It's totally possible, perhaps even likely, that Brian was initially more willing to go in an Americana and/or bittersweet angsty direction at first (look at those early songs, the name "Dumb Angel," not shutting down Van's "stick it to the Brits" ideas) but by late October at the latest, with the Holmes cover delivered and sudden inclusion of comedy sketches in the sessions, I think Brian was on a humor kick and anything he perceived as a hindrance to that design was suddenly on the chopping block.

Fascinating and thought provoking conversation as always, but I take strong issue with this statement. I think the session tapes themselves for the album as a whole and for heroes, through at least February 1967, strongly suggest that Brian believed the Americana theme, the bittersweet, angsty direction, and his interest in humor were entirely compatible and could be combined into an album that combined all three seamlessly. Heroes the single combines all three, and the album sessions as a whole combine all three. What you see as evidence for Brian turning away from serious themes and towards humor (the newly uncovered Windchimes experiments, the Rock with me Henry Wonderful, the psychedelic skits), I see as evidence that Brian believed these things could be successfully combined within one project, but wasn't exactly sure where the line should be.

I think your arguments about the turn to Smiley when it happens later in 1967 are more compelling. But there, too, I think there is an alternative explanation that needs to be considered, which is that Brian's primary motivation was not about the content of Smiley Smile, but rather the *way* in which it would be recorded. I would posit that what Brian wanted, above all, was to hold sessions for Smile's replacement in a chill, relaxed, atmosphere, at home, without sessions musicians, and with all the members of the band involved. And I would further suggest that Smiley brought out the humor side of the project because Brian felt it was most compatible with the atmosphere and approach he wanted to bring to the process of making music at that time, rather than that Brian turned to a chiller, more laid-back, and less studio-intensive process *because* he cared more about the humor side of the project than its other aspects. I agree that the historical record clearly demonstrates that Brian valued the humor element of the project very highly, but do not agree at all that the historical record clearly demonstrates that he valued it *more* than the project's more serious side, which was clearly also of immense importance to Brian, as evidenced by the tremendous care he took in arranging and recording songs like Surf's Up and Wonderful in the first place.

I was going to make a comment about how we should really all be talking about how Van Dyke Parks feels about the modern Middle East, not ourselves, given the section of the forum we're in...

But then I realized that this kind of conversation, however heated and ugly in moments, is something I used to see online *all the time* but haven't really witnessed in years. When an algorithm is resorting people's comments in real time and showing different things to different people, it's impossible to go back and forth like this. Odd. Never would have thought I'd miss something like this. But however much the board may be dying, I really do prefer these backwaters of the internet that haven't changed since the early 2010s.

On topic, I just want to say two things:

First, I think the way Van Dyke Parks talks about Palestine is telling. Connecting it to his childhood idolization of Winston Churchill, then moving immediately to Big Oil and the extinction crisis. It's a sort of associative way of thinking that I don't think is very common, and that is also reflected in much of Park's music. (And the environmental causes Parks pivots too were, of course, also where the Beach Boys could find common ground politically in the early 70s, the place where "square" Mike and Al could fully align themselves with the hippies. No coincidence that Mike and Dennis's greatest cowrite was on the subject! (depending on how you feel about Only with You, I suppose, but I've always thought it was a little slight, albeit gorgeous and certainly better than any song I've ever written! But Pacific Ocean Blue is one of those oddly singular songs that most bands come up with one or two of in their careers and the Beach Boys came up with so often that they didn't both to release them half the time!))

This paragraph from Parks's interview also really struck me:

I think that it’s important to remember that I was employed by the grace of Brian Wilson‘s conviction that I could do something to help him reinvent himself in his work. I did my best, and knowing that sustains me in my late age. But the reason that I am here, it’s all within the compass of the golden rule. I believe mankind was invented for the purpose to demonstrate reciprocity, empathy and goodwill. I always felt that Brian Wilson deserved the best that I could bring him, whether he knew it or not. The lyrics were also highly abstract, only as a result of music that was highly segmented, anecdotal, and of a higher spiritual plane. I felt as bewildered as anyone could be about the abstract nature of the music, but I found it to be quite beautiful and it turns out freestanding creativity, not dependent on the lyrics at all.

This strikes me as humble, observant, and the words of someone who cares a lot about this music, and has spent a lot of time thinking, and probably hurting, over what happened in those few months in the mid-60s. It's not going to help us solve the puzzle of Smile, of course, but it's still a pretty incisive comment from a principle, all these years later. And I do think it's true that all the different moods and ideas Van Dyke Parks brought to the table did, in fact, reflect the incredible richness and variety of Brian's music, which was and is saying many, and many contradictory, things at once.

[I'd actually prefer it your way artistically. While I may sometimes sound like I'm denigrating Van Dyke for not "getting" Brian (either from the jump or not following Brian's shifting plans) I actually think his influence was better than what Brian would've done left to his own devices.]

Even with all the research I've done, this was such a frustrating and obviously misguided endeavor on its face (and even more so with hindsight) which is why I think fans like us just can't be satisfied with the explanation and let it go. Why pick Heroes for the single? (Anderle says because it was "the most finished.") Then why remake it virtually from scratch and change so much? (Because Brian is a perfectionist.) Why did it have to come so soon after GV hit #1 in December--shouldn't that in itself have brought them some breathing room? (Because the BRI launch required new product to bargain with!) Why couldn't the BRI launch have waited? (Because nobody thought it had to until it was too late.) Why couldn't Brian have just kept at it after these distractions subsided in March/April? (Because the moment passed and the man followed his muse despite the consequences beyond the music itself.)

I think this is well said. So many of the steps along the path to Smile's failure made sense in the moment. There are certainly moments, many captured on tape, when you just want to reach back in time and say "what are you thinking!" But so much of what derailed the project was just reasonable or at least to-be-expected reactions to events in the moment. And then eventually the band was too far down a path of no return.

