Man, do they sound great! And what about Matt?! Incredible

Can't wait to hear "Let us go on this way". One of my favorite Beavh Boys tracks of the 70s.

The new part of "Ding dang" fits very nicely.

Al probably will never become a Mick Jagger or Mike Love but I wish this band will get more attention. It certainly deserves playing to bigger crowds.

Uploaded this just for you! Wasn't planning to share and mostly didn't capture entire songs, but until someone more diligent comes along, it'll have to do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mazWvBPHK8I

I was at the Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band show last night in Cohasset and it was absolutely incredible. Just magic. Honestly up there with any Beach Boys - related show I've been to. They played virtually the entire Love You album (pretty sure the only Love You songs they *didn't* play were Mona, Let's Put Our Hearts Together, and Love is a Woman). They also played She's Got Rhythm and Sweet Sunday Kind of Love, a song I love and never in a million years expected to hear live. The crowd was super into the whole show. It was far from sold out, but the vibe was really good. There was clearly a significant contingent of fans loudly excited about the 70s stuff, and I think that enthusiasm helped the rest of the audience (whose attitude may have been a little more bemused, based on looking around), stay into it. Honestly, Al seemed a little visibly surprised by how excited the crowd was about songs like Johnny Carson (which got big cheers, which I did my best to contribute to!). I also witnessed an amazing meeting between two strangers in matching "Keeping it Clean with Al Jardine" shirts.

I felt like Darian let loose in a way he never did when Brian was in the band. He sang a bunch of songs (and sounded *amazing* on all of them). I love Love You and always have, but the songs sounded even better live. They (Debbie Shair I think mostly on synth) absolutely nailed that mid-70s fat synth sound, and with so many people on stage and such good energy, it was just explosive. Matt Jardine sounded amazing (no surprise, obviously). Before Heroes and Villains Al told a story I didn't entirely follow about all the versions of Heroes and Villains, which ended with him saying they were going to do the version "with the cantina." Besides the Love You and MIU tracks, that was a major highlight for me. There was also a funny moment when Gary Griffin and the band were making fun of how Mike Love sang Airplane. I laughed genuinely out loud, but I don't think most of the people around me understood what was happening  Of course they nailed the hits, the Pet Sounds songs, etc. Al tried to skip Susie Cincinnati and Darian didn't let him, that was another kind of a funny moment.

All in all, if you have any chance to see this tour, don't miss it!!! It is truly something special.

Someone just posted.

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ke_63U8BTE

It is absolutely astonishing, absurd, tragic, miraculous, I don't even know, that after 20+ years of fandom, in the year 2025, I am *still* hearing fantastic unreleased Beach Boys songs in full for the first time. This band!

One thing about SMiLE discourse I find interesting is how people just sort of assume that no one was doing their jobs correctly except maybe Anderle and Vosse. What I mean is, a lot of people take it as a given that VDP never wrote lyrics for the rest of the songs, which then begs the question "what the hell was this guy doing for 9 months on payroll then, seriously?" And at least as often as not, people assume Taylor went rogue and unilaterally canceled SMiLE even against Brian's wishes or without his consent. (Even "official" and published sources like the Badman book say as much "but Brian knew better.") And it begs the question, what kind of a publicist was he then, and why would the Beach Boys allow him to make such a momentous decision? If he had no explicit authority why wasn't he fired on the spot? There may have been a lot of craziness and confusion from Brian but does that really mean these other important underlings were allowed to just fart around collecting paychecks for not doing their jobs properly? Im really asking.

Yes! I think this extends to Brian, too, honestly. Like, Brian Wilson was a professional, and although well before Pet Sounds his behavior could be eccentric (and at times clearly off-putting), he also knew how to put together a record and was very well-versed in the commercial side of the industry. Even in the early 60s, with all the outside productions, Brian aspired to be a record industry figure (like Phil Spector, of course!) more than the pop star he reluctantly was. The idea that he wouldn't have approved an important press release, or a finalized record jacket, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, personally.

I'm of two minds on the missing lyrics, though. I guess my gut feeling, unfounded in any kind of factual evidence, is that if Van Dyke Parks had written full lyrics to Child is the Father of the Man or Look or whatever else, that everyone actually liked and that Brian planned to use, those lyrics would have been important enough to have been at least mentioned or described or shared with *someone* who could attest to their having existed. Which makes me suspect that if certain songs *weren't* left unfinished, maybe they were lyrics that weren't quite considered to have worked...

I can agree with this logic to an extent but also, it ignores the real world hindrances, human follies and corporate/contractual obligations that sometimes complicate an artist's vision.

I've come to agree that, in some sense, there is no '66 SMiLE. Ideas were too in flux for us to pin anything down definitively and no song sans GV and maybe Wind Chimes was finished until after the project was abandoned. Any attempt at a faithful recreation is prioritizing a certain day/week/month's version of the album over conflicting testimony/evidence. I do believe the primary accounts like Vosse and Anderle who say that by early Nov the album existed as a conceptual whole in Brian's head, but I think it's more that he knew what themes he wanted, he had a general "checklist" of 30-40 minutes of music that'd be included even if the exact configuration was still in flux. People saying "there was no 1966 SMiLE!" are right in that we may not be able to pin down what was on it minute by minute, but we know it would have some version of Heroes, Barnyard would be somewhere either as a 4-part suite or part of Heroes, etc.

BWPS was officially released but so was 20/20, Smiley, Sunflower, Surf's Up. Does that mean that SU the song was really meant for the '71 album--or that it sounds better there than it does with its '66 brothers? I'd argue no, some might say yes, and ultimately it's a matter of taste.

