ful development of the "Pied Piper" melody in the Holland fairy tale.

Does anyone know about that track? Does it exist, and is it any good?

It's a great track, sort of in the schoolgirl-obsessed mode of Hey Little Tomboy lyrically, but musically -- I never made the Fairy Tale connection, but maybe that explains why it's so appealing to me -- it's one of the stronger tracks from this period, IMO. A good example of why there needs to be a seventies rarities release.

It's nearly unlistenable, IMO. It's the same Pied-Piper riff over and over, with Tomboy-type lyrics. I love Love You, and I can't remotely deal with it.

Lazy Lizzie? What a sh*t track. Definitely not Brian Wilson at his most inspired. But it has that undeniable cult following, so whadda I know?

It's very rough-hewn, so I know what you mean. But, it's so 'of it's era' so to speak. I like the starkness of it, like a lot of folks like the starkness of Smiley Smile. Songs like Hey There Momma, It's Trying To Say, etc. I don't know why but that whole period is so interesting, not to mention how incomparable it is to anything else, like they existed in a bubble where outside influences simply didn't exist.

I like it, but there's like only one verse in the whole song.

If you love that heavy-handed keyboard riff style that Brian also used in Airplane, go for it.

WOW! You bought that book for 7.00???!!!  That is quite a bargain, check out how much this book is worth on Amazon...

I got that book out of my library once. It's okay, more like the basic info. Nothing in there i really didn't know. I never thought Lazzy Lizzie had that connection. Never sounded like it. Not one of my favorite songs, but it's pretty amusing.

"Lizzie" is an expansion of the ""Better Get Back To Bed" riff. It's, um, well... here's the opening line -

Three fifteen and the bell starts ringing
The girls start walking home from school

... and later on -

I slow down in my car
And I pull to the kerb.

Didn't Errol Flynn once get arrested for something like that ? Policeman asked him what he was doing out side an LA girls school at turning out time and he replied "just watching, officer".

That's "curb" for the Americans in the audience...

Maybe he wrote the song for Gary Glitter....  :o

Between this and Hey Little Tomboy...yikes. What was up with Brian's 70s lyrics?

I dig Lazy Lizzie - it's only on the level of a demo, but it could have been worked on and made into one of the better tracks of the period.

He didn't deny  hitting on Carnie and Wendy’s school friends when they were little when asked about it by Howard Stern. He might have just been playing along, though. Still, there are many creepy lyrics from this period in his career. If we didn’t know him and love him so we’d probably be more turned off my it than we are. He probably felt like a kid himself psychologically and was verbalizing his fantasies in song form. Eh. At least he didn’t act on it like Denny did. Ewwww!

As for Lazy Lizzy....not one of my faves.....annoying, actually.....