I of course, also speaking personally, think the comedy material is more plausible for all the reasons stated ad nauseum but will reiterate I'd actually prefer it your way artistically. While I may sometimes sound like I'm denigrating Van Dyke for not "getting" Brian (either from the jump or not following Brian's shifting plans) I actually think his influence was better than what Brian would've done left to his own devices. I find the Americana stuff, CIFOTM turn-of-phrase and Won/SU lyrics in particular to be a lot more enticing than a humorous mish-mash of random occult references plus veggies. I'd have preferred a "Pet Sounds 2--with Americana as the theme instead of teen angst" instead of Smiley Smile. If Heroes/Veggies/Barnyard is more Brian and CE/SU/Worms is more Van, as I suspect, then I'd take Van's version of the album anyday. But really, what these two men did together in '66 trumps anything they ever did separately (Pet Sounds excluded, in Brian's case) and I think Brian should've trusted the natural evolution of the project instead of abandoning it for a misguided underwhelming comedy album the way he did. That's how art works sometimes, where the project finds itself in the process and turns out much different than you'd planned. Put succinctly, I advocate for the comedy inclusions not out of personal preference but historical accuracy, despite the impression I suspect many have of me.

This is perhaps neither here nor there, but I do think that the Cantina mix of heroes from Feb. shows that, from a creative and musical perspective, it was absolutely possible to integrate these two sides of the project seamlessly. Brian managed it at least one time, in one of really only a handful of "finished" mixes we have from the period. The Cantina mix is undeniably gorgeous and sophisticated music, with a very strong Van Dyke Parks influence, that fits well alongside the darker and more serious side of the project. But it's also full of Brian's musical humor, in almost every section: the slide whistle at the end of the verse, Mike's exaggerated doo-be-doos in the acapella section, the madcap laughing in the cantina section, the "your under arrest," rhyming "jive" with "survive," the dum dum dums that lead into the tape explosion. All of those moments seem, to me, to be clearly products of Brian's musical humor kick! Now, could he have pulled it off for a whole album? Honestly, yeah, I think he could have.

Why would GV be out, if it was the part of "da tracklist"? also, very important for the commercial standing of the album.

The question remains open with respect to a "spring SMiLE," even though the evidence you cite strongly points toward its inclusion.
Working with the "four variant" notion, I could see a version where it is left off, and three others with it (but each in different locations relative to the other tracks).

Yea, once you get away from what could hypothetically have happened early in the year, the different possibilities get wider and wider the more time you give the scenario to unfold!

[release]

Julia, I think Robbins is almost certainly peripheral to the SMiLE story & while you are to commended for the desire and sense of responsibility to leave no I undotted and no T uncrossed, the blazing edge of your work will rise or fall on creating 2-4 credible scenarios for an April 1967 release of the LP, each flowing from the best possible reconstruction of the time frame.

For me, it all hinges on Brian figuring out how to distribute Heroes & Villains across the landscape of his tracks. That could have stemmed from what he was doing in the studio in Jan-Feb, but didn't, so he went back to materials that had been taking shape (often inchoately) around "the Elements." That's when his commitment to the rest of the VDP Americana material hits the skids.

But I think a March-April release of SMiLE has to include all of that material, and MOLC would have remained in the can (or, in my mischievous scenario, is the mind-blowing B Side to the single version of H&V!! ). But lighter variants of H&V from the work in Jan-Feb could be what stitches things together across the two sides of the LP. A musical comedy/overture snippet could provide the transition into the innocence section culminating in Surf's Up.

I think one or two of your track orders get close to this approach. I think the book should suggest the likeliest ones for a March-April release, but the parallel tracks of the book should encompass the best detailed timeline (using the session data) while incorporating/embodying the fan-mix tradition/sensibility. I think all that can work in tandem when we acknowledge that to get a SMiLE in that time frame, some stuff has to be left out--otherwise, its Everyman making his/her own BWPS...

I've thought about giving it some kind of shot myself, but I'd much rather read a book like this written by you!!

I know I'm a broken record with my own idiosyncratic opinions, but I continue to believe that the evidence taken together strongly suggests a coherent, totally complete-able album being recorded through December, followed by a long Heroes and Villains tangent that was intended to create either a single three minute single a la Good Vibrations or a double-sided single, of which one side was a Good Vibrations style modular hit and the second was possibly going to be a little looser - followed by the abandonment of both projects at once. I completely agree with Julia that within and between songs and between sections within songs there would *certainly* have been snippets of comedy, both musical and spoken, and quite possibly many such moments. But (speaking for myself and in a spirit of good humor and exchange of ideas!) I don't think the January-March Heroes material was ever intended to be distributed across the album as you suggest. I feel strongly that Brian was working towards a single, and that any scenario where the album comes out in the spring has that single as one track on an album that uses the track list already printed on the jackets.

I think there are several credible variations of what would have constituted a spring 1967 SMiLE, and a book that explored them should leave room for those potential outcomes. For example, the H&V "part 1/part2" construction could have appeared in separate places on the record, with part 2 following Cabinessence as a light-hearted coda to the Americana side.

It is all conjecture, of course, and any alternate scenario that produces a spring '67 SMiLE has to change some of the events that doomed the project. I would concur that H&V would've had to be the single, but I'm not ready to rule out musical reprises and variations, which takes the modular concept a step further and (speaking personally!) is much more credible than 95% of the comedy material.

I think none of us knows enough to unilaterally discard any of the possible configurations that might have coalesced once Brian had successfully synthesized his efforts on H&V. Which is why I think a book exploring what that spring '67 SMiLE has to accommodate a number of disparate variations. (And ideally the book would also include a CD set that presented each variation--let's keep it relatively tame and limit the number of those to, sap, four--in their respective track orders for comparison. Given the vagaries of copyright law, however, all of that might need to appear at YouTube...)

Of course the question that emerges from this is whether or not the number of variations can actually be limited to four...!    I will defer that decision to Julia... 

I don't disagree with any of this! I think you're right not to rule out musical reprises and variations, and I may have made my case too strongly.