To step outside the SMiLE box for a second, Get Back was a "back to basics" album originally meant to have stripped down production and a live concert. For many reasons, that didn't happen and the music came out later, with overproduced Spector schmaltz and a new name. Is Let It Be the same as Get Back just because it actually got released? Maybe. Paul didn't think so and released Let It Be...Naked over 30 years later, which is in my opinion far superior. To my heart, that is the true way that music should be heard. We can quibble over what takes precedent, which came first or which stayed true to the original vision of the project but ultimately everyone's going to listen to what they like. The point is these things are not so clear cut.

We may never know exactly what '66 SMiLE would be if Brian even knew himself. But we can safely say it wouldn't have been BWPS for many reasons. First of all, no Beach Boys. Second, the three-movement structure is simply impractical for 2-sided vinyl. Third, the various short snippets would've almost certainly been edited into the main tracks or left on the cutting room floor. Fourth, certain tracks like I Ran and especially Holidays would've almost definitely been left off. Fifth, the lead single would've opened a side and probably the entire album while almost anyone would agree Surf's Up makes too much sense as the closer. Sixth, there's no fades, even though those are the best parts of most of the songs. I could go on.

When a project likes this changes so significantly, I think there's an argument to be made that after a certain subjective point it becomes something different. Most would agree Smiley Smile isn't the same as SMiLE either. Then there's that whole parable about the car that gets replaced piece by piece (when does it become a different car than what it started as) and the way we differentiate between the ancient Roman Empire and medieval Byzantine Empire even though the latter is an anachronistic term. Or how Caroline changed after she cut her hair, lost her happy glow and wasn't the same woman the narrator fell in love with 

I think all of this is well said!

I think I've reread this thread two or three times or so now (after participating originally!), usually looking for some piece of information that's buried in the middle somewhere, like WillJC’s post on page 11 with a breakdown of where things were left in the 60s.

I think that post, and the thread in general, establish that there are a number of things that were considered finished in 1966, even if there was a certain tentativeness to that finality: Good Vibrations (obviously), Wonderful, Old Master Painter/My Only Sunshine, Wind Chimes, and Our Prayer seem to have all been regarded as done in the fall. Finished, mixed backing tracks for Do You Like Worms, Cabin Essence, Child is the Father of the Man, and substantial pieces of the rest of the songs. Maybe Heroes, though it’s immensely confusing and tapes are missing.

I guess my feeling is that a world where these things that were finished were suddenly unfinished is a world where Smile doesn’t come out. (The world, of course, that we live in.) And so logically, if we’re going to ask: what would Smile have been if it had been released at the time, we sort of have to accept that it would have sounded like all the stuff that was finished up to that point. A counterfactual where Brian considers nothing ever to have been finished just isn’t a counterfactual where an album is released, because if you can’t finish one song you sure as hell can’t finish twelve songs.

But there is a very compelling counterfactual where the album does come out, and that’s the imagined world where Brian Wilson finishes the album he was actually recording. And that Smile is not hard to conceptualize or understand at all, because it was like 75% done or better. There are important questions that will never be answered, of course, but those questions do not necessarily point to flaws or inconsistencies in the original conception of the record, but only to the reality that it is impossible to know the outcome of a decision that has not in fact been made.

And so I remain sort of frustrated (and obviously I’m not really talking about you here, Julia) with the way that people return to a "Smile was so in motion it could never be fixed down" attitude that I think is maybe less supported by the surviving evidence than it is by the desire of fans to accommodate a broad range of fan theories and/or take seriously every random thing Brian Wilson said in 1966, when Brian Wilson is famously someone who just, ya know, says things all the time for all kinds of reasons.

But I recognize that my views on this are perhaps idiosyncratic. I am not asking anyone to agree with me! Just can’t resist saying my piece.

Also I love your Let It Be analogy. Though as a big fan of Spector’s work in the late 60s and 70s in general, we’ll indeed have to agree to disagree on the merits of Let it Be…Naked

All I would offer hopefully without detailing the enthusiasm is that Keith Badman's book isn't a reliable resource for anything, really. Just about everything from him in the original post can be thrown out. Making it up and getting the real information backwards is kinda that book's whole thing.

I knew there were mistakes but didn't know it was that bad?! What a shame, really. I do think much of what Julia deduced from Badman in the first post is also supported by Bellagio and various primary sources! With some exceptions I'm afraid...

On 20/20: Brian oversaw the overdubs on Our Prayer, not a case of the group working without him. Carl produced the mixdown. Cabin Essence was finished with Brian's consent and guidance but not his hands-on participation. It was again Carl specifically who produced the final additions and mixing.

That is more what I thought... I do wonder to what extent this felt like a moment when Smile was being given up on, somehow... or if it was just an opportunity to get some cool music out into the world... It would be great to know how Brian felt about it. Almost certainly unknowable, I imagine.

On fall '67 Surf's Up: Brian briefly thought about putting it on Wild Honey. It was to be heard as it was played, not a demo or sketch for some future idea. The plan probably dissolved five minutes after listening to the playback.

Just out of curiosity, how do you know this? (I am not challenging you!) Is it something Brian or someone else remembered when the tape was found? Or is there some kind of evidence about it being intended for Wild Honey in the surviving documentation accompanying the tape?

I wonder what the world would have made of that version of Surf's Up on Wild Honey. It would have fit, in a weird way, I think. But then, in another way obviously not at all. I do think it's really interesting that Brian twice seems to have considered that Surf's Up was best treated as a solo piano piece. I personally think the arrangement he did for the first movement is one of his most beautiful, so it's always seemed a shame to me that he never worked up an equivalent arrangement for the rest. And clearly, he intended a kind of choral finale... But there is a way in which the song really unfurls its secrets so effectively in the piano-vocal mode. I guess there's nothing original in that thought... But what a gift that 1967 version is, in any case!

[Do You Dig Worms]

1. Do You Dig Worms (better title than "like," now it's a pun) [You're Welcome/Worms Proper, a version with and without AI vocals, with the "east or west indies" somewhere, like the Hawaiian section or maybe over the fade, maybe the "Whistle In" whistling over the last "Rock Rock, Roll..." part, possibly a bit of Taxi Cabber buried low in the fade, with the "foreboding Hawaiian instrumental part*" gradually getting louder in that part of the song]
*This: https://youtu.be/p7-Nd13f0pQ?si=wZrukzEotgabyylm&t=122

OMG I'd forgotten all about that weird slide guitar solo! It's so cool!

"I know you're a bit put off by how sad some of this music is sounding as opposed to the happy vibe you want to put out, but look! It's sad in reverse, like a film negative, or negative theology, you need the opposite to express what's happy!"

I really love this idea. I think it's a beautiful description of why, for me at least, even the darkest aspects of the Smile music have never felt like they don't belong under that name.

I'm still of the opinion that Brian did have plans for an "orchestral SMilLE," and that this was at least part of what he was alluding to in the Honolulu interviews. And my guess is that the early October 1967 run-through of "Surf's Up" was a prelude to figuring out how he'd start to put that together. Other speculators (including some who frequent that other not-faraway-enough place...) speculate that Brian never quite figured out how to orchestrate the song; this session, with its key change alteration, might have been an experiment to assist him in doing so. In any case it appears that the Wally Heider incident had the effect of subverting any plans he might have had (as well as scuttling his plans for Redwood)--it became clear that a more urgent songwriting/production cycle was mandated by the need for the Beach Boys to quickly counter the bewilderment that had greeted SMILEY.

I agree with you about the plausibility of Brian thinking about returning to the Smile material in fall, 1967, and I think the idea that that piano run through was a way of Brian thinking through how to orchestrate the song is also plausible. I also agree with you that the Beach Boys commercial problems clearly derailed Brian in this moment, although how anyone who heard Smiley Smile could possibly have imagined a different reception is pretty inconceivable to me, so on some level there shouldn't have been a surprise there? Or did the "squares" around the group and at the record label really have so little understanding of where pop music was going that Smiley seemed like a plausible direction for a successful record?

But I cannot resist beating my favorite dead horse, and saying that, while I recognize that this kind of speculation is both fun and more or less necessary to making sense of Smile's story, I also really don't think there's much evidence that Brian didn't know how to finish Surf's Up, or, for that matter, The Elements. Did Brian stop work on Surf's Up because he didn't know how to orchestrate the second half? Or because that January session went so badly? But given that he was back in the studio doing intensive work on Heroes and Villains 4 days later, I think it's just as likely that he was just focused on finishing Heroes and Villains first. (Notable, too, that the run of sessions immediately following the last mysterious Surf's Up session was notably productive, leading around Feb 10th to an actually finished A Side that Brian was ready to release, although, alas, he changed his mind soon after.

David Leaf summarizes this situation in his most recent book: "...the message from the Beach Boys to Brian seems clear. Work with us. Or don't work at all."
I'd guess that this was a slowly tightening straitjacket for Brian, which he countered with a quirky, all-over-the-map LP (FRIENDS) that bombed commercially. As with "Heroes & Villains" previously, Brian couldn't find the handle on "Can't Wait Too Long," which might have been a terrible deja vu moment for him. (See the notion of "flashpoint" above. This was followed by Carl & Dennis appropriating "Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence" for 20/20, which likely created a sufficient level of desolation in Brian that he had to simply put SMiLE out of his mind at that point. He would have to relive this several times in the next few years, most prominently when Carl & Jack Rieley decided that in order to leapfrog over the commercial abyss that had cruelly followed the release of SUNFLOWER, they had to resurrect "Surf's Up."

With all of that, it's no wonder Brian circled the wagons for so long regarding SMiLE. But doing so created a much more powerful myth that fascinated and motivated many over the following three decades, which resulted in the triumphant emergence of BWPS (in a form that was perhaps more reminiscent of fan-based speculation than the sidetracked original vision for SMiLE) and the incredible range of fan mixes we've encountered. I think Julia's ideas are refreshingly different and I look forward to hearing the "DAS mix" in the near future. (Someone should ask David whether or not he ever broached the subject of SMiLE fan mixes with Brian--I'd be interested to see how Brian felt about all that--flattered, insulted, etc. Did bringing it to a resolution close a door on it all for him, or could he appreciate the zealous fascination that the SMiLE saga had spawned?)

I think this is all well put. I don't think I knew or had remembered that Dennis and Carl had insisted on Cabinessence and Our Prayer going on 20/20 over Brian's objections? Although I guess even if Brian had been enthused by the idea on some level, or some part of him, that wouldn't mean that it might not also have led to deeply conflicted or difficult feelings. I will say that I just really wish they had taken Do You Dig Worms too, because in '68 it would probably have been just as easy to finish as Cabinessence. And now it will never be finished...

Certainly SMiLE foundered for all the reasons mentioned, including the legal and logistical aspects that GF laid out for us. But we have to careful not to conflate the stories we've heard into a scenario that suggests Brian was suffering from "clinical" issues in the April-May 1967 timeframe. He was just buffeted by a series of events that led him inexorably to shelve his production approach for the SMiLE material. A great deal of it was reworked into the more lo-fi variants that form the bulk of Smiley (leaving out "With Me Tonight," "Little Pad," and "Gettin' Hungry").