I think that in the abstract, the variations of a hypothetical "spring Smile" are infinite, virtually limitless. Brian, of course, would not have been limited to the material we have, he would have had the material we have plus whatever work he did to finish whatever vision ended up coalescing! But that fact in itself, on some level, puts fan-mixers in a position fundamentally at odds with "historians," or writers interested primarily in what happened and what compelling counter-factuals we might imagine rooted in those facts. The fan-mixer needs to organize the pieces we have into something that can be listened to. The historian, on the other hand, needs to weigh all the evidence, consider cause and effect, and imagine what Smile was and might have been without limiting themself to the material that works on a fan mix.

A big part of what I took away from Julia's argument about comedy - and I'm not sure if this is exactly what she said, but it is what she convinced me of, whether it is what she was trying to say or not - is that the comedy skits we have tell us important things about the project, even if Brian did not intend to use them as recorded. Anything likely to be done in the late stages of the project, including comedy, interstitial material, reprises, all things that were likely to come together at the stage of assembling songs and finalizing the track order, can't be judged on the basis of how well they work using the pieces we have, because Brian wouldn't have been limited to what we have at all!

[release]

Julia, I think Robbins is almost certainly peripheral to the SMiLE story & while you are to commended for the desire and sense of responsibility to leave no I undotted and no T uncrossed, the blazing edge of your work will rise or fall on creating 2-4 credible scenarios for an April 1967 release of the LP, each flowing from the best possible reconstruction of the time frame.

For me, it all hinges on Brian figuring out how to distribute Heroes & Villains across the landscape of his tracks. That could have stemmed from what he was doing in the studio in Jan-Feb, but didn't, so he went back to materials that had been taking shape (often inchoately) around "the Elements." That's when his commitment to the rest of the VDP Americana material hits the skids.

But I think a March-April release of SMiLE has to include all of that material, and MOLC would have remained in the can (or, in my mischievous scenario, is the mind-blowing B Side to the single version of H&V!! ). But lighter variants of H&V from the work in Jan-Feb could be what stitches things together across the two sides of the LP. A musical comedy/overture snippet could provide the transition into the innocence section culminating in Surf's Up.

I think one or two of your track orders get close to this approach. I think the book should suggest the likeliest ones for a March-April release, but the parallel tracks of the book should encompass the best detailed timeline (using the session data) while incorporating/embodying the fan-mix tradition/sensibility. I think all that can work in tandem when we acknowledge that to get a SMiLE in that time frame, some stuff has to be left out--otherwise, its Everyman making his/her own BWPS...

I've thought about giving it some kind of shot myself, but I'd much rather read a book like this written by you!!

I know I'm a broken record with my own idiosyncratic opinions, but I continue to believe that the evidence taken together strongly suggests a coherent, totally complete-able album being recorded through December, followed by a long Heroes and Villains tangent that was intended to create either a single three minute single a la Good Vibrations or a double-sided single, of which one side was a Good Vibrations style modular hit and the second was possibly going to be a little looser - followed by the abandonment of both projects at once. I completely agree with Julia that within and between songs and between sections within songs there would *certainly* have been snippets of comedy, both musical and spoken, and quite possibly many such moments. But (speaking for myself and in a spirit of good humor and exchange of ideas!) I don't think the January-March Heroes material was ever intended to be distributed across the album as you suggest. I feel strongly that Brian was working towards a single, and that any scenario where the album comes out in the spring has that single as one track on an album that uses the track list already printed on the jackets.

Thanks for answering. Yeah I just used the first hit on "AI splitter" and was able to achieve one of my "holy grails" of isolation I thought was impossible--the "uh-um pretty baby wont you rock with me henry" backing vox from the Wonderful 2 session! And it was completely free and no tinkering with any complex settings at all! I've always wanted to try including them in the first version of Wonderful and combine all the major elements of that song in one. I ought to be able to make a cleaner restoration of the cornucopia lyrics for Veggies in the '11 single mix in the same way. And even include the verse lyrics from Project Smile in a boxset-sourced CIFOTM to "finish" that song. (Hell, I could use AI to have Brian's voice sing those lyrics!) This tech is black magic.   

And with what you describe about isolating individual vocalists, it is even more exciting. Nothing is off the table now in terms of SMiLE mixes. So many things were a case of "yeah that'd be nice, but the raw materials just aren't there" and now if what you're saying is true I ought to be able to preserve the CIFOTM reprise without the "na na" part at the end of Surf's Up. That's awesome.

Im gonna go geek out in the corner there, excuse me.

I'm with you, it's absolutely mindblowing what this technology is making possible in the world of remixing 20th-century recordings. It really does feel like black magic, and I think we haven't even scratched the surface yet of what's possible.

Very surreal for me, because listening to Beach Boys and Beatles remixes on youtube, AI feels so powerful and beautiful and full of potential, whereas over in my day job (academic writing, history, and higher education), it's just been incredibly destructive and depressing in its effects. Hard to imagine how it'll all shake out across the culture as a whole.

So the album is still "Sold Out" on UDiscover and The Beach Boys site.  Which makes it seem that the number crunchers have made a big mistake on this one.  (Unless, they really have manufactured more already and are just holding out to make it appear that it's in much higher demand than it really is -- which I wouldn't put past them.) But let's say that they did only manufacture only enough to make it possible for them to get all their money back plus the profit they expected to make.  That means they severely underestimated the demand for this product.  And if they did underestimate the demand then that means they probably could have made their assigned profit goal by selling different configurations, i.e., a 3 CD set only and an LP set only.  I mean, I don't have any numbers, but I'm guessing only a third of the people online have been able to pre-order the set, another third are purchasing the 3CD-only set from Japan, and another third are just not going to buy it because of the American configuration of CD/LP together.  It just seems like a serious miscalculation.

And since the LP/CD set is only being sold through UDiscover and The Beach Boys site, does that mean that if you're not in the ol' USofA you have to pay extra to have it shipped to your country?  That's even more alienation of the fan base!