As has been discussed in the earlier mega-thread, a meeting in late May 1967 must have occurred to determine what was going to happen in order to regain forward momentum (though we have little to no concrete evidence of it). I suspect that the band discussed several key items at that time, including but not limited to: 1) how Brian could bring the rest of the band into the songwriting/production process; 2) what opportunities would accompany a pending new relationship with Capitol; 3) a road map for getting an LP done ASAP; 4) a full-blown plan to create a home studio at Bellagio; and 5) an understanding that Brian would be able to pursue outside productions (along with the rest of the band) and that he would quite likely return to the "orchestral SMiLE" in some way .

Another fantastic and thoughtful post for this increasingly wonderful thread!!

I want to just clarify that I don't mean to argue that Brian's mental illness or instability significantly worsened in early 1967 and this is a fundamental reason Smile didn't happen. I don't actually think that. So far as I can tell, the two main flash points happened in the 64-65 era, when Brian first started dealing with various symptoms of mental illness (obviously wrapped up in the immense pressure he was under professionally and personally), and the 68 moment you point to. I think you can begin to see some of those struggles manifesting in Brian's approach to making music in 1967, but I'm not really sure how important a factor it was in Smile's non-appearance. Despite my relative sympathy to Mike Love's position in this era, I do think resistance from the band (and lack of the kind of supportive, independent external voice of reason that Julia bemoaned in her first post), as well as all the bullshit with Capital Records were really key.

I agree with you about the themes you outline as central concerns in the moment of Smile's transition to Smiley, but I do wonder about how abrupt this turning point was. (I do recognize that this was a major point of contention in that last thread, so sorry if I'm opening a can of worms). Obviously a meeting or series of meetings must have been held at this moment, but whether things were really fully talked through, or talked around, or left frustratingly unsaid... I dunno. Also, I think it's pretty significant that EITHER Brian was trying to get Carl and Dennis both in the studio practicing production and orchestration OR Carl and Dennis were taking initiative to work on those skills earlier in 1967 seems pretty significant. As, frankly, do the Jasper Daily sessions, as (maybe) a way to keep working without working on Smile? And then, the Rock With Me Henry version of Wonderful from January 9th is at least a big step towards the Smiley aesthetic. I'm not saying that that big meeting didn't happen, just adding that its seeds had been percolating for a long time...

Just a little test...

1966

1967

Seems normal.

I edited the post Still laughing about this in my head, though!

BJL, what's about all those 1766/1767 dates? Some kind of autocorrection? It reminds me of those AI-generated graphics where everything is perfect except a person has 8 fingers on the right hand.

LOL!!!! I am a colonial historian in my day job, and I am writing a book about the 18th century! So basically I type 1766 all the time and 1966 almost never  Sorry about that! My brain just did it, I didn't notice at all.....

[The entirety of the next 5-6 months is spent trying to get a single. That's not a sign of a stable and healthy mind, it isn't productive to constantly rework one song rather than 12 at once, and it is not going to produce both a single and an album without some big changes being made.]

But when Brian was told he needed a single, he chose to rework this song as something both commercial and exciting, and that's when it began to consume parts of other songs. First I'm in Great Shape, then Do You Like Worms, then Cabin Essence, then My Only Sunshine... songs became unusable for the next project, as they were physically disassembled, and the focus shifted entirely toward the new single. It didn't help that for the first time for The Beach Boys (this had been the case for other artists, pseudonyms, studio bands, etc), Brian needed TWO new songs. Previously, he'd relied on material from released albums to fill out the B-side, but on a new record label, he couldn't just take something off Pet Sounds, for example. The entirety of the next 5-6 months is spent trying to get a single. That's not a sign of a stable and healthy mind, it isn't productive to constantly rework one song rather than 12 at once, and it is not going to produce both a single and an album without some big changes being made.

There are valid points here, of course. But the last few lines which I put in bold come to a conclusion based solely on opinion, and to me it's one which also ignores completely how Good Vibrations was created and how that became a #1 single.

Trace the arc and the timeline of Good Vibrations and all the related sessions, reworkings, rerecordings, new edits, and even an abandonment by Brian of the song at one point...only to have the final edit be released and hit #1 on the charts. How long did it take that song to go from its initial writing and that initial "take 1" of the song until Brian had the edit mixed which was the one that we all know?

Was that too not a sign of a stable and healthy mind, or did the success of Good Vibrations validate his working methods which got that song to the finish line?

While I agree that Heroes overall became a bit of an anchor weighing the ship down at times, another point lost in the post above was the intended timeline of when the follow-up single to Good Vibrations was planned to be released. Good Vibrations was still hitting the Top 40 singles surveys across the country (USA) well into January 1967. Why would they want to piggyback another single that soon after a smash single release which was still on the charts? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Chuck Britz "single mix" of Heroes with Cantina made February 10 1967? That would line up with what standard practice of releasing a follow up would suggest be done: Release it as Good Vibrations finally slipped off the charts and station playlists, in other words after it had run its course. Then the new one is ready to launch.

However, apart from Brian trying to get a B-side for the single, what also happened in February '67? The lawsuit against Capitol, effectively either ending or putting a dead stop to the Beach Boys' relationship with that label, either until it got sorted out or as a final separation. Now factor that into the mix of situations surrounding the whole thing, and no one knew when or how the lawsuit would be resolved, with the "when" being the more important element. What would the band even release if they were in the middle of a lawsuit with their label where potentially they'd have a single ready but no label to issue that single and promote it, and no setup of their own yet with the proper channels and relationships to deal with marketing and distributing anything they planned to put out?