Now I have no inside info, but I would be willing to bet that a 3CD only compilation will come out next year (or next holiday season), and will probably be sold through the usual outfits.  With The moves Iconic/BRI have made with this set everything just seems very calculated, verging on sinister.  And with all the under-crunching of the numbers, that means they probably could have made it a 4, or even a 5 CD set and just as easily have met their goals.  And, again, I have no qualms with the price because I would have bought both CD and LP sets, or bought this Super Deluxe version if it had been an option.  But I'm just flabbergasted at the continued "Sold Out" status of the set.  Did someone forget a "zero" or forget to "carry the one" at the end of their tabulations on what it would take to make a profit on this?  And as someone else said somewhere, this is not the time you want a "Sold Out" sign on your website, because this is the time when the internet was awash with the announcement of the set, and I'm guessing they're missing some sales because there are probably folks who would have pre-ordered right away, but by the time it's back in stock they will have forgotten about it and/or moved on to purchase something else.  It just boggles my mind to try to comprehend what the powers-to-be were thinking when they came up with this strategy.  It really comes across as very cynical.  Are fans of The Beach Boys really that much different in their purchasing habits as compared to Aerosimeth and Frank Zappa and Rush and others who just released boxed sets?  I guess we could be, but I sure would like to see the numbers on how we spend compared to how other fans spend for their band.

I don't think it takes some great cynic to veto a CD only set in America in 2025. My guess (and I have zero inside info) is that there isn't any great cynicism here. Just a perfectly smart hedge. Yes, by limiting the initial print run, they risk underestimating demand and losing some sales. But they also cap their losses by limiting how many unsold sets they'll have to eat. Lose some potential upside, cap the downside. If you consider the fact that at some point, the Beach Boys obsessives involved in this set had to get approvals from non-Beach Boys obsessives on the business side, and consider also what this music *sounds* like to someone listening to it for the first time as a business proposition.... not surprising at all. I love them to death, but these are *weird* records.

Here is Friends.
https://vocal.media/beat/friends-bu1lfr0b22

Great stuff!

The very tiniest of nitpicks, but Brian's Something Great from '68 tour was in 2019, not 2018. (Ended just a few months before covid shut everything down.)

https://www.grammy.com/news/brian-wilson-and-zombies-announce-something-great-68-joint-tour

Saw that tour at the Beacon in NY. One of the best shows I've ever seen. Brian and the band were in great form, doing basically a dream setlist for me. But the Zombies! I was there for Brian and hadn't given much thought to the Zombies part of it, and my partner and I were blown away. They did Odyssey and Oracle and we just kept looking at each other like "are you hearing this sh*t?" They just sounded so damn good. The whole night was magic. A few months later the world shut down and it was never really like that again with Brian and the band... nor was anything in my life ever really the same.

Sorry for the tangent. I really enjoyed the Friends review

If BRI wants them, why didn't they get them all those years ago when they would have been much cheaper?  There was no bidding required then.  Just a straight out purchase of $10.000 from some company Durrie gave them to to sell.  And they probably could have gotten them cheaper from Durrie, herself, as there would have been no middle man to pay.

Who the hell knows. Im pretty damn salty about the situation myself. I was going to try to coordinate a group effort but held back when I saw that the ""experts"" at BRI had it covered. Now I just feel played for a fool and these recordings that are very precious to me will never be heard. Beach Boys once again doing everything they can to fumble their own legacy and that of their greatest work (none but the hardcore fans have heard SMiLE except in that awful TSS format and probably walked away with a mediocre impression). Bunch of fucking amateurs if you ask me. I thought they'd have put in a ridiculously high secret max bid and had round the clock interns refreshing the page every microsecond to be sure they'd get it--you'd think a wealthy corporation could manage such a thing with arguably their last great unreleased collection at stake. Guess that was too much to ask of ol' Mike in between Trump/MAGA performances.

Can you tell I've become bitter in my old age? 

My recollection is that they were digitized at the time of the first sale, unless I'm misremembering. If that's true, and assuming it was done even remotely properly (which I hope to God it was), than those infinitely duplicable digital files are more valuable than the acetates themselves at this point, which are only going to sound worse with every play and every year...

That said, I hear your bitterness, absolutely.

Still nothing. I'll wait a a bit longer and put another bug in their ear, then if I still don't get a response a few more days after that, I'll spread the word to other BB communities that there's potentially a lost SMiLE article in the CSUDH vaults and hopefully someone can get through.

Hopefully they will be willing to pull the article for you and at least confirm if it's about the Beach Boys! I'll be in LA in January and can check it out then if it's still not resolved, but hopefully you'll have an answer before then

[a)]

The Beach Boys: A Biography in Words & Pictures by Ken Barnes
The Beach Boys by John Tobler
The Beach Boys Silver Anniversary by John Milward
The Beach Boys (Rock and Roll Hall of Famers) by Mark Holcomb
The Beach Boys: America's Band by Johnny Morgan
The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys: The Essential Interviews by John D. Luerssen
The Beach Boys Archives Vol. 1 by Torrence Berry
Surf's Up! The Beach Boys On Record 1961-1981 by Brad Elliott
In The Studio with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys by Stephen J. McParland

^This webpage (http://beachboys.com/booksI.html) was my source to see what BB books I was missing. If you notice anything there that wasn't already "reviewed" in this thread or listed here in my "suggested future reading list," it's because a) I did read them but they didn't have any novel info worth commenting on, b) they have a narrower focus that doesn't include SMiLE, c) I have it on good authority they're not worth my time, money or effort--either very basic info or badly written and error-prone.

Okay, I don't know why I addressed that last post to you like an email, Julia  

Did you read the Smile chapter in Timothy White's The Nearest Faraway Place? (It's on archive.org). If you haven't, that's worth taking a look, I think. Nothing that's going to, like, shift the narrative, but White was really interested in Van Dyke Parks and writes about Parks place in the industry in the mid-60s and his connections to Warner Bros and maybe has a bit of a different angle on it.

[a)]

The Beach Boys: A Biography in Words & Pictures by Ken Barnes
The Beach Boys by John Tobler
The Beach Boys Silver Anniversary by John Milward
The Beach Boys (Rock and Roll Hall of Famers) by Mark Holcomb
The Beach Boys: America's Band by Johnny Morgan
The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys: The Essential Interviews by John D. Luerssen
The Beach Boys Archives Vol. 1 by Torrence Berry
Surf's Up! The Beach Boys On Record 1961-1981 by Brad Elliott
In The Studio with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys by Stephen J. McParland

^This webpage (http://beachboys.com/booksI.html) was my source to see what BB books I was missing. If you notice anything there that wasn't already "reviewed" in this thread or listed here in my "suggested future reading list," it's because a) I did read them but they didn't have any novel info worth commenting on, b) they have a narrower focus that doesn't include SMiLE, c) I have it on good authority they're not worth my time, money or effort--either very basic info or badly written and error-prone.

Hi Julia,

I have The Beach Boys by the Beach Boys and just scanned through the Smile chapter. 99% sure there's no knew info there, but I'm sharing a folder with images of the chapter by direct message if you're interested. The one thing you might want to take a look at if you haven't already seen it somewhere else is the Derek Taylor articles "The Beach Boys: Maverick Millionaires" reproduced in full on pg. 231. It has the ring of genuine observation to me, and gives some insight into Brian and Mike's working relationship, suggesting that Mike was becoming more interested and involved in the business side of things in the mid-60s and noting the difficulty of making decisions by consensus without a manager. Also Mike's quotes on the facing page reiterate the point you made earlier in the thread (I can't remember which source) that Derek Taylor played a big role in making the England tour a success. Also an interesting quote from Carl saying he wishes Brian could have seen how well received their music was in England, suggesting that it might have helped him keep his confidence up.

While I mostly agree with BJL, I have a reservation. Namely, IS Pet Sounds perfect because it's complete or do we rather CONSIDER it perfect because it's complete?

Same for Good Vibrations? And Cabinessence?

Opinions about music are opinions about music. But *my* opinion is that Pet Sounds is perfect because it's perfect. One of very few perfect things in this world.

I'm about to go into full heresy mode here... I'll tackle maybe the biggest totem, Good Vibes. As unbelievably awesome as it is, there was always  something slightly unsatisfactory for me. It is too perfect-sounding, too clean-cut, too carefully calibrated to the millimiter... to the point it ends sounding a bit dry to my ears. It lacks just a bit of breathing space.
I actually prefer the more "dishevelled" GV we hear in BWPS: the additional chant and the wonderfully airy ending add just that breathing space.

When I first listened to Heroes in 1967, liked it a lot, but sensed that something was really amiss. It sounded exactly like what it really was: an abridged version of a longer song. Againg, a bit too dry, but drier. When I discovered the Cantina version, was like: "Now THAT is more like it!"
And, if you leave off for a minute the "idolatry" for the officially released product, you could even admit this: GV and H&V share a feature, i.e. being longer songs forcefully compressed into 3-minutes format, albeit with different results.

I don't find it shocking or heretical to love the "looser" take on Good Vibrations. I love those versions too. I also have a deep, deep love for the instrumental sessions outtakes (the version on the Smiley twofer is the one I fell in love with), which are also pretty damn perfect in their own way. But the song Good Vibrations in its finished form is an astonishing creation. There's really nothing else like it.

But my point is not really that the produced down to the tiniest detail final mix of Good Vibrations is *better* than a looser, faster, less perfectionist takes would have been. It's that in 1966, Brian Wilson was interested in creating that kind of highly developed, perfected production. It's obviously what he was aiming for with not just Good Vibrations, but most of what he recorded in the fall. Obviously, he would move in a dramatically different direction in 1967, but if we're thinking about the album Brian was writing and recording when he did most of the work on Smile between Sept. and Dec of 1966, I think we need to consider that perfectionist-Brian was likely in the driver's seat.

I agree with you 100% on the Cantina mix of Heroes. I've always been underwhelmed by the released single, and I've always loved the Cantina version. Which funnily enough, because my introduction to Heroes and Villains was the Good Vibrations boxed set, I basically discovered both versions at the same time.

If you ask me what's the perfect song, the one where I would not change a single note, it's Wind Chimes. Smiley Smile version.

Can't fault you there.

[3.]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

Master numbering only really had relevance to Capitol keeping track of recordings they'd paid for. A number would be associated with a title in their own files and usually on union sheets, but it wasn't something the artist had any input to. It would often be messy and inconsistent, especially during the Smile era, and generally didn't communicate meaning.

Not disagreeing at all, but it's interesting in and of itself that the paperwork was messy and inconsistent, I feel like. I wonder how normal that was in the industry at this moment, or if it was a phenomenon of the Smile working method. Because you'd think under normal circumstances that a record company would, in fact, want to know what expenses matched to what songs and it would be someones job to get it more or less right. Obviously Smile was not normal circumstances. And also maybe the record industry back then was just generally sloppy with paper work.

Beautiful and very moving Brian vocal and strings version of Still I Dream of It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqO92f6EySY

Gorgeous. I've always loved the Still I Dream of It arrangement, and it's cool hearing the strings this way. Such a lovely part.

[I was hoping there would be an overwhelming consensus and admittedly I haven't deeply analyzed these findings yet, but at a glance it seems all the AIs found their own rationales for how to use this info, and only this info, to complete SMiLE. Same with the chords, it's very interesting and useful data that maybe someone could use as the basis for some kinda new inventive mix.]

I was hoping there would be an overwhelming consensus and admittedly I haven't deeply analyzed these findings yet, but at a glance it seems all the AIs found their own rationales for how to use this info, and only this info, to complete SMiLE. Same with the chords, it's very interesting and useful data that maybe someone could use as the basis for some kinda new inventive mix.

Totally agree that this is a fascinating way you might maybe think about some kind of new mix, but I think it's worth considering that a big part of the point of modular recording was to emphasize contrasts in instrumentation, so thinking about similarities or resonances across sections or songs isn't necessarily going to get you closer to what Brian was thinking, since you could just as easily make a creative case for thinking about difference across sections, or songs sequenced so as to emphasize a strong contrast in instrumentation or style.

[3.]

3. OMP was 56866 on 11/14, but the fade recorded on 2/10 is 57020. (How interesting too, that the fade was done during the period we commonly assume only singles were on the menu.)

Pretty sure that 2/10 date was just the new vocal overdubs (presented vocals only on disc 3 of the Smile Sessions), and that that the instrumental was recorded with the rest of OMP on November 14, so the change to a Heroes master number makes sense. Then on 2/28 he recorded the section over from scratch, but still for heroes of course.