So with all this going on, the suggestion that all of the activity around "Heroes" and "Vegetables" and trying to get a workable single ready to go (mind you, temporarily without an actual label for it to go anywhere), we're supposed to believe that all of this was due to an unstable and unhealthy mind, rather than a literal shitstorm of other factors swirling around at the exact time Brian was supposed to have had a single ready? And also, should we ignore how long it took within Brian's working process the year before to get Good Vibrations from the initial session to the final released version that was still charting almost up to February in some US radio markets? That's where I'd counter those opinions and that narrative rather strongly. And we didn't even mention Carl's legal issues, the search for a new house and studio plans, etc. There is too much at play to narrow it down to the old "unstable and unhealthy mind of Brian" conclusion.

I don't disagree with any of this. What happened in 1967 cannot be reduced to any one factor or narrative; a huge number of things contributed to Smile not being finished. The only explanation which I, personally, reject wholesale is that Smile wasn't finished because the project was too creatively ambitious for the recording technology of the time. I believe the evidence overwhelmingly shows that Brian Wilson was *capable* of finishing Smile. But other than that, I think every single angle is worth considering and virtually every factor in the album's failure that's ever been raised has, in fact, played some role. Choosing to highlight this or that issue in any given post should not be taken as my saying that that's the *only* factor.

I don't really know whether the way Brian approached Heroes and Villains was right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy. I agree with the sloopjohnb72 quote you pull out above, but I fully recognize that it is an opinion, my personal judgement, and in no way, shape, or form a fact.

What I think is a fact, or something very close to a fact, is that Brian's effort to finish Heroes and Villains and then Vegetables as a suitable follow up to Good Vibrations made finishing Smile impossible between January and April of 1967, because he was dedicating so many sessions to the single that he could not reasonably have resumed work on the album as a whole until he either mixed a finished single or abandoned it.

Your comment about Good Vibrations made me want to, in fact, trace the arc of the recording of Good Vibrations, and I ended up literally counting sessions. (I know, I know, obsessive behavior! What can I say, Smile is an addiction!):

Pet Sounds was recorded in 37 documented studio sessions between the first Sloop John B session in July, 1965 and the final mastering of the album on April 19, 1966. 33 of those sessions were done in three months of consistent work between January 18 and April 19, 1966.

Good Vibrations was recorded in 17 sessions between April 9 and the final mix-down at Columbia on Sept. 26.

Not counting the Good Vibrations sessions, all the songs we know as Smile were recorded in some form between the first Heroes and Villains session on May 11 and the end of the year.

In 1966, there were 40 non-GV Smile sessions, 34 of which took place in the three months between October 3, when work on the album really picked up in earnest, and December 28. Brian is working at almost the exact same pace as Pet Sounds.

Between January 3 and April 14, slightly more time than Brian had had spent on Pet Sounds between January and April and Smile between October and December, Brian held 43 sessions. He dedicated 20 sessions to Heroes and Villains (he had already worked on H&V at 9 sessions in 1966). He dedicated 11 sessions to Vegetables, 6 sessions to Dennis and Carl’s songs, and 4 sessions to Jasper Daily. In January, he also took one session to rerecord Wonderful in a notably inferior version (a track that had been mixed to mono and labeled as a master on October 6), and also held the famous January Surf’s Up session on which I need not speculate here.

That’s 43 sessions which produced 2 unfinished singles, 2 unfinished Dennis/Carl songs, whatever was recorded of the Jasper Daily album, and a crappy rerecord of Wonderful.

On May 6, Taylor made his famous “Smile has been scrapped” announcement. On May 15, Brian picked up again with Love to Say Da Da, but quickly shifted gears to Smiley Smile.

I LOVE this!!! Thanks for sharing

Mike brought good lyrics to the table often enough to more than earn his salt, but I also think in at least a few cases he brought Brian's music down with juvenile unimaginative tripe. (I thought this was in the Carlin bio but I guess it was the book on Pet Sounds alone, where the author specifically lists "California Girls" as the moment Brian outgrew Mike; the author felt that beautiful pristine backing track was brought down by such trivial "I wanna bang ALL the girls!" lyrics and I'm inclined to agree. I always just listen to the instrumental of that song these days.)

I agree completely that Brian Wilson outgrew Mike Love right about the time California Girls was released. But I've always had an image in my head of Brian Wilson doing acid for the first time, writing this weird cowboy music, getting really excited and being like: "everyone loves girls! It's going to be a song about girls! All different girls! And the chorus will be girls, girls, girls, yeah I dig the girls!" Which I just think is so funny and so how people on drugs often act.

Also in this interview from 2007 (which has the ring of truth imho), Brian claims to have written the first line himself, then gone back and forth with Mike line for line. So not sure you can get away with blaming Mike if you don't like them!

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-socalsong12aug12-story.html

To your actual larger point, though, I agree

Perhaps. It's not something I'm gonna quibble on because, again, I prefer a simpler structure anyway and I think debates about the specifics of SMiLE to some extent are pointless because the plans changed so much and there's so much contradictory evidence. However, just for the sake of pointing out the possibilities and encouraging readers to keep an open mind to them, could it not be said that any linking dialogues or laughs might also have been added at the assembly stage? Just food for thought  

I haven't even read your last post yet (again, technically a work day over here!), and hope to contribute more at length this weekend, but just want to jump in to say that I think my point got lost somewhere (which was definitely my own fault). I actually agree with you! I think it is not only plausible, but maybe more likely than not, that there would have been little jokes or dialogues between the tracks on a finished Smile! What I was trying to say originally is that I don't think it's an either-or between accepting the 12 song track list and having jokes and dialogues between the songs, because I think the jokes and little spoken exclamations or chants or whatever would simply not have been listed in the track list! And exactly, I think they would have been added at the assembly stage, which of course was never reached

This is a kind of weird thing to do, but I want to copy into this thread a post sloopjohnb72 made on page 12 of the other Smile thread, almost exactly three years ago. Just because I think it's incredibly relevant to this conversation, and because I never felt like it got as much purchase in that thread as I thought it deserved.

Based on the session information posted above about how done everything was, I really think that until the end of December, 1966, Brian was making an album called Smile that was pretty damn close to finished and would have gone out in the jackets Capital Records had already printed. Yea, he changed his mind, he scrapped some things and moved some things around, but creatively, the project was working.

After December, 1966, that was no longer true. And the problem, in my view, was Heroes and Villains.

This whole message is very well said, but I'm highlighting this portion, as it rings especially true.

Like you said, things were sort of beginning to fall apart by Christmas, but there was still an album that could easily have been finished at any given moment, had the Beach Boys been given one week to complete the LP. Those 12 songs could have been finished in a rush if they needed to be.

But the big switch was David Anderle informing Brian that he needed a unique A and B side single to launch Brother Records. Brian was seemingly satisfied with Good Vibrations as the sole single for the project, until his decision to launch a record label for the Boys (which had been in the plans for about a year now) sort of snuck up behind him. There's sufficient evidence in the way that this story has been told for us to believe that Heroes had already been conceived, and maybe even recorded as a song for Smile when Brian got this news. Every session up until October 20 had not produced a piece of a song, but an entire backing track that was in need only of vocal overdubbing. So far, the process was no different than Pet Sounds, beside the fact that the tracks were not performed beginning-to-end live by the ensemble, as Brian used editing to highlight big dynamic and metric contrasts between verses and choruses that couldn't be achieved as well via a continuous performance. There's no reason to believe Heroes was an exception. On October 20, Heroes had only 2 long parts - the verse (which was originally much longer, and is cut down even on The Smile Sessions disc 2), and the Barnyard section, a fadeout which, like all of Brian's Smile fades, adds in new melodies and instruments with each round, rather than starting full steam ahead. With Brian and Van Dyke's 3 verses telling a cohesive love story set in the old west, without the "side quests" that later versions of the song will include, this works perfectly as a concise 2-part album track.

But when Brian was told he needed a single, he chose to rework this song as something both commercial and exciting, and that's when it began to consume parts of other songs. First I'm in Great Shape, then Do You Like Worms, then Cabin Essence, then My Only Sunshine... songs became unusable for the next project, as they were physically disassembled, and the focus shifted entirely toward the new single. It didn't help that for the first time for The Beach Boys (this had been the case for other artists, pseudonyms, studio bands, etc), Brian needed TWO new songs. Previously, he'd relied on material from released albums to fill out the B-side, but on a new record label, he couldn't just take something off Pet Sounds, for example. The entirety of the next 5-6 months is spent trying to get a single. That's not a sign of a stable and healthy mind, it isn't productive to constantly rework one song rather than 12 at once, and it is not going to produce both a single and an album without some big changes being made.

Yeah I agree Guitarfool. Theres no denying Brian was by far the most individually talented member of either bands operation. Absolutely. I criticized him a lot in my original post but the fact that he did so much for the group and they owed it to him to have faith in his muse is still dead-on accurate. Had Brian not been so sensitive and fragile, anyone else wouldve gone solo or threatened to and that wouldve shut the naysayers up real fast if they lnew what was good for them.

Ultimately though we gotta acknowledge that all Brian's partners in this era, creatively and maritally, felt disrespected by him and put off by his irresponsible behavior. Marilyn, Mike, Anderle, VDP ("victimized by [his] buffoonery") and even Asher will admit as much. I think Tony summed him up best, "amazing musician, amateur human bring" (paraphrased). Not trying to sound mean just being honest that even our hero was a shade of gray.

I 100% agree with this. But I also think it's worth reminding ourselves that Brian was dealing with a serious mental illness, almost certainly some kind of schizoaffective disorder (as he was officially diagnosed in the 90s), characterized by both schizophrenia symptoms including delusions and auditory hallucinations, and bipolar/mood disorder symptoms. That kind of mental illness is no joke. To be dealing with something like that without proper medical care and almost no support, no one in your life in any position to help you understand what you were experiencing or how to deal with those symptoms. I can't even imagine how terrifying and lonely that must have been. I say this not to absolve Brian of his bad behavior to the people around him (and I believe Marilyn did try to get him professional help, something he was resistant to). but I do think it's something that we need to keep in mind when we think about his behavior in this era.

BJL, youre probably right about the modular recording, actually. I may have let the insane Heroes sessions (all to produce a, in my opinion, very flawed presentation of the song) cloud my judgement. I might try to go through each track and count the different sections in each (I believe Worms and CE have three each, Child had two versions but the second is 3 including the bridge I think, Surf's Up is two, etc...) Still though, even just two tracks tinkered with the the extent GV was (Heroes was more, Veggies less but put together it about equals 2 GV worth of sessions I believe) put the album back 6 months. 