'We know a hell of a lot more about Great Shape than we did 30 years ago, but we still have absolutely no idea how Brian gets from the pieces we have to a song that belongs next to Cabinessence, Good Vibrations, or the cantina mix of heroes'

I think IIGS would have been a whimsical collage - the barynyard suite mentioned in '66 - so would never have had the horsepower of those songs.  I think it was supposed to be humorous.  I honestly don't think it would have been that great - more like an 'interval' amongst the heavy stuff.

Same with Elements a bit - a collage although that seemingly would have had some very impressive sections - MOC is obviously brilliant.

Well, yea, but that's exactly my point. Of course that's what looks most likely. I'm not trying to say you're wrong, by any means. It's what we hear. It's what exists. It's what makes sense. And so yea, I can't fault you for saying IIGS would have been four whimsical, vaguely connected fragments of funny farmyard music cut together, a little underwhelming humor interlude.

Or maybe Brian would have cut one or two sections completely, written a new section we can't even imagine, added a mind-bending a cappella break and created something spectacular. Given Brian's perfectionism, his high ambitions for the album, the speed with which he was working, the fact that he clearly considered himself and Van Dyke Parks not to have finished the writing process, and where he took Heroes and Villains and Vegetables in 1967, I've slowly come to believe that fans have been too willing to accept what we hear on the tapes as what Smile would have been. The temptation is just too overwhelming to resist. How can my theory that's based on music that was never recorded possibly compete with your theory based on what Brian put on tape that we've all heard?

But there isn't a moment on Pet Sounds that isn't perfect. I believe Smile would have had a strong humor element, but I don't think it would have had a medley of half-developed fragments run back to back without a clear musical through-line, just because Brian had them laying around and wanted to use them. That's the logic of a bootlegger or a fan mixer - use what you have - it's not the logic of a creative genius working at the height of their power.

I remember Mike's Beard. And Dancing Bear. And Nicko1234, though he had no "Bear" or "Beard". For the record, Mike Love's actual beard had way more sense.

Poor Brian, what fans he had. How right was Voltaire!

P.S.
I had gotten so wary of "Bea" in a nickname that rereading this thread I was pleasantly surprised that Bean Bag was actually a good guy.

There were a lot of good posters here, once upon a time. Still many today of course, but yeah that's partly why reading these old threads has been such a trip. Captain, Sheriff John Stone, leetwall and Summertime Blooz in addition to those you mentioned, plus many others Im sure Im forgetting. In hindsight I regret the way I treated some, like Cam Mott. His Mike apologism was annoying at the time but if I'd have known what great insight he had in the Smile Shop days, pre-'13 in this forum and later to come in PSF & even EH, I would've seen the fuller scope of what he had to offer. I think he just felt the need to stand up for someone who was already beaten-up on enough.

I wonder what caused the great schism to make so many leave--some to PSF/EH (including myself for awhile) and others off the forums entirely. For me it was personal drama with some of the people who were here at the time but that can't account for everyone else? I know there was a lot of drama regarding NPP back in the day too. Ah well. Nobody answer that, just reminiscing...

I was more of a lurker back than, but it's wild to think how many years I've been following this board. I never had a great grasp of what happened (and like you don't have any real desire too know), but I've always felt like it was pretty depressing thing that even the hardcore Beach Boys fans of the world couldn't all share a message board without an irrevocable schism. The universal Catholic church didn't stand a chance in hell.

And I was very sympathetic to the pro-Mike crowd back in the 2000s. I think it probably sounds sort of crazy now, but my sense is that back then embracing Mike was somehow part of a process of rehabilitating the late 60s and early 70s albums, realizing that David Marks was actually important, understanding that the Beach Boys actually *did* play on their hits until like the middle of 1965, basically just that the Beach Boys were a *band*, not just a bunch of random puppets fulfilling Brian's vision. Which wasn't the line at all when I first got into them.

Oh I meant more about the tunes not the lore.  I just think the content of the tracks isn't as mysterious as once thought.  IIGS was once a complete mystery but not now for instance.
 

I don't think Smile is as mysterious as people think.  When you look at the tracklist and session logs and contemorary press and hear what was recorded I think there's a pretty clear picture.

Details are missing but the body of it is there I think.

Yes and no. The music's all there minus the ~5 (I think) missing reels and handful of unfinished parts like CIFOTM' vocals and SU' second half backing track.

I mean, I agree on one level. But there's another part of me that thinks we've just tricked ourselves into thinking we understand this music and what it might or could have been. Tricked ourselves into thinking what we have is close to what would have been.

But look at the difference between the Good Vibrations early takes and session outtakes and the actual final record. Like, all the pieces are there, and its incredible in all its versions. But the final record, it has a focus, a concentrated power, as if it's truly determined to fit a symphony's worth of musical ideas into three minutes, that's almost unique to Brian Wilson's music from this era. Or look at the difference between Cabinessence and Do You Like Worms. One is finished, one is not. That's it. That's the only difference. They're both amazing, and yet, on some hard to define level, they're light years apart.

We just can't handle the uncertainty of the most likely version of reality, which is that... I'll put it this way, there are songs on Pet Sounds that stand obviously, for lack of a better word, above the rest. But there's no song that doesn't fit, that doesn't sound finished, polished, like it 100% belongs on the record and it would be foolish to change a note. (Kind of like the difference Julia was describing in this thread between a movie that's perfect and movie that you can see how it could have been perfect). There wouldn't have been on Smile, either. We know a hell of a lot more about Great Shape than we did 30 years ago, but we still have absolutely no idea how Brian gets from the pieces we have to a song that belongs next to Cabinessence, Good Vibrations, or the cantina mix of heroes. But I absolutely believe he would have, in a world where he finished Smile in 1967.