My opinion: Heroes and Villains and Vegetables - but really, the desire to find a follow up single to Good Vibrations out of the existing Smile material, something I'm convinced was not part of the original plan - didn't just put the album back 6 months, it put the album back forever. Which is why I think the point of no return was the decision not to put out the cantina mix in February. If that single had gone out, maybe somehow things could have worked out. Which is just one reason why I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head with your last few paragraphs from the original post.

It's infuriating reading the Badman book with Brian wondering "gee what can the B-side be?" and supposedly having Heroes: Side1 done (at least for a hot minute) but then worrying about a useless Part 2 that wouldn't even get any airplay. Someone needed to say "Brian, who cares about the B-side? You've got at least two perfectly fine instrumentals in the can you're never gonna release otherwise--Trombone Dixie and Holidays. Use one of those."

I've had that exact same thought reading those exact some quotes (which are also in LLVS, which is where I think I first encountered them).

On a different note, I love the humor element of the album, and I really do agree with you that all the humor stuff Brian was working with was absolutely part of the plan and would have appeared in a variety of ways in a finished album, whatever it looked like. I think it would have happened at the assembly stage, both for the individual songs and the album as a whole, which is why we don't see nearly as much of it in the surviving tracks as I think there would have been in a finished Smile, though of course it's impossible to know for sure.

I agree with you that a 12 track album is preferable to a BWPS or "We're Only In It For the Money" medley too, just saying that Brian felt different at least at one point and its worth noting.

It's not that I think it's preferable, it's that I think there's a huge amount of evidence that it's what Brian was actually producing through January, though certainly various other ideas were floated now and then. I agree that it's certainly worth noting all the alternative ideas that did float around, some of which influenced proceedings in various interesting ways.

This is an extremely astute analysis, Julia! I have some thoughts which I'm going to share now, and some thoughts which I'm going to share later today or this weekend!

Lately though, I've started going into more "hard scholarship" (IE sources with no editorializing, just reporting the facts and documenting what happened with dated citations) about this topic and it's revealed to me some things that I think get lost in the discussion of the album as a whole.

I completely agree that now that we have a detailed timeline of all or at least very close to all of the sessions, and a pretty clear idea of what was recorded when, it is possible to reconstruct the recording and collapse of Smile with a clarity and precision that was just completely and utterly impossible back in the 80s and 90s when a lot of the older conventional wisdom and key sources like LLVS were put together.

On your "humor in between songs" section. We have very few vintage mixes that represented actually finished, mixed, completed songs. One of very few such mixes is the Cantina mix of Heroes and Villains, and the fact that it has a funny shouted interjection (Your Under Arrest!) strikes me as very significant. I am a very strong supported of the 12 discrete songs theory, mainly because (as I've said elsewhere), I think that Brian absolutely intended to use the track listing that Capital records *printed on thousands of record jackets*, and that encompasses the vast majority of songs Brian worked on during the period when he was actually seriously attempting to record an album (which, by March, he was, frankly, no longer doing, as you point out in your comment on Jasper Daily). But I don't see any contradiction between Smile having 12 basically discrete tracks and Smile including spoken interjections and interludes. Given that Our Prayer was intended to be unlabeled, and again the "Your Under Arrest" interjection, I think a huge variety of possible uses of that approach are easy to imagine, and would probably not have actually shown up until the end. The Rock With Me Henry version of Wonderful is also strong evidence for the seriousness of the humor concept in Brian's mind (albeit also strong evidence of an artist losing control of his creative judgement!)

Re: modular recording wasn't worth it -

I sort of maybe agree about Good Vibrations being taken to a point of overkill, but as someone else pointed out in the other long Smile thread from a few years ago (sorry, I can't remember who), for most of the recording process of Smile, before the project (in my view, at least) went off the rails in early 1967, Brian was dedicating each session to a single song, and working pretty efficiently. He was recording the different sections of the song separately, instead of running through the track from the beginning. But not to make work, but probably to save work. He obviously liked the sharp and exciting sound that resulted from tape splices. It also would have made it made it much easier to vary the instrumentation between sections. I think it's worth noting that much modern music is recorded this way and edited together, not because it's more work but because it's less work. With a song as complex as Heroes and Villains or Cabinessence, trying to record the tracks through like on Pet Sounds would have been madness! It would have taken so many takes to get the transitions. Honestly, I've heard modern musicians/producers on youtube absolutely marvel that a song like Wouldn't It Be Nice was recorded in a single take without overdubs!

Okay, I have more to say, but it will have to wait for another time because I have to get back to my actual job. But one last note before I go:

To this quote: "Also, it's a damn shame Phil Spector was such a piece of human garbage." True for so, so, so many reasons, effecting so many people across so many decades. Sometimes I think if Phil Spector had just been, you know, not even nice necessarily, but just a fine, good-enough human being, the whole history of popular music might look different. And, of course, at least one woman would be alive who isn't.

By the way. Does anyone else agree that Good Vibrations is an odd fit with the rest of the Smile material, regardless of which lyrics are used? Has Brian discussed this before? It shares some sonic DNA with the Smile songs just as Sloop John B does with Pet Sounds, but for me the vibe and lyrics of GV are pretty wildly different.

Ive always agreed that it fits better as a standalone single, but boy you would get crucified for saying that back in the day.

Realistically it wouldve been on the album for the sales boost alone but damn if it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. Like, wherever you put it it feels like a weird, lengthy detour

But I guess even Sgt Pepper had the totally out of left field Within You, Without You and as you allude to, some people dont like SJB on Pet Sounds.

I definitely see this - I mean, lyrically it's in a totally different universe. But I think musically it would have fit very well, and that as Brian did his last vocal overdubs and assembled and mixed the other songs they would have become sonically more like Good Vibrations—tighter, brighter, denser. I also think there's a certain logic to including a song about the rush of falling in love within the "cycle of life" theme the album develops, even if we are on a different planet lyrically.