Last week Julia went on something of a brilliant fools errand trying to reconstruct Part 2 of Surf's Up from Brian's experiments. Which is like trying to write a history of the first Lee administration after the South wins the Civil War. There are no answers, because there were never answers, because it didn't happen. BUT Julia's work was the opposite of a waste of time. At least for me, personally. For my actual life. Because in light of Julia's enthusiasm and research and ideas, I listened to a mix of Surf's Up with the moaning horns overdubbed (which Julia later told me actually wasn't timed nearly as well as it could have been!). And for a moment, I was totally persuaded. I heard a song I've probably listened to 1000 times with fresh ears. And I imagined an alternate reality. Call it Smile alternate reality No. 7,563.

In this alternate reality, Carl asked Brian if they could put Surf's Up on their next album in 1971, and Brian said no, I don't think so. And Carl said, okay Brian, obviously I'm not going to try and finish Surf's Up without you because that would be literally insane and sooooo disrespectful (see Julia's influence again there?). And so Brian didn't remember / didn't have the new idea (because actually we have *no* evidence I know of that it was a 1966 idea) to put the Child vocals on Surf's Up, and the song remained unfinished. Fast forward to the 90s, fan mixers and bootleggers divide themselves into two camps. One camp uses the piano demo on their mixes. It's what we have, they say, it's all we know. It's perfect how it is. The other camp says, look, we have this whole other Surf's Up session! We can't just pretend it doesn't exist! Look how well these moaning horns fit! Obviously this was what Brian planned for Part 2! And it's strange and wild and a little Sonic Youth or whatever, and so all these bootlegs from the 90s have moaning horns overdubbed onto Surf's Up. And so obviously in 2004, when Darian plays Surf's Up for Brian, that is what he plays. And Brian, who does vaguely remember recording something like that, says oh yea, that was it!! It was gonna have all those moaning horns, yea, and moaning strings too, and then the version of Surf's Up on BWPS is filled with insane chromatic horns and like, Day in the Life style strings, and everyone is like, whoa, damn, so that's what it was.

And that alternate reality is just as likely as the one where Brian finishes Surf's Up in 1966. Just as likely.

Which is also why no, I don't think any other fandom is like this one. Because the Beatles, you know, they were a band releasing albums. A great band releasing great albums, but it's all there, what they did, what they accomplished. Anyone can listen to it. Whatever the hell the Beach Boys were or mean, they were so much more than a band that released albums. They were something else, they mean something else.

Someone mentioned other band biopics, particularly the ones about Queen and Elton John. I never saw the former but heard bad things--I think the problem is it was authorized. I saw the latter on the recommendation of my dad and it has sentimental value as it was one of my first dates with my now-husband but I could go the rest of my life never seeing it again. It was good not great. I realize re-reading this post I may've come off as too down on L&M. I'd still give it a solid ~7 out of 10 for a fan, maybe slightly lower like 6 for someone with no knowledge of Brian going in. It's a solid, good movie with moments of greatness. My misgivings are I think it could've been a 10/10 all-time masterpiece if it focused on what worked best and cut the semi-confusing (at least mildly disrupting) dual-story structure.

For what it's worth, I took your initial review as fair, respectful, and considered. I think the reason you got such a strong response from a few posters isn't because your review was negative, but because of the question in your title. You asked for the fan consensus, and so I for one wanted to be a part of that consensus by expressing how deeply I loved the film at the time.

Anyway, I thought your take on the movie was not exactly negative. After all, you basically said, it's good, but it's no Lawrence of Arabia / Goodfellas / Ed Wood etc. The fact that you felt you could make such a comparison speaks volumes. Can you imagine saying, of the Elton John movie (which I also very much enjoyed as a date at the theater), it was good, but it was no Lawrence of Arabia? Of course you couldn't, no one would ever say that. Just saying a movie *doesn't* belong on that list is a high compliment!

When it first came out I saw it like 4 or 5 times in the theater. That probably sounds insane (and it really may be) but I just remember thinking, “I finally have a way to show my friends and family why The Beach Boys are so important to me” - so I went with various friends and family during the few weeks it was in the theaters. Sadly, I haven’t really felt a pull to rewatch it much since it was in the theaters. I did buy the blu-ray immediately when it came out and watched it a couple times, but it’s been almost a decade (wow!) since I’ve seen it fully.

First I want to say that this movie was a blessed gift to us fans. Honestly the pieces coming together for this film is a miracle…And especially after stint of made-for-tv Beach Boys biopics that are terrible, and the Aaron Eckhart Dennis Wilson movie that was never realized (perhaps thankfully), I think us fans were kinda not expecting much (if anything at all) and what we got was a masterpiece (relative to other music biopics). While there is room for criticism in everything, I think this project absolutely could’ve been a bonafide disaster, and instead we got a coherent and beautiful film that didn’t stick to the usual music-biopic trope (at least, in terms of artistic vision and chronological narrative)…and thus this movie receives mostly praise and thanks from me.

Second, the crew that worked on this film is a dream-team. Bill Pohlad, being one of the producers for Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’, was a bold choice (as he had no real standout directorial work before ‘Love & Mercy’ to my knowledge) - but being close to Malick’s work made me hopeful about this choice (and it seemed to pay off well). The editor is most famously known for his work on ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ (incidentally another movie that weaves back and forth through a timeline) did a phenomenal job. Atticus Ross doing the score was a perfect choice. I mean, we could’ve gotten a movie with some ‘London Symphony Orchestra covers The Beach Boys’ but instead, we got an incredibly well thought-out and deep score that wasn’t stereotypical and yet it still had a powerful impact on the film.

Why have I not seen this film in a decade? Honestly, I think it’s that the last ten years of the fandom have wore me out. Partly, I have had incredible changes in my life and I have less time for this music. But also, the cliques, drama, over-the-top opinions have just grated on me for years and I’ve slowly realized that the world of the Beach Boys music doesn’t bring me the joy it once did. I think this movie just reminds me of a darker time in my fandom life when there was a lot of petty drama going on, and those memories are just attached to this movie for me, and thus I kind of avoid it.

Also regarding the 7.4 IMDB score (from 45,000 people), I don’t know how that is calculated, whether solely user reviews or what, but Rotten Tomatoes (which shows both critic review averages and user averages) gives it a critic average of 89% from over 250 critics, and an 85% from over 10,000 users (which is pretty incredible). Not that that has any bearing on the IMDB score, but just wanted to throw out some other review scores so we didn’t just see the lower one. I remember after Brian Wilson died the movie rocketed up to or near #1 on Apple's top-selling movie chart - so obviously regular people do watch this movie as well...I think it's just like any music biopic, you can't really expect it to be on the public scope for a long period of time.

There is a video from Elliot Roberts, here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j68ZIE2YRW4) that has over half-a-million views that makes the case for why ‘Love and Mercy’ is the best music biopic ever made. I did watch this video some 4 years ago when it came out, but I kinda forget what his points are - though I remember agreeing with them at the time - but if anyone wants to check it out, I do recommend it.

I could basically have written this post! I didn't see it quite so many times in theaters, and I wasn't worn down by the fandom so much as just slipped out of it naturally. But other than that... I remember watching that Elliot Roberts video when it came out! Also completely agree that Atticus Ross's score is perfect and adds so much to the experience of the movie.

I haven't seen it in ten years... so I can only share my impressions from then. I planned to re-watch it this summer, actually, but my watchlist is so long and I didn't end up getting to it.

What I will say, is that at the time I thought it was a goshdarn miracle. I absolutely loved it, and considered it immediately amongst my favorite movies, although always with the caveat that as a rabid Beach Boys fan I am an inherently compromised judge, of course. But I consider it among the best narrative movies I've ever seen about music. And as an officially authorized biopic of a major baby boomer musician - I mean, compared to the Queen and Elton John and whatever other biopics of that ilk? Amazing. Just the fact that they decided to make an art film and not a Beach Boys blockbuster was a major win. I think in terms of how the movie is and will be seen by general audiences, it was pretty obviously aiming to be a cult kind of film - more for the Portrait of a Lady on Fire audience than the Marvel audience. In that context, I imagine it still does and always will have a level of interest, because people interested in Brian Wilson will seek it out, and because it has close to career-best performances from two pretty legendary leads.

I don't want to say too, too much about the film itself, because like I said, I haven't seen it since 2014. But at the time, I did not think the 60s scenes were better than the 80s scenes. I mean, on some level I enjoyed them more as a fan because of what they inherently are. But I felt that what made the film so powerful was the balance and contrast between Dano and Cusack's performances, and ultimately I think I definitely would have said then that giving the two stories equal weight was the right call. And my recollection is that I felt some of the best scenes were in the 80s section (that double date scene!)

Re: John Cusack, I remember reading reviews at the time and thinking exactly what you say, that Cusack absolutely nailed Brian's mannerisms, and that reviewers who saw his acting as affected were actually just struggling to wrap their minds around the *reality* of how Brian Wilson looked and acted at that moment. I definitely felt at the time that Elizabeth Banks and Melinda's character were the film's weak point, and that it was the writing's fault at bottom, so I would have agreed with you there. As far as Landy - he is the only person in the Beach Boys story that I believe really was evil. I mean, obviously he was an intelligent, complicated person with complex motivations, but what he did was truly just... evil. He was a psychiatrist who took advantage of a mentally ill patient in an absolutely terrible way in order to feed his own ego and make money, and he didn't do it in a gentle way, either. Everything about his behavior in that period was despicable.

I wouldn't recommend it as a movie to a casual movie fan (but again, I really don't think that was the intended audience. This was a ten million dollar movie that made 30 million dollars. It wasn't trying to be Rocketman, a 40 million dollar film that made 200 million). But I do and have recommend it to people who like art and independent cinema. And I absolutely believed at the time it would stand the test of time. Hopefully I will have a chance to watch it again this winter and see if I still feel that way!

I don't think the key thing means anything, it's not even a matter of being "against the rules". (Any piece of music can technically be transcribed in any key, after all, just a matter of more accidentals But whatever key your software decides those overdubs are in doesn't really tell you much when you're only looking at one piece of a larger arrangement, especially when you're dealing with chromatic harmony, which by definition isn't really in any key. All of which is to say, if it sounds good, it's fine.

Listening to your Voynich mix, I'm not entirely sold on the second movement, though it does work on some level, but the fade sounds really amazing. In its own way, as beautiful as the usual vocal tag, really. That said, Brian couldn't have intended these sections to be *literally* overdubs for part 2, because no basic track for part 2 had been recorded yet, right? The piano track you're overdubbing onto was recorded like a month later, and working on tape especially, the idea of recording an overdub before the basic track just doesn't really make sense. And in that context, I really don't think the minutia of the timing makes any difference either, whether something is a few seconds off, because that would change in the final version. I can really only see it as something Brian was doing as he tried to work out the arrangement idea in his head, in preparation for recording the final track.

Thanks for the feedback, that's good to know!

I totally get it, SU is ultimately a hodge podge of pieces that doesn't represent what would've been the ultimate plan. As you say, we're using Brian's guide vocal (is that the right term?) with a piano that wouldn't necessarily be part of the arrangement. It's just a matter of doing the best we can with what we have. Like you said, maybe this wasn't a matter of laying down the definitive take he'd use to overdub the second movement but trying out some ideas while he had the musicians in the studio. Like, the main thrust of the session was to get George Fell on tape, same as the Hal fight was its own dedicated session, but he figured he'd try out these weird overdub ideas while they were getting paid by the hour. Get his money's worth. That would make sense to me.

I think the timing of where the horns come in on the fade in Voynich was off in hindsight. I fixed that in some of the experiments I've been doing today. It's possible the entirety of the "moaning horn" section wouldn't have been used any more than the entirety of the laughing and playing sections were. (How many individual instances of the laughing sound do we hear, especially in the 9 minute version on some bootlegs, compared to just that one single instance used in the finished part 1 track?) This could've been like that, where he may've used a quick snippet of the moaning sound, perhaps over "a choke of grief" or something else to emphasize the lyric? Could the "moaning" have been a "choking" instead?

I think all of this makes sense. On a larger level, what I think is really obvious just reading your ideas and listening to your old mix is that these experiments need to be taken seriously as a crucial part of the overall picture of the songs development, which I don't think they really have been.