For what it's worth, I've always thought Sloop John B fit perfectly on Pet Sounds and am very glad it was included. It's so central to the emotional arc of the album in my mind, and I've always seen it as one of the album’s more abstract and existential tracks. The experience of being on a trip you don't understand, nothing's going how you thought it would, and you just want to go home. Just let me go home. I want to go home. What home? The West Hollywood apartment he’d shared with Marilyn for less than a year? The house in Hawthorne his parents no longer lived in? What home?

This is a rehash of what I've said many times (to the point of pissing a lot of people off at me back then--sorry) but I'll post it here because, hey, it's relevant, I've been gone for like ten years so some people may not know my take and also for posterity. These are my strongly held opinions based on a preponderance of the evidence:

I'm probably repeating what I said back in that long 2022 thread, but I basically agree with you but have a few thoughts of my own to throw in. But to your four points:

1. I completely agree. I also personally think that the track list on the jackets Capital printed was the tracklist Brian was working with at least through January, and that Brian fully understood himself to be recording an album with those 12 tracks that would ultimately be pressed and distributed in those jackets. However, I've never seen any evidence from the period that suggested segregating each side by theme. I'd be very interested to be proven wrong on that. But I think it's just as likely that the two themes would have intertwined (sometimes within songs, even).

2. I completely agree that The Elements was going to be a single song with four separately recorded sections, although I think it's more likely Brian would have used hard cuts than cross fades, as was his style generally. But I think it's also worth considering that at some point Brian either considered or decided to have just fire + rebuilding instead. I also think, in my personal opinion and personal read of the surviving evidence as I understand it, that people, in general, are too quick to jump from "this wasn't finished" to "Brian couldn't figure out how to finish this." The way the sessions went suggests, to me, that Brian's (foolhardy) attempt to turn Heroes and Villains into a followup to Good Vibrations, beginning in early 1967, led him to stop work on the other tracks and focus almost entirely on a new single for the remainder of the sessions. My take is that Brian didn't fail to complete the Elements because he couldn't figure out how, but rather because he stopped trying to complete anything on the album other than Heroes and Villains (and briefly Vegetables, when that was imagined as the new single).

3. Completely agree with all of this!

4. This is an interesting theory, for sure. It feels intuitively plausible, to me. Although at risk of repeating myself, here too, I think that by early 1967 Brian was no longer recording in a way that really made a lot of sense if your goal was to finish an album, and that this, and not any particularly manifestation of the problem, was the key issue.

Thanks for keeping the Smile discussion alive!! I love it and always have

I'm also very interested in these questions! It's a bit of a universally elided topic, if understandably so. Re: question 2, I don't have my Beach Boys books and bios handy, so perhaps I'm off-base here, but I don't think I've ever seen any evidence that Brian's interest in Diane predated his marriage? I think his lyrics from the period, how quickly they seem to have moved, how young Marilyn was, all suggest that they didn't exactly have a super strong foundation for a marriage. And Brian at least seems to have had motivations a lot more complicated than just "we're in love and want to get married"... All of which is just to say, I'm not sure Diane had to do anything other than exist to become an obvious person on whom Brian could project a fantasy of an easier relationship (or easier life)...

I just missed the Foster's Freeze! I did my own pilgrimage a few years ago and it was closed ... but the vibe was as if whoever was supposed to open it hadn't bothered to come in that morning. Glad I at least got to see it, even if I didn't get my shake. Definitely drive down Hawthorne Boulevard and definitely visit the monument. Even though the house is gone, Hawthorne is still a working class area, which means there hasn't been nearly as much development as there might have been. There are some old 50s signs and buildings on the main strip, and the part of the Wilson's neighborhood that didn't go under the freeway still has the kind of vibe you might imagine, I think. Just imagine them riding up and down those streets on their bikes, it's easy to see it. Also you can have lunch at Pizza Show, which is where Brian would go for a slice. As a New Yorker, the pizza itself is bad. But I bet ya it's exactly the same bad pizza they were chowing down on in the 50s!

Except for the fact that “Rooftop Harry” on the SOS box comes directly from Brian and is nothing less than an early version of “From There to Back Again.”

As demos and early versions have trickled out, it’s pretty clear that the big man has pulled his creative weight the entire time.

If Brian gets a credit for co-writing a song, he co-wrote the song.

This. I really don't understand why people think Brian has been uninvolved in his solo work since 1998. Really all the evidence points the other way. In fact, the general pattern seems to be that Brian's collaborators tended towards the uninspired, and the more active a role Brian played in any given song, the better it ended up being. Which is the exact opposite of worrying that the highlights didn't really come from him! Witness Cry and Happy Days on Imagination - the two solo writing credits and also the only two really special songs on the record. Good Kind of Love and Message Man being the two catchiest things on That Lucky Old Sun. I remember amazing rumors on facebook and this board back in 2010 about how engaged Brian was in the instrumental tracking for the Gershwin record. That was before the record came out or anybody had heard it, but lo and behold, the instrumental arrangements were arguably the best of Brian's solo career. Coincidence? I think not. In other words, the only thing crazier than Brian Wilson coming up with a suite of four incredible songs to close out a new Beach Boys album in 2012 is the idea that Joe Thomas - one of the least-inspired co-writers Brian Wilson has ever worked with - somehow turned into a brilliant composer and arranger for about ten minutes, then promptly went back to being boring.

I think it was probably posted by mistake, or by someone whose rights to the material are disputed.